[For I always pray to] the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, that He may grant you a spirit of wisdom and revelation [of insight into mysteries and secrets] in the [deep and intimate] knowledge of Him, (Ephesians 1:17 AMP)
As a young girl, I dreamed of being able to breathe underwater like a fish. I was the reverse of the little mermaid – I wanted to be part of her world. One day while swimming in our local pool, I submerged, looked around and pretended to breathe. For a split second, I felt I was actually inhaling oxygen! However, it quickly became clear that I was not and could not…much to my great disappointment.
As an adult, still wanting to swim and breathe underwater, I purposed to learn how and took a scuba class from my dear friend and excellent teacher, Phil Miller. Finally one day, after studying and practicing, I put on scuba gear, put the regulator in my mouth, slipped into the depths and drew breath! After walking to the water encumbered with the weight of gear, the weightlessness in the depths relieved all tension and the weight of the surface world was quickly forgotten.
The enveloping silence and beauty of the world below the surface is wonderfully overwhelming and exhilirating…at least most of the time. There was a dive in Yaquina Bay I’ll never forget. Visibility was a few inches, and I lost sight of my dive buddy in the murky water. I was carried by the ebbing tide further than I realized – away from shore. Weightlessness in murky water messes with your sense of vertical direction, and I had to follow my bubbles to find the surface. Well, I’m writing this now, so I apparently made it back safe.
Last week, I was surprised and delighted that Elisa Morgan published one of my pieces on her blog Really. Please check it out for another amazing dive into the the depths – this time in the clear waters of Hawaii.
http://www.elisamorgan.com/#!Cathedral-Dive
I have always been drawn to deep places and their hidden mysteries and beauty. For as long as I can remember, I have yearned to know God more deeply and experience Him more fully – to beathe in a place my body can’t go and see things my eyes can’t perceive. There’s an otherworld stillness in His depths and a great mysterious beauty. His Spirit waits to teach me how and take me into the depths. So, I purpose to learn and follow Him.
Slipping into the depths of God, the encumbering weight of the world vanishes and the noise and turbulence of the surface falls silent. Tension melts away and peace floods the soul. Yet, the deeper I go the more I realize I’m still barely below the surface. For, there is no limit and no end to knowing Him more fully and experiencing the wonders of His presence more deeply and intimately. I pray for myself and for you that – the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, that He may grant you a spirit of wisdom and revelation of insight into mysteries and secrets in the deep and intimate knowledge of Him.
Tag Archives: Going Deeper
Sealed
As you can tell, I’ve carried this little envelope in my Bible for quite some time. I sealed and secured it with wax because it contains something of great value to me. I pressed my initial into the melted wax to identify it as mine. Makes you wonder what’s inside, doesn’t it?
Remember the scene from the Lord of the Rings in which Gandalf slips the ring of power into an envelope and seals it to keep it safe? Well, there’s no magic ring inside, but there’s a message of great power. It’s, in fact, the message that changed everything. But that’s another post for another day, so stay connected!
God has a seal of colossal significance. When He uses it on His child, it secures them and identifies to whom they belong. When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession—to the praise of his glory.[1]
The moment I believed that Jesus Christ died for my sin and accepted Him as my Savior and Lord, His Spirit supernaturally and literally entered my body and it became His home. God pressed His seal of ownership into my melted heart. All beings in the spiritual world – both dark and light – read His seal and know that I am His and not to be messed with. His seal announces: she belongs to Me and nothing can touch her except by My permission. And it also announces, “She is of great value to Me.”
I’m in the process of selling my mother’s home, and the potential buyer has deposited $1,000 to show they’re committed and earnest about the purchase. That’s the implication in Ephesians 1:14. The Holy Spirit is a pledge and deposit showing God’s earnest commitment to me and that there is more to come. His seal is a guarantee…a guarantee…of my eternal destiny with Him in glory and His constant Presence day by day. Whether I’m aware of Him or not, following close or staying distant, listening to Him or talking over Him…I am safe and sealed forever, guaranteed eternal life.
God’s possession of my soul is unyielding. Nothing will ever dislodge me from His grasp… neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God…nothing![2] Not even my sin can separate me from Him. Cynthia Heald wrote, “Since we can do nothing to captivate His love, we can do nothing to lose it.”[3] He pressed His seal into my heart with all His Sovereign authority behind it, and nothing can breach His seal.
Oh, praise the One who created me, redeemed me and calls me His own!
[1] Ephesians 1:13-14
[2] Romans 8:38-39
[3] Heald, C. (1997). A Woman’s Journey to the Heart of God. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, Inc.
Blood Bought
Redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins. Ephesians 1:7.
I have heard it and read it innumerable times, and, in the repetition, my mind becomes desensitized to the immeasurable anguish and unspeakable agony of Jesus. I have struggled for years to understand the brutality of His death. The attempts at depicting it on the screen fall pitiably short of the actual trauma and mutilation. His mom witnessed it and was, perhaps, close enough to be splattered with her son’s blood. It was nothing less than horrific. Why the bloody brutality? Why not a quicker less painful death?
The Old Testament altar was a bloody place. Perfect lambs were sacrificed to atone for sin – their blood poured out day after day. Sin is written into my DNA and struggles to the surface of my life on a daily basis. I was born bad, and, even on my best days, I still fall short. The price on my head: death. No plea bargains. No negotiating. Blood was the ransom demanded for my life because without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness.[1] But instead of sacrificing me, God sacrificed His Son shedding His blood to atone for my sin.[2]
The record of all my sins were laid on Christ and nailed to the cross. They were all washed white in the crimson flood and erased from the record forever. He does not condemn me now nor will He – not now, not ever.[3]
“…the Christian’s total debt has been paid by the death of Christ….The debt of our sins has been marked ‘Paid in Full!’….not only has the debt been fully paid, there is no possibility of going into debt again. Jesus paid the debt of all our sins: past, present and future. As Paul said in Colossians 2:13 ‘[God] forgave us all our sins.’ We don’t have to start all over again and try to keep the slate clean. There is no more slate.”[4]
So, how does that change today? What difference does it make right now? His death tore, from top to bottom, the thick veil separating me from God and exposed the sacred place of His Presence. He pealed back the covering of His heart and now calls me close. The Eternal Living God draws me into the hum of His power and the intimate pulse of His heart. He wants a personal relationship with me every moment of my day and has made the way.
Today, by His precious blood, I have entered the inmost sacred place of God – the very Holy of Holies – and sat in peace with the One who ransomed me and set me free from sin’s power and the strangling grip of guilt. I can talk intimately with Him and experience His power and Presence in my life day after day after glorious day. Hallelujah!
[1] Hebrews 9:22
[2] Romans 3:25
[3] Romans 8:1-2
[4] Bridges, Jerry. (2008). Transforming Grace: Living Confidently in God’s Unfailing Love. Colorado Springs: NavPress.
Divine Mystery or Contradiction?
The mind, composed of the elements of the earth, attempts to understand Divine mystery. The mystery of the Trinity or how Jesus could be fully God and fully man at the same time overwhelms the mind. How did Jesus become sin and still be the sinless Lamb of God who could pay my debt? How can the infinite God be contained in my body?
The mind linked to the body encased by time can’t grasp the mysteries of faith. Logic and intellect attempt to explain, but, in so doing, we cram God into the box of language.
I’ve been reading Ephesians for a couple months now, but am still in chapter 1. My mind slammed into a divine mystery in verses 4 – 6, and I’ve been groping around the edges of election and free will for a couple weeks. In an attempt to avoid cramming God into a box of words, I’ve identified a handful of truths He’s given us in the inerrant scriptures He inspired and spoke.
Truth: Chosen v. 4
For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. I was chosen by God before time began. He set His love upon me and made me His before I existed and before there was an earth. He chose me, and I will never be unchosen.
Truth: Predestined v. 5, 6
- In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will. With great love and tender affection, He set me apart to be His child because it delighted Him. By His will, I am. By His will, I’m becoming what He designed me to be.
- to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. This is not about me or anything I did. I was nothing more than a deplorable object of wrath, but He lifted me to His great heart and made me an object of His mercy to the praise of His glorious grace which He continues to lavish upon me without reserve or condition.
Truth: He chose first – John 15:16
You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit…. He chose me first. So, did I have a choice? Could I have chosen Him if He had not chosen me?
Truth: Free will – John 3:16, John 7:36, Revelation 22:17, Deuteronomy 30:19-20
- If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink….
- For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
- Is anyone thirsty? Come! All who will, come and drink, drink freely of the Water of Life!
- I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him.
Anyone who thirsts, whoever believes, all who will come – the invitation is extended to all. He sets a choice before every human being and says, choose life. But we can choose death.
If I don’t believe the offered medicine will heal me and don’t accept it, then I will die as the fatal disease consumes me. If I accept it, I’m healed by the power of the remedy not by my act of choosing. My rejection of the cure denies its power to heal, but my acceptance of it unleashes its power to save.
Choosing or being chosen? Election or free will? Are they exclusive? Can it be both? The two sides of this Divine mystery – Sovereign choice and our free will to choose – are both unequivocally and absolutely true simultaneously.
In John chapter 6 Jesus combined these two truths:
Truth: Chosen v. 37
All those the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away.
Truth: Free will v. 40
For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day.
Truth: Chosen v. 44
No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them.
Truth: Free will v. 47
Very truly I tell you, the one who believes has eternal life.
I can’t reconcile the two sides of the mystery but faith accepts that both are true. The Father chooses who of us He will give to His Son, and no one comes unless God compels them. But He didn’t create robots. He wants to be chosen as much as He wants to choose. Does God not have the right to choose His bride, and would He not want His bride to freely choose Him?
“Men by their sins have forfeited all claim upon God; they deserve to perish for their sins – and if they all do so, they have no ground for complaint….When we are brought to see our own utter ruin, and the justice of the divine verdict against sin, we no longer scoff at the truth that the Lord is not bound to save us; we do not murmur if he chooses to save others, as though He were doing us an injury, but feel that if he deigns to look upon us, it will be His own free act of undeserved goodness, for which we will forever bless His name….”[1]
“I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden. One of you will say to me: “Then why does God still blame us? For who is able to resist his will?” But who are you, a human being, to talk back to God? “Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this’?” Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for special purposes and some for common use? What if God, although choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath—prepared for destruction? What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory? Romans 9:15, 18-23
What if He did this to overwhelm me with the riches of His glory?
I will bless His name forever for He is Sovereign and controls my hours and days. With love, He chose me and works through every circumstance to achieve His purpose in my life. I can make poor choices and turn away from Him. Though they will never separate me from Him, those choices will limit His greatness in my life and create shallowness. Or I can choose life and be overwhelmed by His glory and filled with all of His fullness.
Cynthia Heald, in her book A Woman’s Journey to the Heart of God, wrote “…the choices I make today determine whether I move toward Him, or toward self and the world. …one day I must give an account of my life to God. I will answer for the choices I made. I can never say, ‘The devil made me do it,’ for God has delivered me from the rule of Satan so that I am no longer a slave to sin. And I cannot say, ‘God why didn’t You make me do it?’ for He loves me too much to force me to obey Him.”
God of my heart, Maker of my soul, I am Yours. I love You. Deepen my love for You and Your people. Give me grace to surrender all to you – my freedoms and my chains. Show me Your ways, teach me Your truth and give me more faith to follow to the praise of Your glorious grace.
[1] Charles Spurgeon, (2003). Morning and Evening, Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books.
Soul-Union
…that I Myself may be in them. John 17:26b
I stuck my nose into the white blossom of the star magnolia in my yard and inhaled sweetness. I wonder what God inhales when He puts His nose into my heart. If it’s sweet, it’s Christ in me. If it’s foul, it’s my own attempt at fragrance.
Christ Himself in me. I have soul-union with the living God! How does that work? Why on earth would the One that time and infinite space cannot contain do that?
“…this soul-union of which I speak, this unspeakably glorious mystery of an indwelling God is the possession of even the weakest and most failing believer in Christ.”[1] Hannah Whitall Smith
God has chosen to take up residence in this physical body of mine and be united to me. I am the dwelling place of God. I am not my own anymore. Every day, all day, every thought that runs through my mind, every word spoken, everything I do is in union with Jesus Christ. That should change everything.
I have been hovering over Ephesians 1:3 for quite some time: All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ.
The blessing of God is soul-union with God. Stop there and ponder that for a few weeks. In our poverty, our persecutions, our failures, our deteriorating health and frenetic lifestyles, we are blessed more than we can grasp, and more than we have embraced. Unimaginable blessing flows from our union with Him.
“What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived”— the things God has prepared for those who love him — these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. I Corinthians 2:9-10
Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know. Jeremiah 33:3
The Spirit of God, who searches the deepest depths of God, longs to reveal the secrets of the deep. We can know these great and mysterious secrets. He wants us to know. He is always trying to tell us and waits for us to listen. There is a language of Deity, a transcendent exchange, and if I am still long enough to listen in the quiet, I will catch the inaudible song of the Trinity. All this is taking place in me, and I am called into the conversation. What glorious unspeakable blessings in Christ!
[1] Smith, H. W. (2009). The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life. Christian Classics Ethereal Library.
Going Deeper
“A continual cry of my heart is that I might always be deepening my intimacy with the Lord. I do not want to become complacent, or even satisfied, in my current relationship with Him. I desire to keep growing in my love and knowledge of God – in essence, I thirst for His ongoing power and presence in my life.”[1] Cynthia Heald
30 years ago, I was floundering on the surface of Christianity trying to find my way into a deeper experience of God. After years of failure, I reached the end of myself and gave up. My spirit stilled, waiting for what might or might not come next.
In my quiet desperation, I began reading Ephesians and writing out my heart. God drew close, materializing out of the fog of my despair, and began His deepening work in my heart. Yet, the deeper He has drawn me, the more I despair of my shallowness and the greater my longing to know God more. For there is no limit, no rocky bottom, no end nor finality to the wondrously unimaginable depths of God. And I feel that I have only splashed in the spreading waves of the surf.
At the gate of 2015, He has again stirred my heart to return to Ephesians and plunge deeper. He has also brought back to me the writings of several of the godly seekers of the deep: Cynthia Heald, AW Tozer, Calvin Miller, and Andrew Murray. Their panting after God has inspired me over the years, and drawn me after them and after the One they pursue.
So, begins the next leg of my journey and rereading Ephesians and writing and, this time, blogging it. [For my determined purpose is] that I may know Him [that I may progressively become more deeply and intimately acquainted with Him, perceiving and recognizing and understanding the wonders of His Person more strongly and more clearly.] Philippians 3:10a, Amplified Bible
“…now begins the glorious pursuit, the heart’s happy exploration of the infinite riches of the Godhead. That is where we begin, I say, but where we stop no man has yet discovered, for there is in the awful and mysterious depths of the Triune God neither limit nor end.”[2] A.W. Tozer
Anyone else thirst for God’s ongoing power and presence in your life? Anyone else hungry to go deeper into the mysterious depths of the Triune God? He calls us to it. He yearns and waits for it.
[1] Heald, C. (2009). Dwelling in His Presence. Colorado Springs: NAVPRESS, p. 7.
[2] Tozer, A. W. (1993). The Pursuit of God. Camp Hill: Christian Publications, p. 14.