NEW YEAR, NEW LIFE - Answering God's Call

Today’s reading in Oswald Chamber’s devotional, “My Utmost for His Highest”, comes from the book of Isaiah and is one of my favorite passages.  It describes a vision given by God to Isaiah in which Isaiah sees the Lord high and lifted up, and himself thoroughly sinful in comparison.  What follows Isaiah’s cleansing is a call, issued by God, and answered by Isaiah.

“In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple.  Above Him were seraphs, each with six wings:  With two they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying.  And they were calling to one another:

“Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty;

The whole earth is full of His glory.”

At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.

“Woe to me!” I cried.  “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty.”

Then one of the seraphs flew tome with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar.  With it he touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.”

Then I heard the voice of the LORD saying, “Whom shall I send?  And who will go for us?”

And I said, “Here am I.  Send me!”

Isaiah 6:1-8

Oswald Chambers speaks about God’s call in this way:

“When we talk about the call of God, we often forget the most important thing, namely, the nature of Him who calls.  There are many things calling each of us today.”

What are some of the things calling to YOU today?

Is it your job?  Your children?  An aging parent?  A hobby?  A house that needs cleaning?  A telephone call that needs to be made?  TV?  Your fears about the future?  Thoughts of vacation, escape, a new husband/wife, house, place to live – anything that will get you away from where you are?  

What about the call of God on your life? Where is that in relation to other calls?

 Oswald goes on to say:

“The call of God is the expression of God’s nature, not ours.  God providentially weaves the threads of His call through our lives, and only we can distinguish them.  It is the threading of God’s voice directly to us over a certain concern.”

This is what happens I believe when we “Delight ourselves in the Lord”, as David says in Psalm 37:4 so that the Lord can, “give you the desires of your heart”.  

Chambers says, the Lord then “weaves the threads of His call through our lives – over a certain concern - and only we can distinguish (the threads).”  

He goes on to say:

“The call of God is not a reflection of my nature; my personal desires and temperament are of no consideration.  As long as I dwell on my own qualities and traits and think about what I am suited for, I will never hear the call of God.  But when God brings me into the right relationship with Himself, I will be in the same condition Isaiah was.  

Isaiah was so attuned to God, because of the great crisis he had just endured that the call of God penetrated his soul.  The majority of us cannot hear anything but ourselves.  We cannot hear anything God says.  But to be brought to the place where we can hear the call of God is to be profoundly changed.”

Isaiah could hear the Lord because he was in the right place to hear Him.  He recognized the greatness and holiness of God, and his own sinful nature (I’m a man of unclean lips!) by comparison and graciously the Lord forgave and cleansed him.  Then, he was in the place where he could hear God’s voice.

Is that where you are?  

What is your view of God?  Is He “the man upstairs”, maybe just a celestial Santa Claus?  Would you use the words, “in awe”, “respectful”, “worshipful” to describe your view of Him?  

Psalm 145 is my favorite psalm for a panoramic view of the greatness of God.  These are some of the words and phrases David uses to describe Him:

The King

Great, worthy of praise

His greatness no one can fathom

Majestic

Powerful

Awesome

Good

Gracious

Slow to anger

Rich in love

Glorious

Mighty

Everlasting

Holy

He hears and saves

Destroyer of the wicked

Provider

Is this the way you would describe the Lord?

Isaiah would have.  

When Isaiah saw the Lord, he couldn’t help but see himself as well.

How would you describe yourself?  A pretty good person, better than most, not as bad as some others you could name, in need of a little "work"?

Would you like to know how God describes us humans?

The Apostle Paul tells us in Romans 3:10-18.  Be warned! It’s not a pretty picture!

“There is no one righteous, not even one (that means YOU, and ME);  There is no one who understands, no one who seeks God.

All have turned away, they have together become worthless (not only individually, but collectively, this is true).  There is no one who does good, not even one.

Their throats are open graves, their tongues practice deceit.  The poison of vipers is on their lips.  Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.  Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know.  There is no fear of God in their eyes.”

Compared to the holiness of God, this is where we stand.  Without a prayer, without excuse, without a leg to stand on, without hope.

When Isaiah saw himself in the light of the Lord’s holiness, he recognized his own sinfulness and need for cleansing and the Lord provided it so that Isaiah was able to be in a right relationship with Him.

If you desire to begin this New Year on adventure with God, then you must first be in the “right place” to hear His call.  You must be in a right relationship with Him and the only way to experience that is through faith in the person and work of Jesus Christ.  It is only when we depend on the work of Jesus on the cross to have paid the penalty for our sin, that we can be declared “right” with a holy God.  It's only the "rightness" that He credits to our account when we have believed, that we can draw near to a holy God.

 

You and I have many calls tugging at us every day, and many we can’t deny.  We have jobs, children to care for, food to prepare, houses to clean and other perfectly good and necessary things to occupy our thoughts and time.  Others we can let slide, for another hour, for another day, for another time.  Maybe some we could forego altogether and never miss.  

But the call of God to be in a right relationship with Him through faith in Jesus is one that shouldn’t be put off for another day.  That is a call that demands an answer, NOW.  It’s a call that, once answered, will profoundly change you.  Wouldn't it be wonderful to wake up tomorrow knowing that your guilt for the things you've done wrong has been taken care of by Jesus?  Wouldn't it be wonderful to know that you belong to Jesus with a greater intimacy than you have with your closest friends?  God will begin the lifelong process of making you more like Jesus and you will enjoy a relationship with Him you never dreamed possible.

Once we have responded to that call, another awaits us.  It’s the call of God that asks, “Who will go?”  That call represents the heart of God that weaves His passions and His concerns through your heart, creating in you a desire to join Him in some work of His in the world around you to influence people and the world around you for Him.  That call is the doorway to some of the most amazing adventures with God that you will EVER experience!  

What would it take for you hear the call of God?

If you have never heard the call to enter into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ – God’s Son - who gave His own life for yours, taking the penalty for your sin on the cross, so that you could be cleansed and be made right with Him, so that you could know Him personally – then THIS IS that call!  How will you respond?

If you long ago answered God’s call to put your faith in Jesus – then ARE YOU DELIGHTING in the Lord, so that when He issues a call for you to join Him in some adventure, you'll  be able to hear Him?

And what will be your answer?  Will you be like Isaiah and say, “Here I am Lord, send me?”  

I can tell you from personal, firsthand experience – there are many decisions we might look back on in life that we sorely regret – but the decision to put our faith in Jesus and to follow where He leads us, will never be one of them.   

God is calling YOU.  What’s holding you back?   Answer the call.

IT'S RESOLUTION TIME! SO WHAT IS YOUR NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTION?

It’s already January 12, 2013 and I have done nothing more than THINK about resolutions – not make them.  I’ve kind of given up on it really, such has been the degree of my success, or lack thereof.  Every year I do what a lot of other people do.  I think that I should probably eat better, and exercise more, and be kinder, and keep my mouth shut instead of rushing in where angels fear to tread.  The latter two are ongoing battles, and the former get left in the dust after maybe the first week of the New Year.   Last year I did determine to read 30 fiction and 10 non-fiction books and I reached those goals by August – but I LOVE to read, so I’m thinking that didn’t really count the way reaching healthful eating goals or consistent exercise would have.  (Exercise is definitely below the bottom of my list! Down there in the minuses actually.)

If I was going to make one resolution at the beginning of this and every year, it would be the one recorded by the ancient King David of Israel the Old Testament book of Psalms.

Psalm 37:4 “Delight yourself in the Lord.”

Having set so may unrealistic goals and made so many unsuccessful resolutions for many years, I have come to the conclusion that this is the only one worth pursuing and the only one in which I’m likely to experience success.  It’s another of those goals, like reading, which is easier to accomplish because the Lord is so easy to love.  The rewards are intangible but no less real because they are.  Things like joy, comfort, wisdom, compassion, forgiveness, acceptance, and a host of others too numerous to mention, are my daily fare when I am delighting in the Lord.  

Apart from delighting myself in the Lord, I like to leave what comes next to Him, and rely on Him to set my goals for me, as David suggests in the second part of Psalm 37:4:

“Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart.”

Maybe the reason I had so little success keeping past resolutions and goals is because I was pursuing what I thought I ought to be doing instead of simply delighting in the Lord and allowing Him to put His desires for me on my heart and then pursuing THEM.

I’ve mentioned before that the only devotional I read consistently is “My Utmost for His Highest”, a compilation of the teachings of Oswald Chambers, put together by his wife after his death.   

On January 2^nd, the reading was entitled, “Will You Go Out Without Knowing?”, based on the Scripture from the New Testament book of Hebrews, chapter 11.  In speaking of the patriarch Abraham, verse 8 says:

“By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going.”

Chambers asks the question:  “Have you ever ‘gone out’ in this way?”, and then goes on to say, “If so, there is no logical answer possible when anyone asks you what you are doing.”

If you have been reading my blogs from the last couple of months then you know I’ve been undergoing the long process of being evaluated to be a kidney donor.  I’m donating a kidney to a woman from my church whom I didn’t know all that well before we began this adventure together.  I embarked on the journey when I heard that she needed a donor, not because I love having surgery, but because I strongly sensed that this was something Jesus wanted me to do.  Many people, including some on the donor medical staff, have wondered why I would do such a thing for someone other than a relative.  As Chambers says, there is no logical answer to satisfy some.  Abraham was content to know that it was the Lord doing the calling out, and so am I. 

Chambers goes on to say:  

“Have you been asking God what He is going to do?  He will never tell you.  God does not tell you what He is going to do – He reveals to you who He is.  Do you believe in a miracle working God, and will you “go out” in complete surrender to Him until you are not surprised one iota by anything He does?”

Believe God is always the God you know Him to be when you are nearest to Him.  Let the attitude of your life be a continual willingness to “go out’ in dependence upon God, and your life will have a sacred and inexpressible charm about it that is very satisfying to Jesus.  You must learn to ‘go out’ through your convictions, creeds, or experiences until you come to the point in your faith where there is nothing between yourself and God.

I’d like to think that I’ve finally reached the place where “going out” into an unknown WITH God is all I ever really want to do.  If I do the choosing, I will always do the safe and familiar thing.   But if I delight in the Lord, amazingly He begins to quicken my heart to do the things that are on HIS heart – things I would never even have contemplated.

It was the Lord who put it in my heart to volunteer for my first ever missions trip – at 61 – with teens - a group I hadn’t even mingled with since my own girls were teens.  And He encouraged me to go on two other trips after that as well.  It was He who quickened my heart to desire to work with a foreign student to teach English as a second language, at 65.  If I hadn’t pursued that adventure, I’d have missed getting to know my wonderful Japanese student and finding a new friend.   It was He who invited me to volunteer to teach a middle school Sunday school class.  If you have a middle schooler, then you know that this was a CRAZY idea that HAD to be the Lord’s!!

Why would I ever want to choose my own path when the Lord’s plan for me is so much better?

So this year, I’m going to once again forgo the fruitless idea of setting resolutions and goals and let the Lord do the choosing.  What I will do is pursue the thing that will certainly ensure success in whatever lies ahead, I will delight in the Lord, and then wait with great expectation to see what He has in store for me this year!  I don’t know what it will be, but I know it will be better than anything I can ask or even imagine!

“Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine according to His power that is at work within us, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever! Amen.”

Ephesians 3:20-21

"I HAVE HEARD YOU, DOT"

This is the season of Advent, when Christians worldwide anticipate the celebration of the first coming of Jesus in a manger in Bethlehem.  On the night He was born, an angel announced His coming to lowly and now terrified shepherds, watching over their flocks on the hillside, with the words:

“Do not be afraid, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.  Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; He is Christ, the Lord.  This will be a sign to you.  You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.

Suddenly, a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, 

“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom His favor rests.”  The Gospel of Luke, chapter 2, verses 10-14

The shepherds couldn’t wait to get there to see Jesus, their promised Messiah (Savior) for themselves.

I was reminded today in a number of ways that it doesn’t take a special announcement by one angel, or a host of them, to know the reality of the living Jesus and to SEE Him today.  The Jesus of Bethlehem, the Jesus of the cross of Calvary, THIS Jesus still lives today and if we are willing to look with spiritual eyes, He’ll reveal Himself in big ways and small.

For the last six weeks or so I’ve been teaching a series of lessons on the life of Abraham from the book of Genesis.  In chapters 12-15, the Lord had given Abraham innumerable promises.

·        The Lord would make him into a great nation

·        The Lord would bless him and make his name great

·        Abraham would be a blessing

·        All people on earth would be blessed through him

·        The Lord would multiply his descendants like the sand on the seashore and the stars of the sky – too numerable to even count

·        He gave him and his descendants the land of the Canaanites, from the river Egypt to the Euphrates, as an everlasting possession

·        He promised that Abraham would have a son from his own body through which these promises would be passed to future generations

Throughout that time of waiting for the promises to be fulfilled, Abraham’s wife Sarah had been unable to have children.  Abraham and Sarah became impatient for this promised son and so Sarah gave Abraham her maid as a wife, following the custom of their day, so that this maid might have children for HER.   

The maid conceived and bore to Abraham a son whom the Lord named Ishmael, but this was not the son the Lord promised, not the one through whom the blessings of God’s promises would be realized. That son would be born through the supernatural working of the Lord, in a "good as dead" as far as conception was concerned, Abraham and Sarah.

Finally the Lord appeared to Abraham again and said that he and his wife Sarah would have a son whom they should name Isaac.  Abraham must have been both overjoyed and sorrowful at the news, for by this time Ishmael was 13 years old and had been Abraham’s only son.  Having some longings of my own for my children, my heart went out to Abraham when he said this to the Lord in Genesis 17:18:

“If only Ishmael might live under your blessing.”

If you’re a parent, you understand how Abraham feels.  I have prayed long – years – for those I love to come to faith in the Lord.  Maybe you have too.  And yet they have not yet come.  Sometimes I find myself grieving over the fact that I have spent so much of my believing life teaching others about Jesus and encouraging their faith while those I love don’t seem interested at all.  

I love what the Lord says a little later in this same passage, because it brings such consolation to my heart.  Verse 20 of chapter 17:

“As for Ishmael, I have heard you: I will surely bless him.”

The Lord HEARD Abraham's heart regarding Ishmael, as He hears your heart cry and mine for those we love.  Our prayers and longings are not falling on deaf ears, even when we can't see what the Lord is doing.

Recently, I began praying differently for those I love.  I began praying as Abraham prayed.  

 “If only you would work in THIS loves one’s life Lord.”  And, “How long O Lord, before just one of these loved ones comes to know you?”

And I reminded myself that the Lord says to me exactly what He said to Abraham, “I have heard you, Dot, I have heard you.”

Last week my husband made his weekly call to his 91 year old mom in California.  She told him something about a nephew who had called her.  She wasn’t used to hearing from this young man on a regular basis, so his call took her by surprise.  But what really surprised her, and what she related to Jim, is that this young man, “got religion”, as she described it.  When Jim told me, we were both puzzled and wondered about it ourselves.  And the curiosity was killing me!

So this week I contacted him, and today he phoned.  Before he even described what had happened to him, I could hear a change in his voice.  I recognized the emotion, having felt it many times myself.  It was JOY.  He began describing new priorities – like thinking less about himself and more about God.  And going to church and reading the Bible, discussing doctrine with friends, and having accountability partners! 

I had only one critical question for him:  What about Jesus, what do you believe about Jesus?  In answer, he told me all the wonderful things I hoped to hear!  He realized that he was a sinner and that Jesus had died for his sins and he had received Him into his heart and life.  I recognized the transforming power of the Holy Spirit in this young man’s life!  He is a new man!  

Jesus came into the world a long time ago for the first time and his coming was revealed to lowly shepherds.  The world has never been the same.

But Jesus still lives and He still comes into lives in the here and now, revealing himself in big ways and small.  My nephew now knows the reality of the living Jesus for himself.  

And Jesus has blessed MY heart as well, by reminding me of His love.  He has spoken the words, “I have heard you, Dot”, to MY heart and given my faith in His faithfulness in answering prayer, and His power to yet change the lives of others I love, a HUGE boost.  

Along with Christians all over the world, I am joyfully anticipating the celebration of Jesus birth in a manger more than 2000 years ago.  It was a birth that changed the world forever.   

I am joyfully anticipating the second coming of Jesus too, about which the Bible also speaks.  I long for the day when I see Him coming in the clouds and will finally look upon Him face to face.  What a day that will be!

In the meantime, I am overjoyed that He still comes. . . into hearts and into lives, and He leaves them forever changed.

Thank you so much Lord for showing me Your Glory today and for encouraging my  so small faith.  

Even so, come Lord Jesus!