ScribeLife » Knowing God

Capillary Beauty of Trees

Tonia — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 14:48:00 +0000

For the first winter ever, I am captivated by the capillary beauty of the trees revealed against the bare blue winter sky. My eyes are drawn irresistably to them as we drive the roads and as I walk the 20+ acres of Son Rise. What strikes me about this new love is that until this year, I always felt a bit of sadness over the nakedness of the trees, the lack of loveliness, the “forlorn” look of winter. But without effort, without warning, what was once ugly is now lovely to me, and stirs new wonder at God and his creation. I look at the trees and smile, involuntarily.

So the teacher in me is looking for the lesson. I do think of things, like how the tiniest branches are the tender new growth, hidden the rest of the year under the tree’s leafy glory — and yet indeed, a great part of that leafy glory.

I think of how very fragile these little spidery veins of wooden life appear, how they are exposed to icy air and storm; yet survive to grow another year. They are stronger than they look. Of course, they have the joy of living closest to the light and warmth of the sun.

I have no big lesson for you, save this: when a new awareness comes, when I have new eyes to see my world, I know the Holy Spirit is at work within me. The Lord has quietly awakened my soul to something he made, something he loves and delights in. When I look in wonder upon the capillary beauty of the trees, thrilling me for no good reason, I am gazing at it with my creator and theirs. Unbidden, he has changed my perspective and enabled me to share his joy; he just couldn’t let me go another winter feeling sad about something he has no sadness for. It is sharing life with God, a sign of his living in me, gentle, powerful, mysteriously quiet so much of the time. In this simple act he has spoken to me many things without saying a single word.

Ponder with me and write to me of your thoughts.

A Fast from Self-ishness

Tonia — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 16:58:00 +0000

Do you remember those parental scoldings that turned into lectures — where all you could do was get comfortable and endure while Mom or Dad went on and on in an attempt to get something through your “thick skull”? These usually came because our repeated behavior revealed we just really didn’t get it, whatever “it” was. Our Father God occasionally launches into one of those; as exhibit number one (can you tell I once was a legal secretary?) I offer Isaiah 58.
Isaiah 58 is a lecture intended to help us “get it” about God’s true values and purposes for fasting, explaining how easy it is to miss his heart altogether in our religious-ness.
A common theme of God’s lectures is how his people turn the festivals, disciplines and acts of worship he prescribed into self-serving rituals instead of pathways to greater love and life with Him and others.
I write in my Bible. After reading a section, I lay the Bible down, sit back and ponder, “What did God just reveal to me about himself?” When the answer comes, I make a note somewhere, either in my Bible study journal or in the margin of the Scriptures, so that a truth about God connects forever in my mind with that section of scripture. Frankly, I’m terrible at memorizing scripture, so this helps me internalize God’s truths in a way that stays with me.
The truth that lives in my heart, and the subtitle I have written for Isaiah 58 is that God meant fasting to be, above all, a fast from selfishness, a turning away from complete pre-occupation with my comfort and even my spiritual performance, so I may know my God, understand His will, and carry out His work of loving people to life. When I fast from business as usual in order to know him, I do something far better than deny myself: I forget myself. In forgetting myself, I can see and hear him more clearly.
A.W. Tozer shared in his most excellent book “The Pursuit of God,” his theory of why Christians, for whom the great veil separating men from God has been torn down, still seem unable to see and know their God. He believes that a veil remains which blinds us to the truth about God, a veil that he describes as “the close-woven veil of the self-life,” woven of the fine threads of what he calls the “hyphenated sins of the human spirit,” such as self-reliance, self-righteousness, self-pity and self-love. These are the things which blind us to God’s true purpose in asking us to deny ourselves and other acts of worship. They often pervert those acts of worship into lifeless religious ritual. Personally, I think God hates religion.
Our Father’s rant in Isaiah 58 greatly validates Tozer’s theory, making it clear that he is not at all pleased with the self-serving “Look at how I deny myself” type of fasting that demands a reward from God while simultaneously failing to effectively love and serve others. My personal conclusion to Tozer’s theory and God’s words is that God’s preferred way to destroy the veil of self is not for you to to make a show of denying yourself, putting yourself on your own cross, but to be so busy loving God and others that self dies while you’re not looking. And he promises in Isaiah 58 that if you will fast in such a way, he will provide you with all the healing and blessing you could ever desire. Get it now?

Sightings of the King

Tonia — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 11:44:00 +0000

I have a confession to make; I am co-dependent. I start going wonky if I don’t experience the nearness of my Lord. Tho I know He is with me always, I much prefer the times when I sense his closeness and hear his voice, or even catch a glimpse of him with the eyes of my heart. If these ways of knowing God go away for while, I begin to self-examine — what did I do, or not do, that caused the Lord to withdraw from me?

In faith I know the Lord and I are joined in our spirits forever, so when I use the word “withdraw” I do it in the context of intimate relationship. Even though my husband and I are together most of every day, on occasion he seems withdrawn from me, either because he is focused deeply on something else, or perhaps I have offended or neglected him. Withdrawal is a subtle signal in relationship to step closer to the beloved and discover what may be amiss in how we are loving.

I had not been consistently attentive to the Lord in recent weeks; maybe that was the problem. I also felt a nagging concern that perhaps I have become too familiar in my easy intimacy, neglecting to show God the reverence he is due. So, in a renewed effort to worship him appropriately, I had returned to a more formal prayer posture: kneeling in reverence, using my imagination to “see” my Lord on his throne, and worship him as the King and Sovereign Lord. However, my more formal prayers, confessions and blessings did not change the space between us. I said to myself, “God will not be manipulated, and in his sovereignty reserves the right to manifest his presence whenever and however he pleases;” but when this little self-lecture did nothing to soothe my raw neediness, I cried out, “Lord, please open my eyes to see you again!”

The next day, in worship at church, I suddenly saw him, unexpectedly, clearly; and when I saw him, I instantly understood the source of my blindness. For he was sitting on a low stool, in a humble house, surrounded by the hungry, the needy, the weak, the ignorant — he teaching, sharing his heart. He paused to look up at me across the room, and smiled an invitation to come near. I wept for joy, and my heart said, “of course.” I had been looking too high.

It is an old familiar, religious rut I fall into at times, especially after a spell of relative unfaithfulness, this trying to reconnect through the high worship of a low subject to a high sovereign. Appropriate as that may be, my Lord, the King of Graciousness has invited me to know him in my low estate, to draw near and be familiar, to know him.

Without question God is worthy of the highest reverence. As a worshipper who wants to be found true, I want to keep in full view the majesty AND the tender Fatherhood of God, the Lordship AND the Brotherhood of Jesus. I saw that I had only increased the perceived distance between us by looking for Christ on his throne rather than where he wanted to be found by me, the teacher close by. I remembered then also that I had felt him drawing me to read my Bible more and more, to meet with him there, but the spirit of religion had kept whispering in my ear, “That’s not enough.”

God has given himself to me — forever, still, continually. I have a fresh reminder that in seeking the Lord I must discover where he is, not go looking where I religiously assume he will be. Also, I must be faithful for the sake of loving Him well, not in order to manipulate him. He is a living person, not a deity I presume upon through religious ritual, obliged to bless me because I did the right stuff. He has invited me to something infinitely more precious and free and satisfying, yet available only when the heart is fully surrendered to letting God be God and receiving him as he chooses to come. This is how Supreme Lordship and Gracious Love get perfectly all sorted out for us.

Freedom

Tonia — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 23:05:00 +0000

God is into freedom, especially where his children are concerned. I have often experienced Him more easily through spontaneous encounters — on a walk, in the shower, musing over my morning cup of sweet black tea — than in times of disciplined prayer. In the beginning, it felt so — illegal. Could I really trust the sense of hearing his voice or feeling his affectionate closeness when I had done nothing special? The idea dawned slowly upon me…how preposterous to think that God never speaks unless spoken to first, or hides himself from his children unless they approach him in a ritual!

“It is for freedom that Christ has set you free…” as it says in Galatians 5:1. I’ve learned that the Lord particularly enjoys sharing my pleasure in bubble baths, long walks to enjoy his creation, doing creative food things in the kitchen, listening to music that makes my heart joy or my spirit mellow. While not taking away one tittle of how important discipline is in prayer, I rejoice in the freedom of knowing God easily in the mundane moments of life. As one of my beloved teachers has so wisely said, we need to stop making a distinction between the sacred and the secular, because God never does.

Discipline is good, but freedom is better, if that freedom is a celebration of a living relationship between two people who live for one another.