Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. II Corinthians 4:16
For the past three weeks, I’ve spent many hours at my mother’s bedside in the hospital and now in rehab at a nursing home. She fell and fractured her pelvis and hip on February 12.
I had told a friend at work that I was looking forward to the three-day weekend and spending time in my yard and art studio. On my way home, I received a call from the assisted living facility that mom had fallen in her apartment and was in transport to ER. So, instead of continuing home, I headed for the hospital. Thus began the daily vigil of caring, supporting, listening, advocating, waiting, pacing, coaching, and generally struggling to understand the mysterious ways of the medical world.
My mom has suffered with chronic pain and limited mobility for years, and now this. Really, God? I have watched her outwardly wasting away and wondered how she is being renewed day by day. How am I?
We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. II Corinthians 4:10
Perhaps the renewal is inextricably linked to suffering. Perhaps it’s the blossom and fruit of our troubles. Life from death. I don’t like that model.
Sometimes…well, most of the time…it’s hard to understand what God is up to when we or someone we love is suffering. I see but a miniscule slice of time, albeit the only slice of time I live in and experience, and from that perspective, none of this makes sense. But God has the beginning and end in view simultaneously and weaves it all together perfectly. I can see His perfect timing looking back, but I can’t see it looking forward. With Him, there is no back or forward. He envelops time – beginning to end.
So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. II Corinthians 4:18
I think the key is where I set my focus day in and day out through the years and the struggles. If I develop an enduring habit of fixing my gaze and thoughts on Him, more of His life will be formed in me. As the outside fades away, the truth of the inside is revealed. We’re turned inside out.
The most profound picture of Jesus today is in those who have walked the long path of life’s troubles but have kept their eyes on their unseen Companion who has carried them and sustained them.
Even to your old age and gray hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you. Isaiah 46:4
Author Archives: Pam Teschner
Two Questions
For the past few years, I’ve not approached the New Year with a resolution but instead with two questions: “What, God, do you want to teach me and change in me this year? What scripture do you want to use to do this in me?” Then I wait and listen.
The first year, He gave me Galatians 2:20 and helped me better understand what it means to live by faith every moment of every day. He showed me the insufficiency of my self-effort and brought me to a decision of accepting Him as my “every day get up in the morning walk through the day and slip into bed at night” Redeemer and Doer of it all.
The last two years He gave me Romans 12:1 and called me to absolute surrender. It’s been two years, and I don’t think He’ll ever be done working that verse into my heart and life. I’ve always struggled with the failings of my will and determination toward complete surrender. God has patiently let me fail to help me realize that absolute surrender isn’t the outcome of my determination or will. I don’t have to muster it up. I need to give it up, then He gradually and absolutely works it into the fabric of my soul.
Now I stand at the first day of 2016 and ask again, “What, God, do you want to teach me and change in me this year? What scripture do you want to use to do this in me?” I’ve been waiting and listening, and this morning He confirmed it.
This year, Lord, I want to abide more fully and deeply in Your love. How my heart yearns to abide with You more consistently but quakes before my weakness and failure. So, I give You my frail humanity and propensity to wander. Oh, wondrous love that made me frail and accepts me as I am! Stir the embers of my heart into fiery love and take me deeper and deeper into an abiding rare intimacy with you.
After writing out this prayer, God nudged my heart with these thoughts…Oh child of Mine, it is My own yearning that cries out for rare intimacy. It’s what you were made for, it’s what I died for, and it’s what I call you to each morning. Follow Me, stay close to Me, and abide with Me. I will sweep you into the heights and depths of My love and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not yet know. Just stay close…and hold on to your hat.
Just as the Father has loved Me, I have also loved you; abide in My love. If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love; just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love. John 15:9-10 NASB
I think His lessons about faith and absolute surrender were His preparation to draw me into this abiding intimacy. I’ve been reading Andrew Murray’s book, Abide in Christ, and realize now that God has been connecting the dots over the past three years: faith…surrender…abide. Murray wrote:
“As the Father hath loved Me, so have I love you.” What a love! And it is with that same infinite love that His eye still rests upon each of us here seeking to abide in Him, and in each breathing of that love there is indeed the power of eternity. “I have loved thee with an everlasting love.” With the tenderest compassion He bows to our weakness, with patience inconceivable he bears with our slowness, with the gentlest loving-kindness He meets our fears and our follies.
Love gives all, but asks all. It does so not because it grudges us a thing, but because without this it cannot get possession of us to fill us with itself…our surrender to it must have no other measure than its surrender to us. O that we understood how the love that calls us has infinite riches and fullness of joy for us, and that what we give up for its sake will be rewarded a hundredfold in this life!
But is it possible, can I always abide in His love? Listen how that love itself supplies the only means for our abiding in Him: It is faith in that love which will enable us to abide in it. If this love be indeed so divine, such an intense and burning passion, then surely I can depend on it to keep me and to hold me fast. Then surely all my unworthiness and feebleness can be no hindrance. If this love be indeed so divine, with infinite power at its command, I surely have a right to trust that it is stronger than my weakness; and that with its almighty arm it will clasp me to its bosom and suffer me to go out no more….there is one thing my God requires of me….He cannot force all this blessedness on me; He waits till I give the willing consent of my heart.”
Secret Prayer
The alarm goes off and I finally rise after a couple snooze cycles. Tea in hand, I shuffle to my chair and sit in the presence of God. It takes a few moments to corral wandering thoughts and turn toward Him. He watches me settle and waits. Sometimes I become acutely aware of His Presence and my humanness falls silent. Sometimes I just stare into my tea.
I don’t know how I should pray, but the Spirit begins to pray His heart and will for me in the unutterable language of Deity. In the quiet of the morning, a deep upwelling stirs my soul and the unutterable becomes my prayer.
All that I am waits quietly before you, O God,
for my hope is in You.
I am Yours – all I am and all I have.
Work into my heart a deeper and more absolute surrender.
Wash away all my sin.
Cleanse me from all that dishonors You and rises above You.
Empty me of myself and fill me with all of Your fullness.
Permeate every cell.
Remove the scales from my eyes and give me greater faith to see You.
Overwhelm me with Your presence and take my breath away.
I want to know Your great heart, O God.
I yearn for rare intimacy with You.
Tried by Fire
I have set the Lord always before me. Because He is at my right hand, I will not be shaken. Psalm 16:8
Two weekends ago at Camp Elkanah in the Blue Mountains, I heard testimony from a woman named Cindy who lost everything in the fire that raged through the Canyon Creek area this fall. All was lost…except her prayer bench. Though the forest around it was engulfed in raging flames and her home incinerated, God preserved her place of prayer. Because she has set the Lord always before her, He was at her right hand speaking stillness into her soul when the flames came.
God calls us to set Him in front of our faces. The Eternal God is always present, always near, but I choose whether to set Him before me and into my field of vision or focus on other things that flare up in my face.
I’ve come to realize that I set the Lord before me when I set myself before Him. He longs to reveal Himself to us, but we have to stop and meet Him face-to-face. So, every morning, I set myself before my Lord and see Him at my right hand. Throughout the day, and even in the restless hours of the night, I set myself before God. Faith sees Him and feels His gentle grip.
Though the fires come and storms nearly undo me, He speaks stillness into my soul when I turn to face Him. Oh, that I would learn to do it more!
Look to the Lord and His strength; seek His face always. Psalm 105:4
Whales and Cormorants
Weekend before last I sat in a condo overlooking the Pacific Ocean and stared out at its waves. My view of the ocean was framed by the window molding. My simple mind might think the ocean exists only within the boxed area of my perspective. Yet standing in the surf, I’m dizzied by the rush of it around my legs and overwhelmed by its expanse and motion.
It’s too easy to define God from my boxed view and think He exists only within the parameters of my understanding. I attempt to make Him fit the predictable and comfortable. It’s hard to wrap my mind around something bigger than I can perceive and deeper than my surface perspective. It’s much safer to look at Him from a dry condo rather than stand in the dizzying rush of His power, off balance and overwhelmed by His endless expanse.
As I sat gazing out the window, I watched black cormorants bobbing on the surface of the sea, rising and falling with the waves and occasionally diving to catch a fish. One flew along the foamed-laced translucent surface of a cresting wave. It struck me that there are those who live out their lives flying through the spray of a cresting wave. They bob on the surface occasionally diving when need drives them deep. But they don’t live in the deep.
As I pondered the cormorants, my mind went to the whales who live and move and have their being in the sea. They move in its currents, are enveloped by its power, and sustained by its bounty. Their other-world songs echo in the depths. Humanity has been captured by their haunting melodies and study its complex compositions and evolving patterns. We wonder at their song.
Perhaps they sing for the joy of the song. Perhaps they’re humming to themselves, and perhaps they’re praising their Creator. Is that so outlandish? In Revelation 5:13, John wrote, “Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, singing: To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power for ever and ever!”
O God, stretch the boundaries of my limited perspective. I don’t want to live out my life on the surface only occasionally going deeper. I want to be deeper, live deeper, and stay deeper. I want to feel the surge and rush of Your unrestrained power in my life, carried by Your currents of love, and fed from the bounty of Your depths. I want to live and move and have my being in You. I want Your Presence around me carrying me, lifting me, challenging me, and sustaining me.
As I prayed and pondered this, a distant spout of spray and a dark glistening back broke the grey-green surface of the sea. Then a great tail lifted and disappeared again into the deep.
…in Him we live and move and have our being. Acts 17:28
Still Water Reflection
He leads me beside quiet waters, He restores my soul. Psalm 23:2b-3a
Still waters center my soul like nothing else. I try to find my way there several times a year. Today was one of those days. I spent the afternoon paddling up the south arm of Foster Reservoir – my favorite get-away. It was a rare day with very little wind and very few people. The lake was placid and smooth as glass. I got into my kayak and paddled into the stillness with no one in sight.
The further I paddled up the arm, the quieter it got. Trees along the shore were reflected flawlessly in the smooth green mirror of the surface. My bright red kayak creased the green surface, the water gently lapping against the bow.
The silence was broken by chittering birds and the cry of an osprey. Random splashes with rings of ripples were tell-tale signs of hungry fish. A lazy salamander undulated to the surface for a quick gulp of air then flashed his orange belly and disappeared back into the depths. An iridescent blue dragonfly perched on a floating twig while I slipped by. I was amused by three startled ducklings racing across the water on webbed feet.
The air was fragrant with the sweetness of the woods after the brief morning rain. I drew it deep into my lungs and exhaled in peace. The stillness enveloped me and seeped into my soul. Worship flowed out of me and filled the quiet with His praise.
I wanted to stop time and stay suspended there, but I wasn’t meant to live in a place with no ripples. God leads me beside still waters so I can carry it into the grit of life. Without stillness there is no restoration of soul. But it’s too easy to neglect and remain caught in the chaos of life until spent and drained.
I can’t always go to the quiet waters, but God always brings it to me if I take time to step aside and meet Him in the stillness.
At the end of the day, in the parking lot of the boat ramp, an old guy picking blackberries discretely watched me load my kayak on top of my car. I was still tying it down as he drove away. As he passed me, he yelled, “You go girl!” I laughed and finished cinching it down and drove home. His exhortation probably had something to do with the unusual sight of a 62 year old white haired woman loading a kayak by herself.
Back to work tomorrow. But in the morning, before the sun rises, I’ll meet my God in the stillness and let His praise fill the quiet. Then He will whisper, “You go girl.”
Photos from Foster Reservoir