HAVE YOU NOT KNOWN. HAVE YOU NOT HEARD.

Isaiah 40:28-31 (Amplified Bible) - Have you not known? Have you not heard? The everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, does not faint or grow weary; there is no searching of His understanding. He gives power to the faint and weary, and to him who has no might He increases strength [causing it to multiply and making it to abound]. Even youths shall faint and be weary, and [selected] young men shall feebly stumble and fall exhausted; But those who wait for the Lord [who expect, look for, and hope in Him] shall change and renew their strength and power; they shall lift their wings and mount up [close to God] as eagles [mount up to the sun]; they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint or become tired.

The everlasting God, the Lord and Creator of the ends of the earth does not faint or grow weary. What a God we worship. He is super-duper great and wonderful. We should never doubt His goodness. He gives power to those who are weary. He gives strength when we are wearied from the many onslaughts of the enemies of life. Sometimes we are not sure what hits us. We are not looking for trials. We are not searching for trouble. But life itself does not leave us alone. As long as we are here in this broken world anything unpleasant can happen. It is not always bad – maybe a little – but it certainly will shake us out of our comfort zone. Even in those circumstances He increases strength – causing it to multiply and making it to abound – so that we will be renewed. God did not promise us a trouble-free life, trials-protection scheme and zero-temptation pathway BUT he promises changed and renewed strength when we are faint, wearied and exhausted emotionally and spiritually.

I remembered a song by Phil Driscoll entitled Soldier. The song speaks of believers are soldiers engaging in the battles of life and returning home from the battlefield discouraged, wearied and exhausted in our spirits.  There have been long hours and days digging deep into the trenches with no sign of relief. There have been battle scars, wounds, weariness, exhaustion, doubt, fear and uncertainty all around. But the song ends it this way: when the day is over, when the night comes and you lie down on your bed REMEMBER you are still a child – a child of God.

Especially those of us who are serving the Lord; feeling weary and tired battling through tough situations, difficult people and relationships, and engaging in spiritual battle and warfare – we need to know clearly that when we put down our fighting gear for the night to rest a little we remember we are still His child. We are our Father’s sons and daughters. We may be soldiers for Christ in this battle torn world advancing the Kingdom of God but we are still His children – loved by Him with an everlasting love. He will renew our strength. He will cause us to mount up with wings like eagles. We will soar above the clouds – above our circumstances and into the very arms of the Father’s warm embrace. We will have abundant strength in the weary-land.

Whenever I feel the strain and the weight of responsibility in the work of the Lord, I needed to stop on my track, pause for a moment, and go into the chamber of my King. It is there that I would receive renewed strength and the comfort of the Lord. It is there in His presence that I am once reminded that I am His child and I belong to Him. He loves me with an everlasting love. No weapon forms against me will prosper. Nothing can separate me from the love of God. The devil cannot snatch me out of the palms of His hand.

Nothing can compare with the time a child has in the presence of his Father. His abiding presence removes all weariness of self-imposed expectations, all frustrations of the unexplained dynamic of relationships and unexpected circumstances and all fears of unknown paths that we know we have to walk through. Like Isaiah, in quietness and confidence, shall be my strength. It is learning to rest in Him completely – confident trust and quiet faith!!

Father God, I love you! 

Today's Spirituality: Pandering to the Drama of Some Side Show Artists?

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THANK YOU.

THE STILL SMALL VOICE OF GOD

The cacophony of secular ideas and thoughts have slowly but surely silenced the still small voice of God calling us to gaze upward into His countenance, to emanate the light of His glory, and to surrender to His perfect will. We are being bifurcated in our allegiance; on one hand, we pledge to follow Him all the way, but on the other hand we are drawn to the stirring of the growing barbarians – the relapse to neo-paganism where we make our own gods out of our hearts and our minds.

Let us stop on our track, pause for a moment, before we go any further down the path of foolishness or in a cruder form, a sublime stupidity. Why? How could we ever live our lives without the Lord? How could we even try to make sense of our lives by ourselves? We need the Lord. We need to learn to gaze into His face. We need to surrender to the perfect will of God!

There are no options and no substitutions to being in the presence of God. It is better to spend a day in His court than a thousand elsewhere. It is better to hear the still small voice of God and walk in obedience than justifying and debating within ourselves because of the rational yet dissonant sound of secular ideas and philosophies. We have the Word of God. We have the Spirit of God. We need to open our hearts to the leading of the Lord.

I am struggling with my mental processes, my imagination, what the Bible says, and what I see within and without the church. All of these have given me a spiritual “headache”. As an example, I don’t see how people could say so easily “God said these” or “God spoke to me” or “God told me to tell you.” How could we use terms like these so easily and freely? How do we know that we know He has spoken? What is the indication? What is the sign that He said it? Is it audible? Is it an impression? Could our impression be wrong? How often have we been right? Is there a possibility of presumptions and assumptions when we said it so freely? If we could use it so freely, then those who can’t means what – they are not in tune, not in close intimacy?

Yet I can’t deny the fact that God would choose to do that either. I have read in the Bible how he had spoken in a still small voice to the prophets. It is a known fact that God does speak in such fashion.

So what should we do? I believe that it’s a learning process for all of us. I think I will have to press in and press through, patiently wait upon the Lord and learn to hear and recognized His voice when He speaks. There’s no other way to go. Even if we said that He speaks through His Word we still need that still small voice reassuring us from deep within that indeed He meant for that text, that passage or that portion in the Bible to be personal to you. Perhaps one of the most assuring thought from the Scriptures is found in Isaiah 30:18-21 –

Therefore the Lord waits to be gracious to you, and therefore he exalts himself to show mercy to you. For the Lord is a God of justice; blessed are all those who wait for him. For a people shall dwell in Zion, in Jerusalem; you shall weep no more. He will surely be gracious to you at the sound of your cry. As soon as he hears it, he answers you. And though the Lord give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction,  yet your Teacher will not hide himself anymore, but your eyes shall see your Teacher. And your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, “This is the way, walk in it,” when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left.

I think now is the time when God’s grace is found in abundance. He will be gracious to our cries. He will hear us as soon as we call upon Him. Isaiah said that even though God gave us “the bread of adversity and the water of affliction” – times of testing and trials – yet in the midst of it all the Holy Spirit, the Teacher of righteousness will not hide anymore. We will see the Teacher of righteousness and will hear when He leads and guides us with the still small voice from behind us – “this is the way, walk in it.”