Those who make their dress a principal part of themselves, will, in general, become of no more value than their dress.
William Hazlitt
Thursday, October 15, 2009
"The Commandments: Doorways To Joy"
Keeping covenant is increasingly a foreign concept in America. The closest we had to it was perhaps marriage. That was in the old days when “for better or for worst” meant it.
God has kept his covenant with me—mostly “for worst.” I alluded in an earlier blog post to my decades of highhanded rebellion. It is interesting to observe the way a God in covenant handles that kind of thing. One never gets off scot-free, in the sense of feeling no painful repercussions; they are exquisitely painful. But God is expert in weaving chastisement with blessing seamlessly. And then you minister out of your scars, and it’s all good.
I like the way my New King James Version phrases the last part of the verse: “who remember His commandments to do them.” It’s one thing to remember God’s commandments, another thing to actually do them. I think we’ve all got the “remember” part more or less down pat: Love your enemy; forgive 70 times seven, do not grumble, do not be anxious. And I have a bad feeling that some of us are going to be awfully surprised some day that we confused the “remembering” part with the “doing” part. As my brother Marc likes to say, “When all is said and done, more will have been said than done.”
Some of us late bloomers have also come to see that when we have actually tried to start seriously “doing” the commandments, they’re not bad at all. Maybe that’s what Jesus meant by His yoke being easy and his commands not burdensome. As a matter of fact, to begin to venture out into the virgin territory of moment-by-moment obedience is to soon discover that the commandments are doorways to joy. Yes, what we have been avoiding doing all our lives turns out to be the way to our own joy.
And then we reread the Psalmist’s exclamation, “Oh, how I love your law!” And suddenly we don’t think he’s a weird ancient Hebrew “enthusiast” anymore.
Andree Seu
God has kept his covenant with me—mostly “for worst.” I alluded in an earlier blog post to my decades of highhanded rebellion. It is interesting to observe the way a God in covenant handles that kind of thing. One never gets off scot-free, in the sense of feeling no painful repercussions; they are exquisitely painful. But God is expert in weaving chastisement with blessing seamlessly. And then you minister out of your scars, and it’s all good.
I like the way my New King James Version phrases the last part of the verse: “who remember His commandments to do them.” It’s one thing to remember God’s commandments, another thing to actually do them. I think we’ve all got the “remember” part more or less down pat: Love your enemy; forgive 70 times seven, do not grumble, do not be anxious. And I have a bad feeling that some of us are going to be awfully surprised some day that we confused the “remembering” part with the “doing” part. As my brother Marc likes to say, “When all is said and done, more will have been said than done.”
Some of us late bloomers have also come to see that when we have actually tried to start seriously “doing” the commandments, they’re not bad at all. Maybe that’s what Jesus meant by His yoke being easy and his commands not burdensome. As a matter of fact, to begin to venture out into the virgin territory of moment-by-moment obedience is to soon discover that the commandments are doorways to joy. Yes, what we have been avoiding doing all our lives turns out to be the way to our own joy.
And then we reread the Psalmist’s exclamation, “Oh, how I love your law!” And suddenly we don’t think he’s a weird ancient Hebrew “enthusiast” anymore.
Andree Seu
"Precious Time"
Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that's the stuff life is made of.
Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin
"But On Every Word That Proceeds From The Mouth Of God"
We're drowning in information and starving for knowledge
Rutherford D. Rogers
Rutherford D. Rogers
"The Poison of Subjectivism"
The modern mind has two lines of defense...The second claims that to tie ourselves to an immutable moral code is to cut off all progress and acquiesce in 'stagnation'...Let us strip it of legitimate emotional power it derives from the word 'stagnation' with its suggestion of puddles and mantled pools. If water stands too long it stinks. To infer thence that whatever stands long must be unwholesome is to be the victim of metaphor. Space does not stink because it has preserved its three dimensions from the beginning. The square on the hypotenuse has not gone [moldy] by continuing to equal the sum of the squares on the other two sides. Love is not dishonored by constancy...For the emotive term 'stagnant' let us substitute the descriptive term 'permanent'. Does a permanent moral standard preclude progress? On the contrary except on the supposition of a changeless standard, progress is impossible. If good is a fixed point, it is at least possible that we should get nearer and nearer to it; but if the [terminal] is as mobile as the train, how can the train progress toward it? Our ideas of the good may change, but they cannot change either for the better or the worse if there is no absolute and immutable good to which they can approximate or from which they can recede. We can go on getting a sum ore and more nearly right only if the one perfectly right answer is 'stagnant.'
CS Lewis
The Poison of Subjectivism
CS Lewis
The Poison of Subjectivism
"Created To Become Like Christ"
God’s ultimate goal for your life on earth is not comfort, but character development. He wants you to become like Christ…Christlikeness is all about transforming your character, not your personality...God’s Word provides the truth we need to grow, Gods people provide the support we need to grow, and circumstances provide the environment we need to practice Christlikeness. If you study and apply God’s Word, connect regularly with other believers, and lean to trust God in difficult circumstances, I guarantee you will become more like Jesus...How does this happen in real life? Through the choices we make. We choose to do the right thing in situations and then trust God’s Spirit to give us His (strength), love, faith, and wisdom to do it…Don’t wait to feel powerful or confident. Move ahead in your weakness, doing the right thing in spite of your fears and feelings...Each metaphor requires active participation: Seeds must be planted and cultivated, buildings must be built- they don’t just appear- children must eat and exercise to grow...Spiritual maturity …is a gradual, progressive development that will take the rest of your life.
The Purpose Driven Life pp 173-176
The Purpose Driven Life pp 173-176
"Striving For The Ideal Relationally"
Our supreme model for unity is the Trinity…Just like every parent, our heavenly Father enjoys watching His children get along with each other…conflict is usually a sign that the focus has shifted to less important issues...Pastors often have the unpleasant task of serving as mediator between hurt, conflicting, or immature members…Sometimes you will have to do what ‘s best for the Body, not yourself, showing preference to others. That’s one reason God puts us into a church family- to learn unselfishness...Once you discover what God intend real fellowship to be, it is easy to become discouraged by the gap between the ideal and the real in your church. Yet we must passionately love the church in spite of its imperfections. Longing for the ideal while criticizing the real is evidence of immaturity. On the other hand, settling for the real without striving for the ideal is complacency. Maturity is living with the tension...We must remember that it was God who chose to give us different personalities, backgrounds, races, and preferences, so we should value and enjoy those differences, not merely tolerate them.
Rick Warren
The Purpose Driven Life pp160-167
Rick Warren
The Purpose Driven Life pp160-167
"As Far As The East Is From The West"
He gives us two things we cannot measure—the distance of heaven from earth and the tail-chasing distance of east from west...—to convey the idea of a mercy that is beyond our experience in other human relationships, a love that “no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined” (1 Corinthians 2:9). Literally, the sky is the limit when it comes to God’s mercy. No request that is made from a good motive is outrageous. Let me not limit my prayers to what men say is possible.
But if God’s love is so big—and He is so earnest to communicate how big it is—why do I keep thinking I’m just about to get the boot? How can I insult Him so? Do I think so highly of myself as to imagine that I’m the only person on earth that the gospel isn’t going to work for? I’ve finally done it: I’ve finally committed a sin that’s more powerful than Jesus’ blood!
The Christians I admire most—and I know precious few of them—are those whom I can see are so confident of God’s undeserved love that they are not constantly revisiting their sin or crime, but they have moved on with their lives and have peace and joy. Oh, if the matter of their past comes up, they will not deny it, and will be the first to call it evil. But you will not suck them into a morbid dwelling on it... “. . . as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.”
How far is east from west? About as far as yes is from no, I suppose, or guilty from innocent. Or as far as future is from past. They can give each other a good chase, but they will never catch each other.
If you were trying to encourage a fearful soul to understand that he is forgiven, if you were dealing with someone given to serial relapses into self-incrimination, what would you say to him? God bends over backwards; He multiplies metaphors till one of them works for you: Your sin is so forgiven that only if the east could become west would you become unforgiven.
Don’t like that one? Then how about this: Your sin is so forgiven that it is like the goat whose head the high priest Aaron laid both his hands on it and confessed over it everything he could think of, transmitting all the vileness of his person and his people onto the animal. And then he took the sin-ridden beast to another man, who led it into the wilderness, never to return (Leviticus 16:20-28).
That one doesn’t do it for you, either? Try this: Your sin is like the curtain between the Holy Place and the Holy of Holies (don’t picture your mother’s drapes but more like an iron curtain) that was ripped clean from top to bottom in the hour that Jesus, the archetypal scapegoat, took on our sins (Mark 15:38).
Or if it helps, picture yourself standing before God, covered in human excrement (that’s the actual word in Zechariah 3), with Satan accusing you—and making a very good case. And the Angel of the Lord rebukes Satan instead of you and calls for the filthy garments to be taken away and brand new, pure garments put on you...
Andree Seu
But if God’s love is so big—and He is so earnest to communicate how big it is—why do I keep thinking I’m just about to get the boot? How can I insult Him so? Do I think so highly of myself as to imagine that I’m the only person on earth that the gospel isn’t going to work for? I’ve finally done it: I’ve finally committed a sin that’s more powerful than Jesus’ blood!
The Christians I admire most—and I know precious few of them—are those whom I can see are so confident of God’s undeserved love that they are not constantly revisiting their sin or crime, but they have moved on with their lives and have peace and joy. Oh, if the matter of their past comes up, they will not deny it, and will be the first to call it evil. But you will not suck them into a morbid dwelling on it... “. . . as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.”
How far is east from west? About as far as yes is from no, I suppose, or guilty from innocent. Or as far as future is from past. They can give each other a good chase, but they will never catch each other.
If you were trying to encourage a fearful soul to understand that he is forgiven, if you were dealing with someone given to serial relapses into self-incrimination, what would you say to him? God bends over backwards; He multiplies metaphors till one of them works for you: Your sin is so forgiven that only if the east could become west would you become unforgiven.
Don’t like that one? Then how about this: Your sin is so forgiven that it is like the goat whose head the high priest Aaron laid both his hands on it and confessed over it everything he could think of, transmitting all the vileness of his person and his people onto the animal. And then he took the sin-ridden beast to another man, who led it into the wilderness, never to return (Leviticus 16:20-28).
That one doesn’t do it for you, either? Try this: Your sin is like the curtain between the Holy Place and the Holy of Holies (don’t picture your mother’s drapes but more like an iron curtain) that was ripped clean from top to bottom in the hour that Jesus, the archetypal scapegoat, took on our sins (Mark 15:38).
Or if it helps, picture yourself standing before God, covered in human excrement (that’s the actual word in Zechariah 3), with Satan accusing you—and making a very good case. And the Angel of the Lord rebukes Satan instead of you and calls for the filthy garments to be taken away and brand new, pure garments put on you...
Andree Seu
"Avoiding, Creating, and Resolving Conflict"
Notice Jesus didn’t say ‘Blessed are the peace lovers,” because everyone loves peace. Neither did he say, “Blessed are the peaceable,” who are never disturbed by anything. Jesus said, ‘Blessed are those who work for peace” those who actively seek to resolve conflict. Peacemakers are rare because peacemaking is hard work…Peacemaking is not avoiding conflict. Running from a problem, pretending it doesn’t exist, or being afraid to talk about it is actually cowardice. Jesus, the Prince of Peace, was never afraid of conflict. On occasion he provoked it for the good of everyone. Sometimes we need to avoid conflict, sometimes we need to create it, and sometimes we need to resolve it.
Rick Warren
The Purpose Driven Life pp 153
Rick Warren
The Purpose Driven Life pp 153
"God's Classroom & Laboratory"
The local church is the classroom for learning how to get along in God’s family. It is a lab for practicing unselfish, sympathetic love…only in regular contact with ordinary, imperfect believers can we learn real fellowship and experience…being connected and dependent on each other...God’s mercy to us is the motivation for showing mercy to others. Remember, you will never be asked to forgive someone else more than God has already forgiven you. Whenever you are hurt by someone, you have a choice to make: Will I use my energy and emotions for retaliation or for resolution? You can’t do both.
Rick Warren
The Purpose Driven Life pp.133, 142-143.
Rick Warren
The Purpose Driven Life pp.133, 142-143.
"Becoming Best Friends With God"
It’s difficult to imagine how an intimate friendship is possible between an omnipotent, invisible, perfect God and a finite, sinful human being…The word for friend in this verse does not mean a casual acquaintance but a close, trusted relationship. The same word is used to refer to the best man at a wedding and a king’s inner circle of intimate, trusted friends. In royal courts…the inner circle of trusted friends enjoy close contact, direct access, and confidential information…knowing and loving God is our greatest privilege, and being known and loved is God’s greatest pleasure...You are as close to God as you choose to be. Like any friendship, you must work at developing your friendship with God. It won’t happen by accident. It takes desire, time, and energy. If you want a deeper, more intimate connection with God you must learn to honestly share your feelings with Him, trust Him when he asks you to do something, learn to care about what He cares about, and desire His friendship more than anything else.
Rick Warren
The Purpose Driven Life
pp86-87,92
Rick Warren
The Purpose Driven Life
pp86-87,92
"What Makes God Smile"
This is what God wants most from you: a relationship…God made you to love you, and he longs for you to love him back…learning to love God and be loved by Him should be the greatest objective of your life. Nothing else comes close in importance...If you want to know how much you matter to God, look at Christ with His arms outstretched on the cross, saying, "I love you this much! I'd rather die than live without you.
Rick Warren
The Purpose Driven Life pp.70
Rick Warren
The Purpose Driven Life pp.70
"The Reason For Everything"
It’s all for Him. The ultimate goal of the universe is to show the glory of God. It is the reason for everything that exists, including you. God made it all for His glory. Without God’s glory, there would be nothing. What is the glory of God? It is who God is. It is the essence of his nature, the weight of His importance, the radiance of His splendor, the demonstration of his power, and the atmosphere of His presence. God’s glory is the expression of His goodness and all His other intrinsic, eternal qualities.
Rick Warren
The Purpose Driven Life pp.53
Rick Warren
The Purpose Driven Life pp.53
"Luxurious Self Reproach"
There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel no one else has a right to blame us.
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
"God's Megaphone"
God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains; it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.
CS Lewis
CS Lewis
"Forget None Of His Benefits"
“Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits . . .”
At a wedding recently I met a woman whose husband spent the whole summer in nothing but repentance. She sensed that it was becoming morbid and said to him, “Will you stop repenting!” Repentance is a good thing and I do it all the time, but it is important for the soul’s health—it is chicken soup for the soul and strength for the body—to do a lot of rejoicing in God’s “benefits.”
“Benefits” is such an understated word for what God has done in my life—the Rube Goldberg orchestration of my conversion; the improbability of Him even wanting me after the evil child I was; the way He suffered through my first two decades of sham Christian life; the way He was planning, even during that period, the good things I now enjoy; the way He keeps this widow with modest abilities financially afloat; the way He has given me joy.
The Psalmist isn’t telling us not to forget God’s benefits because it’s impolite. He’s telling us not to forget God’s benefits because it’s deadly. After all, all we have to go on as our encouragement in this present day’s troubles is the record of God’s faithfulness in yesterday’s troubles. And not only our own yesterdays, but other people’s yesterdays (our own individual histories being so short a paper trail). That’s why fellowship is crucial (Hebrews 10:25; Malachi 3:16). You need to hear about the impossible things God has done in other Christians’ lives.
Pastor Bill Johnson of California made an absolute statement—that every time ancient Israel backslid it was because she had forgotten God’s miracles. Said Johnson, “Read Psalm 78 and see if you can reach any other conclusion.”
So I read it, and it is so. “The Ephraimites, armed with the bow, turned back on the day of battle” (78:9). Why? Because what use is a bow where there is no mindfulness of God’s past miracles? What courage do we have to tackle spiritual strongholds when we don’t remember what God did before or believe that He can do them in our day?
“Those who feared the Lord spoke with one another . . .” (Malachi 3:16). Wonder what they spoke. I bet they reminded each other of God’s benefits.
Andree Seu
At a wedding recently I met a woman whose husband spent the whole summer in nothing but repentance. She sensed that it was becoming morbid and said to him, “Will you stop repenting!” Repentance is a good thing and I do it all the time, but it is important for the soul’s health—it is chicken soup for the soul and strength for the body—to do a lot of rejoicing in God’s “benefits.”
“Benefits” is such an understated word for what God has done in my life—the Rube Goldberg orchestration of my conversion; the improbability of Him even wanting me after the evil child I was; the way He suffered through my first two decades of sham Christian life; the way He was planning, even during that period, the good things I now enjoy; the way He keeps this widow with modest abilities financially afloat; the way He has given me joy.
The Psalmist isn’t telling us not to forget God’s benefits because it’s impolite. He’s telling us not to forget God’s benefits because it’s deadly. After all, all we have to go on as our encouragement in this present day’s troubles is the record of God’s faithfulness in yesterday’s troubles. And not only our own yesterdays, but other people’s yesterdays (our own individual histories being so short a paper trail). That’s why fellowship is crucial (Hebrews 10:25; Malachi 3:16). You need to hear about the impossible things God has done in other Christians’ lives.
Pastor Bill Johnson of California made an absolute statement—that every time ancient Israel backslid it was because she had forgotten God’s miracles. Said Johnson, “Read Psalm 78 and see if you can reach any other conclusion.”
So I read it, and it is so. “The Ephraimites, armed with the bow, turned back on the day of battle” (78:9). Why? Because what use is a bow where there is no mindfulness of God’s past miracles? What courage do we have to tackle spiritual strongholds when we don’t remember what God did before or believe that He can do them in our day?
“Those who feared the Lord spoke with one another . . .” (Malachi 3:16). Wonder what they spoke. I bet they reminded each other of God’s benefits.
Andree Seu
"Only Supernaturalists Really See Nature"
Only Supernaturalists really see Nature. You must go a little away from her, and then turn around and look back. Then at last the true landscape will become visible. You must have tasted, however briefly, the pure water from beyond the world before you can be distinctly conscious of the hot, salty tang of Nature’s current. To treat her as God, or as Everything, is to lose the whole pith and pleasure of her.
Come out, look back, and then you will see: this astonishing cataract of bears, babies, and bananas [and birds]; this immoderate deluge of atoms, orchids, oranges, cancers, fleas, gases, tornadoes and toads. How could you ever have thought this was the ultimate reality? How could you ever have thought that it was merely a stage-set for the moral drama of men and women? She is herself. Offer her neither worship nor contempt. Meet her and know her.
If we are immortal, and if she is doomed (as scientists tell us) to run down and die, we shall miss this half-shy and half-flamboyant creature, this ogress, this [saucy girl], this incorrigible fairy, this dumb witch. But the theologians tell us that she, like ourselves, is to be redeemed. The ‘vanity’ to which she was subjected was her disease, not her essence. She will be cursed in character: not tamed (Heaven forbid) nor sterilized. We shall still be able to recognize our old enemy, friend, playfellow and foster mother, so perfected as to be not less, but more, herself. And that will be a merry meeting.
CS Lewis
Miracles pp.67-68
Come out, look back, and then you will see: this astonishing cataract of bears, babies, and bananas [and birds]; this immoderate deluge of atoms, orchids, oranges, cancers, fleas, gases, tornadoes and toads. How could you ever have thought this was the ultimate reality? How could you ever have thought that it was merely a stage-set for the moral drama of men and women? She is herself. Offer her neither worship nor contempt. Meet her and know her.
If we are immortal, and if she is doomed (as scientists tell us) to run down and die, we shall miss this half-shy and half-flamboyant creature, this ogress, this [saucy girl], this incorrigible fairy, this dumb witch. But the theologians tell us that she, like ourselves, is to be redeemed. The ‘vanity’ to which she was subjected was her disease, not her essence. She will be cursed in character: not tamed (Heaven forbid) nor sterilized. We shall still be able to recognize our old enemy, friend, playfellow and foster mother, so perfected as to be not less, but more, herself. And that will be a merry meeting.
CS Lewis
Miracles pp.67-68
"From Vapor to Eternal Glory"
Only one life, 'twill soon be past, Only what's done for Christ will last.
Author Unknown
Author Unknown
"Risk For The Cause"
But not even Joshua could explode the myth of safety. The
people were drunk in a dreamworld of security. And they tried
to stone Caleb and Joshua. The result was thousands of wasted
lives and wasted years. It was clearly wrong not to take the risk
of battling the giants in the land of Canaan. Oh, how much is
wasted when we do not risk for the cause of God!...I have been assuming that the power and the motive behind
taking risks for the cause of God is not heroism, or the lust for
adventure, or the courage of self-reliance, or the need to earn
God’s good will, but rather faith in the all-providing, all-ruling,
all-satisfying Son of God, Jesus Christ. The strength to risk losing
face for the sake of Christ is the faith that God’s love will lift
up your face in the end and vindicate your cause...In this
way risk reflects God’s value, not our valor...Every loss we risk
in order to make much of Christ, God promises to restore a thousandfold
with his all-satisfying fellowship.
John Piper
Don't Waste Your Life pp89
people were drunk in a dreamworld of security. And they tried
to stone Caleb and Joshua. The result was thousands of wasted
lives and wasted years. It was clearly wrong not to take the risk
of battling the giants in the land of Canaan. Oh, how much is
wasted when we do not risk for the cause of God!...I have been assuming that the power and the motive behind
taking risks for the cause of God is not heroism, or the lust for
adventure, or the courage of self-reliance, or the need to earn
God’s good will, but rather faith in the all-providing, all-ruling,
all-satisfying Son of God, Jesus Christ. The strength to risk losing
face for the sake of Christ is the faith that God’s love will lift
up your face in the end and vindicate your cause...In this
way risk reflects God’s value, not our valor...Every loss we risk
in order to make much of Christ, God promises to restore a thousandfold
with his all-satisfying fellowship.
John Piper
Don't Waste Your Life pp89
"Unquenchable Optimism"
Ray Stedman writes in Authentic Christianity that the first mark of such authenticity is "unquenchable optimism."
Unquenchable: "unable to be extinguished, terminated, destroyed, or satisfied."
Optimism: "an inclination to put the most favorable construction upon actions and events or to anticipate the best possible outcome."
Joseph had unquenchable optimism when he went from favored son to Egyptian jailbird, and he just kept doing his little prison jobs, one day at a time, because he knew he had a prophecy hovering over him (Genesis 39-50).
Moses' mom had unquenchable optimism when she thought it might just work to fashion a floating device and launch her son down the river (Exodus 2:2-3).
ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW
Caleb had unquenchable optimism when the other spies to Canaan said it was not realistic to attack at this time, and he said, like a choir boy, yippee, let's do it! (Numbers 13:30).
Manoah's wife had unquenchable optimism when her husband thought they were going to die because they had seen an angel, and she sensibly said, "If the Lord had meant to kill us, He would not have accepted a burnt offering and a grain offering at our hands, or shown us all these things, or now announced to us such things as these" (Judges 13:23).
Even Samson, when he had made a mess of his whole life, and squandered his calling, and was broken and blind and in ankle irons pushing a grinding wheel around in circles— even he thought it was worth a try to call on the Lord one more time and ask for favor (Judges 16:28).
Jonathan had unquenchable optimism when he and his armor bearer broke off from the moribund Israelite army during Philistine occupation, saying, "Come, let us go over to the garrison of these uncircumcised. It may be that the Lord will work for us, for nothing can hinder the Lord from saving by many or by few" (1 Samuel 14:6).
David had unquenchable optimism when Philistia was spanking Israel's finest (1 Samuel 17:26). And when the King asked him how a runt like him could kill a giant, he said because he used to kill lions and bears when they threatened the herd, and Goliath would be just like one of them (1 Samuel 17:34-37).
Elisha had unquenchable optimism when even the prophets kept telling him to give up following Elijah, but he wouldn't because he thought he might just get a double portion of blessing (2 Kings 2).
Mordecai had unquenchable optimism. What else can you say about a guy living in exile, with a contract on his head, who mulls over his cousin's fluky positioning at court and says to her: "Who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?" (Esther 4:14).
Ezra had unquenchable optimism when he decided not to ask the king for an escort of soldiers to help them against bandits on the road from Persia to Israel, because he had bragged to the king that God would protect them (Ezra 8:22).
Simeon and Anna had unquenchable optimism when they grew old coming to the Temple every day, because they figured that one of these days the Messiah would show up (Luke 2).
A woman in Israel had unquenchable optimism when she thought if she only touched Jesus' cloak she would be healed of a 12-year disease that none of her doctors had been able to cure (Mark 5).
Paul had unquenchable optimism when he decided that his sitting in jail was a clever strategy on God's part for spreading the gospel to Caesar's household (Philippians 1:12-13; 4:22).
And Paul had unquenchable optimism when only decades after Christ's resurrection the church seemed to be coming unglued in Corinth and Galatia, and others wanted to go back to the old-time religion of slaughtering bulls and goats. He scolded them but expected better things.
I'll bet if someone like Caleb or Jonathan or Paul were not able to sleep worth a fig for the past five years, they would say to themselves something like, "Gee, I wonder if God is preparing me for some endurance test in the future where it will be an advantage to have learned how to make do with 4 hours of sleep a night."
Andree Seu
Unquenchable: "unable to be extinguished, terminated, destroyed, or satisfied."
Optimism: "an inclination to put the most favorable construction upon actions and events or to anticipate the best possible outcome."
Joseph had unquenchable optimism when he went from favored son to Egyptian jailbird, and he just kept doing his little prison jobs, one day at a time, because he knew he had a prophecy hovering over him (Genesis 39-50).
Moses' mom had unquenchable optimism when she thought it might just work to fashion a floating device and launch her son down the river (Exodus 2:2-3).
ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW
Caleb had unquenchable optimism when the other spies to Canaan said it was not realistic to attack at this time, and he said, like a choir boy, yippee, let's do it! (Numbers 13:30).
Manoah's wife had unquenchable optimism when her husband thought they were going to die because they had seen an angel, and she sensibly said, "If the Lord had meant to kill us, He would not have accepted a burnt offering and a grain offering at our hands, or shown us all these things, or now announced to us such things as these" (Judges 13:23).
Even Samson, when he had made a mess of his whole life, and squandered his calling, and was broken and blind and in ankle irons pushing a grinding wheel around in circles— even he thought it was worth a try to call on the Lord one more time and ask for favor (Judges 16:28).
Jonathan had unquenchable optimism when he and his armor bearer broke off from the moribund Israelite army during Philistine occupation, saying, "Come, let us go over to the garrison of these uncircumcised. It may be that the Lord will work for us, for nothing can hinder the Lord from saving by many or by few" (1 Samuel 14:6).
David had unquenchable optimism when Philistia was spanking Israel's finest (1 Samuel 17:26). And when the King asked him how a runt like him could kill a giant, he said because he used to kill lions and bears when they threatened the herd, and Goliath would be just like one of them (1 Samuel 17:34-37).
Elisha had unquenchable optimism when even the prophets kept telling him to give up following Elijah, but he wouldn't because he thought he might just get a double portion of blessing (2 Kings 2).
Mordecai had unquenchable optimism. What else can you say about a guy living in exile, with a contract on his head, who mulls over his cousin's fluky positioning at court and says to her: "Who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?" (Esther 4:14).
Ezra had unquenchable optimism when he decided not to ask the king for an escort of soldiers to help them against bandits on the road from Persia to Israel, because he had bragged to the king that God would protect them (Ezra 8:22).
Simeon and Anna had unquenchable optimism when they grew old coming to the Temple every day, because they figured that one of these days the Messiah would show up (Luke 2).
A woman in Israel had unquenchable optimism when she thought if she only touched Jesus' cloak she would be healed of a 12-year disease that none of her doctors had been able to cure (Mark 5).
Paul had unquenchable optimism when he decided that his sitting in jail was a clever strategy on God's part for spreading the gospel to Caesar's household (Philippians 1:12-13; 4:22).
And Paul had unquenchable optimism when only decades after Christ's resurrection the church seemed to be coming unglued in Corinth and Galatia, and others wanted to go back to the old-time religion of slaughtering bulls and goats. He scolded them but expected better things.
I'll bet if someone like Caleb or Jonathan or Paul were not able to sleep worth a fig for the past five years, they would say to themselves something like, "Gee, I wonder if God is preparing me for some endurance test in the future where it will be an advantage to have learned how to make do with 4 hours of sleep a night."
Andree Seu
"The Big Bluff"
I have been amazed by him for a long time, so I finally asked a friend of mine how he overcame such great sin in his life—and more than overcame, becoming a person with as pure a heart as it used to be crooked. He had an answer for me. He told me that for many years, even as a Christian, he used to think that he was more or less helpless before his sinful urges. (His was a heroin addiction, with all the deceit and other baggage that accompanies that lifestyle.) He believed that the best he could hope to do was a vicious circle of succumb and repent.
Then the Lord put him through a painful process in which he, for the first time, truly understood the meaning of Paul’s exhortation: “You also must consider [or “reckon”] yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Romans 6:11). In a fairly epiphanic way, my friend grasped the fact that sin did not have to have dominion over him (v.14). The grace was there in Christ to say “no” to temptation (Titus 2:12). (For my part, I remembered 1 Peter 4:1, that the person who has suffered in the body is done with sin.)
Of course, sin will still try to convince you, after your conversion, that nothing has really changed, that you are still the weak and pitiful slave to him that you always were. But it’s a big bluff. And we need to call his bluff and to act on the grace that’s already present and sufficient (2 Peter 1:3). It is a very serious matter what we “consider” and “reckon” about ourselves. It is imperative that we operate out of the truth about who we are now: If we’re slaves to anyone now, we’re “slaves to God” and “the fruit you get leads to sanctification” (Romans 6:22).
Wouldn’t it be the most pathetic thing if a man drove a beautiful new Ferrari at 40 miles per hour all his life because he “reckoned” that’s as fast as it could possibly go? We have the Holy Spirit under the hood. A lot more “overcoming” is possible to us than many of us have believed. That’s why Jesus commends seven times in Revelation 2 and 3 the churches who believe they can “overcome” their sins, and do so.
Andree Seu
Then the Lord put him through a painful process in which he, for the first time, truly understood the meaning of Paul’s exhortation: “You also must consider [or “reckon”] yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Romans 6:11). In a fairly epiphanic way, my friend grasped the fact that sin did not have to have dominion over him (v.14). The grace was there in Christ to say “no” to temptation (Titus 2:12). (For my part, I remembered 1 Peter 4:1, that the person who has suffered in the body is done with sin.)
Of course, sin will still try to convince you, after your conversion, that nothing has really changed, that you are still the weak and pitiful slave to him that you always were. But it’s a big bluff. And we need to call his bluff and to act on the grace that’s already present and sufficient (2 Peter 1:3). It is a very serious matter what we “consider” and “reckon” about ourselves. It is imperative that we operate out of the truth about who we are now: If we’re slaves to anyone now, we’re “slaves to God” and “the fruit you get leads to sanctification” (Romans 6:22).
Wouldn’t it be the most pathetic thing if a man drove a beautiful new Ferrari at 40 miles per hour all his life because he “reckoned” that’s as fast as it could possibly go? We have the Holy Spirit under the hood. A lot more “overcoming” is possible to us than many of us have believed. That’s why Jesus commends seven times in Revelation 2 and 3 the churches who believe they can “overcome” their sins, and do so.
Andree Seu
"Fatal Acquiescence"
I do not think any efforts of my own will can end once and for all this craving for limited liabilities, this fatal reservation. Only God can. I have good faith and hope He will. Of course, I don't mean I can therefore, as they say, "sit back." What God does for us, He does in us. The process of doing it will appear to me (and not falsely) to be the daily or hourly repeated exercises of my own will in renouncing this attitude, especially each morning, for it grows all over me like a new shell each night. Failures will be forgiven; it is acquiescence that is fatal, the permitted, regularised presence of an area in ourselves which we still claim for our own. We may never, this side of death, drive the invader out of our territory, but we must be in the Resistance, not the Vichy government. And this, so far as I can yet see, must be begun again every day. Our morning prayer should be that in the Imitation: Da hodie perfecte incipere - grant me to make an unflawed beginning today, for I have done nothing yet.
CS Lewis
The Weight of Glory pp. 191-192
CS Lewis
The Weight of Glory pp. 191-192
"The Only Well"
"If you have not chosen the Kingdom of God, it will make in the end no difference what you have chosen instead." Those are hard words to take. Will it really make no difference whether it was women or patriotism, cocaine or art, whiskey or a seat in the Cabinet, money or science? Well, surely no difference that matters. We shall have missed the end for which we are formed and rejected the only thing that satisfies. Does it matter to a man dying in a desert by which choice of route he missed the only well?
CS Lewis
The Weight of Glory pp190-191
CS Lewis
The Weight of Glory pp190-191
"Don't Fear The Reaper: Fill Well Your Years"
Our repugnance of death increases in proportion to our consciousness of having lived in vain."
William Hazlitt
William Hazlitt
Law VS Love
Far more important than law, the tempter would seem to say, is love. He condemns Eve’s attitude of trust in God’s command and seeks to point out to her that if she would obtain the wholesomeness and well-roundedness that should characterize a fruitful life, she must not be bound by law…She is confined by her position of trusting in God, of taking seriously His command…From this cramping position she must be emancipated and move over to a standpoint of neutrality from which she can accurately pass judgment upon God and His commands. She is foolish to continue permitting God to lay down the law for her...we can hear the tempter saying...[the human] soul is a very tender thing, and to restrain and bind it by the imposition of categorical law is to harm it. The soul should be free to develop and to express itself, and this it can do only through freedom and love.”
Edward J. Young
Edward J. Young
Neglect = Misery
"...the moral principles and percepts contained in the scriptures ought to form the basis of all our civil constitutions and laws. If men would universally cultivate these religious affections and virtuous dispositions, with as much diligence as they cultivate human science ... the world would soon become a terrestrial paradise."
"All the miseries and evils which men suffer from vice , crime , ambition , injustice , oppression , slavery , and war , proceed from their despising or neglecting the precepts contained in the Bible...."
Noah Webster
"All the miseries and evils which men suffer from vice , crime , ambition , injustice , oppression , slavery , and war , proceed from their despising or neglecting the precepts contained in the Bible...."
Noah Webster
"The Great Cataract of Nonsense"
Most of all, perhaps, we need intimate knowledge of the past. Not that the past has any magic about it, but because we cannot study the future, and yet need something to set against the present, to remind us that the basic assumptions have been quite different in different periods and that much which seems certain to the uneducated is merely temporary fashion. A man who has lived in many places is not likely to be deceived by the local errors of his native village: the scholar has lived in many times and is therefore in some degree immune from the great cataract of nonsense that pours from the press and the microphone of his own age.
CS Lewis
CS Lewis
"Our Happiness Lies In Him"
Everyone has noticed how hard it is to turn our thoughts to God when everything is going well with us. We “have all we want” is a terrible saying when “all” does not include God. We find God an interruption. As St. Augustine says somewhere, “God wants to give us something, but cannot, because our hands are full—there’s nowhere for Him to put it.” Or as a friend of mine said, “We regard God as an airman regards his parachute; it’s there for emergencies but he hopes he’ll never have to use it.” Now God, who has made us, knows what we are and that our happiness lies in Him. Yet we will not seek it in Him as long as He leaves us any other resort where it can even plausibly be looked for. While what we call “our own life” remains agreeable we will not surrender it to Him. What then can God do in our interests but make “our own life” less agreeable to us, and take away the plausible source of false happiness? It is just here, where God’s providence seems at first to be most cruel, that the Divine humility, the stooping down of the Highest, most deserves praise.
CS Lewis
CS Lewis
"Acquiring A Taste For Obedience"
...action precedes love. The...way to get to like doing God's work...is to throw yourself into it.
Andree Seu
Andree Seu
"Stake Your Claim"
The Lord has a storehouse of unasked for prayers just waiting to be claimed
Andree Seu's neighbor, "Janice"
Andree Seu's neighbor, "Janice"
"Learning To Sing In The Rain"
"...live in joy that's worthy of the gospel. The dog bits and the bee stings and you're feeling sad. But blest are those who praise God in the midst of it, who praise Him when their hearts are broken" [who have learned to 'sing in the rain' cd]
Andree Seu
Andree Seu
"Finding A More Excellent Way"
Joseph found his betrothed to be with child—and not by him. "Being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, [he] resolved to divorce her quietly" rather than throw the book at her (Matthew 1:19). Small footnote in Scripture; big leap in this reader's understanding. Here was a thinker, a grappler, who wrestled within the parameters of righteousness and found one way more excellent than another.
Andree Seu
Andree Seu
"Andrees Aphorisms"
(Selected)
People laugh at your unwholesome talk at the moment but think less of you afterwards.
Marry a man who loves God more than he loves you.
Neglect a phone call, lose a friend.
I complained, "God hasn't answered my prayer." That's because I was not looking for help in my weakness but for the removal of my weakness to the praise of my own glory.
Sit on a sensitive letter for three days before sending it.
A phone call to say, "I'm thinking of you," yields benefits all out of proportion to the time investment.
The best teaching moments are never at convenient times.
An idol forfeits your life. You look back and say you never lived.
God is the better chess player. Just obey.
Talent is good, but faithfulness is better.
Tell your child what delights you about him.
Drop the dust rag and look at your child when he's telling you a story.
Andree Seu
People laugh at your unwholesome talk at the moment but think less of you afterwards.
Marry a man who loves God more than he loves you.
Neglect a phone call, lose a friend.
I complained, "God hasn't answered my prayer." That's because I was not looking for help in my weakness but for the removal of my weakness to the praise of my own glory.
Sit on a sensitive letter for three days before sending it.
A phone call to say, "I'm thinking of you," yields benefits all out of proportion to the time investment.
The best teaching moments are never at convenient times.
An idol forfeits your life. You look back and say you never lived.
God is the better chess player. Just obey.
Talent is good, but faithfulness is better.
Tell your child what delights you about him.
Drop the dust rag and look at your child when he's telling you a story.
Andree Seu
"Widen Your Hearts"
Paul's phrase, "widen your hearts," is so loose, so non-technical, so undefined, so ... wide open, as to invite—or coerce—some outlay of cogitation on my part. What it means to "widen your heart" I am evidently free to explore without restriction, since I am so unlikely to go too far with it that, as with other virtues Paul names elsewhere, "against such things there is no law" (Galatians 5:23).
I discover there are two ways of seeing my brother. There is the "merely human" way (1 Corinthians 3; 4)—a severe, loveless accuracy. A clinical fixation on the wart on his nose. A covering the sun with one finger, as a Mexican boy once told me.
Then there is the "wide" way. It sees possibility; it is full of self-knowledge; it "believes all things, hopes all things" (1 Corinthians 13:7); it regards the other as "a new creation" (2 Corinthians 5:17) and abandons the tired modes of "measuring" and "comparing" (2 Corinthians 10:12). It is the difference between mercy and justice, kindness and shrewdness, remembering one's own reflection in the mirror and forgetting.
Andree Seu
I discover there are two ways of seeing my brother. There is the "merely human" way (1 Corinthians 3; 4)—a severe, loveless accuracy. A clinical fixation on the wart on his nose. A covering the sun with one finger, as a Mexican boy once told me.
Then there is the "wide" way. It sees possibility; it is full of self-knowledge; it "believes all things, hopes all things" (1 Corinthians 13:7); it regards the other as "a new creation" (2 Corinthians 5:17) and abandons the tired modes of "measuring" and "comparing" (2 Corinthians 10:12). It is the difference between mercy and justice, kindness and shrewdness, remembering one's own reflection in the mirror and forgetting.
Andree Seu
"The Warrior/Lover"
War is problematic for my thoroughly modern children (and for every thinking soul). It would seem to bring into collision two prominent themes of Scripture: God the warrior (Isaiah 42:13), on the one hand, and on the other, God the lover (1 John 4:16), the compassionate (2 Corinthians 1:3), the merciful (2 Samuel 24:14-15), the hater of violence (Ezekiel 12:19). But, I ask you, my children, would love be love—would it be compassionate, merciful, and a hater of violence—if, say, it let the murderer of your best friend go on his merry way?
Can we then at least establish, considering all the above, that if God is against war, He is not against it categorically? That extenuating circumstances may justify it? "For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven ... a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace" (Ecclesiastes 3:1,8). The highest good is not earthly peace but heavenly peace. Earthly peace has given us such things as the tower of Babel and Sodom and Gomorrah, after all.
The Lord has a score to settle with the nations of the earth, and it will not come about without violence. It will be as in the days of Joshua, when the heavenly host, the sun, and hailstones all fought on his side (Joshua 5:14; 10:11-13). That first time was a sip of His justice; the second will be the full cup (Revelation).
Andree Seu
Can we then at least establish, considering all the above, that if God is against war, He is not against it categorically? That extenuating circumstances may justify it? "For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven ... a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace" (Ecclesiastes 3:1,8). The highest good is not earthly peace but heavenly peace. Earthly peace has given us such things as the tower of Babel and Sodom and Gomorrah, after all.
The Lord has a score to settle with the nations of the earth, and it will not come about without violence. It will be as in the days of Joshua, when the heavenly host, the sun, and hailstones all fought on his side (Joshua 5:14; 10:11-13). That first time was a sip of His justice; the second will be the full cup (Revelation).
Andree Seu
The Gateway To Happiness"
We will see that every word we spoke was eternally consequential, and none were neutral. We wielded them not only to the betterment or detriment of our hearers but for ourselves, our very words incrementally forming the persons we would became, rendering us either capable of greater victory or more susceptible to temptation. We will see that the little phrase we always skipped over in Philippians 4:6—“with thanksgiving”— was the ticket against depression and the gateway to happiness.
Andree Seu
Andree Seu
"The Deadly Poison Of A Bad Report"
Caleb was one of 12 men sent by Moses to scout out Canaan and bring back intelligence to prepare Israel for conquest (Numbers 13). Twelve spies all observed the same data: fertile soil, fortified cities, and giants descendant from Anak. At the debriefing Caleb said cheerfully, “Let us go up at once and take possession, for we are well able to overcome it.” But the other men (except Joshua) gave the people “a bad report”:
“The land, through which we have gone to spy it out, is a land that devours its inhabitants, and all the people that we saw in it are of great height. And there we saw the Nephilim . . . and we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them” (13:32-33).
How little have we understood the deadly poison of “a bad report” on the hearers? I do it all the time. I nearly gave one today. Someone told me his relationship with the mother of his son was unsalvageable and that the idea of their reconciling and marrying was out of the question. He listed several reasons why he should give up and move on, and they were such formidable reasons that I almost agreed with him. (God could never fix that! Too far gone!)
No Christian who insists that he is unable to do a difficult thing thinks he has a spirit of unbelief. He thinks, rather, that he is a realist. He considers someone with Caleb’s attitude to be nutty at best and theologically dangerous at worst.
God later weighed in on the spies’ reports and decreed that the 10 realists would never enter the land of Canaan. But as for the obnoxious faith fanatic, God said, “My servant Caleb, because he has a different spirit and has followed me fully, I will bring him into the land into which he went. . . .” (14:24)...We have made things complicated but they are simple: Put your faith in God, in spite of all outward appearances. And do not go around giving “a bad report” and dousing other people’s faith by always pointing out the negative side of things, the obstacles and probabilities and statistics. Caleb saw opportunities for God to be glorious, where others saw only difficulties...
Andree Seu
“The land, through which we have gone to spy it out, is a land that devours its inhabitants, and all the people that we saw in it are of great height. And there we saw the Nephilim . . . and we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them” (13:32-33).
How little have we understood the deadly poison of “a bad report” on the hearers? I do it all the time. I nearly gave one today. Someone told me his relationship with the mother of his son was unsalvageable and that the idea of their reconciling and marrying was out of the question. He listed several reasons why he should give up and move on, and they were such formidable reasons that I almost agreed with him. (God could never fix that! Too far gone!)
No Christian who insists that he is unable to do a difficult thing thinks he has a spirit of unbelief. He thinks, rather, that he is a realist. He considers someone with Caleb’s attitude to be nutty at best and theologically dangerous at worst.
God later weighed in on the spies’ reports and decreed that the 10 realists would never enter the land of Canaan. But as for the obnoxious faith fanatic, God said, “My servant Caleb, because he has a different spirit and has followed me fully, I will bring him into the land into which he went. . . .” (14:24)...We have made things complicated but they are simple: Put your faith in God, in spite of all outward appearances. And do not go around giving “a bad report” and dousing other people’s faith by always pointing out the negative side of things, the obstacles and probabilities and statistics. Caleb saw opportunities for God to be glorious, where others saw only difficulties...
Andree Seu
"Communicate What Is Universally Profitable"
The unbeliever may take his own temperament and experience, just as they happen to stand, and consider them worth communicating simply because they are his. To the Christian his own temperament and experience, as mere fact, and as merely his, are of no value or importance whatsoever: he will deal with them, if at all, only because they are the medium through which, or the position from which, something universally profitable appeared to him."
CS Lewis
CS Lewis
"Painting Black Mustaches"
My view of words was that there are good words and bad words but that most speech is neutral. After all, how can you sin ordering a cheese steak hoagie?
But the more I go, the more I see spoken words as falling into either what “gathers” or what “scatters.” ...It is a rare person who will recognize himself in a moral example. We are sure we would never have been the Pharisees or Job’s wife or Elisha’s servant Gehazi. We paint waxed mustaches on them, while we ourselves, by contrast, do not grumble but “share” or “discuss” or “confess” or make “prayer requests.”
It helps me to think of speech as a zero-sum game: It is important not only to avoid outright sinful words, but also worthless and insipid words, where words of life might have seized an opportunity for the kingdom. Jesus’ bar is higher than ours. We feel we’ve had a good day if we didn’t swear, lie, or gossip. Jesus says, “I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak” (Matthew 12:36).
I hate to think of the times I went for a cheap laugh rather than turn a conversation to eternally weighty things.
Andree Seu
But the more I go, the more I see spoken words as falling into either what “gathers” or what “scatters.” ...It is a rare person who will recognize himself in a moral example. We are sure we would never have been the Pharisees or Job’s wife or Elisha’s servant Gehazi. We paint waxed mustaches on them, while we ourselves, by contrast, do not grumble but “share” or “discuss” or “confess” or make “prayer requests.”
It helps me to think of speech as a zero-sum game: It is important not only to avoid outright sinful words, but also worthless and insipid words, where words of life might have seized an opportunity for the kingdom. Jesus’ bar is higher than ours. We feel we’ve had a good day if we didn’t swear, lie, or gossip. Jesus says, “I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak” (Matthew 12:36).
I hate to think of the times I went for a cheap laugh rather than turn a conversation to eternally weighty things.
Andree Seu
"Becoming Clean Mirrors"
Our whole destiny seems to lie in the opposite direction, in being as little as possible ourselves, in acquiring a fragrance that is not our own but borrowed, in becoming clean mirrors filled with the image of a face that is not ours
CS Lewis
CS Lewis
"Be Ye Doers"
I believe that the collecting of neat insights that never filter down to pavement-pounding obedience is the bane of a particular ilk of intellectual Christian: “Knowledge puffs up.” ...Lest this blog post become another neat insight, I propose a homework assignment: Next time we hear a neat insight from a preacher, teacher, or friend, let’s stop and pray over it immediately, thanking God for this illumination of a little corner of his truth and asking him to help us live it. Then let’s live watchfully... People who enter the kingdom and get somewhere in it are fiercely committed enthusiasts. They participate in the adventure by following Jesus, not by just sitting on the grassy knoll and eating the multiplied fish and bread...put into practice the neat insights you learned from God’s Word. Ignore those promptings and Satan comes along to snatch them from your mind like so much seed on a path..."
Andree Seu
Andree Seu
"Gardening Routines"
Cultivate only the habits that you are willing should master you.
Elbert Hubbard
Elbert Hubbard
"Waiting To Be Kindled"
The fire which seems extinguished often slumbers beneath the ashes.
Pierre Corneille
Pierre Corneille
Monday, August 24, 2009
"Value Equal To Effort"
That which we acquire with the most difficulty we retain the longest; as those who have earned a fortune are usually more careful of it than those who have inherited one.
Charles Caleb Colton
Charles Caleb Colton
"On The Shoulders of Giants"
If I have been able to see farther than others, it was because I stood on the shoulders of giants.
Issac Newton
Issac Newton
"Praying Out Loud Because The Battle Is Fierce"
The main thing I have to say about speaking out loud to God is that I need to do it, somehow.
Partly it’s as basic as being able to disentangle my prayers from the stream of random thoughts in my mind: When you pray out loud you know you’ve prayed. Also, prayer that percolates up to the lips, even if in barely a whisper, packs a force that stands a fighting chance against the screaming banshees of desire and mutiny. I pray out loud because the battle in me is fierce and so prayer must be fierce.
Andree Seu
Partly it’s as basic as being able to disentangle my prayers from the stream of random thoughts in my mind: When you pray out loud you know you’ve prayed. Also, prayer that percolates up to the lips, even if in barely a whisper, packs a force that stands a fighting chance against the screaming banshees of desire and mutiny. I pray out loud because the battle in me is fierce and so prayer must be fierce.
Andree Seu
"He Awaits Our Choice To Worship"
...we are in Christ and now it’s a whole new ballgame—life on the spiritual plane. God has ordained that we secure His resources by our praise. He awaits our choice to worship—rather than to whine, complain, or give up—as an entry point for His presence and kingdom power.
He tells the “barren one,” the person in pain and affliction, to sing. The command “to sing in the face of such a state would be a cruel act, were it not for the power of song. Isaiah’s word is to deal with the barrenness through worship, to enthrone God in song in order to release His ... provision” (NKJV commentary on Isaiah 54:1).
“Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise!” (Psalm 100:4).
Andree Seu
He tells the “barren one,” the person in pain and affliction, to sing. The command “to sing in the face of such a state would be a cruel act, were it not for the power of song. Isaiah’s word is to deal with the barrenness through worship, to enthrone God in song in order to release His ... provision” (NKJV commentary on Isaiah 54:1).
“Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise!” (Psalm 100:4).
Andree Seu
"Little Doorways Into Grand Pavillions"
The Psalmist says, “Oh, how I love your law!” (Psalm 119:97). Now I know why. The best-kept secret in town is that God’s commands are little doorways into grand pavilions of many rooms.
Put on “a garment of praise instead of a faint spirit” (Isaiah 61:3). “Sing, O barren one, who did not bear; break forth into singing and cry aloud” (Isaiah 54:1). “Finally, my brothers, rejoice n the Lord. To write the same things to you is no trouble to me and is safe for you” (Philippians 3:1).
I don’t know how God can stand it sometimes. He stocks his Word with escape hatches from depression and temptation, and we skim them and say, “What lovely poetry.” Poetry schmoetry—these are our deliverance. The commands are counselors; they are like a dentist’s instruments laid out neatly to hand him on an as-needed basis.
Andree Seu
Put on “a garment of praise instead of a faint spirit” (Isaiah 61:3). “Sing, O barren one, who did not bear; break forth into singing and cry aloud” (Isaiah 54:1). “Finally, my brothers, rejoice n the Lord. To write the same things to you is no trouble to me and is safe for you” (Philippians 3:1).
I don’t know how God can stand it sometimes. He stocks his Word with escape hatches from depression and temptation, and we skim them and say, “What lovely poetry.” Poetry schmoetry—these are our deliverance. The commands are counselors; they are like a dentist’s instruments laid out neatly to hand him on an as-needed basis.
Andree Seu
"Whose Opinion Carries Weight?"
...We all wish to be judged by our peers, by the men 'after our own heart.' Only they really know our mind and only they judge it by standards we fully acknowledge. Theirs is the praise we really covet and the blame we really dread. The little pockets of early Christians survived because they cared exclusively for the love of 'the brethren' and stopped their ears to the opinion of the Pagan society around them. But a circle of criminals, cranks, or perverts survives in just the same way; by becoming deaf to the opinion of the outer world, by discounting it as the chatter of outsiders who 'don't understand,' of the 'conventional,' the 'bourgeois,' the 'Establishment,' of prigs, prudes, and humbugs.
CS Lewis
The Four Loves pp114
CS Lewis
The Four Loves pp114
"One Approach For Preventing Crime"
Men are not hanged for stealing horses, but that horses may not be stolen."
George Savile, Maqrquess de Halifax
George Savile, Maqrquess de Halifax
"All Who Are Cured, Are Cured By Him"
There is a sense in which no doctor ever heals. The doctors themselves would be the first to admit this. The magic is not in the medicine but in the patient’s body – in the vis medicatrix naturae, the recuperative or self-corrective energy of Nature. What the treatment does is to stimulate Natural functions or to remove what hinders them. We speak for convenience of the doctor, or the dressing, healing a cut. But in another sense every cut heals itself; no cut can be healed in a corpse. That same mysterious force which we call gravitational when it steers the planets and biochemical when it heals a live body, is the efficient cause of all recoveries...All who are cured are cured by Him, not merely in the sense that His providence provides them with medical assistance and wholesome environments, but also in the sense that their very tissues are repaired by the far-descended energy which, flowing from Him, energies the whole system of Nature.”
C.S. Lewis
Miracles pp.145
C.S. Lewis
Miracles pp.145
"Getting Ahead Of Ourselves"
Our business in life is not to get ahead of others but to get ahead of ourselves - to break our own records, to outstrip our yesterdays by our today, to do our work with more force than ever before.
Stewart B. Johnson
Stewart B. Johnson
"Feed My Sheep. Not Experiment On My Rats"
Novelty may fix our attention not even on the service but on the celebrant. You know what I mean. Try as one may to exclude it, the question "What on earth is he up to now?" will intrude. It lays one's devotion waste. There is really some excuse for the man who said, "I wish they'd remember that the charge to Peter was Feed my sheep; not Try experiments on my rats, or even, Teach my performing dogs new tricks.
CS Lewis
Letters To Malcom
CS Lewis
Letters To Malcom
"Getting To Know You. Getting To Know All About You."
Adversity introduces a man to himself
Anonymous
Anonymous
"Gobbling Poison"
...spiritual nature, like bodily nature, will be served; deny it food and it will gobble poison"
CS Lewis
"Equality"
CS Lewis
"Equality"
"Overthinking A Goal"
Nothing will ever be attempted, if all possible objections must first be overcome.
Lord Philip Dormer Stanhope Chesterfield
Lord Philip Dormer Stanhope Chesterfield
"What's She Going To Cost Him?"
It is a glorious thing to feel for a moment or two that the whole meaning of the universe is summed up in one woman - glorious so long as other duties and pleasures keep tearing you away from her. But clear the decks and so arrange your life (it is sometimes feasible) that you will have nothing to do but contemplate her, and what happens? Of course this law has been discovered before, but it will stand re-discovery. It may be stated as follows: every preference of a small good to a great, or a partial good to a total good, involves the loss of the small or partial good for which the sacrifice was made. Apparently the world is made that way. If Esau really got the pottage in return for his birthright, then Esau was a lucky exception."
CS Lewis
First and Second Things
CS Lewis
First and Second Things
"Go In"
Take time to deliberate; but when the time for action arrive, stop thinking and go in.
Andrew Jackson
Andrew Jackson
"Fruitless Trees In Late Autumn"
A hoary head should enclose a mind with wisdom, not lasciviousness. (“Gray hair is a crown of glory; it is gained in a righteous life”—Proverbs 16:31). God has ordained each age of man to have its peculiar beauty, just as celestial bodies differ in glory from terrestrial bodies (1 Corinthians 15:40). The youthful charms are fleeting (Proverbs 31:30), but the ripened counsel of maturity is a pearl of great price (Titus 2:2-8)...The anecdote in Mark 11 is a split one, the fig tree narrative interrupted by the recounting of Jesus’ visit to the temple, in which the expectation of finding his Father’s house to be a “house of prayer” is dashed by the spectacle of hustlers. Jesus overturns their tables—and later curses the fig tree. Jesus is not polite sometimes.White hair on a fool is false advertisement, like “waterless clouds” (Jude 1:12)...Let me flee the temptation to debase myself before youth, thinking to ingratiate myself with them. Children want to find godliness in the aged, whether they admit it or not. Even if a person does laugh at an unseemly joke in the moment, he thinks less of you afterward.Lord, since I have to get old anyway, please begin preparing me now, so that I will not be like “fruitless trees in late autumn, twice dead, uprooted” (Jude 1:12).
Andree Seu
Andree Seu
"Monty's Prayer"
Good morning, Lord. it’s me Monty. Thank you for this wonderful day! Thank you for letting me live it for you. Stretch my wings and take me to where you want me to be. Take my eyes and show me what you want me to see. Take my heart and show me how to care. Take all of my skills and training and let it all be to your glory. For all I have ALL I HAVE, is but a gift from Thee. Take all of my life, my breath, my soul and let it be consecrated unto Thee.
Andree Seu's World Magazine Blog
User Name:montyfisherwoof
Andree Seu's World Magazine Blog
User Name:montyfisherwoof
"Practical Advice"
I picked up a little pamphlet from the rack in the foyer of a church I was visiting titled “Squeezing Prayer into a Busy Life.” I could imagine various possible directions for the six pages that would follow. The writer could tell us that if we really loved God we would find time to pray. He could tell us that he himself loves praying more than football. He could tell us that if we don’t pray a lot, maybe we ought to examine ourselves to see if we’re really even Christians at all!
This particular writer, Jim Auer, takes a different tack. He gently invites us to consider that the problem of time management might mask a few deeper blocks to prayer that we’re unaware of, which he then proceeds to deal with helpfully. At one point he comes up with the idea of using any of the day’s small happenings as grist for the mill of prayer. Example:
“Prayer Over Empty Beer Cans Discarded on the Sidewalk: ‘Lord, please be with whoever left these cans. If they drank from sorrow, heal their hurt. If they drank to escape, help them to face their difficulty. . . .”
I like that...Sometimes we spiritual slackers can be helped immensely by a concrete suggestion or two.
Andree Seu
This particular writer, Jim Auer, takes a different tack. He gently invites us to consider that the problem of time management might mask a few deeper blocks to prayer that we’re unaware of, which he then proceeds to deal with helpfully. At one point he comes up with the idea of using any of the day’s small happenings as grist for the mill of prayer. Example:
“Prayer Over Empty Beer Cans Discarded on the Sidewalk: ‘Lord, please be with whoever left these cans. If they drank from sorrow, heal their hurt. If they drank to escape, help them to face their difficulty. . . .”
I like that...Sometimes we spiritual slackers can be helped immensely by a concrete suggestion or two.
Andree Seu
"When A Beloved Utters The Devil's Suggestions"
As so often, Our Lord's own words are both far fiercer and far more tolerable than those of the theologians. He says nothing about guarding against earthly loves for fear we might be hurt; He says something that cracks like a whip about trampling them all under foot the moment they hold us back from following Him. "If any man come to me and hate not his father and mother and wife... and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple" (Luke XIV, 26).--
--But how are we to understand the word hate? That Love Himself should be commanding what we ordinarily mean by hared--commanding us to cherish resentment, to gloat over another's misery, to delight in injuring him--is almost a contradiction in terms. I think Our Lord, in the sense here intended, "hated" St. Peter when he said, "Get thee behind me." To hate is to reject, to set one's face against, to make no concession to, the Beloved when the Beloved utters, however sweetly and however pitiably, the suggestions of the Devil. A man, said Jesus, who tries to serve two masters, will "hate" the one and "love the other. It is not, surely, mere feelings of aversion and liking that are here in question. He will adhere to, consent to, work for, the one and not for the other... So, in the last resort, we must turn down or disqualify our nearest and dearest when they come between us and our obedience to God. Heaven knows , it will seem to them sufficiently like hatred...it is too late, when the crisis comes, to begin telling a wife or husband or mother or friend, that your love all along had a secret reservation--"under God" or "so far as a higher Love permits."
C.S. Lewis
The Four Loves
pp 171-172
--But how are we to understand the word hate? That Love Himself should be commanding what we ordinarily mean by hared--commanding us to cherish resentment, to gloat over another's misery, to delight in injuring him--is almost a contradiction in terms. I think Our Lord, in the sense here intended, "hated" St. Peter when he said, "Get thee behind me." To hate is to reject, to set one's face against, to make no concession to, the Beloved when the Beloved utters, however sweetly and however pitiably, the suggestions of the Devil. A man, said Jesus, who tries to serve two masters, will "hate" the one and "love the other. It is not, surely, mere feelings of aversion and liking that are here in question. He will adhere to, consent to, work for, the one and not for the other... So, in the last resort, we must turn down or disqualify our nearest and dearest when they come between us and our obedience to God. Heaven knows , it will seem to them sufficiently like hatred...it is too late, when the crisis comes, to begin telling a wife or husband or mother or friend, that your love all along had a secret reservation--"under God" or "so far as a higher Love permits."
C.S. Lewis
The Four Loves
pp 171-172
"Do You Think Sin Barren, You Fool!"
(An allegory of aging sin)
After that John was always going to the wood. He did not always have his pleasure of her in the body, though it often ended that way: sometimes he would talk to her about himself , telling her lies about his courage and his cleverness. All that he told her she remembered, so that on other days she could tell it over to him again. Sometimes, even, he would go with her through the wood looking for the sea and the Island, but not often. Meanwhile the year went on and the leaves began the fall in the wood and the skies were more often gray: until now, as I dreamed, John had slept in the wood and he woke up in the wood. The sun was low and a blustering wind was stripping the leaves from the branches. The girl was still there and the appearance of her was hateful to John: and he saw that she knew this and the more she knew it, the more she stared at him, smiling. He looked round and saw how small the wood was after all - a beggarly strip of trees between the road and a field that he knew well. Nowhere in sight was there anything that he liked at all.
'I shall not come back here," said John. 'What I wanted was not here. It wasn't you I wanted , you know.' 'Wasn't it?' said the brown girl 'Then be off. But you must take your family with you.'
With that she put up her hands to her mouth and called. Instantly from behind every tree there slipped out a brown girl: each of them was just like herself:the little wood was full of them.
'What are these?'
'Our daughters,' said she. 'Did you not know you were a father? Did you think I was barren, you fool? And now, children,' she added, turning to the mob,' go with your father.'
C.S.Lewis
The Pilgrim's Regress
V Ichabod
After that John was always going to the wood. He did not always have his pleasure of her in the body, though it often ended that way: sometimes he would talk to her about himself , telling her lies about his courage and his cleverness. All that he told her she remembered, so that on other days she could tell it over to him again. Sometimes, even, he would go with her through the wood looking for the sea and the Island, but not often. Meanwhile the year went on and the leaves began the fall in the wood and the skies were more often gray: until now, as I dreamed, John had slept in the wood and he woke up in the wood. The sun was low and a blustering wind was stripping the leaves from the branches. The girl was still there and the appearance of her was hateful to John: and he saw that she knew this and the more she knew it, the more she stared at him, smiling. He looked round and saw how small the wood was after all - a beggarly strip of trees between the road and a field that he knew well. Nowhere in sight was there anything that he liked at all.
'I shall not come back here," said John. 'What I wanted was not here. It wasn't you I wanted , you know.' 'Wasn't it?' said the brown girl 'Then be off. But you must take your family with you.'
With that she put up her hands to her mouth and called. Instantly from behind every tree there slipped out a brown girl: each of them was just like herself:the little wood was full of them.
'What are these?'
'Our daughters,' said she. 'Did you not know you were a father? Did you think I was barren, you fool? And now, children,' she added, turning to the mob,' go with your father.'
C.S.Lewis
The Pilgrim's Regress
V Ichabod
"No Guarantee"
People don't realize that doing what is right is no guarantee against misfortune.
William McFee
William McFee
"Enjoy The Chase. Then Be Content"
An object in possession seldom retains the same charm that it had in pursuit.
Pliny the Younger
Pliny the Younger
"This Moments Obedience"
All the real action in the Christian life takes place on the cellular level of this moment’s obedience to this moment’s call.
Andree Seu
Andree Seu
"Here. Take My Self-Worth"
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt
"Aiding The Enemy"
The haft of the arrow had been feathered with one of the eagle's own plumes. We often give our enemies the means of our own destruction.
Aesop
Aesop
"Enjoying The Better Things"
To really enjoy the better things in life, one must first have experienced the things they are better than.
Oscar Holmolka
Oscar Holmolka
"Our Passions"
It is with our passions as it is with fire and water; they are good servants but bad masters"
Sir Roger L' Estrange
Sir Roger L' Estrange
"The Wise Man Knows"
The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
"True Progress Better Than Longevity"
Now I care far more how humanity lives than how long. Progress, for me, means increasing goodness and happiness of individual lives. For the species, as for each man, mere longevity seems to me a contemptible ideal.
CS Lewis
CS Lewis
"World Peace: A By-Product
It is impossible... not to inquire what our own civilization has been putting first for the last thirty years.
And the answer is plain. It has been putting itself first. To preserve civilization has been the great aim; the collapse of civilization, the great bugbear. Peace, a high standard of life, hygiene, transport, science and amusement - all these, which are what we usually mean by civilization, have been our ends. It will be replied that our concern for civilization is very natural and very necessary at a time when civilization is so imperiled. But how if the shoe is on the other foot? - how if civilization has been imperiled precisely by the fact that we have all made civilization our summum bonum? Perhaps it can't be preserved in that way. Perhaps civilization will never be safe until we care for something else more than we care for it... But while they cared for other things more than for civilization - and they cared at different times for all sorts of things, for the will of God, for glory, for personal honour, for doctrinal purity, for justice - was civilization often in serious danger of disappearing?
CS Lewis
And the answer is plain. It has been putting itself first. To preserve civilization has been the great aim; the collapse of civilization, the great bugbear. Peace, a high standard of life, hygiene, transport, science and amusement - all these, which are what we usually mean by civilization, have been our ends. It will be replied that our concern for civilization is very natural and very necessary at a time when civilization is so imperiled. But how if the shoe is on the other foot? - how if civilization has been imperiled precisely by the fact that we have all made civilization our summum bonum? Perhaps it can't be preserved in that way. Perhaps civilization will never be safe until we care for something else more than we care for it... But while they cared for other things more than for civilization - and they cared at different times for all sorts of things, for the will of God, for glory, for personal honour, for doctrinal purity, for justice - was civilization often in serious danger of disappearing?
CS Lewis
"Prefer The Great"
It is a glorious thing to feel for a moment or two that the whole meaning of the universe is summed up in one woman - glorious so long as other duties and pleasures keep tearing you away from her. But clear the decks and so arrange your life (it is sometimes feasible) that you will have nothing to do but contemplate her, and what happens? Of course this law has been discovered before, but it will stand rediscovery. It may be stated as follows: every preference of a small good to a great, or a partial good to a total good, involves the loss of the small or partial good for which the sacrifice was made.
CS Lewis
CS Lewis
"Looking Beyond Ourselves"
We should, I believe, distrust states of mind which turn our attention upon ourselves. Even at our sins we should look no longer than is necessary to know and to repent them; and our virtues or progress (if any) are certainly dangerous objects of contemplation. When the sun is vertically above a man he casts no shadow: similarly when we have come to the Divine meridian our spiritual shadow (that is, our consciousness of self) will vanish. One will thus in a sense be almost nothing: a room to be filled by God and our blessed fellow creatures, who in their turn are rooms we help to fill.
CS Lewis
CS Lewis
"The Universe Is Relational"
The most profound thing we know about the universe is that it is relational. Before anything existed, there was relationship. One day God, for His own reasons, wanted to share the throbbing, pulsating joy of it beyond the frontiers of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and so created us. And He made us to be like Him. For better, when there is someone near. For worse, when there is not.
Andree Seu
Andree Seu
"With All Your Mind"
Love the Lord with all your mind" is delightful. It gives me permission to fire connections, to put Bible verses together with experience and observations, and to run with it.
Andree Seu
Andree Seu
"The Best Kept Secret"
God's commands turn out to be doorways to intimacy with Him. And the best kept secret about obedience in the face of a hard temptation is that there is a blessing waiting on the other side. Satan doesn't want us to know that. He would prefer the usual succumb-and-repent routine.
Andree Seu
Andree Seu
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
"Making Character"
Character may be manifested in the great moments, but it is made in the small ones.
Phillips Brooks
Phillips Brooks
"Imagine"
Man’s desires are limited by his perceptions; none can desire what he has not perceived.
William Blake
William Blake
"The Faithful Verses The Skeptic"
To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas
"Tremble, For God Is Just"
Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
"Wisdom Surpasses Knowledge"
Never mistake knowledge for wisdom. One helps you make a living; the other helps you make a life.
Sandra Carey
Sandra Carey
"Familiarity = Confidence"
A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
"That Dragon: Jealousy"
Jealousy, that dragon which slays love under the pretense of keeping it alive
Havelock Ellis
Havelock Ellis
"Study Hard, But Above All, Be Great"
The world’s great men have not commonly been scholars, nor great scholars great men.
Oliver W. Holmes
Oliver W. Holmes
Monday, June 22, 2009
Govern Thyself First
He that would govern others, first should be the master of himself.
Philip Massinger
Philip Massinger
"Love Freedom Heartily"
He who would do some great things in this short life must apply himself to work with such a concentration of force as, to idle spectators who live only to amuse themselves, looks like insanity.
Francis Parkman
Francis Parkman
Do Some Great Things
He who would do some great things in this short life must apply himself to work with such a concentration of force as, to idle spectators who live only to amuse themselves, looks like insanity.
Francis Parkman
Francis Parkman
Education: Not Always The Solution
Want of care does us more damage than want of knowledge
Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin
"The Highest Reward"
The highest reward for a person's toil is not what he gets for it, but what he becomes by it.
John Ruskin
John Ruskin
Monday, June 15, 2009
"Know When Help Does Not Help"
The more help a person has in his garden, the less it belongs to him.
William H. Davies
William H. Davies
"A Few Persuasive Words"
It is with words as with sunbeams. The more they are condensed, the deeper they burn.
Robert Southey
Robert Southey
"Opportunity In Disguise"
Opportunities are usually disguised as hard work, so most people don't recognize them.
Esther P. Lederer
Esther P. Lederer
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
"Always Calculate The Real Price"
The real price of everything is the toil and trouble of acquiring it.
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
"What Lies Within"
What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared with what lies within us
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Oliver Wendell Holmes
"Certain Gain"
No gain is so certain as that which proceeds from the economical use of what you already have."
Latin Proverb
Latin Proverb
"Progress = Rejecting Falsehoods"
Very much of what we call the progress of today consists in getting rid of false ideas, false conceptions of things, and in taking a point of view that enables us to see the principles, ideas, and things in right relation to each other.
William Hoard
William Hoard
Friday, June 5, 2009
"As The Flowers Do The Sun"
Keep your face upturned to [God] as the flowers do the sun. Look, and your soul shall live and grow
Hannah Whitall Smith
Hannah Whitall Smith
Sifting Gold From Sand
Perhaps a new wave of plague or persecution is what is needed to sift gold from sand. In that day we shall see “faith” that Paul would think worth writing home about.
Andree Seu
Andree Seu
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
"Accepting And Offering Up The Sufferings Of Love"
We shall draw nearer to God, not by trying to avoid the sufferings inherent in all loves, but by accepting them and offering them to Him; throwing away all defensive armour. If our hearts need to be broken, and if He chooses this as the way in which they should break, so be it.
C.S.Lewis
The Four Loves pp170
C.S.Lewis
The Four Loves pp170
"Eternal Love Embodies Love Himself"
In Heaven I suspect, a love that had never embodied Love Himself would be equally irrelevant. For Nature has passed away. All that is not eternal is eternally out of date.
C.S.Lewis
The Four Loves pp188
C.S.Lewis
The Four Loves pp188
"Dressing Our Souls For The Daylight Of The Next World"
It will be infallible judgment. If it is favourable we shall have no fear, if unfavourable, no hope, that it is wrong. We shall not only believe, we shall know, know beyond doubt in every fibre of our appalled or delighted being, that as the Judge has said, so we are: neither more nor less nor other. We shall perhaps even realize that in some dim fashion we could have known it all along. We shall know and all creation will know too: our ancestors, our parents, our wives or husbands, our children. The unanswerable and (by then) self-evident truth about each will be known to all. I do not find that pictures of physical catastrophe - that sign in the clouds, those heavens rolled up like a scroll - help one so much as the naked idea of Judgment. We cannot always be excited. We can, perhaps, train ourselves to ask more and more often how the thing which we are saying or doing (or failing to do) at each moment will look when the irresistible light streams in upon. it; that light which is so different from the light of this world - and yet, even now, we know just enough of it to take it into account. Women sometimes have the problem of trying to judge by artificial light how a dress will look by daylight. That is very like the problem of all of us: to dress our souls not for the electric lights of the present world but for the daylight of the next. The good dress is the one that will face that light. For that light will last longer.
C.S.Lewis
C.S.Lewis
What God Wants
If God answered all your prayers immediately, you would have yourself a fine prayer-dispenser machine—not a relationship. But God is into relationship, as evidenced by His having been in one for all eternity. Here are a few good things God wants for you in the deserts and ambiguity that stretch between asking and receiving:
* He wants you to have a chance to get to know Him.
* He wants you to have a chance to get to know yourself.
* He wants to expose your idols—and deal with them—in a natural way.
* He wants you to be in the story with Him, co-creating it as an authentic agent and not a puppet.
* He wants you to watch him weave the circumstances of your life into a work of art.
* He wants you to come to the point of surrendering completely.
* He wants you to learn to trust Him.
* He wants you to know what perplexity and the silence of God feel like, so that you can help others who are going through it.
* He wants you to have...joy at the way He finally answers your prayer, rather than the lesser joy of an answer given too soon.
* He wants you to get to see, when you emerge from the desert, that He was there all along.
* He wants you to have a chance to hold on tight to him in the middle of the story, when you see no light—and then He wants to reward you for that...
* He wants to give you a chance to walk by faith and not by sight, not as a mere slogan or abstract doctrine but as an every-moment dance.
* He wants to give you a chance to learn that praying, as Miller writes, is “inseparable from repenting, serving, managing, waiting,” and not an add-on in your life.
* He wants to give you “victory over little pockets of evil,” writes Miller.
* He wants to give you a chance to reject what seem like answers to prayer on a silver platter that have, as Miller writes, “little tests of integrity” attached to them.
He wants relationship. How about you?
Andree Seu/ Paul Miller "A Praying Life"
* He wants you to have a chance to get to know Him.
* He wants you to have a chance to get to know yourself.
* He wants to expose your idols—and deal with them—in a natural way.
* He wants you to be in the story with Him, co-creating it as an authentic agent and not a puppet.
* He wants you to watch him weave the circumstances of your life into a work of art.
* He wants you to come to the point of surrendering completely.
* He wants you to learn to trust Him.
* He wants you to know what perplexity and the silence of God feel like, so that you can help others who are going through it.
* He wants you to have...joy at the way He finally answers your prayer, rather than the lesser joy of an answer given too soon.
* He wants you to get to see, when you emerge from the desert, that He was there all along.
* He wants you to have a chance to hold on tight to him in the middle of the story, when you see no light—and then He wants to reward you for that...
* He wants to give you a chance to walk by faith and not by sight, not as a mere slogan or abstract doctrine but as an every-moment dance.
* He wants to give you a chance to learn that praying, as Miller writes, is “inseparable from repenting, serving, managing, waiting,” and not an add-on in your life.
* He wants to give you “victory over little pockets of evil,” writes Miller.
* He wants to give you a chance to reject what seem like answers to prayer on a silver platter that have, as Miller writes, “little tests of integrity” attached to them.
He wants relationship. How about you?
Andree Seu/ Paul Miller "A Praying Life"
Thank You, God, For The White Water
"Last night I realized that I am the person who eagerly desires a destination and has resisted the means God sends to take me there.
One should expect that at a certain level of training, in whatever discipline, the tests would become more difficult. No one begins white water rafting on a Level 6 course. The able teacher will start the neophyte on a Level 1 river, placid waters with minor ripples. As the student masters first sporadic choppiness and then larger waves, he will be ready for the rapids.
The goal is perfection of skills and the subjugation of the body and mind and will. God leaves no guesswork regarding His goal...“This is the will of God, your sanctification.”
Let us say a person were to pass God’s piddling baby tests...What kinds of tests would follow? How would He ratchet up the course to a level 2, or 3, or 4, or 5?...I looked into the pit of despair and, uncharacteristically, I recognized it for what it was—white water for my training in sanctification."
Andree Seu
One should expect that at a certain level of training, in whatever discipline, the tests would become more difficult. No one begins white water rafting on a Level 6 course. The able teacher will start the neophyte on a Level 1 river, placid waters with minor ripples. As the student masters first sporadic choppiness and then larger waves, he will be ready for the rapids.
The goal is perfection of skills and the subjugation of the body and mind and will. God leaves no guesswork regarding His goal...“This is the will of God, your sanctification.”
Let us say a person were to pass God’s piddling baby tests...What kinds of tests would follow? How would He ratchet up the course to a level 2, or 3, or 4, or 5?...I looked into the pit of despair and, uncharacteristically, I recognized it for what it was—white water for my training in sanctification."
Andree Seu
Eliminating The Foundation = Architectural Destruction
My brother, who lived in France for a quarter century, once told me there is a fancy school for future diplomats in the Paris area where a survey produced the results that many students could not name the three Persons of the Trinity (Joseph, Mary, Jesus?)...I do find it passing strange—and not a little significant—that in the quest to produce well-educated graduates of fine universities, our educators have eliminated from consideration the one book that, more than any other, created Western Civilization.
Andree Seu
Andree Seu
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
"Viewing Media With Deathbed Clarity"
I don’t want to wait until everything is clearer on my deathbed; I would like my deathbed clarity now, when it can still do some good. I expect that one of the things I will regret on that day “when the keepers of the house tremble, and the strong men are bent, and the grinders cease because they are few,” is the movies and TV shows I allow myself to see.
In truth, this allowance has been more drift than philosophy, but to the extent that you can dignify half-conscious notions with the status of convictions, mine have been the following: (1) I am no legalist, and (2) one must be informed about the culture.
The interesting thing about these self-justifications, as I view them at the moment, is that they are nowhere to be found in the Bible. Oh, some crafty person can wrest them out of the Word “by good and necessary consequences,” as they say. I can imagine the texts rustled to the rescue: Galatians will be a rich vein. And Colossians 2:21, where Paul excoriates teachers of “Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch,” who put rule keeping for true piety.
What is unequivocal in the Bible is the command to love God with all your heart. What has no ambiguity is the call to pure eyes that alone will see God. What is not fudgeable is that we are to put God’s word above the word of man.
Evan Thomas went around Wales during the great Revival of 1906 telling folks to “put away everything doubtful in your life.” I like that. You have to think about that one. I sometimes get deathbed inklings. I feel quite sure that when the death dew lies on my brow, I will not think it had been necessary to see a raunchy movie in order to be better informed about the culture.
Andree Seu
In truth, this allowance has been more drift than philosophy, but to the extent that you can dignify half-conscious notions with the status of convictions, mine have been the following: (1) I am no legalist, and (2) one must be informed about the culture.
The interesting thing about these self-justifications, as I view them at the moment, is that they are nowhere to be found in the Bible. Oh, some crafty person can wrest them out of the Word “by good and necessary consequences,” as they say. I can imagine the texts rustled to the rescue: Galatians will be a rich vein. And Colossians 2:21, where Paul excoriates teachers of “Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch,” who put rule keeping for true piety.
What is unequivocal in the Bible is the command to love God with all your heart. What has no ambiguity is the call to pure eyes that alone will see God. What is not fudgeable is that we are to put God’s word above the word of man.
Evan Thomas went around Wales during the great Revival of 1906 telling folks to “put away everything doubtful in your life.” I like that. You have to think about that one. I sometimes get deathbed inklings. I feel quite sure that when the death dew lies on my brow, I will not think it had been necessary to see a raunchy movie in order to be better informed about the culture.
Andree Seu
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
"Striving For Excellence"
Striving for excellence motivates you; striving for perfection is demoralizing.
Harriet Braiker
Harriet Braiker
"Clasping For Things Still Higher"
| As plants take hold not for the sake of staying, but only that they may climb higher, so it is with men. By every part of our nature we clasp things above us, one after another, not for the sake of remaining where we take hold, but that we may go higher. Henry Ward Beecher | |
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"There Is A Time And Season For Every Activity Under Heaven"
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Friday, May 22, 2009
"Retaining No Sourvenirs of Hell"
I do not think that all who choose wrong roads perish; but their rescue consists in being put back on the right road. A wrong sum can be put right: but only by going back till you find the error and working it afresh from that point, never by simply going on. Evil can be undone, but it cannot 'develop' into good. Time does not heal it. The spell must be unwound, bit by bit, 'with backward mutters of dissevering power' - or else not. It is still 'either-or'. If we insist on keeping Hell (or even earth) we shall not see Heaven: if we accept Heaven we shall not be able to retain even the smallest and most intimate souvenirs of Hell. I believe, to be sure, that any man who reaches Heaven will find that what he abandoned (even in plucking out his right eye) has not been lost: that the kernel of what he was really seeking even in his most depraved wishes will be there, beyond expectation, waiting for him in 'the High Countries'...But what, you ask, of earth?...I think earth, if chosen instead of Heaven, will turn out to have been, all along, only a region in Hell: and earth, if put second to Heaven, to have been from the beginning a part of Heaven itself.
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
"I Will Put My Trust In Him"
"I Will Put My Trust In Him" (Hebrews 2:13)
I have read these words all wrong for years. They are not a pious sentiment; they are the final, exhausted act of will at the end of a grueling fight. They are a white flag waving from the barricades of self-will and striving. They are a victorious shout of defiance against hell’s arrows that would fell him before he reaches the finish line, whether by sweet seductions or by fear or perplexity.
They are spoken by Jesus, the one who after battling the flesh in Gethsemane, after hours of pleading for some other way to accomplish the plan, after coming so close to the edge that He is talking in terms of “my” will and “thy” will as two distinct things, comes to rest in the place we must all come to rest in: “I will put my trust in Him.”
I have read these words all wrong for years. They are not a pious sentiment; they are the final, exhausted act of will at the end of a grueling fight. They are a white flag waving from the barricades of self-will and striving. They are a victorious shout of defiance against hell’s arrows that would fell him before he reaches the finish line, whether by sweet seductions or by fear or perplexity.
They are spoken by Jesus, the one who after battling the flesh in Gethsemane, after hours of pleading for some other way to accomplish the plan, after coming so close to the edge that He is talking in terms of “my” will and “thy” will as two distinct things, comes to rest in the place we must all come to rest in: “I will put my trust in Him.”
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
"God: Outside And Above Time"
Suppose I am writing a novel. I write 'Mary laid down her work; next moment came a knock at the door!' For Mary who has to live in the imaginary time of my story there is no interval between putting down the work and hearing the knock. But I, who am Mary's maker, do not live in that imaginary time at all. Between writing the first half of that sentence and the second, I might sit down for three hours and think steadily about Mary. I could think about Mary as if she were the only character in the book and for as long as I pleased, and the hours I spent in doing so would not appear in Mary's time (the time inside the story)at all...God, I believe, does not live in a Time-series (the real one)at all. His life is not dribbled out moment by moment like ours: with Him it is, so to speak, still 1920 and already 1960. For His life is Himself.
If you picture Time as a straight line along which we have to travel, then you must picture God as the whole page on which the line is drawn. We come to the points of the line one by one: we have to leave A behind before we get to B, and cannot reach C until we leave B behind. God, from about or outside or all round, contains the whole line, and sees it all... what we call "tomorrow" is visible to Him in just the same way as what we call "today." All the days are "Now" for Him. He does not remember you doing things yesterday; He simply sees you doing them, because, though you have lost yesterday. He has not. He does not "foresee" you doing things tomorrow; He simply sees you doing them: because, though tomorrow is not yet there for you, it is for Him.
C.S.Lewis
Mere Christianity pp. 167-168
If you picture Time as a straight line along which we have to travel, then you must picture God as the whole page on which the line is drawn. We come to the points of the line one by one: we have to leave A behind before we get to B, and cannot reach C until we leave B behind. God, from about or outside or all round, contains the whole line, and sees it all... what we call "tomorrow" is visible to Him in just the same way as what we call "today." All the days are "Now" for Him. He does not remember you doing things yesterday; He simply sees you doing them, because, though you have lost yesterday. He has not. He does not "foresee" you doing things tomorrow; He simply sees you doing them: because, though tomorrow is not yet there for you, it is for Him.
C.S.Lewis
Mere Christianity pp. 167-168
Monday, May 18, 2009
"Moving Mountains"
The man who removes a mountain begins by carrying away small stones
Chinese Proverb
Chinese Proverb
"As If You Were The Only Creature"
He who counts the stars and calls them by their names, is in no danger of forgetting His own children! He knows your case as thoroughly as if you were the only creature He ever made, or the only saint He ever loved!
Charles H. Spurgeon
Charles H. Spurgeon
Saturday, May 16, 2009
"Neither Whining Nor Criticism Changes Truth"
Two and two the mathematician continues to make four; in spite of the whine of the amateur for three, or the cry of the critic for five
James McNeill Whistler
James McNeill Whistler
"My Argument Against God Collapsed"
My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show was bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such violent reaction against it? A man feels wet when he falls into water, because man is not a water animal: a fish would not feel wet. Of course I could have given up my idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too--for the argument depended on saying that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my fancies. Thus in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist--in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless -I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality--namely my idea of justice--was full of sense. Consequently atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be a word without meaning.
C.S. Lewis
Mere Christianity pp38-39
C.S. Lewis
Mere Christianity pp38-39
"Restitution Trumps Incarceration"
Where does this idea of incarceration come from?
In the Bible, there are two basic punishments for two basuc types of crimes:
Property crimes are punished by restitution, slavery (until both compensation and punitive damages are paid — the thief pays back what he stole to restore his victim, plus 3 or 5 more as punishment), etc.
Violent crimes are punished like-for-like. E.g., death penalty for murderers, physical punishment for assaults, etc.
This idea of the criminal owing “a debt to society” is thinly-veiled statism....have you ever stopped to consider just how odd it is that, in the false “debt-to-society” paradigm, the debtor is provided for by the entity to whom he ostensibly owes the debt!
The car thief didn’t steal from “society” (i.e., everybody), and “society” (everybody) shouldn’t be taxed to feed, clothe and house him in an environment where he may very well learn nothing more than more skills about the “craft” that put him there in the first place.
No, he stole from the car’s owner. He must work — two or three jobs, if necessary — to a) pay his own rent, groceries and bills, and b) restore the car’s owner (restoration) and c) perhaps to put gas in his car for the next six months (punishment).
Frank A. Golubski
In the Bible, there are two basic punishments for two basuc types of crimes:
Property crimes are punished by restitution, slavery (until both compensation and punitive damages are paid — the thief pays back what he stole to restore his victim, plus 3 or 5 more as punishment), etc.
Violent crimes are punished like-for-like. E.g., death penalty for murderers, physical punishment for assaults, etc.
This idea of the criminal owing “a debt to society” is thinly-veiled statism....have you ever stopped to consider just how odd it is that, in the false “debt-to-society” paradigm, the debtor is provided for by the entity to whom he ostensibly owes the debt!
The car thief didn’t steal from “society” (i.e., everybody), and “society” (everybody) shouldn’t be taxed to feed, clothe and house him in an environment where he may very well learn nothing more than more skills about the “craft” that put him there in the first place.
No, he stole from the car’s owner. He must work — two or three jobs, if necessary — to a) pay his own rent, groceries and bills, and b) restore the car’s owner (restoration) and c) perhaps to put gas in his car for the next six months (punishment).
Frank A. Golubski
"Right Is Right"
Right is right. Even if everyone is against it: and wrong is wrong. Even if everyone is for it.
William Penn
William Penn
"The Kingliest Warrior Born: Your Mother"
Motherhood
The bravest battle that ever was fought!
Shall I tell you where and when?
On the maps of the world you will find it not;
'Twas fought by the mothers of men.
Nay not with the cannon of battle-shot,
With a sword or noble pen;
Nay, not with eloquent words or thought
From mouth of wonderful men!
But deep in a walled-up woman's heart --
Of a woman that would not yield,
But bravely, silently bore her part --
Lo, there is the battlefield!
No marshalling troops, no bivouac song,
No banner to gleam and wave;
But oh! those battles, they last so long --
From babyhood to the grave.
Yet, faithful still as a bridge of stars,
She fights in her walled-up town --
Fights on and on in her endless wars,
Then silent, unseen, goes down.
Oh, ye with banners and battle-shot,
And soldiers to shout and paise!
I tell you the kingliest victories fought
Were fought in those silent ways.
O spotless woman in a world of shame,
With splendid and silent scorn,
Go back to God as white as you came --
The Kingliest warrior born!
Joaquin Miller (1839-1913)
The bravest battle that ever was fought!
Shall I tell you where and when?
On the maps of the world you will find it not;
'Twas fought by the mothers of men.
Nay not with the cannon of battle-shot,
With a sword or noble pen;
Nay, not with eloquent words or thought
From mouth of wonderful men!
But deep in a walled-up woman's heart --
Of a woman that would not yield,
But bravely, silently bore her part --
Lo, there is the battlefield!
No marshalling troops, no bivouac song,
No banner to gleam and wave;
But oh! those battles, they last so long --
From babyhood to the grave.
Yet, faithful still as a bridge of stars,
She fights in her walled-up town --
Fights on and on in her endless wars,
Then silent, unseen, goes down.
Oh, ye with banners and battle-shot,
And soldiers to shout and paise!
I tell you the kingliest victories fought
Were fought in those silent ways.
O spotless woman in a world of shame,
With splendid and silent scorn,
Go back to God as white as you came --
The Kingliest warrior born!
Joaquin Miller (1839-1913)
"Sacrificing The Dispensable To Gain The Indispensable"
He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.
Jim Elliot
Jim Elliot
"When The Dust Clears"
God had a plan to raise up 12 tribes of Israel.
A man named Jacob took to wife Rachel (whom he loved) and Leah (not so much). Leah conceived, and named him Reuben. She interpreted his birth as God’s consolation for her emotional affliction. She conceived again, winning first and second prize. He was called Simeon. Then it was a hat trick, and she named him Levi. Soon the score was four to nothing, Leah: Enter Judah.
All of which produced no end of drama between Leah and barren Rachel. Rachel unsheathed her secret weapon, Bilhah the maid, who was good for two in a row: Dan and Naphtali. The war of the maids was off and running. Leah’s Zilpah gave her mistress Gad and Asher. Leah also purchased Jacob’s services from Rachel with mandrakes: nine months later came Issachar, followed by Zebulun and Dinah. Rachel finally conceived twice, having the last word in the baby wars, with Joseph and Benjamin (Genesis 29-30).
When the dust cleared, there were the 12 tribes of Israel standing all in a row.
A few hundred years later God’s plan hung by a thread. The Benjamites were complicit in the most debauched episode recorded in Scripture (Judges 19). The other 11 tribes, no slouches at debauchery themselves, went out to war against their brother, slaughtering 25,100 of Benjamin’s 26,000 able-bodied men. When they saw what they had done —nearly exterminating one of the 12 tribes of Israel—they wept and prayed, and then they got scheming: They looked around to see who had not shown up for battle, slaughtered them, and thereby scared up 400 virgins for the Benjamite remnant. That wasn’t enough, so they sent the leftover Benjamites to hide in the vineyards at an annual dance in Shiloh, and snatch themselves some women from the dance floor.
So when the dust cleared, there were still 12 tribes of Israel.
We do not recommend as policy jealousy, intrigue, maid-swapping, debauchery, internecine warfare, dance hall high jinks, and other sin. But we are edified that God is adept at throwing all of this into the hopper and, when the dust clears, bringing about his Kingdom.
Andree Seu
A man named Jacob took to wife Rachel (whom he loved) and Leah (not so much). Leah conceived, and named him Reuben. She interpreted his birth as God’s consolation for her emotional affliction. She conceived again, winning first and second prize. He was called Simeon. Then it was a hat trick, and she named him Levi. Soon the score was four to nothing, Leah: Enter Judah.
All of which produced no end of drama between Leah and barren Rachel. Rachel unsheathed her secret weapon, Bilhah the maid, who was good for two in a row: Dan and Naphtali. The war of the maids was off and running. Leah’s Zilpah gave her mistress Gad and Asher. Leah also purchased Jacob’s services from Rachel with mandrakes: nine months later came Issachar, followed by Zebulun and Dinah. Rachel finally conceived twice, having the last word in the baby wars, with Joseph and Benjamin (Genesis 29-30).
When the dust cleared, there were the 12 tribes of Israel standing all in a row.
A few hundred years later God’s plan hung by a thread. The Benjamites were complicit in the most debauched episode recorded in Scripture (Judges 19). The other 11 tribes, no slouches at debauchery themselves, went out to war against their brother, slaughtering 25,100 of Benjamin’s 26,000 able-bodied men. When they saw what they had done —nearly exterminating one of the 12 tribes of Israel—they wept and prayed, and then they got scheming: They looked around to see who had not shown up for battle, slaughtered them, and thereby scared up 400 virgins for the Benjamite remnant. That wasn’t enough, so they sent the leftover Benjamites to hide in the vineyards at an annual dance in Shiloh, and snatch themselves some women from the dance floor.
So when the dust cleared, there were still 12 tribes of Israel.
We do not recommend as policy jealousy, intrigue, maid-swapping, debauchery, internecine warfare, dance hall high jinks, and other sin. But we are edified that God is adept at throwing all of this into the hopper and, when the dust clears, bringing about his Kingdom.
Andree Seu
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