Category Archives: Common English Bible

Scared Spitless

That means really scared.

Habakkuk had that experience. His small book is look inside his prayer journal. At first, he seems pretty ferocious. He’s upset with God. The wicked are getting away with murder, blah, blah, blah.

“I’m just going to give God a piece of my mind and see what he does with that!”

2 Lord, how long will I call for help and you not listen?
I cry out to you, “Violence!”
but you don’t deliver us. (Hab. 1:2, CEB)

“So, there! Take that!”

God seems unfazed. Imagine that. We wag our tiny little fingers at him and “rage” at him in our pipsqueak voices… (Come on, even Charlton Heston’s voice sounds like some tiny little mouse from God’s vantage point. Admit it.)

Habakkuk is just so enraged. And God let’s Habakkuk know he’s got this one.

His answer?

5 Look among the nations and watch!
Be astonished and stare
because something is happening in your days
that you wouldn’t believe even if told. (Hab. 1:5, CEB)

Translation: “Shut up and watch something.”

Does Habakkuk learn? Not yet. He rages on in the latter part of Chapter 1.

Then, in Hab. 2:2-3, God shows up.

“Habakkuk, just watch.”

Whatever Habakkuk witnessed in a vision was enough. In fact, it buckled his knees.

16 I hear and my insides tremble.
My lips quiver at the sound.
Rottenness enters my bones.
I tremble while I stand, (Hab. 3:16, CEB)

This isn’t the warm and fuzzies. God showed up and let Habakkuk know what was about to happen and it scared Habakkuk spitless.

There are times we need to have THAT feeling come over us. There are times we need the realization that the warm fuzzies is not the entirety of God. We think WE see injustice? When God shows up and gives us HIS view, we need a sense of fear and trembling.

God is ready to do amazing things. But “amazing” isn’t going to necessarily be in our definition. But whatever God does, when he shows up, have a glass of water close by. You just might need it.

Do We Have What It Takes?

5 Those who put their strength in you are truly happy;
pilgrimage is in their hearts.
6 As they pass through the Baca Valley,
they make it a spring of water.
Yes, the early rain covers it with blessings.
7 They go from strength to strength,
until they see the supreme God in Zion. (Psalm 84:5-7, CEB)

Life simply overwhelms us. The pace of life crushes us at times. The worry of finances. The concern over time. We rush to make things happen.

Do we have it in us to take up a passionate pursuit of the Holy One anymore? Are we so tired, so busy, so overtaken by… life…  we just can’t breathe?

We need prophetic words like those of A.W. Tozer to somehow reach deep down into our spirits and call us upward once again. We need to break away from the mundane all around us and take up the hot pursuit of the Holy One. We need to bust away from mediocrity all around us.

It will require a determined heart and more than a little courage to wrench ourselves loose from the grip of our times and return to biblical ways. But it can be done. Every now and then in the past Christians have had to do it. (Tozer, The Pursuit of God)

Do we have what it takes?

 

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The Rewards of Waiting

Hope in the Lord!
Be strong! Let your heart take courage!
Hope in the Lord! (Psalm 27:14, CEB)

No one likes to wait.

“Hope” and “wait” are ways to translate the Hebrew word used in Psalm 27:14. The NIV uses “wait.” What is communicated is this: What you’re seeking from God isn’t coming at the click of a mouse. There is a season where you have to have your eyes fixed on the Father… waiting… hoping… anticipating. We need that sense of longing once again in our lives.

The world moves to fast. We want results faster. We need more instantaneous results. The days of “slow plodding” are gone… or seem to be. There just doesn’t seem to be any need for waiting any more.

But that is the admonition of Scripture. Prophets are told to wait for the answer of a dream or a revelation. The church was told to wait until they were clothed with power from on high.

Our fast-paced world screams out to us to get the lead out! We move quick or we are run over.

And this wonderful call still comes from our Father.

Wait.

 

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Tenacious Waiting and Our Millisecond Attention Span

I will take my post;
I will position myself on the fortress.
I will keep watch to see what the Lord says to me
and how he will respond to my complaint. (Hab. 2:1, CEB)

We often think we are just THE THING when it comes to walking with God. We’re smarter, faster, more “spiritual”…

We certainly know better than the old fogies who’ve gone before us. While they “tarried” in prayer, we can get things done. Plug in the right marketing strategy and BOOM… instant church. Good stuff.

And even when God seems to throw us a curve ball, no problem. We’ll just lodge a complaint. We’ll even sit and wait for his response… as long as he gets back to us by the end of the business day. And we have a RIGHT to complain! There is injustice in the land! And we know injustice. We are trained professionals!

So, we lodge our complaint with God and wait.

And we think, “Let’s just see what he says about THIS.”

What if God just lets us stew there? What if we wait and five p.m. rolls around?

We may be good at complaining… but how good at we at waiting? And more still, how good are we at taking God’s answer?

He basically tells Habakkuk, “If the revelation lingers… wait.”

Habakkuk probably could wait. Some of the “old saints” of the Church could wait. That was the point of “tarrying.” They knew what it meant to “pray until.”

In our day… do we know what it is to have a tenacious pursuit of God? Do we know what it is to latch on and not let go until we hear from God?

There are times we truly need to hear from heaven. I believe we live in those times. We are suffering from extreme prosperity as an American Church and it is killing us. We just don’t know it yet. We are living in an anorexic lifestyle spiritually that is killing us. Yet, we are not wanting to hear from God… at least not yet.

We need to repent of our ADHD spirituality and get back to the call to WAIT for the vision God gives.

The Secret is in the Response

Come, my heart says, seek God’s face.
Lord, I do seek your face! (Psalm 27:8, CEB)

God wants everyone pursuing him. He is constantly pursuing each of us.

All He has ever done for any of His children He will do for all of His children. The difference lies not with God but with us. (A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God)

We need a heart to pursue God. When he calls, do we respond? I look at the lives of those who lived in incredible blessing from God and then examine other lives (even my own). The difference, often, is those who knew the incredible presence and blessing of God were those who acquired a lifelong habit of spiritual response.

God calls. Does he just get our voicemail?

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The Hungry Heart

The opportunity of worship is the opportunity to gaze on the power and beauty of the Lord. Coming into worship in a church isn’t about the “entertainment” value. It is the incredible opportunity to come face to face with the living God.

Yes, I’ve seen you in the sanctuary;
I’ve seen your power and glory. (Psalm 63:2, CEB)

David would come into the sanctuary and allow the elements of worship draw him into the presence of God. Worship together needs to draw our attention to the One worthy of worship. It is about the Lamb on the throne. It is not about US. David would come into the sanctuary and find the elements of the liturgy drawing him to seek the Lord. It was in that worship he found the power and the glory of God.

Come hungry! When you come to church, come ready to feast!

Too often we come exhausted. We drop into our seats and hope that the worship team has something for us. It may just shock our entire system to think WE are supposed to come in with hearts hungry and asking, “Lord, what can I do for you?”

When you come to worship with the Body of Christ, begin with an appetizer at home. Feast on the Word. Read a Psalm or two. Take the time to put on some worship music that begins to draw your heart to the worship of the Lamb on the throne. Have those songs in your heart on the way to church. When the Israelites came to the Feasts, they would sing the “Songs of Ascents.” They came worshipping.

As you come in tasting the Word of God and preparing your heart with song, you may find that you can more readily experience the power and the glory of God when you are there.

As a pastor, and along with our worship team, we want our hearts hungry when we come as well. I have feasted on the Word all week as I try to prepare a great meal for those coming to church. I have asked for a song in my heart. I don’t always come with a song… but I try.

The realization is that neither I nor the worship team can put that song into the hearts of those coming. We can only supplement that song. I’m long done with the guilt that I’m supposed to “crank it up” for those coming. No show. We’re hungry hearts coming to feast on the greatness of our God. And with hungry hearts we will see his power and glory.

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The EXPERIENCE of God

Scripture invites us to the experience of God.

Psalm 34:8 — Taste and see how good the Lord is!

Psalm 45:8 — All your clothes have the pleasing scent of myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon.

John 10:27 — My sheep listen to my voice. I know them and they follow me.

Psalm 63:2 —
Yes, I’ve seen you in the sanctuary;
I’ve seen your power and glory.

(All Common English Bible)

God is beyond the mind. He is beyond the propositional truth. He is the God who wants us to know him.

The Holy Spirit doesn’t make us alive for the purpose of having our brains know some truth alone. The Spirit makes us alive for pursuit. The God of all might and power has apprehended us! We are called to a holy pursuit.

We are so numb to experience. We seem to be locked up in the fantasy world of just “knowing” the right stuff.

A spiritual kingdom lies all about us, enclosing us, embracing us, altogether within reach of our inner selves, waiting for us to recognize it. God Himself is here waiting our response to His presence. This eternal wold will come alive to us the moment we begin to reckon upon its reality. (Tozer, The Pursuit of God)

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Fire in Our Bones

19 Brothers and sisters, we have confidence that we can enter the holy of holies by means of Jesus’ blood, 20 through a new and living way that he opened up for us through the curtain, which is his body, 21 and we have a great high priest over God’s house.

22 Therefore, let’s draw near with a genuine heart with the certainty that our faith gives us, since our hearts are sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies are washed with pure water. (Heb. 10:19-22, CEB)

We have become too easily satisfied. We have settled into propositional truths and contented ourselves with intellectual ascent to being “in Christ.” It has come to a point, it seems, where we care very little about missing something on the personal level of experience.

The instant cure of most of our religious ills would be to enter the Presence in spiritual experience, to become suddenly aware that we are in God and that God is in us. (Tozer, The Pursuit of God)

The great adventure of knowing God is the greatest invitation we have. It is the opportunity to lift ourselves out of our narrow thinking and put us in a place where our hearts can be enlarged by his presence. We need this call shouting in our inner most being: “BOLDLY go into that holy presence!”

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At the End of Ourselves

2 God said, “Take your son, your only son whom you love, Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah. Offer him up as an entirely burned offering there on one of the mountains that I will show you.” 3 Abraham got up early in the morning, harnessed his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, together with his son Isaac. He split the wood for the entirely burned offering, set out, and went to the place God had described to him. (Gen. 22:2-3, CEB)

God takes Abraham to the very edge. He puts Abraham in a place of no retreat. The knife is up in the air then God stops him. Abraham gets to the place of possessing nothing… yet having everything.

“Now he was a man wholly surrendered, a man utterly obedient, a man who possessed nothing.” (A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God)

Repenting of Sin? Or Sorry You Got Caught?

To fear the Lord is to hate evil.
I hate pride and arrogance,
the path of evil and corrupt speech. (Prov. 8:13, CEB)

“Lukewarm people don’t really want to be saved from their sin; they want only to be saved from the penalty of their sin. They don’t genuinely hate sin and aren’t truly sorry for it; they’re merely sorry because God is going to punish them.”
– Francis Chan, Crazy Love

As one cartoon I once saw said, “I haven’t really died to sin, but I did feel faint once.”