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Lord, turn me over and inside out…please!
Thoughts to encourage us to run to Jesus
“Now listen to the explanation of the parable about the farmer planting seeds: 19 The seed that fell on the footpath represents those who hear the message about the Kingdom and don’t understand it. Then the evil one comes and snatches away the seed that was planted in their hearts. 20 The seed on the rocky soil represents those who hear the message and immediately receive it with joy. 21 But since they don’t have deep roots, they don’t last long. They fall away as soon as they have problems or are persecuted for believing God’s word. 22 The seed that fell among the thorns represents those who hear God’s word, but all too quickly the message is crowded out by the worries of this life and the lure of wealth, so no fruit is produced. 23 The seed that fell on good soil represents those who truly hear and understand God’s word and produce a harvest of thirty, sixty, or even a hundred times as much as had been planted!” Matthew 13:18-23 (NLT2)
Today the Christian emphasis falls heavily on the “active” life.… The favorite brand of Christianity is that sparked by the man in a hurry, hard hitting, aggressive and ready with the neat quip. We are neglecting the top side of our souls. The light in the tower burns dimly while we hurry about the grounds below, making a great racket and giving the impression of wonderful devotion to our task.
But why does God let man be thus assailed by sin? Answer: So that man may learn to know himself and God; to know himself is to learn that all he is capable of is sinning and doing evil; to know God is to learn that God’s grace is stronger than all creatures. Thus he learns to despise himself and to laud and praise God’s mercy.
I am not a farmer, and I am not good with plants.
But as I read the Parable of the Sower/Soil, I wonder why something wasn’t done about the soil before tossing the seed out onto the ground in such a random manner. Even I know you must break up the ground and turn it over. That is one of the primary uses of a farm tractor or a team of oxen pulling a huge plow back in the day.
Christ’s intended parallel to our lives is accurate today and when those words were spoken. Satan still tromps all over us, hardening the soil or lives. There are still rocks in our soil that need to be broken up or removed, the rocks that prevent God’s word from taking deep roots that sustain life. There are still thorns that cause so much anxiety that the message of God gets choked out. So pressures from outside us (the thorns), deep inside us (the rocks), and our hardness at the surface work against us hearing and God’s word impacting us.
Tozer echoes this with words from 60 years ago. (he died in 1963) talking about a shallow but active Christian life. It is too easy to remember a few catchphrases… and not see how they impact you personally. Christ must dig deep within us to reach what we are trying to protect and get that we don’t even know how to talk about.
We need to learn to be silent, let the truth of the gospel sink in, and take root. We need to let it calm us down to help us learn to live in peace. But that means we need to let God penetrate our lives. Which is what Luther was getting at. We need to realize that only God can transform us – that only He has the wisdom and the power to reach deep within us. This action means that He allows us to sin and fail so that He can restore us as we learn to depend on Him. So we have to slow down – and let the law convict and the gospel restore and give us the hope we need. He has to let us see the seed bouncing off the path, or getting choked out… or running up against a boulder… then He can show us how the cross removes the obstacles… while we sit in awe…meditating on His peace, His mercy, His love.
So we are back to the Sower, who breaks up the path at the cross and in the resurrection, removes the stones and the weeds and thistles. Let’s sit in His presence a while… and let His love and mercy do what the Father sent Jesus us to do…
Tozer, A. W. 2015. Tozer for the Christian Leader. Chicago: Moody Publishers.
Luther, Martin. 1999. Luther’s Works, Vol. 42: Devotional Writings I. Edited by Jaroslav Jan Pelikan, Hilton C. Oswald, and Helmut T. Lehmann. Vol. 42. Philadelphia: Fortress Press.
Do We Have the Courage to “shut up?” Some thoughts about worship…
Devotional Thought of the Day:
Stay quiet before Yahweh, wait longingly for him, do not get heated over someone who is making a fortune, succeeding by devious means. Psalm 37:7 (NJB)
The continual recitation of the canon aloud results in the demand for “variety”, but the demand is insatiable, however much these eucharistic prayers may proliferate. There is only one solution: we must address ourselves once again to the intrinsic tension of the reality itself. In the end even variety becomes boring. This is why, here especially, we are in such urgent need of an education toward inwardness. We need to be taught to enter into the heart of things. As far as liturgy is concerned, this is a matter of life or death. The only way we can be saved from succumbing to the inflation of words is if we have the courage to face silence and in it learn to listen afresh to the Word. Otherwise we shall be overwhelmed by “mere words” at the very point where we should be encountering the Word, the Logos, the Word of love, crucified and risen, who brings us life and joy.
It happens every so often, when a worship leader or the rubrics (the small italic letters in our hymnals or bulletins) call for silence, that a musician determines that he must fill the silence with a solo. Sure, it is well-meant, and not ostentatious. just a little light playing.
But there is a reason for silence, a reason for the awkward feeling of emptiness. the time when we are left alone with our thoughts when we need to realize they aren’t on God.
It is awkward, it even may produce a moment or two of guilt and regret.
That doesn’t mean we should ditch those moments.
In fact, we need them! Desperately need them.
We need to enter the heart of worship, as the old worship song describes, the moment of awe in the presence of God, a presence so powerful we cannot speak. It is not that we dare not, rather, we need to wait for God to speak.
We need to be comforted by Him, we need to enter into His presence to hear that He is taken care of our sin, and we belong with Him.
We can’t do that if we are trying to fill each and every moment with sound, with novelty, with trying to make things fresh and new. Eventually, you can only overload people with so much, before the stimulation overload numbs them, and their participation is minimized. ( Try playing five songs without a break, each one with the congregation clapping – how many are left at the 13-minute mark? )
I am not saying we do the stuff dry and without meaning either. And i don’t think Ratzinger/Pope Benedict was saying that either. Rather I think his point is making sure people realize that they are in the presence of God…..
and are loved by Him…
and have the time of silence ot know this… to realize it, not just as an academic point, but in the depth of their souls, the place that needs the most healing. Time to descend to that place, and there, even as we cry out because of the pain, we find God at work, cleansing the wounds, healing them, comforting us…
We need this.
For it is the heart of our worship…
Lord, help us to shut up… and hear You, see You at work comforting us, and healing us. AMEN!)
Joseph Ratzinger, The Feast of Faith: Approaches to a Theology of the Liturgy, trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986), 73.
The Value of Quietness…and how it leads to a joyful dance!
Devotional Thought of the Day:
9 This is the account of Noah and his family. Noah was a righteous man, the only blameless person living on earth at the time, and he walked in close fellowship with God.
Genesis 6:9 (NLT2)
All of us, in this era when public life is being more and more Americanized, are in the grip of a peculiar restlessness, which suspects any quietness of being a waste of time, any stillness of being a sign of missing out on something. Every ounce of
You can suffer from a desperate hunger to be loved. You can search
long years in lonely places, far outside yourself. Yet the whole time, this
love is but a few inches away from you.
It is at the edge of your soul, but you have been blind to its
presence.
We must remain attentive in order to be able to receive.
John O’Donohue
Our primary goal, then, is not just to hear the voice of God but to be mature people in a loving relationship with God. This will result in our living a certain kind of life—one
As a child, my favorite times were when I was alone. Alone to read, along to wander the woods behind our home, alone especially in a church, an hour or two before mass.
Something happened as I was growing up, somehow, I turned into an extrovert, which is kind of awkward, because socially, I am pretty awkward. I can’t find contentment, or satisfaction, or peace easily when I am alone anymore. Which is pretty good considering my vocation as a pastor, but not okay really, because spiritually, there is a huge need to be alone.
Well, not really alone, for in Christ, we never area.
The quote from O’Donohue above (from the Northumbrian community daily devotions at https://www.northumbriacommunity.org/offices/morning-prayer/) struck me first this morning. How often
For as Pope Benedict notes, there is a mystery that occurs as we are still, we grow and become, we find our reality, we relate to God.
Willard reinforces this as well, as he notes we aren’t just made to listen toGod, to hear His voice, to praise Him in unison with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven. We are
Which means we have to find the quiet times, not to be disciplined, but to
So set the time aside, learn to love the moments of peace that finally set in…learn to leave all the distractions behind.
Meditate on the fact that He
Lord, may all those who read this,
[1] Ratzinger, J. (1992). Co-Workers of the Truth: Meditations for Every Day of the Year. (I. Grassl, Ed., M. F. McCarthy & L. Krauth, Trans.) (pp. 386–387). San Francisco: Ignatius Press.
[2] Willard, D., & Johnson, J. (2015). Hearing god through the year: a 365-day devotional. Westmont, IL: IVP Books.
