Wandering Wonders

God draws us out of the deepest waters when we call out to Him.  There isn’t an amount of trouble that’s too deep, nor are we ever too far “in”, and our enemies are never too strong.  And in the New Testament, we are promised that we will always be provided a way of escape from even the strongest of temptations and that we will be able to endure.  So when we have our “disaster days”, as mentioned in the Psalm, we can run to Him and He will be our refuge.  In those days, he supports us.  He draws us out of deep waters.

It’s interesting to me that Abba compares the HS and trouble to deep waters.  One we are told to swim in, and the other we are rescued out of.  Water drowns and can engulf us and can devastate entire towns and communities at once, but without it towns are devastated just the same from lack.  We need water.

But He draws us out of the waters of trouble and sets us in a spacious place… which is interesting.  When he delivers me there is peace and I don’t feel chlaustrophobic or surrounded. And the reason he sets me here is because He delights in me.

And this is why I’ll never fully understand the love of God.  It’s not as if He needs us to fullfill his desire for love, for He is complete in the love of the Spirit and the Son.  They share an intimate union. They are a family and community of their own, wholly other.  They are one and complete in their love.

  Next in the Psalm is the way in which we see God.  The faithful he is faithful, to the blameless he is blameless, but to the crooked he is shrewd. Sometimes I wonder if he holds up a mirror, and in that mirror we see what we want to see.  Perhaps in that mirror we see a reflection of ourselves.

So the pure see Abba as pure, the righteous as righteous, but the wicked see Him as wicked, all because we see Him through a filter. So when I am struggling most of my perception of Him, thinking evil thoughts against Him, it might just be because He’s held up a mirror to reveal my own heart.  So I think He’s to blame, but Iam not blameless.  And I think he’s crooked, but I’ve been listening to shady counsel.  Sometimes– who knows– He may let us see what we want to because He is tired of the arguing. 

But back to the Psalm.  Once we’ve been rescued out of a situation, we must still fight.  He shields us and arms us with strenght and makes our ways perfect.  He gives us the feet of a deer.  All of a sudden we have supernatural strength. Strong arms.  A shield of victory.  A right hand (Jesus) who sustains us, even in our troubles. 

And the he stoops down to our level to “make us great”, which is slightly ironic. He’s the God of the Universe.  And also symbolic.  In Hosea 11, He stoops down to feed us, in order to nourish us.  He stoops down to our level to make us larger. That’s absurd. He understands our limits and comes down to us in the form of Jesus, aka His Right Hand.

Next he broadens our path. He knows our ankles may give way, even as we are setting out to do what is good and right.  He deeply understands our earthly limitations. 

And then in his power he fights for us.

Hey guys.   Sorry I haven’t written in so long; I have been mulling over a lot and thus have chosen to keep to myself.  But I have had a wonderful day, and a wonderful New Years’ celebration in Mobile, so I thought I might share. 

A few days ago I sat down and read The Shack in its entirety.  The Shack was really good about answering questions I have never asked.  At New Years, Kelly, David and I were having a conversation about moral relativism and about whether or not God hears us when we ask Him things. David make the comment that sometimes we don’t hear the answers to our questions because our questions either aren’t valid or the answer is wholly other.  For example, someone who asks an either/or question such as whether a plate is grey or blue isn’t going to get a straight answer if the plate is actually green. Or if we ask wrong, maybe the question is the wrong question for the answers we are REALLY looking for.  Sometimes when God answers us, He has to answer those “other” questions. 

And so when I read The Shack, I felt as if God was answering the “other” questions.  I realized that questions I had had about speaking in tongues, questions about doctrine of various denominations, and questions about the way God operates sprung from other deeper questions.  One being, “If God is good, what does that goodness look like and how do I know it?  Why is there suffering?” And, “why does God ask us to make sacrifices? What does that say about Him?”

There are several things in the Shack that I want to mull over, but I can’t find my copy…. so when I find it, hopefully I’ll post more!  But one of the issues that I dealt with was one of sacrifice, and why He asks it of us.  Oswald Chambers in MUFFH, Jan 8th, says this:

“And Abraham built an altar… and bound Isaac his son.”

We seem to think that God wants us to give up things. God purified Abraham from this blunder, and the same discipline goes on in our lives.  God nowhere tells us to give up things for the sake of giving them up.  He tell us to give them up for the sake of the only things worth having… it is a question of loosening the bands that hinder the life… it is no value to God to give Him your life for death. He wants you to be a “living sacrifice”…

So basically, an incident that I misunderstood, and has made me question his goodness over the past four years, has been cleared up in the past few days. What craziness.