by RobertCummins | Mar 18, 2015 | 11. Listening To God, Uncategorized
Genesis 32:22-32
Then Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. When he saw that he had not prevailed against him, he touched the socket of his thigh; so the socket of Jacob’s thigh was dislocated while he wrestled with him. Then he said, “Let me go, for the dawn is breaking.” But he said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” So he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.” He said, “Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Israel; for you have striven with God and with men and have prevailed.” Then Jacob asked him and said, “Please tell me your name.” But he said, “Why is it that you ask my name?” And he blessed him there. So Jacob named the place Peniel, for he said, “I have seen God face to face, yet my life has been preserved.” Now the sun rose upon him just as he crossed over Penuel, and he was limping on his thigh.
Who challenged who is uncertain but Jacob and a Man wrestled until dawn. Jacob concluded that his opponent was God himself. The average wrestling match lasts less than 10 minutes. This match must have gone on for hours. Wrestling drains all a man’s strength. Living life in opposition to God does so as well.
While hIgh school wrestling has three periods, our sessions with God are innumerable. Some of them go on for years. The prolonged duration of many of our sessions is due to our forgetting that it is always with God with whom we are wrestling.
And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do. Hebrews 12:13
We strive with our bosses, our families and our circumstances, accumulating frustration, discouragement and even resentment. These inner-strivings left unresolved can metastasize and even lead to emotional and mental illness, tearing ourselves and our families to shreds. In a world where an all-knowing, all-caring, all-wise God is reigning, where all things are working together for good, where we are called to be thankful for all things, is it not clear that it is with God with whom we are actually striving? How many times have we groused, protesting the very thing God is trying to use to deliver us from our self-lives (which he knows leads to death) and in the process, fail to realize his presence and intimate involvement? (For a dramatic audio-visual depiction of our heart-wrestling match with God google the 1 minute segment of “Captain Dan and the Storm” from Forest Gump.
About this match between God and us. He knows all our moves before we make them. We know that he can end the match at any moment yet he chooses to wrestle until dawn. It makes me think that even if its a tussle, he likes living in close quarters with us, face to face, even getting soiled with our dirt and sweat. How shocked we will be when we discover that we were staring God in the face all along in those moments of protest and complaint!
While God may seem like an opponent, it is only because we don’t acknowledge his sovereignty and goodness in our affairs. Isn’t it the lie that we can live life on our own terms, in our natural wisdom and strength that God is really opposing? Isn’t he really challenging our right to rule our own kingdom. If God is to build his kingdom, he must have the beachhead of our hearts to operate from.
As we are living life, in the unseen reality of God’s economy, where redemption and reconciliation and healing are hidden in every circumstance, we need to know what hold we should use with God in the ongoing and inevitable matches to come. In light of who our opponent is and his intentions, I believe the best hold we can put on God is not a Full-Nelson, rather it is a full surrender – a dispositional hold that really consists of an acknowledgment of our desperate need for him to become our life. We perceive of God as many things – from the repairer of the moral breach to the provider of blessing (and a hundred others secondary things) while he intends to simply become our life, which is something infinitely more.
I see the kingdom of God as that seen and yet-to-be-seen domain of God where we are not just submitting to his rule by living according to his precepts. Our full surrenders make new space into which the kingdom can expand. In this space which we vacated as Lords of our own lives, Jesus begins to reign and to put things in order. Christ’s very own life begins finding expression in our deeds and even in our countenance.
God’s righteousness, peace, joy and liberty get birthed into the world via the womb of the human heart. We, his kingdom children, are animated once again (as we once were in un-fallen Adam), courtesy: (once again) the breath of God. It is (the second Adam) Christ in us, who is the hope of all kingdom glory. Our full surrenders facilitate Christ becoming our all-in-all, which is the thing that an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving God uses to restore things (especially us) to his original intention in Christ. Truly in our loosing we win.
Father, May we loose consecutive matches with you, sufficient in number to acquire our own limps – those keen reminders of the futility of our human strength. May we soon become exhausted in our attempts at living the Christian life in our own strength. We pray that as we realize that you live in us and that, in our circumstances, we are actually seeing you face-to-face, that we may cross the rivers before us with our new identities in Christ, joyfully living out our destinies, expanding your kingdom as we go about our lives with you and with one another. May our eyes see the sun rise on a new season of kingdom expansion. Truly Lord we are blessed that you know our names and that we know yours. May your will be done on earth, in our hearts, as it is in heaven. Amen.
by RobertCummins | Jan 25, 2015 | Uncategorized
Psalm 36:5-10
God’s love is meteoric, His loyalty astronomic, His purpose titanic, His verdicts oceanic. Yet in his largeness nothing gets lost; not a man, not a mouse, slips through the cracks.
How exquisite your love, O God! How eager we are to run under your wings, To eat our fill at the banquet you spread as you fill our tankards with Eden spring water. You’re a fountain of cascading light, and you open our eyes to light. Keep on loving your friends; do your work in welcoming hearts.
Those who have had dealings with the one true God understand why adjectives of cosmic proportion are used to describe Him. While the psalmist’s words might seem like overstatement to some, the truth is they are anything but. To even approximate the granduer and majesty of God, human imagination and language must be stretched to their limits. I love the psalms for this reason. They are not theologically precise discourses regarding the ways of God. They are more like convulsions, spilling out the heart’s deepest longings and its declarations of who God has become to the writer.
Do you think its possible, having been created in God’s image, that there are longings awaiting to find expression within every soul? I have speculated this is so and that those who are fortunate enough to have never succeeded in blunting their primal longing are referred to by Jesus as the poor in spirit to whom belongs the Kingdom of heaven.
I have also speculated that in cultures such as ours where our affluence and technology create endless distractions and the time to indulge ourselves in them that any latent hunger is blunted if not killed off altogether. We are the wealthiest, busiest, best fed, most entertained culture that has ever lived. We are also one of the most ungrateful, impatient, unfulfilled, angry and empty ones. Why is this? How could this be?
We are told that in our stillness we shall discover God for ourselves. We are told to only dwell on things that are true and lovely and worthy of praise. We are told to watch over our hearts with all diligence because that is where life is inaugurated. We disregard these most fundamental of commands at our own peril. While all of God’s promises are amen and amen, I feel as though in regards to knowing God there is an “oh no” in us as well as an “amen”.
Learning to respond with an amen to our inner longings will facilitate our growing experience with the radical extremes of God’s love. Having eaten and drank our fill from God, who is Himself our abundant portion, is evidence of our delight and acceptance of the invitations He has been sending out. Our ongoing encounter with Him will facilitate our entrance into the ultimate event, The Marriage Supper of the Lamb. The Guest’s lamps will be full and they will be welcomed at the door. Those who never slowed down, whose hearts were seduced by the spirit of the age, who could neither bear silence nor stillness, who never learned to stop and fill their own lamps, will find themselves without sufficient oil to finish their journey. This is the saddest story I encounter in scripture.
I rarely lean upon fear as a motivator. However since reading Neal Postman’s, Entertaining Ourselves to Death, I have had some fear and trembling in my soul as I have been working this topic out in my own life. It is currently very out of vogue to have an “oh no” response to anything since it might throw us back into the dark ages of legalism and quench the grace of God and the liberty it affords us.
Can we have an ongoing experience with the meteoric love of God through the keeping of a list of thou-shalt-nots? I don’t think so. Can we have an ongoing experience with His cosmic goodness by ignoring His warnings and admonitions to live a circumspect life? I don’t think so. So, are we stuck? I don’t think so.
I believe there is a pathway in the Spirit where our obedience is no longer thought of as a means toward some end. While walking in the Spirit, obedience is merely the natural byproduct of a trusting and loving heart. Thou-shalt-nots create a tight-rope that the saint must balance upon where his energies are consumed with sin management and the pursuit of holiness. While this may sound noble, this has not projected any complimentary light on the Good News of Jesus Christ.
On the other hand, those who walk in the Spirit travel in a wide open space where all things are permissible yet are not all profitable. They do not convey to the world that their’s is a white-nuckled existence where their well being is determined by their own discipline. Instead, often in small and simple ways, with their joy and liberty, they convey they have been caught up into something cosmic in scale. And within these kingdom citizens, whose hearts have been liberated from any thou-shalt-nots, many will find safety and refuge.
Father, teach us to nurture longing and may it grow full-term within us to be birthed as the consummation our hearts were created for. May our hearts display the contentment of those being watched over by the Lord of Creation and the satisfaction of those who sup with the King of Kings. Oh God, in simplicity and rest may our lives eloquently state just how exquisite is Your love! Amen.
by RobertCummins | Oct 10, 2014 | Uncategorized
Luke 22:54-62
I am imagining a scene where Peter is being interviewed as his time on earth is drawing to a close. From his prison cell, he is reflecting about His relationship to Jesus.
The interviewer: “Peter, we all know about your behavior that terrible night Jesus was arrested so many years ago. How do you account for your cowardice and betrayal of this man you had professed your willingness to die for?”.
Peter: Much slower to answer at 65 than he was at 35, looked at the reporter, sighing as if the question had deeply pierced him and said,”Thank you for asking that question. I have thought about it much but spoken of it very little. First of all, you are correct, it was a terrible night. The whole day was a series of disasters. I had argued with the other disciples earlier about which of us was the greatest. Later, I had fallen asleep in the garden even after the Lord had instructed me to stay alert. Then the mob came for Him and I panicked, injuring a man with my sword. Then, finally there was the incident you are referring to. Yes, it was a terrible night but there is something you need to understand; it was also a wonderful one in that it was one of the most important milestones in my journey with Him.”
The amazing thing for those of us who have continued on in following Jesus is that our most terrible failures have turned out to be the places of new beginnings, places where His grace has been able to touch us most deeply. These places of our gross failures turn out to be the platforms on which God has been able to build most deeply and reveal Himself. In these areas, we no longer have illusions of who we are and our own greatness. In these areas we know we have nothing – so Christ Himself can then become our foundational-everything. I cannot tell you why, but this is just the way things work out for His true followers; where we are most weak, He is most strong.
The reporter asks; “What did you mean when you referred to illusions as to who you were? Peter, patiently nodding as if he understood, answers, “Yes, excellent question. You see, none of us really knew what this kingdom of God thing was that he was always talking about. We thought it was going to be a government in the earthly sense. We all thought we were going to be high ranking administrators in an earthly kingdom. On top of this none of us knew our own hearts. We loved Jesus but, at the same time, each of us was envisioning our own kingdoms within His. Jesus knew we would not finish the race well operating out of our selfish motives and self-delusion”
Continuing…. Peter added “That is why the evening you have referred to, as terrible as it was, has also become glorious to me. When Jesus turned and looked at me as the cock crowed, this was my first glimpse of something He had known all along. I was not who I thought I was. I was not the great leader of men. I was the chief of sinners. Although it is painful, my awareness of this has created a dependency that opens my heart to His righteousness, peace and joy – the essence of the kingdom He governs now and forevermore.” It would have never happened had I not been mercifully broken.
The interviewer asks if he might ask one more question. “Yes, go ahead“, Peter responds. “OK, what is your advice to me, as a believer, if I want to follow Christ well ?”. Peter is pleased once more at the question. He becomes sober and says, “My counsel is to not follow Jesus from a safe distance as I did the night He was betrayed by Judas. Follow Him very closely. And, do not attempt to blend in with those who do not know Him or care to know Him as I did at the high priest’s home. Instead of saying that you don’t know him. Tell the world around you that you do. Why this is so important I cannot fully explain but we are changed as we identify ourselves publicly with Him.”
Then as if a load had been lifted, Peter said, There is something else that is essential. God is using the events of your life, literally everything that touches you, to transform you into the image of Jesus. My story is relevant to you because we are all made of the same stuff. He may expose you as He did me so that it will be Him you are really trusting in and not in some illusion you have of Him or yourself. Yes, it may seem terrible in the moment but it can become an essential milestone in your journey and a part of the story you were born to tell.”
Our profession is not a one time event. It is a lifestyle of telling others about our milestone experiences and encounters with Jesus. Having a story of our own and telling it will make a dramatic impact on our lives and the lives of those around us both now and in eternity. If you desire to better understand what I am saying about identifying with Christ, 1) Please read: Matthew 10:32-33, Mark 8:38, Luke 9:26, Romans 10:9-10 and 2 Timothy 2:12. also 2) Read The Gift of Being Yourself by David Benner. (I understand this book and others by Benner are on the YWAM spiritual growth book list.)
Father, so be it if You must turn Your gaze upon us and provoke the same kind of bitter tears that Peter shed. Help us to recognize the events you are trying to use in helping us appraise ourselves more accurately so that we may trust you more completely. It is a glorious privilege to be called Your children. Do the necessary work in us so that You become our rock and foundation and we will walk openly and in step with You in boldness and joy. Amen.
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Therefore everyone who confesses Me before men, I will also confess him before My Father who is in heaven. But whoever denies Me before men, I will also deny him before My Father who is in heaven. Matthew 10:32-33
For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will also be ashamed of him when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels. Mark 8:38
For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when He comes in His glory, and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels. Luke 9:26
If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; 10for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation. Romans 10:9-10
If we endure, we will also reign with Him; if we deny Him, He also will deny us 2 Timothy 2:12
by RobertCummins | Sep 2, 2014 | Uncategorized
Isaiah 53:1-6
Isaiah begins with a question;
Who has believed our message? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
Then he goes on, in surprising words, to describe what God incarnate will one day be like. I think if Peter would have been there and picked up on this, he would have been incapable of restraining himself. I could picture him saying, “Oh no Isaiah, this won’t do at all, He must have at least some stately form or majesty!”. I shouldn’t be so hard on Peter. I confess that I too wish that Jesus would present Himself to the world in extraordinary ways.
Yet God, ignoring all human wisdom, chose to appear as an “ordinary” man; so ordinary in fact, that if we could have looked upon Him there would have been nothing distinguishing in His appearance. It is interesting that those who did have preconceived notions of what the Messiah’s appearance would be were not those “who believed the message nor to whom the arm of the Lord was revealed“. Jesus, as the Son of Man, for reasons of His own, concealed His identity from them by appearing “ordinary”.
Long after Isaiah recorded this prophecy, we learn that chief among God’s reasons was that it permitted Him to position Himself so that the stroke of God’s judgement (that was due to all of us sheep who had willfully gone astray), would fall upon Him. I wonder that more do not believe the gospel just based on the sheer impossibility that humans could invent such a bizarre and scandalous plot.
So, in an attempt to answer Isaiah’s question, I have to say that those who have believed the message are those who have embraced the Son of Man, a Man whose life appeared for 30 years, as far as we know, common and ordinary. I believe God, by virtue of His own makeup, has a strong affinity for the ordinary. That Jesus did not posture Himself as an elite, reveals a surprising aspect of divine royalty – it is approachable; it is humble and it does not seek to lord authority over people. It draws and attracts through invitation not mandate.
A robed King with scepter and royal guard is not a relational ruler. Our ruler is in love with us and desires that we find Him accessible not aloof. We think of Jesus as being God’s disguise. Perhaps it was no disguise at all; that it is just as Hebrews has said, that Jesus is the exact representation of the Father, who is the King Eternal.
Father, we have believed your message and your strong arm has been revealed to us in the wisdom of Your gospel. That you are our friend and not our dictator is tremendously good news. As common as Jesus may have appeared, You did extraordinary things through Him that drew men to You. May we too, whatever our appearance, be vessels of honor overflowing with the surprising Life of God to all those You permit us to serve. Amen.
by RobertCummins | Aug 22, 2014 | Uncategorized
For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts. For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there without watering the earth and making it bear and sprout, and furnishing seed to the sower and bread to the eater; so will My word be which goes forth from My mouth; it will not return to Me empty, without accomplishing what I desire and without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it. For you will go out with joy and be led forth with peace; the mountains and the hills will break forth into shouts of joy before you.
It had been a lifelong goal of mine to climb a 14,000 ft mountain. I was on the verge of scratching this off my bucket list but as I approached the summit of my first 14,000 foot peak, things started to happen. Unwelcome things. My vision began to narrow. “Uh oh!” My progress became labored; I started loosing my balance. “Oh #!*t” Thoughts ceased to move around in my head. Finally I could not take one more step without collapsing. Remaining upright became my new goal. “Help!”
Oh how I wanted to achieve that objective. I had dreamed of that view. I had anticipated the cold thin air in my lungs. I thought (in a muddy sort of way), “Why Lord? I have the conditioning! Why couldn’t you let me make it just a few 100 more feet?” Well, the Lord didn’t have anything to do with it. The problem was me. I was not acclimatized. I did have the shape but I had not spent the time at that altitude. Time spent in that environment was all that was missing.
As you probably suspect (if you read my stuff) there is a moral to this story. I believe the church is in much the same condition as I was. We too have the conditioning. We are in Christ. He is the only Life we have or ever will have. In Christ, we are seated at a very high altitude. We are seated with Jesus at the right hand of the Father. We are just not accustomed (or acclimatized) to this reality. We need to let this word dwell abundantly in our hearts. In Christ, it is our basic nature to live at high altitude where the air is invigorating and the view is astonishing.
When we get dizzy, loose our balance or even stumble, we should not go into a tailspin thinking, “Man! I am just a low lander (or low-lifer). I will never be able to ascend to any high calling. I’m just a sinner but at least I’m saved from the pit. Oh well…..I guess I’ll get to the high places someday.” I know this thinking because I’ve thought these thoughts. They can even sound pretty righteous but as the half truths they are, they are very deceptive and destructive to the life we are called to live in the Spirit. Here is the higher perspective and the word we must proclaim. Check out 2 Corinthians 4:8-11;
We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing….. struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. For we who live are constantly being delivered over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.
Altitude sickness. It is horrid. Anticipate intense headache. The good news is that there is a cure. We simply need to spend time there acknowledging that we too have the conditioning we need, by nature, in Christ. We are seated together with him in high places (“high” – as on heaven)!
My current perception of the liberating word that God has spoken over us which is higher than heaven is than earth, which is higher than our ways (therefore hard to grasp intellectually) which will not return to him void is this..
When we stumble and sin (and we will) it is best not to allow the devil to use it for condemnation sake. He would say,” See, you really are just a sinner and that is all you ever will be. Hope for heaven, you wretch, because it ain’t nothin gonna change in this life. All is futility and striving after the wind. Have you not figured that out yet you dunce! You are depraved, therefore get used to it.” For sons it much different. As different as light is from darkness.
For me, as a son, when I sin I am deeply sorry and I ask for forgiveness but I wash my face, stand on my feet and move forward knowing that stumbling is not unnatural for children. What is totally unnatural is for them to mope about as if they were enslaved to corruption. What has this form of righteousness conveyed to the world about the Father?
For me, I just get up. I reach up my hand and the Father faithfully reuses me from my folly and immaturity (not me irredeemable nature.) BIG difference. Along this pathway, one can be led forth in peace and proceed with joy. We will find that we will break forth with the hills and the mountains and the rivers,( OK, the whole cosmos) with shouts of joy. This is what his word is capable of producing in 100-fold magnitude.
Father, thank you for LIfe in CHrist. May you show us that we are already dwelling in the highest possible place (in You) and that there is nothing necessary beyond our thank you’s necessary to acclimatize. So be it. Amen.
by RobertCummins | Jul 24, 2014 | Uncategorized
2 Kings 6:8-23 One of the challenges for me in reading my bible and professing my belief in its divine inspiration and authority has been, quite frankly, the supernatural. It’s a challenge because the world of the bible seems filled with it and the world I live in doesn’t. Why is this?
I know many earnest saints believe the supernatural, miracles and the gifts of the Spirit are not functioning in this current dispensation. There is no inner tension for them when they encounter the supernatural in scripture and not in life because miracles were for then, not for now. For them, all is as it was intended. The world is functioning consistent with their expectation.
However, for many, myself included, I am inclined to believe that God is still willing and able to do miracles. I have decided the tension I feel when reading about miracles is the normal state of affairs for one being awakened. The key is how I relate to the tension.
If you track MwM, you have recently heard me say, “the Truth is in the tension”. Nothing could be more natural in our minds (that are hopefully being transformed) than tension between the temporal and the eternal. As we are endeavoring by faith to live in an invisible eternal kingdom, a collision with the visible and the temporary is inevitable.
The phrase that stands out to me most in this passage is, “Do not fear, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them“. This was spoken by Elisha, a man who was practiced in seeing the bigger picture. While his attendant was seeing an overwhelming force and anticipating the worse, Elisha saw an even more overwhelming force and was at peace.
Was this an isolated event recorded to highlight, for our benefit, a long lost dispensation? Or, was it recorded to give us a picture of an even more solid reality that is just beyond the reach of our natural view which we are to acknowledge and relate to by faith?
One last question before we pray. We know Elisha asked for and received a double portion of Elijah’s anointing. As we consider, that Christ lives in us as the Holy Spirit, what multiple of Elijah’s anointing do you think we have? My prayer this morning is the same as Elisha’s;
Father, I pray that You would “open our eyes that we may see” and that we might assess the battle with new eyes; that we would discover a new fearlessness and boldness growing within our hearts as we discover You, the Lord over all, dwelling within us. Help us also to repent of our dependencies on logic and reason as our primary weapon against the threats that gather around us. Help us to see the victory You have won and the overwhelming army you have assembled that surround us even our most threatening circumstances. Amen.
