Saturday, May 28, 2022

Pray Thyself in Me

 




"Lord,
I know not what I ought to ask of Thee;
Thou only knowest what I need:
Thou lovest me better than I know how to love myself.
O Father! give to Thy child that which he himself knows not how to ask.
I dare not ask for crosses or consolations,
I simply present myself before Thee,
I open my heart to Thee.
Behold my needs which I know not myself;
see and do according to Thy tender mercy.
Smite or heal; depress me or raise me up;
I adore all Thy purposes without knowing them;
I am silent; I offer myself in sacrifice;
I yield myself to Thee;
I would have no other desire than to accomplish Thy will.
Teach me to pray.
Pray Thyself in me.
Amen."


Saturday, May 21, 2022

Strange Ashes, Gethsemane, and Me

 In sacrifice and offering you have not delighted,

     but you have given me an open ear.

 Burnt offering and sin offering

     you have not required (Psalm 40:6, ESV).

 

For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it;

    you will not be pleased with a burnt offering.

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;

     a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise (Psalm 51:16–17, ESV).

 

Raindrops and ants on Easter lily bloom

Mom and I are still practicing our Wednesday Bible study time, but her capacity has changed so much that it currently consists of watching an Elisabeth Elliot talk from the Elisabeth Elliot Foundation YouTube channel. Sometimes we discuss it after; sometimes we don’t. Every day her capacity is unpredictably different now, even as the overall trajectory is decline.

Watching “Betty” week after week as we are doing, certain themes and stories arise from her talks. The themes of surrender, obedience, and the cross are no surprise to me; those have been hallmarks of all her teaching and writing. I did not, however, recall how important and painful her first year of missionary service was, yet she has told this story many times in the talks we’ve viewed.

After many years of preparation and discernment, a young Elisabeth Elliot began serving as a Bible translator and linguist in Ecuador. Jim, whom she loved but to whom she was not yet engaged, was also serving in Ecuador but on the other side of the country. She poured her heart into learning and developing a script for the Colorado people’s language in order to translate the Bible into their heart tongue. During that first year, she suffered “three great losses”:

1.      Her language informant—literally the only human who knew both Spanish and Colorado and thus was suitable to assist her in decoding and translating the language—was brutally murdered.

2.      Jim’s whole mission station washed down Amazon in a flood. This included 5 buildings—2 built by him and 3 redone by him—and 500 hand-planed boards, by themselves representing 500 person-days of labor.

3.      Every single page of her translation materials were stolen from the 2 colleagues succeeding her in Colorado Bible translation work. Her entire year’s labor was instantly gone and irreplaceable

Of the 3 languages she worked on in Bible translation over her missionary career, none of her work amounted to any progress toward Bible translations, but it did work on her character formation. She said, “These were the kindergarten lessons that prepared me for 1956 when the 5 were martyred. And again, “Results are God’s business, not ours.”

In recounting this story, she recited (by heart) an Amy Carmichael poem, “Strange Ashes.” It compares the Christian life to a whole burnt offering, the one offering prescribed in the Old Testament in which every clean part of the animal was burned to ashes on the altar.[i] None was set aside for the priests and Levites. None was given back to the worshiper in a fellowship meal. This was the offering representing the whole-hearted surrender of the worshiper. Here is Amy’s poem:

But these strange ashes, Lord? this nothingness,

            This baffling sense of loss?

“Son, was the anguish of My stripping less

            Upon the torturing Cross?

 

“Was I not brought into the dust of death,

            A worm, and no man, I?

Yea, turned to ashes by the vehement breath

            Of fire—on Calvary?

 

“O son beloved, this is thy heart’s desire:

            This and no other thing

Follows the fall of the Consuming Fire

            On the burnt offering.

 

“Go now and taste the joy set high, afar—

            No joy like that for thee—

See how it lights thy way like some great star.

            Come now and follow Me.”[ii]

 

 

Elisabeth had long ago surrendered her life fully to the Lord. This poem was her way of reminding herself not to be surprised when ashes were the result, even ashes of her service offered to Him. Peter wrote to the suffering Jewish Christians in Asia Minor, “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed” (1 Peter 4:12–13, ESV).

 

Yet we are surprised, aren’t we?

 

When Amore and I moved to Thailand to begin what we thought was a lifelong vocation as missionaries…

 

After years of discernment, education, and confirmation of our direction from the church…

 

After months of raising prayer and financial support…

 

After purging our books and other possessions to travel as light as possible…

 

We spent much of our year in Thailand in hospital medical offices, trying without success to find answers to my sudden, severe fatigue, dizziness, hand pain, butterfly rash across my cheeks, and abnormal lab results. We felt we knew the right label for the complex of symptoms, but we eventually reached the painful conclusion that the Lord was using my illness to lead us back to our home state, doctors who knew me, and family to support us.

 

Years of preparation and prayer, years of training leaders in southeast Asia, months of learning Thai, to what end?

Strange ashes, indeed.

 

That path back home began to topple a complex array of dominoes, leading to some happy providences like the Tuesday Night Tangent Society Bible study for high school students and our availability to support our aging parents and ailing siblings. It also led to very, very hard providences and proved my own primary school preparation for them.

 

When I, like Elisabeth, claimed missionary martyr Betty Scott Stam’s youthful prayer as my own, did I mean it?

 

“Lord,
I give up all my own plans and purposes,
All my own desires and hopes,
And accept Thy will for my life.
I give myself, my life, my all,
Utterly to Thee, to be Thine forever!
Fill me and seal me with Thy Holy Spirit.
Use me as Thou will,
Send me where Thou will,
And work out Thy whole will in my life,
At any cost, now and forever!”
—Betty Scott Stam, as quoted by Elisabeth Elliot in multiple talks

 

 

I confess I never thought “Thy whole will…at any cost” meant

·         3 of my joints braced every day (with a personal worst of 9 joints braced at once),

·         hiking boots instead of ballet flats,

·         swallowing 47 pills on an average Tuesday,

·         dozens of hours and 4 professional health advocates (so far) trying to solve the mystery of the disappearing deductible,

·         never leaving home without a large tote back of the cushions and props my chronic pain requires to sit comfortably anywhere,

·         an average of a surgery a year,

·         dying to my natural fear of needles and learning to inject medicine into my abdomen myself,

·         the shame of rerouting the entire team intending to join us in southeast Asia,

·         my husband working a computer job to earn our bread and provide my insurance, instead of the two of us co-laboring for the gospel and training Christian leaders side by side,

·         constant calculus of risk versus benefits of activities other people take for granted,

·         and praying daily, “I can’t do this. Will You please help me?”

 

Glamour and prestige are altogether absent from life with chronic illness. The disabled often go unseen and unnoticed, “buried with Christ.” But there is One who sees. We are never beyond His notice. He says His grace comes to its fullest expression in weakness, and these light and fleeting afflictions are actively generating for us an eternal weight of glory that surpasses our best imaginings (2 Corinthians 12:9-10; 4:17-18).

 

When union with Christ means “strange ashes” and fellowship with the Man of Sorrows in shared suffering, I must examine myself before the Lord and return to my starting place in the faith: the Scriptures and the garden of Gethsemane,[iii] the “olive press.” Jesus was pressed there, pressed to the point of perspiring blood. All who truly desire to follow Him will at some point, likely many points, face their own Gethsemanes. Charles Spurgeon wrote of Joseph “The greater the blessing, the greater the trial that will precede it.” Scottish minister James Stewart said, “In love’s service, only the wounded soldiers can serve.”[iv]

 

Loving the Triune God by presenting my body and, indeed, my whole self as a living sacrifice (Romans 12:1-2) means searing flames, strange ashes, and more and more of me being transfigured into more and more of Him. His fellowship in the flames is our comfort and sustenance. Even, in the mysterious alchemy of grace, our joy.

 

“Go now and taste the joy set high, afar—

No joy like that for thee—

See how it lights thy way like some great star.

Come now and follow Me.”

 



[i] Genesis 22:1-13; Exodus 29:18-42; Leviticus 1.

[ii] Amy Carmichael, “Strange Ashes,” in Mountain Breezes: The Collected Poems of Amy Carmichael, ed. Elisabeth Elliot (Fort Washington, Pennsylvania: CLC Publications, 1999), 130.

[iii] Matthew 26:36; Mark 14:32.

[iv] Quoted by John Piper, “Solid Joys” email devotional, March 6, 2018.

Saturday, May 14, 2022

Rare Pearls




"Some of the rarest pearls have been found in the deepest waters,
and some of the choicest utterances of believers have come 
when God's waves and billows have been made to roll over them.
The fire consumes nothing but the dross
and leaves the gold all the purer."

~Charles H. Spurgeon, commenting on Job

Thursday, May 5, 2022

The Savior's Sympathy


"Therefore, he had to be like his brothers and sisters in every way, so that he could become a merciful and faithful high priest in matters pertaining to God, to make atonement for the sins of the people. For since he himself has suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are tempted."
‭‭Hebrews‬ ‭2:17-18‬ ‭CSB‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬

"For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in every way as we are, yet without sin. Therefore, let us approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in time of need."
‭‭Hebrews‬ ‭4:15-16‬ ‭CSB‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬




Even the best of earthly companions fail in their sympathy and react to tears with frustration or grief with platitudes and lectures. We are too often tone-deaf in our closest relationships and miss each other out of inattention, our own inner struggles, impatience, fatigue, and just plain sin. Our old self dies hard and persists in seemingly automatic patterns of reaction strengthened over years and decades of practice. Deeply ingrained neural ruts often need much grace and time before they are filled in and different trails of response are blazed in our hearts, souls, minds, and strength. Even after long years of walking with God, the habits of the new self do not completely displace the old, and we cry, "Wretched man that I am!" now while we wait for the day when we will be like Christ, for we shall truly see Him as He is.

Thanks be to God, that Day is coming. It is nearer now than when I went to sleep last night, nearer this moment than when I drank my first sip of coffee this morning. Come soon, Lord Jesus!

In the mean time, in these Shadowlands, I cling to the forgiving grace, unfailing sympathy, and kindness of our Lord. When I fail in love and place myself first, His blood is enough for that. When others fail me, I find comfort knowing He suffered too. He was misunderstood, rejected, physically abused, betrayed, exhausted, thirsty, and hungry. His family tried to stage an intervention, thinking he was mentally ill. He even knew the more ordinary rejection of the failure to listen in order to hear, instead of listening while formulating a response or not listening at all. How many times in the Gospels do we find His words falling on deaf ears and hard hearts! (Case in point: the disciples were surprised and disbelieving when He rose from the dead, even though He had told them, out loud, time and time again, that this very thing would happen.)

Charles Spurgeon elaborates on our Savior's sympathy with words in which to steep a bedraggled, overwhelmed soul:
Many men can be touched by the sorrow of another, but they are not touched with that sorrow. It is one thing to see pain but another thing to be touched with the feeling of it. Our pain, our depression, our trembling, our sensitiveness—Jesus was touched with these though he did not fall into the sin that so often comes of them. We must treasure this view of our Lord's sympathy, for it may be a great support in the hour of agony and weakness (The Spurgeon Study Bible, p. 1645, s.v. Hebrews 4:15).


Dane Ortlund's heartening book Gentle and Lowly also develops this theme eloquently, and I commend it to your notice if you have not yet read it.
Let Jesus draw you in through the loveliness of his heart. This is a heart that upbraids the impenitent with all the harshness that is appropriate, yet embraces the penitent with more openness than we are able to feel. It is a heart that walks us into the bright meadow of the felt love of God. It is a heart that drew the despised and forsaken to his feet in self-abandoning hope. It is a heart of perfect balance and proportion, never overreacting, never excusing, never lashing out. It is a heart that throbs with desire for the destitute. It is a heart that floods the suffering with the deep solace of shared solidarity in that suffering. It is a heart that is gentle and lowly. So let the heart of Jesus be something that is not only gentle toward you but lovely to you. If I may put it this way: romance the heart of Jesus. (Kindle location 1222).

Christ's heart for us means that he will be our never-failing friend no matter what friends we do or do not enjoy on earth. He offers us a friendship that gets underneath the pain of our loneliness. While that pain does not go away, its sting is made fully bearable by the far deeper friendship of Jesus. He walks with us through every moment. He knows the pain of being betrayed by a friend, but he will never betray us. He will not even so much as coolly welcome us. That is not who he is. That is not his heart (Kindle location 1493).

Recently I also found our never-failing Friend and sympathetic Savior in  "The Ruler of the Waves," a small booklet by J. C. Ryle (1816- 1900).

I find a deep mine of comfort in this thought, that Jesus is perfect Man no less than perfect God. He in whom I am told by Scripture to trust is not only a great High Priest, but a feeling High Priest. He is not only a powerful Saviour, but a sympathizing Saviour. He is not only the Son of God, mighty to save—but also the Son of man, able to feel.

Who does not know that sympathy is one of the sweetest things to us in this sinful world? It is one of the bright seasons in our dark journey here below, when we can find a person who enters into our troubles, and goes along with us in our anxieties—who can weep when we weep, and rejoice when we rejoice.

Sympathy is far better than money, and far rarer too. Thousands can give who know not what it is to feel. Sympathy has the greatest power to draw us and to open our hearts. Proper and correct counsel often falls dead and useless on a heavy heart. Cold advice often makes us shut up, shrink, and withdraw into ourselves, when tendered in the day of trouble. But genuine sympathy in such a day will call out all our better feelings, if we have any, and obtain an influence over us when nothing else can. Give me the friend who, though poor in gold and silver, has always ready a sympathizing heart.

Our God knows all this well. He knows the very secrets of man's heart. He knows the ways by which that heart is most easily approached, and the springs by which that heart is most readily moved. He has wisely provided that the Saviour of the Gospel should be feeling as well as mighty. He has given us one who has not only a strong hand to pluck us as brands from the burning, but a sympathizing heart on which the labouring and heavy-laden may find rest….

Had my Saviour been God only, I might perhaps have trusted Him, but I never could have come near to Him without fear. Had my Saviour been Man only, I might have loved Him, but I never could have felt sure that He was able to take away my sins. But, blessed be God, my Saviour is God as well as Man, and Man as well as God—God, and so able to deliver me—Man, and so able to feel with me. Almighty power and deepest sympathy are met together in one glorious person, Jesus Christ, my Lord. Surely a believer in Christ has a strong consolation. He may well trust, and not be afraid" (J. C. Ryle, The Ruler of the Waves).


Are you hurting? Misunderstood? Bullied? Lonely? Rejected? Overwhelmed? Afraid? Exhausted? Forgotten? Alienated? Anxious? Downcast? Grieved by your failures to love, trust, and obey?

Go to your merciful and sympathetic High Priest. He knows. He sees. He understands. He loves. We fail each other, but He will never fail us in His compassion and concern. He who dwells in you, if you are His, cannot but feel your sorrows with you. In all our afflictions, He is afflicted. He may leave us in the dark. He may leave us in the fire. He may leave us in the storm. But He will never leave us.

Courage, dear hearts!