Tag: peace

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Refuge

Psalm 62:7

On God rests my salvation and my glory; my mighty rock, my refuge is God.

2020 is the year that the CDC pleaded with us to “shelter in place” in an effort to protect ourselves and others from the looming danger of a potentially deadly virus. Though it has felt isolating and often burdensome, we are naturally bent toward “sheltering.” Scripture calls it taking refuge. The Psalmists frequently invite us to “take refuge” during storms and impending danger. It is like they are standing in the doorway of a brick house during a hail storm calling us out of the elements and into safety. These storms happen everyday, from which we keep looking for refuge.

  • The storm of COVID
  • The storm of financial problems
  • The storm of broken relationships
  • The storm of nauseating sin
  • The storm of addictions

The world gives us infinite (and often very helpful, though temporary) places of refuge during these storms: masks, grief counseling, financial planning, AA, prescriptions. These can truly help when the hail is raining on our heads. But there has to be more. There has to be a Real Refuge because the storms just don’t stop, and The Storm of Sin, Fear and Death is pressing in.

In my regular everyday life, while I am taking appropriate shelters, I need two more things:

  1. Ask what unhealthy shelters am I taking, which takes on two elements?
    1. Some shelters are simply sin:
      1. Jumping into an inappropriate relationship (or porn) just to feel loved.
      2. Financial impropriety to get out of debt
      3. Lashing out at others to gain control
    2. Some shelters might be overboard:
      1. Never going into public to ensure I don’t get sick.
      2. Not confronting sin so that I don’t rock the boat.
      3. Taking a pill for every malady.
  2. Seeing and enjoying the Lord as my refuge.
    1. “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” Hebrews 13:5
    2. “He will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness is a shield and buckler.” Psalm 91:4
    3. “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.” Jn 14:27

I am painfully aware that this can feel like shallow placating. I need something more than “just trust God” and “but God will work this out for your good.” Yes, those are true. But when I am being beaten down by the hailstorm, I need something I can actually hold onto.

In 2018 Fiona Simpson of Australia was caught with her baby in a massive hailstorm that began to break through the windows. In sacrificial love she laid over her child and was brutally beaten by the hail. She and her baby survived, but she was left with horrible injuries all over her body.

This is what I can hold onto: God himself has done infinitely more than what Fiona did for you and me on the cross. The storm of death was raining down, and so he covered himself over us, taking the hit of death itself. We still get pummeled in this life with relational trauma, abuse, sin, slander, ruin. He has proven his immeasurable love for me on the cross, and therefore Paul can tell us (Paul, the one who was beaten, slandered and continually faced death and pain) in Romans 8:32 “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?”

So what does this mean? Most of us Westerners (me included) have been brainwashed to believe that the utmost goal of life is being safe and comfortable. It is this mindset that determines the type of refuges we create and “rest” in. God has actually told us over and over that sin WILL cause us real pain, discomfort, injustice. Our bodies will decay and our relationships will cause heartbreak, but God has already made all things right and is calling us to begin living the resurrected life now. This is what Easter is about. The cross wasn’t the finale. It defeated sin and the resurrection defeated death.

John 16:33
“I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.”


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Advented Peace

What does it (or would it) look like for you to have true, deep, sustainable REST? I don’t mean the “Wow, that was a good night’s sleep” kind of rest, or the “I don’t have any drama in my life right now” (as if that was ever possible) kind of rest. I mean the kind of rest that is a deep contentment of inner peace where my heart is not troubled, I’m not afraid of what is around the corner, nor am I haunted by the past (of what I and others have done). Now, before I move on, I struggle to know how sustainable this True Peace is this side of heaven, but I do know that it’s possible and even offered through the Holy Spirit right here in our current world, even in the midst of the barrage of artillery coming your way. So let’s look into it together, praying that the incomprehensible Peace of God can be a reality in my everyday life.

Isaiah 57:19b
Peace, peace, to the far and to the near,” says the LORD, “and I will heal him.

As we’ve seen over and over, Isaiah loves to repeat himself. He doubles up words (and once, in Isaiah 6, triples up the word “holy”) in order to put serious emphasis on it. It’s like when a teenager says “I don’t just like you, I “like like” you.” In Isaiah 57 we are told that, while we are drowning in an ocean of idolatry and rebellion (expressed in our works and our “righteousness” (i.e. legalism)), God leans down to pick us up and give us rest from our flailing legs as we helplessly and fatally tread the water of fear and anxiety. The “peace peace” that God offers is not the singular peace the world offers. It isn’t “just relax” or “stop worrying” coping techniques. It’s something literally miraculous (God breaking into our world) and personally designed for you in your exact situation (not a general platitude).

This all sounds fantastic, and I really need it. Now. The way God has made this miraculous PeacePeace possible is in calling and empowering me to hold on the Past Advent and Future Advent (some of these “future advent” thoughts springs out of John Piper’s book “Future Grace“).

To be able to hold onto peace today, I have to stand on the truth that God has personally “advented” himself historically in the birth of Christ in order to rescue us and has perpetually advented himself throughout history in the person of the Holy Spirit; this Spirit has advented himself into my heart, life and situations continually throughout my life, and that he will perpectually, now and forever, intervene in my life not just yesterday, but this afternoon, tomorrow, next year, next season, next forever. And that Jesus will one day Ultimately Advent again in the second coming. I can hold onto the Person of Peace not because problems will stop (they won’t this side of heaven) but because The Problem (sin, fear and death) have been crucified with Christ, who now reigns as our Sovereign King as he advents his Kingdom into our hearts and world even right now. And it is actually HIM that is holding onto me, setting me free from the death-grip I think I have to conjure up heart-peace.

Let’s do an exercise that leads us toward God’s Advented (and Adventing) Peace.

I would encourage you to read Psalm 85 four times in the Lectio Divina style. Something like this (with a prayer-break in between each reading):

  1. Read Simply: Notice the big picture and flow of the passage.
  2. Read Meditatively: What words draw your attention; why this word at this time?
  3. Read Prayerfully: Dialogue with the Author of the passage; speak and listen.
  4. Read Thoughtfully: What does the Holy Spirit have for you in this passage today?

The Lord, in his creativity and personal attention to us individually, will draw out different beauties and applications for each of us. For me personally I was struck with the intimacy of God’s character traits, specifically in verse 10 & 11:

10 Steadfast Love (“Hesed”) and faithfulness meet;
Righteousness and Peace kiss each other.

11 Faithfulness springs up from the ground,
and righteousness looks down from the sky.

Each of God’s character facets intimately interact with and draw out one another. His unending and unbreakable love is made sure and strong through his eternal faithfulness, which tells us that God doesn’t even have the ability to break his promise of love. Likewise, the Lords’ righteousness, his beautiful holiness, is so sure and eternal, and, as we know on this side of the cross, has been given to us through the Advent (the “arrival”), crucifixion and resurrection of the Jesus Christ:

Philippians 3:9
…and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith—

In my anxiety and churning stomach I can rest in the assurance that, despite the lies my heart hears, I have been made “right” with the Lord, and he finds incredible pleasure in being my Father, my Daddy. That when my world spins I am being held and God has not lost any degree of his love or control. Though all doesn’t feel right, all IS right. “It is well with my soul.”

Ephesians 2:13-14
13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. 14 For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility…

Finally, to bring it all home, when I am looking for peace, I think I am looking for a resolution to a problem or the removal of a brutal feeling; I think I am looking for a state of being, of rest. These things are partially correct, but actually way too small. What I am actually desperately longing for isn’t being at rest, but being WITH the Man of Rest…the Prince of Peace; what I am actually looking for is Jesus himself, not just what Jesus will give me. To be sure he can and will give me a state of peace, but only as he gives me HIMSELF. When my world flips and my heart breaks, I am called primarily to the Person of Christ, not just to feel better. If I search for the feeling, I will get neither; if I cling to Jesus as he clings to me, I get both.

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Perfect Fear Casts Out Fear

We live in an age of anxiety. Even though we have more safeguards to prevent danger and more means of rescue from danger, we are a people wrought with fear. All of these protections have convinced us that life can predominantly be controlled. But, in fact, it can’t. It often feels like we are on a raging roller-coaster with nobody at the control panel as we wait for the next disaster to happen. And for many of us that are more acutely plagued with fear and anxiety, this problem is coupled with spiritual shame as we tell ourselves how faithless and weak we are to not trust God’s love, power and plan. And down the black hole we go.

The good news (and frustrating news) is that fear is one of the most common issues we see all through scripture.

  • Adam said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.” (Gen 3:10)
  • God’s people were afraid of their Egyptian captors (Exodus 14)
  • God’s people were afraid to go into the promised land because of the overwhelming “giants” (Numbers 13)
  • The Shepherds were afraid of the angels (Luke 2)
  • Jesus’ disciples were afraid of the wind and waves (Matthew 8)
  • Peter was afraid for his life while Jesus was being crucified (Luke 22)

The incredible news it that “Peace” is also one of the more pervasive commands and promises God has for us:

  • God told Abraham to not be afraid to go to the Promised Land (Gen 15)
  • God told Jacob to not be afraid to go down to Egypt (Gen 46)
  • The angels on Christmas morning told the Shepherds “Fear Not”
  • Jesus told all of us to not be afraid because God even takes care of the birds (Mt 10)

Fear comes when we see a “Future without God.” We see real, imagined or potential problems and quickly deduce all the painful outcomes that could result. We naturally fall back into believing that our worlds, our problems, our lives are spinning out of control and about to fall of the cliff. It’s not that we are faithless, it’s actually a great deal of faith…faith that:

  • God isn’t loving enough to desire what’s best
  • God isn’t powerful enough to do what’s best
  • God isn’t wise enough to know what’s best.

We don’t mean to believe this, it’s just where our natural minds and hearts go.

So what do we DO about it? Is there a help, a cure, a hope?

Yes, but slow.

Believing and actually “resting” (the foundational definition of “peace”) in the Lord is a very slow marinating process. We swim in an insta-pot and instagram pool. But learning to trust is slow, and involves us, by the Spirit’s power, to re-focus out eyes off of the potential car-wreck and onto the whole journey. When I am struck with fear, I am forgetting the whole story and the character of God. I am forgetting the infinite proofs that God has always carried his people through the waters and fires. I am allowing what MIGHT happen to eclipse what HAS happened and, in the end, what WILL happen. I am believing that God is small and powerless; that his love for me is weak; that his arms are too feeble to carry me; that his wisdom is too faulty to know what is best for me and the world.

And so, once again, the initial weapon against our problems isn’t to “try harder” (“Just stop being afraid!”) but to believe differently….to be overwhelmed with the glory of God. The greatest weapon against earthly fear is the “Fear of God” — to be overwhelmed like Isaiah (in Isaiah 6) with the mind-staggering holiness, beauty, glory, power and perfection of the Lord.

Let’s look practically at a real-life example in Matthew 8

Matthew 8
24 And behold, there arose a great storm on the sea, so that the boat was being swamped by the waves; but he was asleep. 25 And they went and woke him, saying, “Save us, Lord; we are perishing.” 26 And he said to them, “Why are you afraid, O you of little faith?” Then he rose and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm. 27 And the men MARVELED, saying, “What sort of man is this, that even winds and sea obey him?”

The wind and waves were real. The potential danger was extreme. But their eyes (just like mine most of the time) were not on Jesus but on the problems. Instead of being in awe of Jesus, they were in awe of their problems, and their own comfort. And this issue is debilitating, hindering us from living the passionate ambassador-lives to which we have been called and empowered to live. God isn’t slapping our hands for being fearful, He’s working to set us free from the slavery of fear that keeps us from fully enjoying Him and this life he’s gifted us. He’s setting us free from the shackles of this world that scream at us that “this is all there is.”

That’s why Jesus gives us this gift:

John 14:27
Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.

Jesus himself gives us Peace (doesn’t just tell us to be at peace) and He himself IS our peace. He has even given us the Spirit of Peace, the Holy Spirit, who resides in us to speak peace into our hearts when the rest of the world is screaming chaos and fear.

And so today, when fear begins to gurgle up from the springs of your heart, take some deep breaths and fight mis-belief with Gospel-belief. Ask the Spirit to overwhelm your mis-belief with the True-belief that Jesus has always carried you through and, as we see in Romans 8 over and over, will carry us through to the end.

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Estranged Estranged

We are the most connected people that have ever lived. And are shockingly isolated.

  • We are convinced of our rightness.
  • We have enthroned ourselves.
  • We believe that others orbit around us.
  • We treat others as our subjects.

The real issue, the foundational problem, is that this is actually how I treat God. I believe that my way is better; my plans are wiser; my solutions more satisfying.

We have been meticulously designed by God to be knit together with him, under his loving and righteous rule, and to be knit to one another in humble love. Which is exactly how we are NOT living. And so, with a broken heart, the Lord sees our betrayal and calls it like it truly is:

Isaiah 1:4b
“they are utterly estranged”

Estranged. Disconnected. Alienated. Alone. Runaways.

But it’s actually even worse than that. The wording is one of handful of “Word Doubling.” God says that we are “Estranged Estranged” — when a word in Hebrew is repeated back to back, it is going exponential. For instance, 2Kings 25:15 talks about a super refined silver by calling it “silver silver”. We do the same sometime. For teenagers there is an enormous difference between saying “I like him” vs saying “I like like him.” The second involves a much higher degree of passion and heart. And this is exactly what we are being convicted of in Isaiah. We aren’t just estranged from God, we are estranged estranged. In our pursuit of self we have utterly and completely estranged ourselves from our Loving, Providing, Caring, Holy Father (compare this to the younger prodigal son from Luke 15). We want to white-wash it and convince ourselves that we aren’t that bad or that far away. We point to the ways we don’t act like that or reduce the holiness of God in order to not seem so unholy (more on that next week in Isaiah 6).

But God is very painfully clear in Isaiah 1:4. In this one verse He explains in 7 different ways how dislocated we have become from him.

Which makes His Grace and Love all the more!

The more I own the truth of my estrangement, the more amazing I realize that God is because of how far he has come to get me; how much his love must have; how powerful he must be. Jesus himself intentionally distanced himself from The Father to come to Creation, and even more so, he was estranged-estranged on the cross because that’s how far he had to come to get us, and that’s the payment that had to be made on our behalf. Isaiah, 700 years before Jesus, knew this was going to happen and said it like this:

Isaiah 53:4-5
Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. 5 But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.

May we all truly hear the miraculous and (almost) unbelievable Good News. We have been brought home and the Father through the power and ministry of the Holy Spirit currently, as you read this, has perfectly and utterly “UnEstranged” you. If you are in Christ, he has perfectly paid for and wiped away (see Isaiah 1:16-18) all of our scarlet sins, making them and us pure in him…and this not from ourselves but by faith through Jesus. Your Father, right here and now, has given you “peace” and “healing” (Is 53:5). He sings over you; is satisfied with you; has brought you into him arms and his home. You are no longer estranged…and has set us free so that we can, starting right now, enjoy Him forever.

Prayer:
Holy Spirit, gently open my eyes to how far I have run from you, and then quickly and surely convince my heart that you have come to get me; that I am a new creation that has been brought home with my brothers and sisters to be satisfied in and by you. Convince my heart of your love and forgiveness, and point how how I am an empowered instrument of your Grace right now in the community around me.