Life is a Vapor

In the last two weeks, two families we know both lost a loved one. One was an unborn baby, the other a healthy young man on fire for the Lord. We know both of them are in heaven, but our hearts still cry out, Why, Lord? What good could possibly come out of the loss of two lives like these?

The young man, Micah, was a good friend of my brothers. He was an excellent musician, had an easygoing personality, and was well-liked by all who knew him. He leaves behind four siblings and his parents.

Why?

To this, our heavenly Father gently replies, "For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways" (Isaiah 55:8). Even though we cannot understand why He would allow such things, He is still in control. His promises are still true. He covers us with His wings and comforts us, even in the midst of terrible tragedy and suffering. He is with us every step of the way.



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 He is our refuge, our strength, a very present help (Psalm 46:1).  He knows the anguish of our souls (Psalm 31:7) and looks down on us with pity, as a Father who comforts His children.

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As someone once said, "The truth of God's love is not that He allows bad things to happen, it's His promise that He'll be there with us when they do."

 

In 1873, American lawyer Horatio Spafford received news that the ship carrying his wife and four daughters had sunk while en route to England. All four of Spafford's daughters perished. Even though overcome with grief, Spafford did not lose sight of his Saviour and His precious promises, penning the words that have comforted many believers. Because Spafford knew his Lord, he could say, "It is well with my soul."

When Elisabeth Elliot received the call that her husband Jim and his companions were missing in the jungle, the following passage came to her mind:

"When thou passest through the waters,

I will be with thee; and through the rivers,

they shall not overwhelm thee: when thou

walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be

burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee.

For I am the Lord thy God, the Holy One of Israel,

thy Saviour."

Isaiah 43:2-3a

 

No one or nothing can change that promise. Not even the most horrible circumstances. The Lord will always be with us -- to strengthen us and comfort us even when we are battered by the wind and rain, and feel like we cannot take another step.

 

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It is in times like these when we realize how fleeting life is. We read passages like James 4:14 and Psalms 144:4, but their meaning does not sink in until we go through something like this.

 

Life is so precious, dear ones, and we have no guarantee of how long it will last. All we have right now is this very minute. We do not know what will happen in the next minute, the next hour, the next day, or the next year.

 

Are we living in light of this fact? Are we redeeming the time for our Lord? Are we living life to the fullest, serving Him and seeking to do wholly of His good pleasure? It is so easy to get caught up in the carefree, fun-loving culture we live in -- a culture that lives only for the present, not in light of eternity. Your life right now is only a pinpoint on the timeline of eternity, and we often forget that there are only three things that will last forever: Christ, people, and the Word of God.

 

That's it.

 

May our prayer be that of Moses in Psalm 90:

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Only what we do for Christ will last. Oh, that we may have a heart for seeking the lost and serving Christ.

 

Please pray for the S family and the B family -- that the Lord would comfort them, that His will would be done, and that others would be led to Christ through the testimony of their lives. We are so thankful we know where Micah and the baby are today, and we know that someday soon, Lord willing, we will be reunited with them in heaven forever.



Cling

I love music. I can practice for hours, play concerts, teach my students, and still come home and want to listen to music. I often go through stages with artists and styles. Sometimes the "stages" last for a couple times, sometimes years.

A couple days ago I recently rediscovered a worship album I hadn't listened to for a long time. I purchased it right away when it was released three years ago, but I could not identify with most of the songs. The only ones I enjoyed were the beautiful hymn arrangements intermixed between the originals, so I put those I liked on my iPhone and set the CD aside.

On Monday, I pulled it out of my stack and popped it into the CD player in my truck as I went off to teach. As I listened, several of the songs struck a chord in my heart. I have learned many things and grown so much since I listened to that CD the first time. I could actually identify with the message of the songs, and I was convicted where my weaknesses and struggles are. It is so amazing what music can do for the soul. I am so thankful God created it, both for our enjoyment and as a tool to bring glory to Him and I love when the Lord brings something to our attention -- a verse, a quote, a kind word, a song -- just when we need it, and I needed the words of those songs this week.


I needed to be reminded I am not the only one who struggles.

 

 

I needed to be reminded that it's not all about me.

I needed to be reminded that joy comes from abiding in Christ.

I needed to be reminded that I am only fulfilled and complete in Him.



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 It is easy to slip from looking to Christ for fulfillment to looking at things in the world around us -- other people, circumstances, jobs, classes, and so on.

Yet I will never find true satisfaction in any of that because we were created to be complete only in Christ. He is ultimately the One whom our souls long for. Some theologians have described this longing as the cross-shaped hole in the heart of every human being.

We fill that hole when we accept Christ as our Saviour, yet we often slide back into our old patterns and the tendency to search for relief, joy, peace, healing, and contentment in everything but Him. Our need -- my need -- is Him.

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In Psalms, David writes, "My soul, wait thou only upon God: for my expectation is from Him" (Psalm 62:8). Only in waiting and abiding in Him will I find fulfillment.

I also should not to look to the world for approval. I don't need the world to pat me on the back for my choices and achievements or for others to smile on me in order to be fulfilled. No, I do what I do for the Lord and His honor and glory.

The struggle between finding my all in Christ and looking for it out in the world is a daily one. It begins every morning the moment I awake. I need to be aware of the struggle and then make a conscious choice to abide in Him. 


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I have to make the choice and when I do, I unlock the secret to the abundant life -- the content life, the peaceful life, the joyful life.

Cling

Shannon J. Wexelberg

 

When the night is long

When I yearn for deep peace to come

I strain to hear Your song

But suddenly I know I'm not alone.

 

For You settle over me

Dispelling all my fears

My Father, I know You are here.

 

May Yours be the only smile I need to see

May You be the healing washing over me.

With Your arms around me,

Your peace surrounds me

And may it only be You

I cling to.

 

I set out on this road

So many voices call to my soul

They try to fill my cup

But I have found, Lord, that You're my enough.

 

So I'm staying close to You

You hold me to Your side

My Father, the joy of my life.

 

May Yours be the only smile I need to see

May You be the healing washing over me.

With Your arms around me,

Your peace surrounds me

And may it only be You

I cling to.

 

Break any hold

This world has on me

I'm letting go

And I throw myself at Your feet.

There's just one thing

One single thing I need

To know the very One who formed me.

 

The above is one of the songs on that album that ministered to me this week, and I hope it ministers to you as well. Is your soul following hard after Christ? Are you resting in the fact that He is your all, your portion?

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Fact, Faith, and Feelings

"For we walk by faith, not by sight."

- II Corinthians 5:7

Being the fleshly, weak human beings we are, we tend by nature (especially us females) to walk by those dreadful things called feelings. We tend to make decisions based on whether it feels good or to think we are finally having a good day just because we feel happy. Deep down inside, we know it is wrong, but we nevertheless resort to leaning on our emotions.

I fall into this pattern regularly, often slipping into it unconciously. One area I have been struggling particularly with is surrender -- whether I have actually surrendered, or done so with the right manner, or truly surrendered myself completely, and so on -- simply because I do not often feel like I have surrendered.

I was so encouraged today when I read Hannah Whitall Smith's thoughts on surrender, or what she calls the act of consecration. I found out that I am most certainly not the only one who has faced that problem and that faith, just like in dealing with burdens, is the solution. More and more I come to realize that faith is truly the key to living the Christian life.

"As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord,

so walk ye in Him: rooted and built up in Him,

and stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught"

- Colossians 2:6-7

Hannah Whitall Smith begins, "Now, God's invariable rule in everything is, fact first, faith second, and feeling last of all; and it is striving against the inevitable when we seek to change this order."

Oh how often I reverse that order, finding myself tossed to and fro by the turbulent waters of emotion instead of resting on the unchanging rock of fact -- God Himself, His Word, and His exceedingly great and precious promises. To go back to the proper order, it is faith that must take me from one to another -- away from the dynamic sea to the sturdy rock.

She continues, "The way, then, to meet this temptation [of reversing the order] in reference to consecration, is simply to take God's side in the matter, and to adopt His order, by putting faith before feeling. Give yourself to the Lord definitely and fully, according to your present light, asking the Holy Spirit to show you all that is contrary to Him, either in your heart or life. If He shows you anything, give it to the Lord immediately, and say in reference to it, 'Thy will be done.' If He shows you nothing, then you must believe that there is nothing, and must conclude that you have given Him all. Then recognize that it must be the fact, that, when you give yourself to God, He accepts you; and at once let your faith take hold of this fact. Begin to believe, and hold on to it steadfastly, that He has taken that which you have surrendered to Him. You positively must not wait to feel either that you have given yourself, or that God has taken you. You must simply believe it, and reckon it to be the case. And if you are steadfast in this reckoning, sooner or later the feeling will come, and you will realize that it is indeed a blessed fact that you are wholly the Lord's."

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Feelings do have a place but that place is the third and last in the divine order. Emotions must not be the determining factor. We cannot doubt God's presence just because we cannot feel Him at a particular moment. In answer to this, she writes, "What we need, therefore, is to see that God's presence is a certain fact always, and that every act of our soul is done before Him, and that a word spoken in prayer is as really spoken to Him as if our eyes could see Him and our hands could touch Him....Sight is not faith, and hearing is not faith, neither is feeling faith: but believing when we can neither see, hear, nor feel, is faith; and everywhere the Bible tells us our salvation is to be by faith."

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 "Your emotions may clamor against the surrender, but your will must hold firm. It is your purpose God looks at, not your feelings about that purpose; and your purpose, or will, is therefore the only thing you need to attend to. The surrender, then, having been made, never to be questioned or recalled, the next point is to believe that God takes that which you have surrendered, and to reckon that it is His. Not that it will be His at some future time, but that it is now; and that He has begun to work in you to will and to do of His good pleasure. And here you must rest.

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"There is nothing more for you to do, except to be henceforth an obedient child; for you are the Lord's now, absolutely and entirely in His hands, and He has undertaken the whole care and management and forming of you, and will, according to His word, 'work in you that which is well-pleasing in His sight through Jesus Christ.' But you must hold steadily there. If you begin to question your surrender, or God's acceptance of it, then your wavering faith will produce a wavering experience, and He cannot work in you to do His will. But while you trust, He works; and the result of His working always is to change you into the image of Christ, from glory to glory, by His mighty Spirit."

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Burdens

 

In many places in Scripture, Christ promises peace and rest. As Christians, however, we often let the cares of the world slip into our lives and rob us of that peace. We become burdened down with our own weaknesses, emotions, frustrations, fears about the future, anxieties about the present. We worry about our loved ones, our homes, our health, and our friendships. As these burdens grow heavier, our eternal perspective grows dimmer and we find ourselves increasingly wrapped up in life on this miserable, sin-filled earth.

If you are like me, I often read passages like Psalm 55:22 or Psalm 37:5 and become convicted of bearing my burdens instead of trusting the Lord. I then hand my cares off to the Lord, but somewhere along the way, I take them back and all the worries and fears flood me afresh.

Over the last couple weeks, I have been reading Hannah Whitall Smith’s classic work The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life. Published in 1875, it is still in print and has been a source of encouragement for believers for more than a hundred years. In chapter three, she defines the Christian life and addresses the problem of burdens in a frank way that I found wonderfully refreshing and convicting.

In response to the often glum picture of Christian life painted by those outside the faith and unconsciously accepted by many Christians, she writes, “The Scriptures do set before the believer in the Lord Jesus a life of abiding rest and of continual victory, which is very far beyond the ordinary run of Christian experience; and that in the Bible we have presented to us a Saviour able to save us from the power of our sins as really as He saves us from their guilt.” The chief characteristics of the joyful Christian life are “an entire surrender to the Lord, and a perfect trust in Him, resulting in victory over sin, and inward rest of soul; and it differs from the lower range of Christian experience in that it causes us to let the Lord carry our burdens and manage our affairs for us, instead of trying to do it ourselves.”

Instead of striving to “work out our own salvation” ourselves, we are to let the Lord work in us, carry our burdens, and “manage our affairs.”

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He cares for us. Dwell on that for a moment. Your heavenly Father, who loves you with an everlasting love and looks upon you with infinite lovingkindness, wants to bear your burdens for you. He is pleading with you to give them to Him.


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Hannah Whitall Smith continues,

 

“In laying off your burdens, therefore, the first one you must get rid of is yourself. You must hand yourself, with your temptations, your temperament, your frames and feelings, and all your inward and outward experiences, over into the care and keeping of your God, and leave it all there. He made you, and therefore He understands you, and knows how to manage you; and you must trust Him to do it. Next, you must lay off every other burden – your health, your reputation, your Christian work, your houses, your children, your business…everything, in short, that concerns you, whether inward or outward. . . .Let yourself go in a perfect abandonment of ease and comfort, sure that, since He holds you up, you are perfectly safe. Your part is simply to rest. His part is to sustain you; and He cannot fail.”

 

Not only must we bring our burdens to Christ – that is just the first step – we must leave them there, which is perhaps the hardest part, particularly for me. As soon as the anxieties reappear, the fears rear their ugly heads, and I shoulder the burdens again, I must hand them back to Christ.

In Edges of His Ways, Amy Carmichael writes, “Psalm 37:5, Kay [translation]: ‘Roll thy way upon the Lord.’ Way means a trodden path, the journey of life, today’s life. Often when we cannot lift a thing we can roll it, and so the Hebrew uses this simple word which we can so easily understand. Roll everything that concerns thee upon the Lord. Roll it again, no matter how many times you did so before, and then rest, ‘assure thyself in Him, and He, He Himself, will work.’”

 

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I love how one of my favorite worship artists, Jami Smith, takes several of these verses and puts them together in her song "Cast Your Cares." When we entrust our burdens to Christ, He gives us the peace promised in passages like Isaiah 26 and John 16. Our part is to trust.

 

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It is really quite simple when we think about it: cast and trust. Just like salvation, daily Christian living comes down to faith. Do we really believe the Lord will fulfill His promise to bear our burdens? As Hannah Whitall Smith states, "Until we believe that we are loved, it never really becomes ours." She concludes, "The gist of the whole matter is here stated; and the soul that has discovered this secret of simple faith, has found the key that will unlock the whole treasure-house of God."

My Heart is Filled With Thankfulness

Another morning, another day, another year. As I look back on 2012, I see how the Lord moved in so many ways. Sometimes while in the midst of trials or trying to make decisions, it can be difficult to imagine how the Lord will work everything out for good, but He does -- according to His plan and timetable, not mine.

 

While I still have so much more to learn, one thing I really saw this past year is the importance of prayer. God wants to hear our prayers, and He delights in answering them, even in the littlest things. I can remember a few things I was anxious about, but I did not take them to Him in prayer. Yet He still worked them out. O me of little faith. After those incidents, I began to pray more faithfully about things, and it was so amazing to watch Him answer. We truly serve a great God and with Him, nothing is impossible (Luke 1:37).

 

Another lesson was realizing even more the call to surrender -- placing myself wholly at His diposal to do His pleasure (Psalm 103:21). As Lilias Trotter writes, "The essential idea of the Cross is a life lost to be found again in those around." I am learning increasingly more what it means to lose one's life for the sake of Christ. It is not easy, because it cuts across the grain of our prideful human nature, but it is the only route to true joy, peace, and fulfillment.

 

So, will I be making New Year's resolutions? No. I am already painfully aware of what I need to work on, and I know the Lord will continue to reveal new areas of my life throughout the year that need improvement. With His faithful hand, the Lord will keep pruning -- and that will be a lifetime process.

 

As I look forward to 2013, I am thankful. Thankful for His provision over the past year. Thankful as I enter a new year where He will continue to mold and shape me into His image. Thankful for His loving kindness and His mercies that are new every morning. Thankful for His faithfulness and His promise to guide in the days ahead. Thankful that He will be there with me, every step of way.

 

My heart is filled with thankfulness

To Him who bore my pain;

Who plumbed the depths of my disgrace

And gave me life again;

Who crushed my curse of sinfulness

And clothed me in His light

And wrote His law of righteousness

With pow'r upon my heart.

 

 

My heart is filled with thankfulness

To Him who walks beside;

Who floods my weaknesses with strength

And causes fears to fly;

Whose ev'ry promise is enough

For ev'ry step I take,

Sustaining me with arms of love

And crowning me with grace.

 

 

My heart is filled with thankfulness

To Him who reigns above,

Whose wisdom is my perfect peace,

Whose ev'ry thought is love.

For ev'ry day I have on earth

Is given by the King;

So I will give my life, my all,

To love and follow Him.

- Keith Getty and Stuart Townend