This is How He Loves Me

[18] Behold, the eye of the LORD is on those who fear him,
on those who hope in his steadfast love,
[19] that he may deliver their soul from death
and keep them alive in famine.
[20] Our soul waits for the LORD;
he is our help and our shield.
[21] For our heart is glad in him,
because we trust in his holy name.
[22] Let your steadfast love, O LORD, be upon us,
even as we hope in you.

(Psalm 33:18-22 ESV)

When I feel overwhelmed or suffocated or trapped by all the circumstances of life, I can say,

"Blessed be the LORD, for he has wondrously shown his steadfast love to me when I was in a besieged city."

(Psalm 31:21 ESV)

When I don't know "Why?", when I don't know what to do next, I can look to Christ, for "the LORD my God lightens my darkness"(Psalm 18:28b ESV).

'"For the mountains may depart and the hills be removed, but my steadfast love shall not depart from you, and my covenant of peace shall not be removed,” says the LORD, who has compassion on you.'

(Isaiah 54:10 ESV)

His "love never fails"(1 Corinthians 13: 8).

Even when I fall away, He will be there. He keeps all His promises.

"If we are faithless, he remains faithful—for he cannot deny himself."

(2 Timothy 2:13 ESV)

"For your steadfast love is before my eyes, and I walk in your faithfulness." [my emphasis]

(Psalm 26:3 ESV)

He loves me better than I even know. More than I can guess.


This is my God, and this is how He loves me.

Paper Flowers

 I haven't had a chance to go to find myself some yellow mums or some tulips or some other spirit-lifting spring greenery, so I made myself these tissue paper peonies out of desperation the other day. February this year has been a month of what seems like endless grey and I needed some brightness in my life. Yellow flowers, even fake ones, just make my day happier--particularly in the middle of a particularly bleak winter. It feels as though I haven't seen the sun in weeks. We've had snow and rain and drizzle and sleet, and the miasma of cloud above us seems endless. I don't need the heat of summer, but I just need some sun! I feel like I'm wilting here. . . I'm not a mushroom, after all!

My paper flowers are in no way comparable to the real thing. Real flowers have rich colour, satin petals, green leaves, and perfume. They are living things and no fake can compare--that is pretty obvious. But I'm so desperate for flowers, that even a poor semblance of them is acceptable. Even something that I made out of the flimsiest of paper with my scissors and a bit of wire is better than nothing.

While that may be a bit pathetic, I admit,  it is also nothing less than the truth, and that got me thinking.

I know that the sun is somewhere beyond clouds--the fact that I can see without needing a lamp is evidence of that--but knowing it is there and feeling it warm on my face are two very different things.

It is the same thing with other things in our lives. I can know that God has what is best for me planned, but when I can't see beyond the clouds I'm living through now, I don't always feel it. Faith says I can believe it, I can hope in it, can trust that it is true, but sometimes I sing with David, "How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?" (Psalm 13:1 ESV).

The future can seem like one endless grey winter sometimes with only periodic rays of sunshine piercing the gloom. It can make it hard to live with hope. All too often, it seems, we make the mistake of settling for what we can get, the paper flowers of this world. Like children not yet tall enough to see over the wall to the beautiful, sunny garden next door, we grasp at the paper flowers we find on our side, and cry when they aren’t perfumed and crumble away in our hands. Those taller than we are tell us how gorgeous that garden is, but we still live in doubt that it actually exists. If we could only see the other side of the wall, we say, we could make the right choice, we could live in faith, we could be content to wait. But we still clutch at the fakes, only to be disappointed when they don't fulfill us. And that is the problem: paper flowers don't really satisfy for long when what you really want, what you need, is the sun. 

Sometimes I find myself grasping at these paper flowers in a bid to somehow fill the empty spot that can only ever be filled by God. Sometimes it is hard to live without the instant gratification that "things" provide. There are times when I don't run to God like I should, but find other "lovers". In that sense I only too closely resemble Old Testament Israel, particularly as portrayed by Isaiah and Hosea. Thankfully, however, I don't have to rely on myself to bring me back "into true" because I can't do it myself. But just like in Hosea 2:14, God allures me and brings me back and reminds me that I don't have to make paper flowers, that He is the "Sun of Righteousness" and He is always there.

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.

(Romans 15:13 ESV)

(As I was writing this, the sun peeked through a gap in the cloud cover: I even saw blue sky!! Briefly. Before the sun set and it was gone again.)

The Desires of your Heart

Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart. Ps 37:4

Many people, including myself, have taken this, and other similar scriptures as a promise that God will fulfill us by granting us the things we want. We want so many things, and so often our wants are quite legitimate biblically-speaking: godly children, a Christian spouse, a job where we can work as God intends us, etc. We seem to take such verses as Ps 37:4 as promises from God that if we do what he wants, He’ll give us what we want. However, I was reading through verses on the heart, and when I got to this one, I was suddenly struck by a new reading of this verse—at least, it was suddenly new to me. Thinking back to all the reading I have done, the sermons I heard, etc., it is not really a new concept at all, but I felt it was important to reorient this verse in my own heart, and hope that it will help shed new light in other people’s hearts as well.

Too often we try to use scripture against God. We take verses promising that obedience will be rewarded, and try to use obedience to get what we want. This is obviously a works-oriented approach to Christianity, and one that it is all to easy to slip into. If God demands obedience, and promises to reward our obedience, it becomes very easy for our sinful humanity to begin demanding His reward on our own terms. When we do not seem to get our “deserved” reward for our obedience to God’s will, we get angry or hurt, and begin to believe the same lie that Satan used to tempt Eve: we think that God is holding out on us. We cry, “I’m doing everything He asked (to the best of my ability): why doesn’t He give me what I want?”

Why doesn’t He give me what I want? “What I want” is not important; what God wants is. God does not have an immense tally sheet in heaven where He checks off our obedience against our disobedience and if obedience wins we get rewarded. One sin, no matter how “small,” is enough to send us to Hell. One sin blots out any of the good we may think we can do. Our obedience is not the measuring line by which we are rewarded, because God demands perfect obedience and we, no matter how we try, cannot ever do His will perfectly. Christ’s obedience is the measuring line—and it is Christ’s desires that are fulfilled.

“Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.” This is where the eyes of my heart were suddenly opened. This text is not an equation where “Delighting myself in the Lord” = “Getting what my heart desires.” No, it promises something far better. In this text, God promises to give us the desires of our hearts. He is not promising to give us want we want, but rather promising to give us desires that come from Him. His desires. Not our Wants, the things we think we “need” or the things we lust after, but His desires. “Delighting in the Lord” = Being Gifted with the desires of God. 

Our little Wants become even smaller as we immerse ourselves, delight ourselves, in the Lord. And as our Wants shrink, He gives us holy Desires to take their place. We must not keep a death-grip on our Wants, or try to manipulate God into giving us what we think we need; instead, we must, by the Holy Spirit’s power, surrender our small Wants and pray to be drawn by God and given His desires.

Jesu, joy of man’s desiring,

Holy Wisdom, Love most bright;

Drawn by Thee, our souls, aspiring,

Soar to uncreated light.

Word of God, our flesh that fashion’d,

With the fire of life impassion’d,

Striving still to truth unknown,

Soaring, dying, round Thy throne.

Through the way where hope is guiding,

Hark, what peaceful music rings!

Where the flock, in Thee confiding,

Drink of joy from deathless springs.

Theirs is beauty’s fairest pleasure;

Theirs is wisdom’s holiest treasure.

Thou dost ever lead Thine own

In the love of joys unknown.

Traditional Hymn

Refining

Behold, I have refined thee, but not with silver; I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction. Isa 48:10

For he hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; neither hath he hid his face from him; but when he cried unto him, he heard. Ps. 22:24

And though the Lord give you the bread of adversity, and the water of affliction, yet shall not thy teachers be removed into a corner any more, but thine eyes shall see thy teachers: And thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand, and when ye turn to the left. Isa. 30:20-21

It is good for me that I have been afflicted; that I might learn thy statutes. Ps. 119:71

“Affliction is both a medicine if we sin, and a preservative that we sin not.”
–Richard Hooker, The Works of Richard Hooker: Tractates and Sermons

Affliction is a tool of punishing, but also one of teaching. God’s people suffer in the world because they, as C.S. Lewis pointed out, were made for another world. We don’t belong here. We are “strangers and pilgrims on the earth”(Heb 11:13) and as such, we do not have a place of our own, a place to hunker down in and stay put. Nothing here on earth can fill the place of God. 

We are temples of Christ here on earth, but we must abide in Him as well.(Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me. John 15:4) We are to be anchored in Christ. Our sustenance comes from the Vine: He is the One with roots, we are the wanderers, who find our place in Him.

Too often we attempt to fill the God-shaped hole in our hearts with things, be they people, money, possessions, sports, or food. God commands us to worship Him alone, forsaking idols. When we do, we will grow in grace under God’s protection and produce fruit.

Ephraim shall say, What have I to do any more with idols? [And God says] I have heard him, and observed him: I am like a green fir tree. From me is thy fruit found. Hosea 14:8

I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately and the thing that keeps coming up is the fact that having possessions and having a desire for certain things (such as marriage) is not wrong, rather it is when we begin treating them like the answer to our emptiness that they become our idols and stumbling blocks.

 A. W. Tozer puts it this way, in his book, The Pursuit of God:

There is within the human heart a tough fibrous root of fallen life whose nature is to possess, always to possess. It covets `things’ with a deep and fierce passion. The pronouns `my’ and `mine’ look innocent enough in print, but their constant and universal use is significant. They express the real nature of the old Adamic man better than a thousand volumes of theology could do. They are verbal symptoms of our deep disease. The roots of our hearts have grown down into things, and we dare not pull up one rootlet lest we die. Things have become necessary to us, a development never originally intended. God’s gifts now take the place of God, and the whole course of nature is upset by the monstrous substitution.

It is difficult, since very often these things are comfortable and comforting, a refuge from the blows of the world. Just like a child must give up sucking his thumb/soother (or face the inevitable laughter of his school mates), we must give up these false comforters and find our Refuge in the true Comforter. Sometimes, it is necessary to cut ourselves off entirely from these things (Ephraim shall say, What have I to do any more with idols?) in order to break our dependence on them. We may be able to reintroduce some things back into our lives, but we have to be aware that it will easy to fall back into old habits. The old nature is, as Joanna Weaver says in her book Having a Mary Spirit, our default mode and when we “crash” (as we will do–we’re not perfect after all), it will be the program that turns up most often.

However, we do not have to do this on our own–indeed, we cannot–God places the will and the strength in our hearts to divorce ourselves from these petty “lovers.” In C.S. Lewis’s The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Aslan tells Eustace, who has, through loving dragon hoard, turned into a dragon, that before he can enter the pool and become human again,”first you must undress”–remove the dragon scales that cover him. Eustace scrapes away gamely, but each layer removed reveals another underneath. Finally, Aslan offers to help him and Eustace accepts (remaining afraid of the Lion’s sharp claws). The skin Aslan pulls off is much thicker than those Eustace had shed by himself and it hurt when it was removed.

The same thing happens when we scrape away at our old nature, we take away single layers, but God can remove much more with a single “claw”– affliction — in any guise Him choses. Not everyone requires a world-shattering tragedy to remove their dependence on “things.” God uses affliction in our lives to refine us,burning away the dross in our lives in “the furnace of affliction.” God knows how much we can stand and He will adjust the “temperature” to our individual requirements.

There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted [also can be translated "tested"] above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it. 1Cor 10:13

God also uses affliction to guide us and bring us closer to Himself.

And though the Lord give you the bread of adversity, and the water of affliction, yet shall not thy teachers be removed into a corner any more, but thine eyes shall see thy teachers: Isa. 30:20

If we, instead of complaining, humble ourselves under His Hand and allow God to show us His working, we will see how “all things work together for good to them that love God” (Romans 8:28).

And He will not leave us alone to struggle on blindly, but “will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go: [He] will guide thee with [His] eye” (Ps.32:8). Not only will He guide us with His eye, but He will speak to us in a “still, small voice”–

And thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand, and when ye turn to the left. Isa. 30:21

We may not be aware at the time how God is working, but we may be sure that His purpose is to our future good–we have already been redeemed, now we are just waiting for our Bridegroom to come and take us home.