Tag Archives: Going Deeper

Spiritually Nuclear

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A month ago, I entered into a new relationship with a male companion. His name is Charlie, and he fills my heart with love and joy, makes me laugh, stretches and tries my patience, thoroughly thwarts my freedom, and has totally upended my predictable daily routines. He whines when I leave and bounces for joy when I return. My personal space is no longer mine alone, but those deep brown eyes completely melt my heart.

This summer I’ve undertaken another, infinitely more life altering, journey that was sparked by something Dane Ortlund wrote:

“We have a domesticated view that…has downsized the glory of Christ in our hearts. Have you reduced the Lord Jesus to a safe, containable, predictable Savior…? Have you treated what is spiritually nuclear as a double-A battery?”[1]

I sometimes find myself lured into the trap of this small-box thinking and lose sight of the blazing glory and spiritually nuclear power that inhabits me. Those small thoughts constrain the experience and expression of Christ’s life and is spiritually debilitating. It leads to doubt, worry, hopelessness and the hamster wheel of performance, which is exactly where the enemy wants me.

God…has made this light shine in our hearts so we could know the glory of God that is seen in the face of Jesus Christ. We now have this light shining in our hearts, but we ourselves are like fragile clay jars containing this great treasure. This makes it clear that our great power is from God, not from ourselves.[2]

We are ordinary, unremarkable, imperfect vessels that contain unspeakably great treasure – Jesus Christ, the radiant glory of God. Containing such splendor and power is staggering and transformative. It changes everything from how I view myself and my circumstances to how I approach my daily challenges and do what He calls me to do.

The God of unlimited possibilities and fullness of life inhabits our frail and flawed humanity. We’re meant to pulsate with the resurrection life and power of Jesus Christ for the praise of His glory…even when these vessels are broken, suffering and dying. This makes it clear that our great power is from God, not from ourselves.

He is able to do immeasurably more than all we could ask or imagine according to His power that is at work within us. The vessel may be weak, but the power within is spiritually nuclear. That divine power never diminishes but inwardly renews us day by day until the end and on into eternity.[3]

[1] Ortlund, Dane. (2021). Deeper: Real Change for Real Sinners. Wheaton, IL: Crossway.

[2] II Corinthians 4:6-7, New Living Translation.

[3] II Corinthians 4:16-17

10 Words

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Last week a string of words grabbed me and embedded themselves in my mind. They’re found in II Corinthians 13:5. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you? There’s a tone of imploring in those 10 words.

Pam, do you not realize that I, Myself, am in you?

I know this. I lived most of my life knowing this. I’ve talked about it, and I’ve pondered it with wonder. I catch breathtaking glimpses of it, but it’s beyond comprehension and so easily slips through my brain cells. Then one day, God puts it in front of me again and takes me a little further.

How much do I really grasp that Christ Jesus Himself is alive in me? How much do I apprehend of His life and power? How deeply do I comprehend and experience the nearness of His Presence? He walks in the inner garden of my soul and wants me to join Him in conversation and in relationship in every moment and every movement.

O my soul, know this well, know this deeply, know this every moment of every day that Christ Jesus is alive in me!

He is in me as I go about my day. He is in me as I eat and drink, as I run, as I create, as I care for my grandchildren, as I drive the freeway, as I shop and wait in lines, as I surf the internet, as I clean my house and mow my lawn. There is nothing in my day in which He is not a part of and fully present.

I do not realize deeply enough the ramifications of the core truth that Christ Jesus is in me. In great love for my soul, Christ joins Himself to me and puts Himself in me to move me into a place of blessing that I have not yet known.  To move me into that blessed place of unbroken union with Him who gave all to become all in all in me. To move me to a deeper place of self death, absolute dependence upon Him and absolute trust in Him. He puts Himself in me to draw me closer to Himself and to do and be more in me than I could ever imagine.

God, keep reminding me and taking me further.

2016 Reflections

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The last couple of days I’ve spent a little time looking back at 2016 and rereading my journal. I don’t journal every day or every week, but I periodically pencil my prayers and thoughts and God-words. As I browsed the pages, I felt again the heartbeat of my prayers and felt the pulse of His behind it.
The page dated 1/1/16 begins with this prayer: “This year, Lord, I want to go deeper with You, abide more fully in Your love and taken into Your secrets and into rare intimacy with you. How my heart yearns for You, but quakes before my weakness and failures….Oh, wondrous love that accepts me as I am then fills me and lifts me to infinitely more than I deserve, more than I can conceive…and all that You desire. So, breathe in me a yearning for more of You. Stir the embers of my heart into a fiery love for You, and take me deeper and deeper into the secret place of rare intimacy with you, O God.”
This yearning for a deeper relationship and for rare intimacy with God continued pouring onto the pages of 2016. My inclination now is to judge how well I did in that pursuit and whether I achieved my goal, but there is a fatal flaw in that thread of thinking. Tug on it a bit, and my life unravels.
The intimacy and depth I long for isn’t something God awards to high achievers and do-gooders. It can’t be achieved by even the most spiritual or the rest of us in our more spiritual moments. If it could, then my relationship with God would be performance-based and not grace-based. If my faith rests on my faithfulness in the pursuit, then I am doomed and will surely fail…I have failed.
I wrote on June 12 that God doesn’t dangle something in front of me and ask me to attain it. Instead, He offers freely what only He can give and what I could never attain. He doesn’t demand that I muster up more doing power and greater faithfulness. I am called in my weakness to entrust my unfaithful self to the Mighty One who will do in me all that He wants of me and from me.
Deepening intimacy is the fruit and power of redeeming love, indeed, it is the aim of redemption…that I may be filled with all the fullness of God and enjoy a deepening experience of His nearness until the perfect image of Christ is formed in my soul.
So, I think it’s summed up like this: My part is to yield all I am and trust all He is. To just be who I am in Him and let Him be all He is in me.
It’s not just a 2016 or 2017 pursuit, it’s a calling to a lifetime journey. It’s yielding my time and my focus to sit every day at the feet of the Living God lost in wonder, love and praise.
Stir the embers of my heart into a fiery love for You, and take me deeper and deeper into the secret place of rare intimacy with you, O God.
 
 

Two Questions

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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.”
 
 

Whales and Cormorants

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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.
whales 2_edited-1…in Him we live and move and have our being. Acts 17:28
 
 

Folded Wings

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I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know…his incomparably great power for us who believe. Ephesians 1:19
 
Do you feel like everybody wants a piece of you, and you’re losing yourself one bite at a time? Are growing demands consuming you from the inside out? Do you feel that if you don’t keep moving you may not be able to move at all? I do sometimes, and I see it and hear it in the people around me. Yet, there is power, an incomparably great power, within reach of even the weakest and most frazzled.
This power – this dynamis – overshadowed Mary at the conception of the Son of God. It’s the same power the woman tapped when she touched the hem of Jesus’ garment, and it’s the dynamis that works in us to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine – more than we could ever dream!
With all this power resident in me, I still struggle. How can I know and experience this incomparably great power in the demands of my day? How do I tap into it? I think the answer is in my posture. It isn’t in having more time to do more or working harder or even getting more sleep. The secret is folding my wings and being still at the feet of Power Himself.
In Psalm 46:10 God says, “Be still, and know that I am God.” To be still means to stop all activity, to fold the wings and sink down. When I start my day with folded wings and sink down into God, He fills me with His Spirit and strengthens my heart for the day.

in quietness and trust is your strength,

but you would have none of it.

Isaiah 30:15 

That last phrase is sobering because sometimes I would have none of it and run through my days without it. Those are the days my soul is stretched thin and my spirit grows weary.
God doesn’t call me to frantic unrelenting activity. He calls me every day to stillness. So, I set myself before God every morning and fold my wings. In those quiet moments of submission, His Spirit moves in the silence of my soul filling me, renewing me, and empowering me to do as He desires. From that place of stillness, I rise to soar on wings like eagles.
 

Folded Wings is now in my gallery:

Sketch Folded Wings_edited-1