Still constant in a wondrous excellence"
(Borrowing these words out of context
from Shakespeare's Sonnet 105, to repurpose
them as a description of my Lord and God)
"Kind is my love to-day, to-morrow kind,
Still constant in a wondrous excellence" (Borrowing these words out of context from Shakespeare's Sonnet 105, to repurpose them as a description of my Lord and God)
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We sang this at church today. I cried. "Majestic Sweetness Sits Enthroned" Lyrics by Samuel Stennett (1727-1795) Music by Thomas Hastings (1784-1872) (Full lyrics here) For always, Jesus. "...The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be silent."
Exodus 14:14 (ESV) Or, as another version puts it, "...ADONAI will do battle for you. Just calm yourselves down!" (Complete Jewish Bible) ...only be silent? ...just calm yourselves down? Proving once again that God has a sense of humor... He knows this is the part we find virtually impossible. Except He's not joking. Re-read Exodus 14:14, not just as a command to the Israelites preparing to cross the Red Sea on foot, but to us. This is secret territory, a land found by His noblest, gentlest, most powerfully Spirit-led saints. Will I ever fully find it? That depends on me. Can I let go of the need to fight my own battles? I've been fighting them forever. I'm an inveterate problem-juggler. I've had to be, humanly speaking. A while ago I found some notes I had written to myself two or three years back -- reminders about things I had to tend to urgently. Other notes in the pile were so upsetting I threw them away; these were what was left. Prior to finding these notes, I had begun reading quite a bit of Oswald Chambers, who perfectly fits the description in the last sentence of the second paragraph above. I picked up the stack of notes, placed it on my pillow, and said to God, "Here. Read this." The pages were blanketed with scribbles; some of the notes had exclamation marks after them; once or twice, the word "HELP" appeared. I may have muttered something rather unsisterly about dear Oswald as I put the notes on the pillow. Yes, re-read Exodus 14:14. This is secret territory. He calls us all to it, but so few find it. We need to learn to be silent and calm. Not inactive, for in Him we live, and move, and have our being, but letting Him take over the "worrying" part. LET GO. (I'm talking to myself here.) How? By letting Him orchestrate the days. The hours are His. Walk through them in obedience. Spend sweet time with Him. Set Him free to reveal His heart to us, through His word and through our circumstances, as He sees fit. Praise Him all the day, and all the night. Remember all He has done for us -- lift it to Him daily as a memorial song. This is secret territory. He calls us to it. Let Him fill our hearts and days with Himself. Let Him set the agenda, and let us calmly walk in it. Let us run after Him and adore Him. How He works out the rest is His own business. Draw me, we will run after Thee: the King hath brought me into His chambers: we will be glad and rejoice in Thee, we will remember Thy love more than wine: the upright love Thee. Song of Solomon 1:4 (KJV) You are my hiding place; You preserve me from trouble;
You surround me with songs of deliverance. Psalm 32:7 You may remember I started memorizing scripture verses a while back. This went well for a time, until I began biting off more than I could chew. I picked passages that were too long and took days and days to learn. I need to get back to scripture memory, come to think of it, but I'll be more careful this time; two or three short lines is about the most I can handle. Psalm 32:7 is one of the verses I did successfully memorize a few months ago, and it has really stuck with me. Today as I was driving home, the Lord wanted me to sing to Him. I protested a bit. Someone in my family is going through a struggle that's been weighing on my mind enough to wake me up in the night. I was returning from day two of the annual two-day departmental workshops and get-togethers that mark the beginning of the new academic year. I was tired, and wondering if there would be a message for me when I got home -- perhaps relieving my fears, perhaps confirming them -- but at least some kind of message. ...I protested, but then out of the blue -- to my surprise -- I started to sing. When I say that I was surprised, I'm not being facetious. I recognized right away that it was the Holy Spirit who had begun singing. My voice, but better. And coming from a well somewhere deep inside me. I don't remember what I sang at first. But as I sang, the line "You surround me with songs of deliverance" came to me, and I realized something: The songs that come from my own voice as praise to Him are the songs of deliverance He sings over me. They probably aren't all of them -- He may also be singing songs over me that I can't hear yet. But the songs I can hear are His own voice, using my voice to minister to me as I minister to Him. Through praise, our bond grows. Through praise, my faith grows. Through praise, my heart is lifted to Jesus, in whom I find healing and strength. I'm STILL digging out of my interminable project (almost there), but I have a few minutes and am listening to Phil Wickham's song "Holy, Holy, Holy," which I posted yesterday on the main page. The line "All who see You bow for countless days" rings through my head like a perfect image of what it is that I live in now -- I have seen Him, not physically, but I have begun to know what it is to love and worship Him and to be loved and transformed forever by Him. Having seen Him, I can do nothing else now but bow for countless days -- praising Him publicly, posting things online that I hope will help other believers love, revere, and obey Him all the more. His Way is perfect: He is the Way.
This lowly one whom Your hand has saved, Jesus, comes before You -- singing Your endless praise, bowing before You forever. After posting a link yesterday to that fabulously exuberant praise song, "Heaven Fall Down," I discovered more amazing songs by the same musicians. Here goes ...lost in love for the exquisite Lord... two more songs:
YouTube videos: "Burn Us Up" performed by Shane and Shane written by Shane Barnard "You're Beautiful" performed by Shane and Shane and Phil Wickham written by Phil Wickham Lyrics:* "Burn Us Up" by Shane Barnard There were three before the king. There were three who wouldn't bow to him. For when you heard the music play and you were standing you would burn. They looked at him and said... Burn us up. Burn us up. Burn us up. Oh, King won't you burn us in the furnace of Your desire. We give up. We give up. We give up. Oh, King won't you burn us in the furnace of Your desire. Oh won't You throw us in the fire. The king enraged at what they said. Sent the three away to find their death. The palace stopped in unbelief when the guilty raised their hands to sing... Burn us up. Burn us up. Burn us up. Oh, King won't you burn us in the furnace of Your desire. We give up. We give up. We give up. Oh, King won't you burn us in the furnace of Your desire. Oh won't You throw us in the fire. You are able to deliver from the fire of affliction! It's the declaration of my Lord! You're not an image of gold! You're the God of Old. You have made us. Come and save us. We are Yours! But even if You don't we will burn. So burn us up in the furnace of Your desire. * source ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Lyrics:* "Beautiful" by Phil Wickham I see Your face in every sunrise The colors of the morning are inside Your eyes The world awakens in the light of the day I look up to the sky and say You're beautiful I see Your power in the moonlit night Where planets are in motion and galaxies are bright We are amazed in the light of the stars It's all proclaiming who You are You're beautiful I see You there hanging on a tree You bled and then You died and then You rose again for me Now You are sitting on Your heavenly throne Soon we will be coming home You're beautiful When we arrive at eternity's shore Where death is just a memory and tears are no more We'll enter in as the wedding bells ring Your bride will come together and we'll sing You're beautiful I see Your face, I see Your face, I see Your face You're beautiful, You're beautiful, You're beautiful *source This morning I was taken to Psalm 142...
Have I mentioned that I love King David? He so often reminds me of me... what a drama queen (OK, king). This psalm is full of "Help me, I'm surrounded, nobody cares" (something I can completely relate to but which isn't my normal mindset at the moment, thanks be to the Lord). So, I strongly suspect the reason I was taken to this particular psalm was to see this (verse 7a): Bring my soul out of prison, so that I may give thanks to Your name. You see, this is just backwards. Yet it's often the way we think: "God, please get me out of this fix and make me feel better, so that I will see Your hand on my life. I'll praise and thank You so much if You do this." Giving thanks to His name is a vastly better starting point. When our primary focus is God and not the rescue, He begins to bring our souls out of prison in ways we've never imagined. But you know what? As I type these words I realize that David's heart probably did have it right. His words sometimes expressed things backwards, but His heart and will were fully the Lord's. Which is all God really asks. Not only that, now that I think of it, "Please get me out of my prison" was my own focus for a very long time. And the sweet Lord met me there. Thank You, beloved One, for meeting us in our prisons and ministering to us there, teaching us day by day to thank and praise You. From the rising of the sun to its setting The name of the LORD is to be praised. Psalm 113:3 For years I've heard people say that beautiful landscapes filled them with awe and wonder at God's majesty. Well, I admit this is strange, but for most of my life I've thought of beautiful landscapes mostly as just beautiful landscapes. Now that I've begun to have a full, "everything on the table" sort of walk with God, all this has changed. Often I'll be driving down the road engulfed by a panorama of cascading hills and farmland, and I'll cry out to my Saviour, "Look! Look what You've made, my beloved One. How magnificent You are!" In the morning now, sometimes I'll look out the window, half-awake and occasionally not thrilled about whatever I've been mulling about, and I'll see a blush of pink rising up from behind the houses. Clouds zigzag across the grey early morning sky, and I say to the Lord Jesus, "Come, let's look out the window... how lovely it all is." What has changed? I'm in a living love relationship with my God, and these things are part of His visible signature. I don't love Him because of His wonderful creative works; but because I love Him, I treasure His handiwork. And I let Him know it. "You created air," I'll say, "How awesome is that -- the perfect balance of chemicals for us to breathe." Yes, OK, I'm a hopeless romantic. But so is He: just look at the sunrise tomorrow, or the sunset. You'll see it in His signature. I don't think re-beginnings is actually a word, but we all have them. First I'll "re-begin" with the thought from my first post: In a church basement on Halloween night just over 40 years ago, I must have said "yes" to the Lord Jesus. "Must have" because I have no recollection of what I said, or even of what the person sitting across from me had said to help bring me to this decision. But that's OK. What God heard was "yes," and He knew it was sincere. It took a while before I even understood what I had done. I eventually came to a more concrete awareness of what it was to become a Christian. I began living what I thought was a yielded life, but in the process I made some exceedingly dumb decisions. I was trying to be a good little disciple, but that's not what the Christian life is. As many Christians do, I eventually began to live as "a practicing atheist," as one well-known pastor puts it. We pretty much do our own thing and hope God will bless it.
The real Christian life, as I've begun to understand more fully, is Christ's life. In me. The "exchanged life." He's the only one who can live the Christian life. I'm not very good at explanations like this, so perhaps the video below will help. But what really transformed my life was simply beginning to praise God, even when it was the last thing I felt like doing. Through it He taught me, among other things, that prayer isn't an exercise we do to convince Him to do things. It's not even making a list of all the needs everyone in your church has, and making sure you pray through the checklist every day. As I said on the main page, prayer is a love song, and it's meant to become a duet. God aches to have an intimate, "everything" relationship with us. Praise lets Him know we revere Him, but also that we want to know Him. And praise is at the core of the sort of prayer that could be called a love song. One last thought, a bit corny, but it came to me recently that "prayer" could spell out Praise. Repent. Ask. Yield. Exalt. Rejoice. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Video: The Life Of Christ Within Us, Part 3 (Charles Price) My reason for starting this blog is quite simple. I've discovered something wonderful, and I want to share it. I'm a Christian whose life was broken. I was lost in the wilderness, and the Lord came and found me. In a very dark moment, when my world was a breath away from coming undone, someone advised me that the best way to keep going was through praise. I began to praise the Lord, mostly in song, even when I felt more like weeping than singing. Soon the most amazing thing began to happen. The praise seemed to open up a conduit to God's very heart; His presence grew increasingly tangible, and my relationship with Him began to grow deeper.
I am now head over heels in love with my God. I live to praise Him and to know Him. I've been a Christian for 40 years, and until recently I had never realized what the Christian life was meant to be. More on that later. |
Every truth of
Scripture leads to Christ. Charles Price .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ..
About me "Hephzibah" (Isaiah 62) A yet unfinished story of the Lord's perfect restoration work I live in southwestern Ontario, Canada. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ||| ||| ||| ||| ||| ||| ||| ||| |||
2 Chronicles 7:16 בָּחַר קָדַשׁ ||| ||| ||| ||| ||| ||| ||| ||| ||| [T]o our
wounds only God’s wounds can speak. from “Jesus of the Scars” by Edward Shillito (1872-1948) Blog archives
August 2022
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...The eyes of the
Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show Himself strong on behalf of those whose heart is perfect toward Him. 2 Chronicles 16:9a (KJ21) |