The Desires of My Heart

Delight yourself in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart.

Psalm 37:4

Once I thought that this meant if only I could try to love God more than anything else, He would give me the things I longed for.

But I was wrong.

I have found that really, as I see more of God and know Him better, I cannot help but delight in Him. And as I delight in Him, He gives me desires that are in line with His Kindgom.

The desires are His; I just share them with Him.

If I could tell you one thing...

The greatest reality in my life is that I am deeply loved by Jesus.

Each day I have an increasing awareness and comprehension of this Love: it is inexpressible joy, perfect peace, freedom from fear. It is the thread that runs through my whole life.

I do not deserve this Love, and I have not earned it. Following Jesus has never been about rules and restrictions; it has never been about me. It is about Love that was proven thousands of years ago and is still strong today. I am only an arrow pointing to that Love that is so much greater than me.

Celebration!!

The chief end and duty of man is to love God and to enjoy Him forever.

-The Westminster Catechism

Celebration is at the heart of the way of Christ.

Freedom from anxiety and care forms the basis for celebration. Because we know He cares for us we can cast all our care upon Him. God has turned our mourning into dancing!

Celebration is central to all the spiritual disciplines. Without a joyful spirit of festivity, the discipline becomes dull, death-breathing tools in the hands of modern Pharisees. Every discipline should be characterized by carefree gaiety and a sense of thanksgiving. Joy is the end result of the spiritual disciplines having functioned in our lives.

In the spiritual life only one thing will produce genuine joy, and that is obedience. Joy is found in obedience. When the power that is in Jesus reaches in to our work and play and redeems them, there will be joy where there once was mourning. Celebration comes when the normal ventures of life are redeemed.

God's normal means of bringing His joy is by redeeming and sanctifying the ordinary junctures of human life.

The spirit of celebration will not be in us until we have learnt to be "careful for nothing". And we will never have a carefree indifference to things until we totally trust God.

God has established a created order full of excellent and good things, and it follows naturally that if we think on those things we will be happy. This is God's appointed way to joy. If we think we will have joy only by praying and singing psalms, we will be disillusioned. But if we fill our lives with simple good things and constantly thank God for them, we will know joy. And what about our problems? When we determine to dwell on the good and excellent things in life, our lives will be so full of those things that they will tend to swallow our problems.

Far and away the most important benefit of celebration is that is saves us from taking ourselves too seriously. It can be an effective antidote for the periodic sense of sadness that can restrict and suppress the heart. And it gives us perspective. Finally, it begets joy.

We can do some specific thins to cultivate the art of celebration. One is to accent the creative gifts of fantasy and imagination. There was a time when visionaries were canonized and mystics were admired. Now, they are studies, smiled at, perhaps even committed. All in all, fantasy is viewed with distrust in our time. But we who follow Christ can risk going against the tide. Let us with abandon relish the fantasy games of children. Let's see visions and dream dreams. Let's play, sing, laugh. The imagination can release a flood of creative ideas, and exercising our imagination can be lots of fun. Only those who are insecure about their own maturity will fear such a delightful form of celebration.

We can take advantage of the festivals of our culture and really celebrate. We can create festivals of our own, specific to our family.

Guidance

There is a corporate aspect to guidance. We don't often think about how God leads through His people, the body of Christ.

We would be well advised to encourage groups of people who are willing to fast, pray and worship together until they have discerned the mind of the Lord and hear His call.

The Spirit can lead contrary to the available facts or in accord with them. He will implant a spirit of unity when the right path has been chosen and trouble us with relentlessness when we have not heard Him correctly. Unity rather than majority rule is the principle for corporate guidance. Spirit-given unity goes beyond mere agreement.

If you cannot listen to your brother, you cannot listen to the Holy Spirit.

Women and the Church

A look at 1 Timothy 2:11-12.

A woman should learn in quietness and full submission.
I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet.

Context

Ephesus was the epitome of feminine supremacy in religion! For example, the shrine to Artemis, the great fertility goddess was there. She was worshipped as the source of life. There was confusion about the creation story in Genesis, with Eve being viewed as the liberator of the human race and God as a kind of evil dictator who was trying to keep knowledge from humans. So, the church in Ephesus has some confusion about the role of women in the church and especially harsh rules were needed!

Keywords

hesychia is translated as "quiet" in the passage above. The meaning of the word is probably more akin to "a tranquility and quietness arising from within". It is helpful to see what other passages the word hesychia occurs in:

I urge, then, first of all, that petitions, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for all people— for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness.

1 Timothy 2:1-2

We hear that some among you are idle and disruptive. They are not busy; they are busybodies. Such people we command and urge in the Lord Jesus Christ to settle down and earn the food they eat.

2 Thessalonians 3:11-12

authentein is translated as "to assume authority over" in the passage. There are many other Greek words translated to mean authority in the Bible, but this is the only time this one is used! So, it is necessary to look outside of the Bible at other literature to find the meaning. It has a wide range of uses, including:

1. to begin something, to be primarily responsible for an action or condition
2. to rule, to dominate
3. to usurp power or rights from another
4. to claim ownership, sovereignty or authorship

Grammar

The grammar of v12 suggests that authentein has been used to explain the KIND of teaching that a woman should not be giving. If that is the case, the alternative translations would be:

"I do not permit a woman to teach or represent herself as originator (or source) of man, but she is to be peaceable."

Worship

To worship is to experience reality, to touch Life. It is to know, to feel, to experience the resurrected Christ in the midst of the gathered community. It is a breaking in to the Shekinah of God, or better yet, being invaded by the Shekinah of God.

Worship is human response to Divine initiative.

To think rightly about God is in an important sense to have everything right. To think wrongly about God is in an important sense to have everything wrong. We desperately need to see who God is.

If the Lord is to be Lord, worship must have priority in our lives. The divine priority is worship first, service second.

We need to have holy expectancy when we come to worship.

All thought and conversation throughout the day can be with God.

I cannot imagine how religious persons can live satisfied without the presence of God.

Brother Lawrence

We are to live in a perpetual inward listening silence so that our words and actions have their source in God.

Often we have forgotten that worship should include the body as well as the mind and spirit. The Bible describes worship in physical terms. The root meaning from the Hebrew word we translate as worship means 'to prostrate'.

Confession

We need to confess our sins to God, but we also have the authority of God to proclaim His forgivenss. We ought to use this gift as we confess our sins to each other, too!

Confession is such a difficult discipline for us partly because we view the believing community as a fellowship of saints before we see it as a fellowship of sinners.

God has given us our brothers and sisters to stand in Christ's stead and make God's prescence and forgiveness real to us.

Today we take far too lightly our offenses to the love of God. If we had only a tinge of the sense of revulsion that God feels toward sin, we would be moved to holier living.

"For a good confession, three things are necessary: an examination of conscience, sorrow, and a determination to avoid sin."

St Luguori

Fear nothing but sin and desire nothing but God.

Anybody who has once been horrified by the dreadfulness of his own sin that nailed Jesus to the Cross will no longer be horrified by even the rankest sin of a brother.

The discipline of confession brings and end to pretense.

Service

Radical self-denial gives the feel of adventure. But in service, we are banished to the mundane, the ordinary, the trivial.

Self-righteous service:

- comes through human effort.
- is impressed with the big deal.
- requires external rewards; needs to know that people see and appreciate the effort.
- is highly concerned about results.
- picks and chooses whom to serve.
- is affected by moods and whims.
- is temporary.
- is without sensitivity.
- fractures community; centres on the glorification of the individual, puts others in our debt, is destructive and manipulative.

True service:

- comes from a relationship with God; we serve out of whispered promptings and divine urgings.
- finds it almost impossible to distinguish the small from the large service.
- rests contented in hiddenness.
- is free of the need to calculate results.
- is indiscriminate in its ministry.
- ministers simply and faithfully because there is need.
- is a lifestyle.
- can withhold the service as freely as perform it; can listen with tenderness and patience before acting.
- builds community.

More than any other single way, the grace of humility is worked into our lives through the discipline of service. We feel a new spirit of identification with the 'outcasts' and the 'broken'.

When we choose to SERVE, we are still in charge. We can decide whom we will serve and when we will serve. But when we choose to be a SERVANT, we give up the right to be in charge. There is great freedom in this. If all of our serving is before others, we will be shallow people indeed.

It is an act of submission and service to allow others to serve us. We graciously receive the service rendered, never feeling we must repay it.

Submission

It has been abused! The purpose of the discplines is freedom, and our aim is that freedom, not the discipline itself. The moment the discpline becomes our central focus, we will turn it into law and loose the freedom that should come with it.

Submission is freeing! If only we could see that most things in life are not major issues, then we could hold them more lightly. Usually the best way to handle most matters of submission is to say nothing. There is a need for an all-encompassing spirit of grace beyond any kind of language or action.

The Biblical teaching on submission focuses primarily on the spirit with which we view other people. Jesus' teaching on self-denial is the only thing that will genuinley bring self-fulfillment and self-actualization.

"To have no opinion of oursevles, and to think always well and highly of others, is great wisdom and perfection."

Kempis

Jesus lived a cross-life in submission to his fellow human beings. He was the servant of all. If anything, the sting on the teaching on submission falls on the dominant partner- it is not at all repressive to the submissive!

Spiritual authority is marked by compassion and power. Revolutionary submission would command us to live in submission to human authority until it becomes destructive.

Solitude

We are afraid of loneliness and we assume solitude is the same thing: it is not. The Word cannot resound in our noisy, crowded, everyday lives because there is not enough silence. Loneliness is inner emptiness, but solitude is inner fulfillment. Jesus went regularly to seek out solitary places: so should we! We must seek out the retreating stillness of solitude if we want to be with others meaningfully. We need community AND solitude.

Solitude is not defined by silence, but it always involved the act of listening.

It is easier to be silent altogether than to speak with moderation! We are so often found speaking when we do not need to. There is a profound tendency to use words to justify ourselves. We constantly speak because we are in a constant process of adjusting our public image: we fear so deeply what others will think of us that we talk. We also rely on words to control other people. Silence releases us into the freedom to let our justification rest entirely with God.

Silence and solitude are characteristic of the 'Dark Night of the Soul'. They draw us away from distractions, strip us of overdependednce on the emotional life and let us see God.

How do we find this solitude?
- Take advantage of the little solitudes that fill a day.
- Experiment with doing deeds with no words of explanation.
- Discipline yourself so your words are few and full.
- Take time out regularly (4 times per year?) to spend a few hours in silence, thinking about your path.

The fruit of solitude is increased sensitivity to and compassion for ohers. There comes a new freedom to be with people. There is a new attentiveness to their needs, new responsiveness to their hurts.

"Silence and solitude teach me to love my brothers for what they are, not what they say."

Merton

Simplicity

It's a gift to be simple, it's a gift to be free. Simplicity is an inward discipline that should result in an outward lifestyle; otherwise it just becomes legalism. It ought to be liberating to us! We crave things we neither need nor enjoy. We insist on possessing everything. We call covetousness, ambition; hoarding, prudence; greed, iondustry.

BUT simplicity is not the same as asceticism. Creation is good and is supposed to be enjoyed! Both asceticism and materialism lead to idolatory. Simplicity becomes idolatory when it takes precedence over seeking the kingdom. If you are not seeking the Kingdom first, you are not seeking it at all. Freedom from anxiety is the inward evidence that you are seeking the Kingdom.

3 inner attitudes:
- What we have, we receive as a gift.
- What we have, we entrust to God to care for.
- What we have, we make available to others.

10 principles for the outward expression of simplicity:
1. Buy things for usefulness, not status.
2. Reject anything that is producing addiction in you.
3. Develop a habit of giving things away.
4. Reufuse to be propagandized by the custodians of modern society.
5. Learn to enjoy things without owning them.
6. Develop a deeper appreciation for creation.
7. Look with healthy skepticism on all 'buy now, pay later' schemes.
8. Obey Jesus' instructions about plain and honest speech.
9. Reject anything that will breed the oppression of others.
10. Shun whatever would distract you from your main goal.

To seek first His Kingdom and understand all that implies is to live in simplicity.

Study

God is about the business of transformation: of the WHOLE person, including the mind. Experience alone is not enough to transform us. Our minds also need renewing. We need to understand.

Study is hard: it requires careful thinking, concentration and a singleness of mind. Ingrained habits of thought WILL become a reality to us. This is why repitition is so powerful.

Study is different to meditation: analytical as opposed to devotional. Study can be of verbal sources (books and lectures) or non-verbal sources (nature, events and people).

4 types of study:

- Repertition
- Concentration
- Comprehension
- Reflection

Study is NOT the accumulation of knowledge. We need to learn to really read a book: understand, interpret and evaluate it. We ought to read widely and broadly. We ought to discuss what we read. It is not a waste of time! Read whole books of the Bible in one sitting, read Christian classics. Learn from nature. Learn about yourself. Why must we always justify ourselves? Learn about what controls you. Learn about your culture and the things that shape it. Ponder events and ask questions. Study produces joy!

Fasting

So neglected! Jesus assumes we will do it. The purpose is spiritual: not health. Fasting ought to be private. Humility is greatly grown through fasting and it reminds us of what we ought to be pursuing in life. Regular fasting is a good discipline. MOTIVE is very important: fasting must centre on God. Fasting has power to reveal the things that control us. It helps us to keep our balance in life.

Prayer

Prayer is change; of us and of God's plans. We learn to see things from God's point of view when we pray. All of the 'great' Christians have viewed prayer as the most important part of their lives. Prayer ought to be like breathing. We must LEARN to pray- it is gradual.

Jesus prayed confidently, knowing what the will of his Father was. Seek out people who pray and learn from them. Pray with an expectation that change will occur. Use your imagination- eyes of faith. Tune in to God and find out what you should be praying. Meditate before you pray. Ask God for guidance. We need to have COMPASSION for people when we pray for them: do not proceed without it! Love them.

Pray like a child.

Pray even if you don't feel like it. "Show up and shut up!"

Meditation

Richard Foster has written this gem of a book about the classical disciplines of the spiritual life: Celebration of Discipline. I've pulled out some good quotes and summarized a few of the ideas, but they are not particularly coherent.

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Slow down and stop hurrying; busy-ness promotes superficiality.

The world needs deep people.

This is not about emptying your mind, but filling it with truth. Eventually, the inward reality will become evident in our outward word and deep. We need to be constantly reminded that the physical, causal approach our society takes is NOT all there is; the spiritual realm is equally real and important. Meditation reminds us of this.

Being in God's presence is what changes us.

It is best to have a specific time and place for meditation. Close your eyes, meditate on an object, a picture. Use your imagination! Pay attention to your dreams. Release your concerns and fears to God and get some of His perspective. Meditate on scripture or an unfolding scene in your imagination. Meditate on the events of your day.