pour out your hearts to him

“Find rest, O my soul, in God alone;
My hope comes from him.
He alone is my rock and my salvation;
He is my fortress, I will not be shaken.
My salvation and my honor depend on God;
He is my mighty rock, my refuge.
Trust in him at all times, O people;
Pour out your hearts to him,
For God is our refuge.” Psalm 62...

Again the LORD spoke to Ahaz, “Ask the LORD your God for a sign, whether in the deepest depths or in the highest heights.”
But Ahaz said, “I will not ask; I will not put the LORD to the test.”
Then Isaiah said, “Hear now, you house of David! Is it not enough to try the patience of men? Will you try the patience of my God also? Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: the virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel…”

When men tell you to consult mediums and spiritists, who whisper and mutter, should not a people inquire of their God? Why consult the dead on behalf of the living? To the law and to the testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, they have no light of dawn. Distressed and hungry, they will roam through the land; when they are famished, they will become enraged and, looking upward, will curse their king and their God. Then they will look toward the earth and see only distress and darkness and fearful gloom, and they will be thrust into utter darkness.

Nevertheless, there will be no more gloom for those who were in distress. In the past he humbled the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the future he will honor Galilee of the Gentiles, by the way of the sea, along the Jordan--
The people walking in darkness
Have seen a great light;
On those living in the land of the shadow of death
A light has dawned.
You have enlarged the nation
And increased their joy;
They rejoice before you
As people rejoice at the harvest, as men rejoice
When diving the plunder.
For as in the day of Midian’s defeat,
You have shattered
The yoke that burdens then, the bar across their shoulders,
The rode of the oppressor.
Every warriors boot used in battle
And every garment rolled in blood
Will be destined for burning,
Will be fuel fr the fire.
For to us a child is born,
To us a son is given,
And the government will be on his shoulders.
And he will be called
Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Pease.
Of the increase of his government and peace
There will be no end.
He will reign on David’s throne
And over his kingdom,
Establishing and upholding it
With justice and righteousness
From that time on and forever.
The zeal of the LORD Almighty
Will accomplish this.

I have been listening to the song “Beautiful Grace” by We are Creation.

Oh, Lord, You are my Lord, You are
my strength when I am weak, and you come
to me and you lift me up,
Until I find my place, I find my place
in You. Will You go
and make a place
where I can fall on my face and lay
my arms before Your beautiful grace?
And all the world holds dear will be stripped away
by Your beautiful grace.

A few nights ago I prayed---
Father, I guess I have been thinking a lot about words, since I heard “surrender my own voice to take on Your’s.” My God, that seems so vital. Why? Lord, I have been feeling very incompetent. LORD, may I feel like that? And just find my strength in You? I feel like I need to figure out how to do that. I keep coming closer and closer to a realization, like inching towards a cliff---God, why won’t I give up and stop wrestling with You and look at Your face? It is too humbling for me. Let me look down that cliff, let me be shocked back into existence, in a sort of sobriety. Let me claim these words:
“The end of all things is near. Therefore be clear minded and self-controlled so that you can pray. Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.” 1 Peter 4:7-8
And now----love covers over a multitude of sins---Jesus, why don’t I believe that Your love does that?

I keep slipping back into grace, after slipping out of it.

Thought: what does pouring require?

“He (Peter) claimed that, though all others might fall away, he never would. One of the most disastrous things that could have befallen Christianity is if Peter had kept that promise. In that case, the key figure of the early church would have continued to operate under the faulty proposition that radical commitment is the key to the Christian life. It is not. Radical grace is.” Rick James.

Merry Christmas to you all.

*Passages found in the book of Isaiah

God is so good.

Psalm 73

When my heart was grieved and my spirit embittered, was sensles and igorant; I was a brute beast before you. Yet I am always with you; you hold me by my right hand. You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will take me into glory. Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you.

Letters

I remember giving letters to that dead feeling.
What longer made sense? Because all the fancy names
I thought to give parted to find
nothing behind the curtain.

If there were a box, if that box was me,
empty it. I want to empty it,
the contents spilling like fire crackers into a sea.

No one needs to know me--must I be known?
More else, sometimes I think I don’t
want to be known; or I want to be known
for not being known.

Once there was a birth, and that was myself.
The product of a moment of intense desire, like everyone else.
But with a reason. Right, isn’t that why am I here, Lord?
I want to cut off those entangling cords that tell me,
“Better find a tight space to fit in.”
Can you give me,--to be unknown
in every eye but Your own--that intense desire?
Can I belong in You?

If there is a box, I would empty it out.
I would write prayers and secrets, scratch a paper
with my hurts and then seal the box.

But then? I don’t know. I don’t think
I would want it to sink into the sea.
Would it sink, even?

Or would it fly across the water, toward the sun,
because where do those prayers go?

What would it look like, those tight pages of

jealousy and insecurity,
frustration, hater,
stomping on people,
disguising sin.

Rage.
To look at You silently, in the midst of that rage---when all I want to know
was, ‘Is that You?’ I don’t want it if it was not. Are You mad, what? Do You care
if I cry and shrink off when we dance? Or am I just made at You?

Where would they land?
Maybe it is a gift I need to give.

It slips across my fingers, that huge box I carry around my arms,
tops across someone’s feet, and they stare at it
with the falling gaze of the wind, like a hunger.
It gets kicked until it disappears.

God, you are not the box.
All the boxes I have collected, all the boxes I have stored,
all of them cramped in tight spaces;
I release them to You.

I can give You nothing else.

Praise Him

Making it a habit to praise God, praise Christ, listen to the amazingness of the Gospel. When I try to find joy any other way, it fails. I will not. That sounds like a rather blunt statement. All I know is that is true in my own life. So very true.

But it is not just for my own selfish desires. I should not look to praise God so I will be happy; that is not the end of praise at all. "Pray," writes Oswald Chambers, "because you have a Father, not because it quietens you, and give Him time to answer." The same goes for praise. Praise His because He is God; praise Him because He has made you His child. Praise Him for the Cross! It is truly a wonderful thing.

I really feel like going on an Oswald Chambers tangent...so I will include a conglomeration of his quotes on prayer. Which also goes for praise.

"We look upon prayer as a means of getting things for ourselves; The Bible idea of prayer is that we may get to know God Himself.
"Get into the habit of dealing with God about everything. Unless in the first waking moment of the day you learn to fling the door wide back and let God in, you will work on a wrong level all day; but swing the door wide open and pray to your Father in secret, and every public thing will be stamped with the presence of God.
"Do not have as your motive the desire to be known as a praying man. Get an inner chamber in which to pray where no one knows you are praying, shut the door, and talk to God in secret.
"Prayer is not only asking, it is an attitude of heart that produces an atmosphere in which asking is perfectly natural, and Jesus says, "every one that asketh receiveth."

~~~

I have been reading David Crowder's book "Praise Habit: Finding God in Sunsets and Sushi." Thus far I have only read up to, at most, the first two chapters.

"Every second is an opportunity for praise. There is a choosing to be made. A choosing at each moment. This is the Praise Habit."
- David Crowder

Praise Him

1 chronicles 29 and generousity and prayer

“But who am I, and who are my people, that we should be able to give as generously as this? Everything comes from your hand. And now I have seen with joy how willingly your people who are here have given to you. O LORD, God of our fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Israel, keep this desire in the hearts of your people forever, ...and keep their hearts loyal to you.”

Reading these verses this week was completely spontaneous. It has been something I have been reflecting on. My deeds and my belief, and how they happen to work together (if at all). It's so easy to know in my head. Of course they both must work together. It seems, on paper, so simple. But a few weeks ago it did not. I completely lost all joy in doing deeds (deeds meaning good, godly deeds like serving and sharing the gospel). It is even hard to explain now---it is half a realization of how insufficient I am, how so many times I do not have God's interest in mind. Another half, a doubting of who God is because, feeling my insufficiency, I doubted that God could even use me, even want to use me. Right now I feel sort of silly going on about this. But it is completely true. It is good and right to know who I am, my own sin and incapability to do awesome things. It is when I lose sight of who God is that it starts looking ugly. And that is what it is. My deeds are ugly without Christ at the center. There is always a root to a plant. Christ needs to be the root of my deeds.

I like how David in 1 Chronicles 29 asks, "Who are we that we could give so generously?" It is a privilege to give, to love, to serve, to do good deeds. It is something we have to be given, in a way. "Everything comes from Your hand." Everything we could possibly give to God was and is and will always be God's. The end. It is not a burden. God gives us so that we may give, and God wants us to desire to give. Giving is so like God. He wants it to be us, too.

I heard this phrase this week:

Pray Big.

I intentionally capitalized the 'big.' I think, in reading prayers from the Bible and Jesus' own prayers, that praying big is the way to go. When you ask God for something big, when you ask God for anything at all, it is really realizing God's character. He is the Giver. He is generous, and He knows what we need.

Okay, the cookies are done baking, so now I have to go to sleep. (: