by RobertCummins | Nov 13, 2013 | 46. Trust
“Let not your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me.”
What does an untroubled heart look like? Is that a heart that has simply secured enough biblical truths to live well and address its particular troubles? Is it a heart that has found a community of kindred spirits who embrace and understand it and help shoulder its troubles? While these things may help in meeting some of our intellectual and social hungers, let’s probe deeper into this passage to see if Jesus may be saying more.
“In my Father’s house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way I am going.”
Sometimes Jesus is an enigma and an apparent contradiction. He had just told them, “I am with you a little while longer. You shall seek me; yet, where I am going you cannot come.” OK, Lord, let me get this straight, I know the way You are going, yet I can’t come? Peter was having none of this. He says, “Lord, why can I not follow You right now? I will lay down my life for You.” Jesus, always going directly to the heart of all matters, say’s, “Really?”
“Will you lay down your life for Me? Truly, truly, I say to you, a cock shall not crow until you deny me three times.
Jesus was saying, “Peter, Peter, You do not know your own heart. Circumstances are coming your way that are about to expose just how wrong you are about how you see everything; yourself, Me and especially My kingdom. Peter’s heart was troubled to be sure. His agenda to reign with Christ in an earthly kingdom was threatened if Jesus was going away somewhere that He could not go. Jesus had more to say to Peter, and I think us as well. John closes out his gospel with these words,
“Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were younger, you used to gird yourself, and walk wherever you wished; but when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will gird you, and bring you where you do not wish to go.” The Father did that with Jesus, His Son. In Gethsemane, when facing that trial Jesus responded, “Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from Me; yet not My will, but Thine be done.”
Has the Lord ever forewarned you that He is going to take you somewhere you would prefer not to go? Or, have you ever found yourself somewhere that you most certainly would have never chosen to go? Or, experience something you would have never chosen to experience? Certainly Peter would have never elected to find that he was unprepared to lay his life down for Jesus. He was totally blindsided by this revelation. He had no clue until Jesus led him through this crucible. Peter could have never gone the distance with Jesus had he not discovered the unwelcome presence of his flesh and its own deep and misguided investment in this temporal world.
Crucible: a severe test, a place or situation in which concentrated forces interact to cause influence or change in development.
Jesus takes His intimate followers to a place where they come face to face with their flesh – that broken, independent and blind facet of their being that is incapable of true righteousness. A brokenness occurs upon this revelation, even a sense of despair. But the Lord is so so close in these moments prepared to unveil something that was bigger than any of our earthy aspirations; Himself.
Until this day of brokenness and resurrection, we will inevitably put our trust in our selves. We may even be hyper in the sense of religious activity and still have hearts, if we were bold enough to reveal them, that are deeply troubled. Yet, after we are broken, we inherently know the folly of such a life. This place that no one chooses to go eventually produces a humility, dependence and intimacy with Christ that cannot be had otherwise. It was the place, perhaps even beyond our dreams, so beautiful that we did not dare to even think it might exist.
And to let go, of all, you cannot hold onto
For the hope, beyond,the blue (From Josh Garrel’s Beyond the Blue) For those who are lingering; Full lyrics of this song are available at the end of this post.)
Many are looking over the horizon past their deaths to receive that place that Jesus has promised to prepare for them. What a glorious revelation it is to discover that we ourselves (not just some well designed cosmic residence) are that place He has prepared as His home. To be sure He is coming one fine day but He has also already come and received us unto Himself just as He had promised. This is the way that Jesus was going which He says, we know. He Himself is the way, the truth and the life and astonishingly, He resides in us as the hope of glory. We are God’s address on earth.
In your story, is their a chapter where you have had to hear the cock crow? Have circumstance come your way that exposed your blind spots? Now that you are older, has he ever exposed your investment or aspirations for an earthly kingdom?
Father, we set our eyes beyond the horizon of this earth to the kingdom that has come and is, even now, within us. Holy Spirit, teach us to yield our timid hearts and stretch out our trembling hands into Your own. And gird us with Your life and take us anywhere Your good and wise heart aspires. Let not our wills be done but Yours. Untrouble us Father with the knowledge that our spirits that have been joined forevermore to You. Amen.
Josh Garrels – Beyond The Blue
Stand on the shores of a site unseen The substance of this dwells in me
Cause my natural eyes only go skin deep
But the eye’s of my heart anchor the sea
Plumbing the depths to the place in between
The tangible world and the land of dreams
Because everything ain’t quite it seems
There’s more beneath the appearance of things
A beggar could be king within the shadows,
Of a wing
And wisdom will honor everyone who will learn
To listen, to love, and to pray and discern
And to do the right thing even when it burns
And to live in the light through treacherous turns
A man is weak, but the spirit yearns
To keep on course from the bow to the stern
And throw overboard every selfish concern
That tries to work for what can’t be earned
Sometimes the only way to return is to go,
Where the winds will take you
And to let go, of all, you cannot hold onto
For the hope, beyond,the blue
Yellow and gold as the new day dawns
Like a virgin unveiled who waited so long
To dance and rejoice and sing her song
And rest in the arms of a love so strong
No one comes unless they’re drawn
By the voice of desire that leads em’ along
To the redemption of what went wrong
By the blood that covers the innocent one
No more separation
Between us.
So lift your voice just one more time
If there’s any hope may it be a sign
That everything was made to shine
Despite what you can see
So take this bread and drink this wine
And hide your spirit within the vine
Where all things will work by a good design
For those who will believe
And let go, of all, we cannot hold onto
For the hope, beyond, the blue
Said I let go, of all, I could not hold onto
For the hope, I have, in you
by RobertCummins | Nov 13, 2013 | 46. Trust
Psalm 125 (written in 2012 but still relevant)
Do you ever find yourself agitated in spirit where something deep inside you just seems to be set on edge and you really can’t put your finger on the reason why? This has been my experience of late. One of the big Blue Book benefits for me has been that it has encouraged me to pause and wait on the Lord in a new way. This type of waiting, where I am subjecting my distressed (and often putrid thoughts) to a fresh stream of living and hope-filled truth has been truly life giving. I am especially aware of this process this morning as His words are bringing clarity and perspective relieving me of some of the rancor within.
Note: I looked up “rancor” just to make sure my application was consistent with its meaning. The example it offered was; “in the end, the debate created a degree of “rancor” among the Sunday School members.” Yep, “rancor” is precisely the right word. Thank you Mr Webster.
Actually, (I confess) I substituted “Sunday School” for “committee” in the definition the dictionary provided. I took this liberty because (as I read Psalm 125) I backtracked my tumult of spirit back to sunday school which (this past week) had turned into a sort of town hall debate which exposed an apparently impassable gulf of views between one side of the political canyon and the other. Psalm 125 however, has caused me to see that the distance between those standing on either side might not be so far as it might appear.
“Do good, O Lord, to those who are good, and to those who are upright in their hearts.”
I think Psalm 125:4 is the Kingdom of God’s common ground to those on the east and the west side of the divide. As I have considered the debate, which I was just auditing, I heard in both, as in this psalm, the longing for righteousness and social justice. Both the super-majority, who are my friends, and the super-minority who is also my friend wanted to see good. Since I came from an earthly family with a history of sibling squabbles, I am grieved when I see division among my eternal family.
“In the west, it seems that your discourse produces more heat than light.” ( rough paraphrase of a comment made by Ravi Zacharias)
It seems as though the supposedly unbiased, profit-driven media who, hosts our political discourse forces us to shout at each other across the divide with the assumption that there is no common ground between us. I am proposing that the idea that, “there is no common ground”, is a lie fostered by the Father of Lies whose mission it is to divide. I believe he is currently pleased with his progress based on our overheated exchanges and the increasingly divisive nature of our discourse.
“Oh great! Here Rob goes over-spiritualizing things again”. At least this was the feeling I got when I tried to step out into the gulf and speak to both sides in the divided sunday school class. It seemed neither side knew quite what to do with me. My super-majority friends think I am a defector from their camp. My super minority-friend thinks I am a defector from his. If my 100% pledge of allegiance to a side is the cost of belonging, then the truth is, I am not a really good conservative or liberal. I recently listened to a song called a King and a Kingdom by Derek Webb. Here are some lyrics from that song;
my first allegiance is not to a flag, a country, or a man
my first allegiance is not to democracy or blood
it’s to a King and a kingdom
there are two great lies that i’ve heard;
“the day you eat of the fruit of the tree, you will not surely die”
and that Jesus Christ was a white, middle class republican
and if you wanna be saved you have to learn to be like him
“Oh, now he’s gone too far! He has now slandered my socio-economic classification, my race and my ideology!” I hear the raised voices from both sides declaring, “There can be no middle ground. You must declare allegiance to either FOX news or CNBC.”
To illustrate my point;
My bright and sensitive son attended a Christian school where he learned the Westminster catechism in Pre-K. But he learned something else in the culture there that was a part of an unspoken (yet very powerful) creed. We discovered this on the way home from school one day as he asked us to pray for a close friend of our family. It happened to be my super-minority friend which I mentioned previously. We were taken aback! What had prompted the intercessor in our son to find its voice? I said “Ok, son what shall we pray?” And this discerning child replied, “We need to pray for Jerry (name changed for protection sake.) He’s a democrat.” My son knew intuitively that this leftward leaning soul was damned due to an infection apparently as fatal as sin – the wrong political ideology. Do you think Derek Webb’s lyrics are accurate? Do you think they are anti-American?
“Those who trust in the Lord are as Mount Zion, which cannot be moved, but abides forever.”
My brief study of Mount Zion equated it to the city of the great King David, the seat of power of in a time that was thought of as Israel’s golden age.
“So the Lord surrounds His people from this time forth and forever.”
Those who have submitted to the rulership of Jesus are looking for “the city which has foundations, whose architect and builder is God“. They have “citizenship in heaven”. Because they have been “raised up with Christ”, they “keep seeking the things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.” They “set their minds on the things above, not on the things that are on earth”. (Heb 11:10, Phil 3:20, Col 3:1,2)
Political discourse as it is, moderated by an inevitably biased media, breeds hopelessness, frustration and agitation of spirit, as it focuses on our differences, highlights the negative and stirs up contention. Unfortunately, at least in this hour, media thrives on division and in my opinion disqualifies itself as a useful moderator of any meaningful and productive discourse.
As the water of His word washed over my soul this AM and gave it the perspective it needed, my agitated spirit was altered to become an appropriate and hope-filled “anxious longing” mentioned by Paul in Romand 8:19 which is, I believe, appropriate for those who have been subjected for a time (along with creation) to a season of futility.
“For we know the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together.” We have hope though because “creation itself will be set free from it slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God.”
Our King came to us from heaven born as a child and a government of peace rests on His shoulders. There will be no end to the increase of this government or His rule over this kingdom. He will uphold it with justice and righteousness for evermore. This is going to be accomplished by the zeal of the One who is called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father and Prince of Peace. (from Isaiah 9:6,7)
Father, Your Word gives us peace and hope in a world that appears to have none. May the Sons of the Kingdom arise and from their higher ground (being seated in Christ); may we earn the right (by Your love) which is in us, to be the hosts of a new dialogue which will draw us together; which will reveal the common ground between us – our instinctive love of righteousness and justice. May Your kingdom of Truth and Wisdom be vindicated by her words of love, wise counsel and deeds of social justice. May this new conversation birth unexpected healing and unity in behalf of all men for Your Name’s sake.
When He returns may He find us conducting ourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ; standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel. Thank You for restoring my spirit once again. Amen
