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Experiencing Advent

I have always loved the season of Advent. Advent is a time of preparation, anticipation and reflection in the weeks leading up to the celebration of Jesus’ incarnation which we celebrate as Christmas.

Prophecies spoken and uniquely fulfilled in Jesus…

Light in the darkest days of the year…

Hope that night will end and something new will begin.

Advent not only looks backwards to the coming of the Messiah, Jesus…it also looks forward to His promised return.

Hope that love will end all war, division and hatred.

Belief that poverty, injustice and evil will be eliminated.

Courage to continue to do the next right thing until he comes, and the understanding that how I live today matters and makes a difference in how I will experience life when God re-invades earth to put all things right, and the universe experiences healing.

The season of Advent calls us to reflect, repent and realign our lives with the rhythm of God, and that is a good thing.

Here is an incredible day by dave journey through Advent created by Biola University…check it out and go back each day, it is well done and will be a great aid in your realigning this season,

Grace and peace
Monty

http://ccca.biola.edu/advent/#

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Sayin’ It Like It Is

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“God if you are real, speak to me!” Have you ever spoken those words? Have you ever been in a place where your throat was dry from crying out, and the requested thing just wasn’t materializing?

I know many people who have shouted out that prayer. I also know many people who are afraid to speak those words. Fear that God won’t love them anymore if they revealed their struggle. Fear that once the words are spoken, they may not like the God on the receiving end. Fear that they will be “found out” and are not as spiritual as their friends think.

Ironically, when we admit our struggles to God, He pours out an over-abundance of grace, showing us that His loves for us is constant, even on our bad days.

When we tell God what we honestly feel about His leadership in our life, we find a loving father who responds differently than the image we created in our minds…when we allow God to reveal Himself He is not furrow-browed and steaming mad. He is the prodigal’s father, arms held wide, eyes that are tired from prayer but full of compassion, and a heart that has enough grace for the entire universe.

When we have the courage to speak honestly, we no longer fear being “found out” because a truly spiritual person does not live a duplicitous life…he lives honestly, “warts and all.”

King David from the Hebrew Bible has always been one of my favorite people to study. He is so complex. He loves God so much, yet makes choices that are anything but holy. He lived his spiritual life out loud.

David unashamedly danced before the LORD…

David longed to build a house for God…

David repeatedly showed grace to a man hell-bent on killing him (King Saul)…

David also allowed his sexual desire to cloud his thinking, the result was adultery and murder…

David also trusted in the size of his army at times rather than the size of his God…

But through all the events of David’s life, God was an internal humming in his soul, calling him back again and again to a relationship. In Psalm 69, when David is obviously overwhelmed, he said:

“Save me O’ God, for the waters have come up to my neck. I sink in the miry depths, where there is no foothold. I have come into the deep waters; the floods engulf me. I am worn out calling for help; my throat is parched. My eyes fail, looking for my God.”

Life is hard…

Life is an assault of joy and pain…a medley of highs and lows…a symphony of dissonance and resolution.

If David’s thoughts and story ended there…it would be pretty sad, bleak, and depressing. But David choses to make a mind-shift in the midst of his honest reality. This shift is powerful. This shift is a game-changer. This shift can move you from the darkness to the light.

In verse 13 he says, “But I will pray to you.” David knows that he needs a hope bigger than himself, and God is that hope.

Eyes lifted up…

Circumstances bleak…

A heart drowning in pain…

BUT…I -will- pray to you. David commands his soul. He doesn’t allow his circumstances to command his destiny, God alone has the sovereignty to do that.

So he prays to God for help, believing that he will be heard…and he was.

David’s prayer moves his soul to worship…

Worship is a thin space between our reality and the presence of God…

Worship realigns our thoughts, motives and begins to expand our faith because we are immersing our mind with truth, God’s inspiration and perspective.

When we finally get God’s perspective, our circumstances have far less power to dominate us, and we are unleashed to believe and trust that God is at work…even in this.

In verses 30-36 David lets loose:

30 I will praise God’s name in song
and glorify him with thanksgiving.
31 This will please the Lord more than an ox,
more than a bull with its horns and hooves.
32 The poor will see and be glad—
you who seek God, may your hearts live!
33 The Lord hears the needy
and does not despise his captive people.

34 Let heaven and earth praise him,
the seas and all that move in them,
35 for God will save Zion
and rebuild the cities of Judah.
Then people will settle there and possess it;
36 and those who love his name will dwell there.

David is experiencing a different soul-ular reality by the end of this Psalm.

He moves from: “Say it like it is” to prayer which allows him to again “Say it like it is” from a different perspective that is life-giving instead of life-depleting.

So if you need some rescue from the miry depths today, say it like it is…pray…and then say it like it is.

God loves your honesty and He smiles when you exhibit faith in the midst of the storm…remember, you matter to Him.

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Pry Me Off Dead Center: Loder

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This was a great way to start the day, another great poem from Guerrillas Of Grace: Prayers For The Battle

Pry Me Off Dead Center

O persistent God,
deliver me from assuming your mercy is gentle.
Pressure me that I may grow more human,
not through the lessening of my struggles,
but through an expansion of them

that will undamn me
and unbury my gifts.

Deepen my hurt
until I learn to share it
and myself
openly,
and my needs honestly.

Sharpen my fears
until I name them
and release the power I have locked in them
and they in me.

Accentuate my confusion
until I shed those grandiose expectations
that divert me from the small, glad gifts
of the now and the here and the me.

Expose my shame wherever it shivers,
crouched behind the curtains of propriety,
until I can laugh at last
through my common frailties and failures,
laugh my way toward becoming whole.

Deliver me
from just going through the motions
and wasting everything I have
which is today,
a chance,
a choice,
my creativity
your call.

O persistent God,
let how much it all matters
pry me off dead center
so if I am moved inside
to tears

or sighs
or screams
or smiles
or dreams,
they will be real
and I will be in touch with who I am
and who you are
and who my sisters and brothers are.

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Prayers From The Great Fish’s Belly

Jonah and Great Fish

Dark nights happen to everyone. Some people’s dark nights are darker than others. Some seem so dark that light is a distant memory, a possible embellishment of the imagination. Some nights seem so dark that you question everything you believed to be true about yourself, your life and even God.

It’s in those deeply pigmented places that platitudes and cliche’s have a retching effect on the receiver. They sound shallow, hollow, devoid of life, empathy or reality. These are when prayers from the belly of the fish come forth from the belly of the soul.

When Jonah found himself in the belly of the great fish, he began to pray. Perhaps it was the first real prayer of his entire prophetic career. A prayer of earth. A prayer of terror. A prayer of surrender. When we finally pray a prayer born in the dark, we are at that place where we know we have no control, no escape, no salvation apart from  divine intervention. This is where real life begins.

Listen to Jonah’s prayer from this dark place:

…“I called out to the LORD, out of my distress, and he answered me; out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice. For you cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the flood surrounded me; all your waves and your billows passed over me. Then I said, ‘I am driven away from your sight; yet I shall again look upon your holy temple. ‘The waters closed in over me to take my life; the deep surrounded me; weeds were wrapped about my head at the roots of the mountains. I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever; yet you brought up my life from the pit,O LORD my God. When my life was fainting away, I remembered the LORD, and my prayer came to you, into your holy temple. Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love. But I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you; what I have vowed I will pay. Salvation belongs to the LORD!”

Sheol means “the realm of the dead.” Sheol is a land of hopelessness. A place disconnected from God, hope, life. Sheol is a place where we cry out to God with groans that are to deep for language. What has been your Sheol?

We cry out…we shout…we argue…

We feel that God is nowhere to be found…

BUT…when all seemed lost, when the waters were covering us…

When the light was diminishing like a candle depleting its wax…

As the jail bars closed shut with a loud click and clang…

Then I remembered…

Then I prayed…

Then my prayer came to God…

When Jonah changed his focus from “Sheol” to the sovereignty of God, not only did His thinking shift, but his circumstances changed. As his words moved from self-focus, in the depths, to God-focus, who dwells on high, he was able to offer words of thanks and gratitude to God.

Prayers from the belly of a fish are spiritually defining moments used by God to form us. Even when we walk through the dark places, God is with us. Even when the valley seems endless, God reminds us that there is light. Even when the jail bars of Sheol click tightly, God’s voice shatters the cage.

Maybe, the reminder we need is that there is no big fish that is bigger than God.