"Spiritual Blessings" from an African Perspective

Last weekend was full of listening and learning opportunities, from Beth Moore's inspiring simulcast to a recording of John Stott's book The Cross of Christ to the prayers, sermons, and testimonies at church.

After a demanding week, I was not optimistic that I could use my ticket to attend the Living Proof Live event at a neighborhood church, but I went for the first session and stayed for lunch. A rest on our pew in the empty church after I ate (too fast) gave enough pain relief and restoration for me to stay for the afternoon session. The Lord provided strength above and beyond expectations or hopes and allowed me to spend time with my mom in my favorite way, at a Christian women's conference.

Then I expected to be too tired or sore for church on Sunday, but again the Lord gave grace to go.

This week Dr. Celestin Musekara, a pastor from Rwanda, offered our church a challenging message from Ephesians 1:1-14. He presented Ephesians 1:3 (ESV here) as a summary verse:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.

Beginning from there, he proceeded through the rest of the segment listing and commenting on the spiritual blessings Paul names.  Three of his remarks are still simmering in my thoughts today:

• He observed that Americans have a poor appreciation of our spiritual blessings because we have so many other blessings. In our remembrance of the September 11, 2001, attacks, we should also recognize that such terror and violence occurs daily in many (or did he even say most?) parts of the world. This reminded me of the very stringent security checks we encountered on our one trip to India, in December 2011. We asked our guide if this was due to the terrorist attacks in America, and he bobbled his head and said, "Oh, no. The Hindus and the Muslims, they bomb each other all the time, so the airlines must be careful." Suddenly the full-body pat-down, confiscation of extra batteries, and testing of all portable electronic devices didn't seem like much of a privacy invasion at all.
• As forgiven people, Christians ought to be the most forgiving people in the world, but that is not our reputation. Dr. Musekara assessed the high divorce rate among American Christians as fundamentally a failure of forgiveness. That statement stunned me, and no doubt there are exceptions, but I received it as a warning to guard my heart from those "micro-resentments," to use commenter chris's term, that can so easily escalate and destroy a relationship. Holding grudges against my husband is not a bad habit; it is sin and could take us away from where we've promised to live, away from the promises "to love, honor, and cherish till death do us part." Our speaker has some authority to speak on forgiveness. Seven of his family members were murdered in the Rwandan genocide, and his Christian community had to admonish him to forgive the murderers. Even so, he urged us to practice forgiveness first in the home.
• The last two blessings in the section, namely believers' inheritance in Christ and the sealing by the Holy Spirit as a guarantee, are the most important ones to help the persecuted church persevere to the glory of God. Their suffering now turns their gaze ahead to those blessings awaiting after death.

There is much more content I need to process, but that will have to come little by little. For now I am recording this much, lest I forget it.

Also, it is Monday, so it's time again to thank God for all His good gifts, the spiritual blessings and the temporal ones:

~those two blessed words, "In Christ"

~every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places

~chosen to be holy and blameless

~adopted as God's children

~gloriously, lavishly graced

~redemption through Christ's blood

~forgiveness of trespasses

~recipients of His revelation

~God's plan to unite all things in Christ

~a waiting inheritance

~"Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will"

~the Holy Spirit sealing us, guaranteeing our inheritance

~wise, courageous teachers

~living examples of forgiveness and reconciliation

~learning opportunities

~grace for the undone

~prayers holding us together

~only an echocardiogram and no stress test at the cardiologist

~heart valve stable, unchanged from a year ago

~Dr. Miao made an appearance and Ebony chased her out of the yard

~lots of squirrels to chase, too, for our happy and energetic pooch-hound

~continued strength for PT appointments and homework

~stable lupus symptoms, too; just waiting for costochondritis pain to subside

~surprising strength and endurance to attend conference with my mom and her friends

~Big Al a phone call and 5 minutes away at whatever point I might have needed to come home

~husband-grilled chicken, enough for 3 nights

~same hard-working husband giving his Sunday afternoon to help sister with computer

~a day at home today

~three more medical appointments this week (2 of them PT...break postponed one more week)

~learning new things about my grandmother

~persistent drought

~return of high temperatures

~such a mixed bag of big and small, easy and hard eucharisteo, yet all is material for sacrifice and opportunity for worship.

(so much more to share, but I'm out of steam for now, so we'll leave things at gratitude items 1549-81)

Linking today to Ann and Michelle and their communities:

"Be Still and Know"

We were in Bangkok on September 11, preparing for bed after an utterly ordinary day of language school with no inkling the eyes of our nation were riveted to the television news. My dad called at 7 a.m. on September 12 and told me what had happened. He had to tell the tale at least twice because the first time I was convinced I had missed a sentence and he was describing an action movie he'd recently seen. Things like terrorists flying planes into buildings on purpose just don't happen in real life, after all.


Allen entered the room in the middle of my listening. I pointed vehemently to the television until he turned it on, and it remained so for days afterward whenever we were in our flat. The only Americans we knew in the city had already moved back to the U.S., so our community, though very sympathetic and kind, was Thai and Australian. It was possibly most alienated day of a difficult year, but our shock, grief, and displacement were nothing compared to the anguish of the families who lost loved ones that day and to the first responders immersed in the wreckage and rescue efforts.


Below is an excerpt from the letter we sent our prayer team on September 9, 2001, with as little idea as anyone else of the events about to unfold. Our primary concerns at the time of the writing seemed paltry days later, but the verse God brought to mind in the smaller needs held me up through the news of the graver tragedy, and it's still a reassurance I need today.

         This morning the voice of the Lord penetrated the fog to address my anxiety about all this uncertainty:  Be still, and know that I am God.  “Be still”–let go, settle down into My faithful sovereignty, let your muscles relax.  No ifs, ands, or buts; an unequivocal command....

         Be still.  I am God.  I will be exalted.... Be still and know...  Be still because you know... He is God.  He is in control.  He is exalting His name, though all evidence may appear to the contrary.  Believe it and be at rest.

         He offers no easy promises, no assurances of a quick resolution, or even assurances that I will be unharmed...  He promises, rather, a cross.  He guarantees suffering, but He also guarantees “a permanent, glorious, and solid reward out of all proportion to our pain” (2 Cor. 4:17, Phillips).

         Knowing and trusting that, it becomes us to let endurance have its perfect work in us, to learn the genuine and visible hope in the invisible workings of God, to glorify Him and astonish the watching world by rejoicing in any little trial He vouchsafes us.

         Oswald Chambers writes, “Tenacity is more than endurance, it is endurance combined with the certainty that what we are looking for is going to transpire.  Tenacity is more than hanging on, which may be but the weakness of being too afraid to fall off.  Tenacity is the supreme effort of a man refusing to believe that his hero is going to be conquered.”  It is only in the fogs of life that we can learn such tenacious faith.  May the Lord make us pliable in His hands to learn this lesson as He appoints.

         Selah.

Trusting Him—christina and Allen



A decade after the September 11 attacks, our country faces more uncertainty and insecurity, more opportunities to learn tenacious faith. God still speaks to us in the midst of national and global financial threats, high unemployment, troops in harm's way, wildfires, floods, and tornadoes, and so many other individual needs. Let us listen and receive the security only He can give even in the midst of the troubles.


God is our refuge and strength,
   a very present help in trouble.
²Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way,
   though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea,
³though its waters roar and foam,
   though the mountains tremble at its swelling.
                         Selah


 ⁴There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
   the holy habitation of the Most High.
⁵ God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved;
   God will help her when morning dawns.
⁶ The nations rage, the kingdoms totter;
   he utters his voice, the earth melts.
⁷ The LORD of hosts is with us;
   the God of Jacob is our fortress. 
                         Selah

 ⁸ Come, behold the works of the LORD,
   how he has brought desolations on the earth.
⁹ He makes wars cease to the end of the earth;
   he breaks the bow and shatters the spear;
    he burns the chariots with fire.
¹⁰ "Be still, and know that I am God.
    I will be exalted among the nations,
   I will be exalted in the earth!"
¹¹ The LORD of hosts is with us;
   the God of Jacob is our fortress. 
                         Selah
-Psalm 46, ESV


May you find grace in Christ to be still in God's fortress today.


Related posts:
Last week's thoughts on lament
A prayer for the nation

Just Come

Come, everyone who thirsts,
   come to the waters;
and he who has no money,
    come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
   without money and without price.

Isaiah 55:1, ESV

"Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."

Matt. 11:28, ESV

The Spirit and the Bride say, "Come."

And let the one who hears say, "Come."

And let the one who is thirsty come;

let the one who desires take the water of life without price.

Rev. 22:17, ESV

In my wanderings about the house last week to fulfill my allotted walking minutes for physical therapy, I grabbed a book which caught my eye, one I hadn't read in a while, apparently not since 2008, as a museum ticket stub from that year marked one passage.

The book is Prayer, by Ole Hallesby, and it has taught me much. As I walked, I flipped through the sticky tabs, surveying the sections I had considered important on the last perusal. This one concerned faith, the current topic for Walk with Him Wednesdays, and truly I can't improve on it:

   The essence of faith is to come to Christ.
   This is the first and the last and the surest indicator that faith is still alive. A sinner has nothing but sin and distress. The Spirit of God as made that clear to the sinner. And faith manifests itself clearly and plainly when sinners, instead of fleeing from God and their own responsibilities as they did before, come into the presence of Christ with all their sin and all their distress. The sinner who does this believes.
   It is written, "Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out" (John 6:37). "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:9).
   That was just what those people did who came to Christ and heard from Him these words before they departed, "Thy faith hath saved thee." All they did was to come to Jesus and plead their distress before Him, whether it was physical or spiritual or both.
   Notice the simple, but unmistakable, mark of a living faith.
   Such a faith as this sees its own need, acknowledges its own helplessness, goes to Jesus, tells Him just how bad things are and leaves everything with Him.
   You and I can now tell how much faith we need in order to pray. We have faith enough when we in our helplessness turn to Jesus.
   This shows us clearly that true prayer is a fruit of helplessness and faith. Helplessness becomes prayer the moment that you go to Jesus and speak candidly and confidently with him about your needs. This is to believe (p. 30).

There is even more than one example in Scripture where the needy one was too helpless even to come; the paralytic let down through the roof by his friends comes to mind, and dead Lazarus, and the widow's son placed in the prophet's room until he came.

Let those of us who can come, do so. If this finds some reader today too weak and weary even to come, may God bring someone to carry you to your waiting Lord.

(This is not to deny a cognitive element in faith as well but to remind believers that Biblical faith is not exclusively cognitive belief in revealed truth, though it is that, but also relational trust in the living God.)


Linking up with Ann and the Wednesday community...

Lament or Complaint?

By the waters of Babylon,
there we sat down and wept,
when we remembered Zion (Ps. 137:1, ESV).

How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever?How long will you hide your face from me? (Psalm 13:1, ESV)

This year we've spent a good many posts discussing the spiritual practice of celebration and delight, but that is not the only appropriate emotional response to the life circumstances God assigns us.

My Bible reading lately has been in Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Lamentations, and a bleak stretch it is. Israel has persisted in disobedience and idolatry for so long and to such an extent that God sends Assyrian and Babylonian forces to conquer them and carry most of the people away into 70 years of captivity. Jerusalem is besieged and sacked, the temple is destroyed, and the Glory has departed.

In the face of such catastrophe, faith does not demand that we put on a plastic smile when our hearts are breaking. God does not desire us to be false with Him. Grief is a spiritual discipline, too, and at times the only right and appropriate response.

Godly grief expresses itself in the laments of Scripture. Job's speeches and Lamentations fall in this category, and individual or corporate lament is the largest subgenre of the Psalms (which more generally constitute lyric poetry). Scholars estimate that at least a third of the Psalms express lament; a few examples include Psalms 13, 22, 40, 59, 74, 88, and 109.

The Thomas Nelson Study Bible describes Biblical lament this way:

In the lament psalms, we hear the strong, emotional words of sufferers. These are words written by real people in very difficult situations. Sometimes the forcefulness of the psalmists' complaints against God is shocking. But these godly sufferers know that God will not be angry with their honesty, for even when they scream at God, it is a scream of faith (887).

These are the prayers for the sleepless nights and weary days, for the seasons when we feel like Bilbo Baggins, "too little butter spread over too much bread," for the days which seem more Romans 7 than Romans 8, for hospital rooms and funeral homes. The sheer multitude of laments in Scripture bears witness that hardship is a commonplace in life in a fallen world, yet God desires to fellowship with us in the midst of suffering as we cry out to Him. What is more, they offer us a guide for how to do so and give us words when we have no words.

Although no strict pattern applies to every lament, common elements include

• an initial cry to God,
• the list of complaints,
• a profession of reliance on God,
• a presentation of reasons God should intervene (such as past covenants, promises, and actions that shape the psalmist's expectations of the future),
• specific requests for deliverance and action, and
• a resolution to praise (TNSB, 887, and Leland Ryken, How to Read the Bible as Literature, 114-115).

These elements may occur in any order or repeat, and some may not appear at all. Psalm 88 never turns the corner from lament to praise, which gives me comfort and confidence that I don't even need to pretend that before God.

However, Israel incurs God's displeasure and discipline when they whine and complain. What's the difference between grumbling and lament?

As I've been mulling this over ever since that earlier post and the comment dialogue on "Worn Out," I believe there are at least four areas of difference:

• Audience: Grumbling speaks about God to other people; lament addresses God directly in prayer. This resembles the difference between gossip and conflict resolution.
• Content: Complaint disputes God's previously revealed character; lament seeks to reconcile God's character with circumstances that seem to contradict it.
• Attitude: Grumbling stems from a heart of unbelief; lament worships in wounded faith.
• Result: Whining produces rebellion; lament limps forward in obedience as best it can.

Amid all the disasters and crises in the daily news, the personal trials, and the national preparation for the September 11 decade memorial, it comforts me to know that I can pour out my heart like water before the Lord (Lamentations 2:19) and mourn with Him as well as dance for joy. Learning about lament set me free to do that, even writing my own laments from the patterns above, and I have found the Psalms helpful guides to prayer in times of trouble. May you also find blessing in these thoughts as you grow in relationship with God in the hard times as well as the glad.

Recommended Resources:
Leland Ryken, How to Read the Bible as Literature

Michael Card, A Sacred Sorrow

Michael Card teaching on lament as worship in 7 parts

*****

This week I'm giving thanks to God for

~freedom to be honest with God even if I'm wounded or angry with Him
~His involvement in every sphere and circumstance of life
~guides to prayer, grief, and worship in the Scriptures themselves
~the indwelling Holy Spirit interceding for us when we have no words
~the whole counsel of the Bible
~a good report from a loved one's medical test
~a surprise package from a dear friend
~a note from another I hadn't heard from in years
~opportunity to give of our plenty to international students recently arrived here
~an update and new photo from one of our sponsored children
~ability to drive myself to all 3 medical appointments last week
~long weekend
~2 days with the alarm clock off
~0.25" rain to cool things off one morning
~an improvised salad that tasted good to both of us (if you're wondering what, a bed of lettuce topped with thinly sliced turkey lunch meat, bacon crumbles, goat cheese, dried figs, diced pear, grapes, and walnuts)
~sourdough with hummus
~roses in the kitchen
~Allen's company at the cardiologist and PT Tuesday (prayers welcome for extra strength and a good heart report)
~possibility of a break from PT appointments after this week (continuing to train without supervision at home)
(from the gratitude list, #1428-1446)

5-minute Friday: Rest

1. Write for 5 minutes flat – no editing, no over thinking, no backtracking.

2. Link back here and invite others to join in.
3. Go a little overboard encouraging the writer who linked up before you.

OK, are you ready? Give me your best five minutes on:

Rest…

The bridal shower where we received our packs

When we married, we registered for cross-country backpacks instead of china and flatware. At the time, we believed we would be moving to India inside of a year, so we were striving to decrease rather than increase our possessions. We also thought that our mission work would require travel into out-of-the-way places where a large camping backpack would work better than an airline carry-on. So... we registered for backpacks.

I still remember, at least 8 years from my last pack usage, the feeling of physical relief when we arrived at our destination and rolled the packs onto a table or pick-up truck bed. Ah, rest.

Climbing into bed at the end of a long day, coming home after a trip, curling up in my favorite chair--all these things spell rest to me.

There's another kind of rest the Bible describes, too: the rest of rolling burdens and worries and others' expectations onto the shoulders of the Lord; the rest of ceasing to strive for my own agenda and leaning into His; the rest of coming to Jesus and accepting His yoke; the rest of moving forward in trust and confidence in the direction of His call.

That kind of rest is available in the midst of the work, in the midst of the labor, as available as a cry to Jesus for help.

I'm feeling a need for both kinds today; how about you?

Then Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest" (Matt. 11:28, NLT).


*****
This is my first attempt at joining the 5-minute Friday fun. Scanning and adding the photo occurred after the buzzer. :) It's been one of those weeks that feels at once too long and too brief: too long because of fatigue and too short because of the self-induced pressure of all that remains on my list. Consequently, when I saw on friends' blogs the word for this week, it seemed the right time to dive on in.


May you find deep rest and replenishment this weekend, which is a long one for Americans. Fitting, isn't it? A long-feeling week followed by a long weekend. As Ann Voskamp says, all is grace.