Heart Tracks - Living In Haran

     The Spirit brought to mind today a passage of scripture from Genesis 11. It's about Terah, the father of Abraham.  Terah had a son named Haran, but he had died while still a young man in Ur of the Chaldeans.  After this, perhaps in grief and seeking to forget, Terah took his family out with the intention of settling in the land of Canaan.  However, they came to a village named Haran, and stopped there.  What was likely meant to be just a stop became a dwelling place.  Terah died there.  He never got past the village of Haran, and I think it may also be true that he never got past the grief and pain of losing his son Haran.  He never stopped "living" in that place.

     We live in a fallen world, and as a result, none of us, whether we are believers or not, are immune from loss, failure, defeat, betrayal, and abandonment.  Events may come about that are truly devastating to our lives.  The death of loved ones.  The failure of a business, a ministry.  The betrayal of friends, the terrible attacks of adversaries, and the unavoidable losses that are a part of life.  We can't help but be affected by them, and on every level of our lives, emotionally, physically, and spiritually.  We can be paralyzed in all of these areas, and very easily, we can end up "living" there, just as Terah did.
      It may be that when Terah came to that village with the same name as his son, all the memories and pain of his loss flooded in on him.  He had wanted to go on, but somehow, he couldn't.  He was trapped in Haran, and in Haran he would die.  I think so many of us are also trapped in our own "Haran's", crippled, paralyzed, by loss, failure, betrayal and disappointment.  What the Father would take us past, we have settled into.  No matter how much time has passed, we are still there, and the pain and wounds of the past are just as real in our present, and as a result, have stolen our future.  The Father calls us to Himself, but Haran holds us in its grip.
     We see this in relationships.  Men and women who have been betrayed by their spouses, or someone they loved, find themselves unable to form real relationships with the opposite sex.  Mistrust and suspicion rule.  They're trapped in Haran.  Those who have failed, sinned, find themselves unable to receive His forgiveness, and live under a condemnation that doesn't come from Him.  They're trapped in Haran.  Others who have been deeply disappointed in what their life has been.  Disappointed in others, themselves, even the Father, living in that disappointment. They too are trapped in Haran.  Yet all the power of these Haran's cannot keep out the voice of Christ, a voice that always calls us forth.  Like Lazarus from the tomb, we may come forth from Haran, if we'll but hear Him, listen to Him.
     Are you, likeTerah, living in Haran, trapped there?  You needn't like Terah, die there.  The chains and bars that keep you there can, will, with a word from Him, fall off, fall down.  Healing will come, and with it, freedom, strength, and the ability to move on, to the place He has called you to.
The pain of the loss, the wound, the failure and betrayal is real, but the joy of His hope is more real.  He calls you, me, us, forth into that hope.
He calls us now, out of Haran, into Himself.  Do we come?

Blessings,
Pastor O

Heart Tracks - Releasing Samuel

       One of the promises we love to cling to is that where the Father promises to give us "the desires of our heart."  We hear this, read this, and most often receive this as a kind of blank check that we can present at His throne and have a guarantee that what we ask for, He's duty bound to give us.  I'm not going to use this space to explore just how wrong that line of thinking is, but more, what our response is when He indeed does give us "the desire of our heart."  Case in point; Hannah, the mother of Samuel the prophet.

      Hannah was the beloved wife of Elkanah, but she was childless.  This to her, was a cause of deep and bitter grief.  More than anything, she desired a son.  Each year they traveled to Shiloh to worship the Lord.  Many trips had been made, and each time, Hannah pleaded with the Father to give her a son.  One such time, as she prayed, she was so deeply burdened with this desire, that Eli the priest believed her to be drunk, and rebuked her.  She then told him she wasn't drunk, but was crying out to the Lord in her desire for a son.  Eli then spoke words of encouragement to her, and she went away rejoicing that her prayer had been heard.  As scripture relates, "in due time," the Father gave her the son she longed for, and she named him Samuel.  In her prayers to the Father, she had promised Him that if He would give her a son, she would dedicate him, literally give him to Him.  Not just with words, but in fact.  At the proper time, she journeyed to Shiloh to do just that.  I Samuel 1:27 relates her words to Eli upon that return; "I asked the Lord to give me this child, and He has given me my request.  Now I am giving Him to the Lord and he will belong to the Lord his whole life."  The conclusion of verse 28 reads, "And they worshiped the Lord there."

     I'm sharing this story with you because I was impacted by something Watchman Nee said concerning the acts of Hannah.  Nee writes, "The sum total of her request was for this child.  Yet now, when she had received all she craved, she gave all back to the Giver. And as Samuel passed out of her hands, we are told, 'They worshiped the Lord there.' "  After reading this, I wrote in the margin, "We are so easily able to ask Him to give us the desires of our hearts, but can we give those very desires, every aspect of them, back into His hands?"  Can we release to Him, surrendering all claim to, the deepest desire, the greatest gift, the most yearned for answer to prayer?  Can we especially do this when He has answered that desire by giving it?  Nee writes, "When the day comes for me, as it came for Hannah, that my Samuel, in whom all my hopes are centered, passes out of my hands into God's, then I shall know what it really means to worship Him."
     Who, what, is yours and my "Samuel?"  What is that we have yearned for, pleaded for, treasured in our hearts, and rejoiced over in our lives That we know beyond any doubt was given us by Him?  Can we give, with nothing held back, that gift, that answer, that treasure, completely into His hands.  Not still clutching it, he, she, with our own, but letting go, giving up, surrendering that fully met desire, to Him?  Hannah could, and did.  Can we?  Will we?  Have we?  

     It comes to me as I close, that it may be that many of us still find ourselves in the place of crying out to Him for a desire that like Hannah's, has not yet been met.  It may be that it has not yet come to be the "due time" of God.  Dare we however  ask ourselves, could it possibly be because we have not been willing, as Hannah was, to give Him the ultimate act of worship and surrender that treasured desire, all of it, to Him?  Can we make that offering of worship?

Blessings,

Pastor O

Heart Tracks - Dark Streets Shining

       A friend and I were recently talking about how the season of Christmas can bring about so many different emotions.  He said, borrowing from the line of the classic Dickens novel, A Tale Of Two Cities, "It is both the best of times, and the worst of times."  It may be that a number of you know how true that really is.

     That, and something else he spoke set me to thinking on what I write today.  In response to my last Heart Thoughts, he used the verse from the carol O Little Town Of Bethlehem, changing the verse slightly, but powerfully, writing, "In our dark streets shineth an everlasting light.  The hopes and fears of all our years are met in Him tonight."  Thinking on that verse, it was brought to my mind all the dark streets that the woundings, betrayals, and disappointments of life had brought me down.  Some of them so dark that there could not be perceived any "light at the end of the tunnel."  All I could see was tunnel.  Some of the darkest of those streets had me as a traveler at this very time of the year, Christmastime.  Christmas, from my earliest memories, had always been a time of joy and happiness, even as an unbeliever.  It was not so on the dark street.  What had once been the best of times, was now the worst.  Yet on that street, the Father had something for me to learn, to know, and it was to realize that the joy, wonder, beauty of Christmas wasn't found in the tinsel and glitter that the world puts upon it.  The world knows how to "package" Christmas, it has no idea about how to "give" it.  Yet the Father did.  He knew over 2000 years ago when He gave us His only Son, Jesus.  Jesus who came to us, died for us, rose for us.  He came to the dark street of the world.  He has come to that street, and He continues to come to it.  He is the everlasting light that shines in and through the darkest street, place and heart.  As the carol says, every hope is met in Him, and every fear is overcome by Him.  The everlasting light that shines in the deepest darkness, the greatest despair, the most staggering impossibility. They are all met in Him.....right now.
     We are but a few days from the fullness of Christmas.  This may be the best of times, the worst of times, or maybe both at the same time.  Whatever the time, now is the time to come to Bethlehem.  The street you're on may be total darkness, but as you take that step of faith, His everlasting light will shine.  It may cover only one step at a time, but it will take you to Him.  Indeed, you'll be with Him before you even complete the first step.  Everything, and I mean everything, is met in Him.  Your "Bethlehem" calls to you.  Will you come?

Blessings, and a blessed Christmas to you,
Pastor O

     

Heart Tracks - A Fatherless World

    Watching the television program "Life Today" with James and Betty Robison, I heard a young woman named Lacey Sturm, the former lead singer of the rock group "Flyleaf" tell of how she came to know Christ.  Growing up as one of 6 children in a fatherless home, and witnessing acts of brutality from many of the men in her young life, she set upon a life of rebellion, sin, and hopelessness.  At age 16, no longer able to be controlled by her mother, she was sent to her grandparents to live, but her life continued on a steady downward spiral.  Finally, unable to bear it no longer, she planned to commit suicide that evening, but her grandmother, in desperation, insisted that she come to church with her.  Sullenly, with hate in her heart, towards her grandmother, the church people, and God, she went.  The pastor preached, and in the middle of the message, stopped, and weeping said, "There is someone here tonight who is planning to commit suicide and the Father wants you to know that He doesn't want you to do it, that He has life for you."  Though totally moved by what she heard, she didn't run towards, but away from Him.  As she went to the rear exit, an elderly, whitehaired gentleman spoke gently to her, telling her that he felt impressed of the Spirit to tell her that she needed to know that not all men were like those she had known.  What he said next melted her heart.  He told her that the Father didn't want her to cry herself to sleep anymore, that He longed to not only be the Father to her that she'd never known, but the Father to her that only He could be.  She was broken, because since the age of 10, she had cried herself to sleep each night, feeling unloved, unwanted, lost.  That night she came out of darkness into His light, out of hopelessness, into His hope.  At the conclusion of her story, Robison said, "We live in a fatherless world," and we need look not only out of our own windows, but within so many of our own hearts to know that this is true.  Yet standing at the door of every heart, is He who would be a Father to the fatherless, if we'll receive Him.  We need to know that this is true not only for all those who have never known Him, but for so many of us who may have received Him as Savior, yet have never known Him as our Father.  Who have never allowed Him to truly minister to us as His children.
     How fatherless might our lives, yours and mine, be today?  Whether we've lost a father, never had a father, or if we did, had one that never knew how, or worse, cared to be one to us, there is a Father, a Father of Kingdom Life available to us.  He knows where we are, what the pain is, the emptiness, hopelessness, despair, that may be there, and He bids us to let Him enter into those places with us.....as Father.  In a fatherless world, will we receive the surpassing joy of knowing Him, through Christ, as Father?  The old hymn sings, "This is my Father's world."  Will we enter into and know that world?
     As I close, I'm reminded of the Psalmist's writing, "Throughout the generations, You have been our home."  To our hurting hearts, our perhaps empty hearts, He speaks that truth, telling us, "I am your home."  A home found only in Him.....the Father.  Might you be in a place, emotionally, physically, spiritually, like Lacey Sturm?  As the Father knew where she was, so does He know where you are, we are.  He comes to us, and bids us come to Him.  Let us do so.  Let us know Him as Father........and be Fatherless no more.

Blessings,
Pastor O

Heart Tracks - Prayers & Incense

      A friend recently shared about a worship service he'd been at.  He said as the service started, machines began to fill the sanctuary with a kind of smokey mist.  He said the mist so affected his sinuses that he couldn't breathe, and had to leave the service.  I'm not sure what the intent of it all was.  Maybe they hoped to re-create the events of the Old Testament dedication of the Temple, where the glory of God was so intense that the priests were unable to minister, and could only fall before Him. Maybe it was meant to be a reflection of the incense offered up in Temple worship. Maybe it was just meant, like so much of today's "worship," to create a sensory effect in the people.  Whatever the intent, it was proof once more that only God, and not we, can bring forth His Presence.  In worship, in prayer, in all things.  His glory and presence will indeed take our breath away.  Our fleshly efforts to do so may well, as it did my friend, drive us away, but they will certainly drive Him away.  Yet this isn't the way of the Father.  This is not what He intends prayer and worship to be.

     I was impacted this past week by something said by two great men of God, Oswald Chambers and Watchman Nee.  Nee spoke on prayer and worship using Psalm 141:2, "Let my prayer be set forth as incense before You."  Incense has little place in the evangelical church, but it was a central part of Old Testament worship.  The incense used was a product of the frankincense tree.  Frankincense was one of the gifts of the wise man to the baby Jesus.  Nee explained how frankincense was obtained by making "successive incisions on the bark of the tree."  A white resin would then come forth and from it was produced the incense.  He then equated true prayer, and I believe, worship with this deep cutting.  He said it is "the presenting of something drawn painfully out of the innermost heart. as though it seeped from our very wounds."  Machines and diligently planned services cannot produce this.  Neither can daily devotions done from a sense of duty, from an attitude of "I have to."  It can only come from a heart, a broken heart, that cries out for Him.  A heart that His Spirit cuts into more and more deeply.  Heartcries that seep out from our deepest wounds, needs, and above all, desire for Him.  This is worship.  This is prayer.  Is it our worship?  Is it our prayer?
    There was then something that Chambers said regarding intercessory prayer.  He said in effect, that true intercessory prayer doesn't come from a place of our sympathy for those lives and situations we pray for.  It comes from having the very heart that the Father has, that Christ and the Holy Spirit have, for those who are the ones we pray for.  Literally, we pray with His heart, His desire.  It doesn't come from our sympathy, which often depends on our feelings, but from His passion and love for those being prayed for.  Such prayer is powerful, mighty, and sees miracles unfold.  Is such prayer our prayer?  My prayer?  Your prayer?
    So, will we go on trying to use machines, lights, effects, in hopes of producing His Presence, and failing every time, or, will we cry out to Him with hearts that He has been able to cut deeply into, fully invade and inhabit, and so experience not only the visitation of His glory and presence, but His habitation as well?  Will our prayers, our worship, truly be incense before Him?

Blessings,
Pastor O

Heart Tracks - Ring Of Fire

       A friend recently shared a story he knew about a American Indian preacher.  The man was telling others about Jesus while seated at a campfire.  He took a number of twigs from the fire and arranged them in a circle, adding an already burning one to it.  Soon the circle of twigs was burning.  Into the center of the circle he placed a worm.  All watched as the worm sought escape, moving in one direction, and then another, trying to find a way out. Trying to find salvation, deliverance.  Finally, unable to do either, it retreated into the center of the circle, and curled into ball, it's striving to save itself ended.  At that moment, the preacher reached down, took hold of the worm, and lifted it out of the certain death that awaited it.  It had been saved.  This, he told his listeners was exactly how the Father saves.  It is when we come to the place of finally realizing that all of our self-effort, all of our striving to better ourselves, improve ourselves, save ourselves, cannot, will not work, and we surrender.  It's at that point that the loving hand of the Father is able to reach down, and lift us from the circle of fire that will surely bring death for all those without Christ.  

    Jesus said that "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Light, and no one may come unto the Father except through Me."  Those who would call themselves His would agree, strongly, that this is true.  We are born into a "ring of fire," through the sin which entered the human race through Adam.  No amount of striving, self effort, religious activity and good works will enable us to escape it, and we will not escape it till we, like the worm, admit our inability to get out and surrender to the hand and heart that will, with unending love, lift us out.  The question that must first be asked is, has He lifted you out of that ring, or are you still seeking to bring about your own salvation, your own deliverance?  You cannot escape the ring, but He can lift you out....if you'll call on Him.  Have you?
    There's another question to be asked, and this would be to those of us who would testify that He has lifted us out.  Do we, as we walk through a fallen world, a world that will often encircle us with rings of burning, impossible circumstances and difficulties, still seek to find a way out, or through them by our own strength and ability?  Having admitted and yielded to His saving grace and power, do we now live in our own strength and power?  When confronted with the "rings of fire" of emotional wounds and scars, of crippling circumstances both physically and circumstantially, and even of spiritual attacks set against us, do we seek, like the worm, to find a way out by our own means? More, when it comes to the lives and situations of friends and loved ones who are trapped in those rings, do we seek to be their deliverer?  To be the ones who "save" them?  Paul, when addressing the Galatian church, called them foolish, for though they had been saved by grace and grace alone, they were now trying to live by the strength of their own ability, rather than by the power of His grace.  How like them are you and I?  How foolish do we continue to be?  How much longer will we continue to try and find the way out of the particular ring of fire confronting us in our lives right now.  How much longer will we go on trying to make things "better" instead of allowing Him to make all things new?

    We're born into a ring of fire, and though, through faith in Christ, the Father will lift us out of it, the fire will not cease to try and surround us through the pain, heartache, and impossibilities of life.  Our choice will be whether we will trust Him to every time, lift of us out of them, walk through them with Him, or, like the worm, exhaust ourselves trying to make our own way out?  If He's allowed a fire, may we trust Him deliver us, knowing that nothing will be burnt except that which hinders us, holds us back, from the fullness of life that He saved us for in the first place.
The rings of fire will come.  Will we trust Him there?

Blessings,
Pastor O
    

Heart Tracks - Doin' The Shuffle

     The Rolling Stones and Oswald Chambers.  I'm not sure those two have ever been used in conjunction with each other, but the Stones, or rather, one of their songs, came to mind by way of a couple of questions asked by Oswald Chambers.  Chambers questions were, in effect, can the Father help Himself to my life, all of my life, and, when standing in the light of His Word, can I stand, or do I have to shuffle?  The first question is deeply penetrating.  Can He help Himself to my life?  When guests join us for dinner, true hospitality invites them to help themselves to as much of the fare as they like.  The Father, in Christ, is not a mere guest in our lives, though we often treat Him as such.  He is our life.  When we experience Him as such, no part of our life is off limits.  There are no "secret rooms" we don't allow Him access to.  It all belongs to Him.  We love to think about helping ourselves to all the riches to be found in Christ, but we rarely entertain the thought that it is His right, His demand, that He be able to help Himself to all of our life, all of ourselves.  Can He?  Does He?  To my life?  To yours?

    As I said, it's a penetrating, convicting question, but the second is even more so, and it brought to mind the Stones song from the 80's, "The Harlem Shuffle."  One of the lyrics was "Doin' the Harlem Shuffle," which was a dance.  When it comes to the Lord and His Word to us, can we stand in it, receive it, be shaped by it, live it?  Or, do we do a dance before Him, trying to evade, trying not to get exposed, to keep parts of our hearts, minds, lives, "in the dark," and so "safe" from Him?  Do we do our own spiritual dance/shuffle when He seeks to shine His light on our attitudes, habits, pleasures, lifestyles, ministries, sins?  At the Red Sea, the Father told the people to "stand still and see."  When we carry out a nicely choreographed shuffle, we don't have to stand still, and we certainly won't have to "see," all those things that we don't want to see.  About us.  About others.  About Him.  We just dance away from them.  We just keep "doin' the shuffle."  

    Maybe the greatest tragedy in our attempts to dance the shuffle before Him, is that we deny ourselves the dance He calls us to with Himself. It's a dance of intimacy, of oneness with Him.  It's a dance where we're not looking to see what our feet are doing, but into His face, to see Him, to see His heart, as He looks into ours  There is nothing of beauty in the shuffle, but there is nothing but beauty in a dance of grace with the Father. That's the result of a life that welcomes Him to help Himself to it.  We don't shuffle before the light of His word and His eyes, we melt, hearts and all, into His heart, and His life.  Spiritually, we'll all do a dance.  Will we dance away from Him, or with Him?  Will we keep doing the shuffle, or will we melt in His embrace?

Blessings,
Pastor O