There
once was an old man, crying out to God, “Remove this pest from me!”
And he cried it again, and again—because it was not his pathos that
he saw as pathetic, but himself, his weakness, his frailty, and he
did not want the constant reminder haunting and accusing him.
Many
have argued over the ages about what it was that he found so
embarrassing about himself. There has been no resolution because no
answer is given; the sources do not say. They
do not fret over irrelevancies, but instead, they point us to the
more important things.
The
cry of the human heart is often concerned with the irrelevant while
missing the important. Indeed, it seems our lot in life to be forever
distracted from what should be our most important goal. It matters
not so much who you are, as who you are with. It
matters not so much what is yours as whose you are.
We
are much like the silly house cat that is more concerned with keeping
an annoying fly away from its food bowl than
it is with what’s in the bowl—its
food.
Leave
off the fly and eat your food.
If
you do not, another cat will come along and enjoy the sup without
you.
It
took many years for that old man to finally hear what God was saying,
to finally understand what it was that was to be his goal. But
when he did, oh the change in him! What a marvelous thing to see!
Even the fly stopped buzzing
for the amazement
of it all. Glory in his
frailty?!?!? What new thing was this??? What
was it that God said to him to bring about such bliss? “My
grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in your
frailty!” 1
There
are things I have been discovering these past few weeks when my knees
have seemed so weak. People
have begun to no longer be seeing me as an appendage on a camera.
They have begun to hear my heart and see my song, no longer blind to
what has been there all along.
From
the moment I elected to accept the pain things have begun to change.
For one thing, I have begun
to dream, again. Some time ago an image entered my dreaming mind, and
a voice with it, saying, “Africa: It’s now or never!”
I
began to pray, and to get
others to pray, and later that very same day God answered those
prayers with the words you can find in the hymn, THE
SILENT VOICE,
which is a message of assurance and hope and promise. It
is also a message of instruction on how to hear the voice of the
Lord, and not be distracted by fools and foolishness.
Indeed,
cast your mind upon the opening line: “Have
you ever heard the silent voice to bellow its command?”
The very fact of the question being asked of the hearer assumes that
they have a trove of experience from which to draw in answering the
question being put. In other words, the very fact of the question
assumes that the hearer is able to answer it—indeed, that the
hearer has,
in fact, heard that voice often enough and knows its behavior well
enough that the question can be stated rhetorically.
There
is an intimacy there, an intimacy that will be missed by those
unfamiliar with it. Those
unfamiliar with the intimacy found in that relationship will react
with confusion and pridefulness, perhaps even dismissing it as a
nonsense question. I
have even been asked—by a brother—“How can you hear a silent
voice?”
But
they asked. There was no pride or dismissiveness in their asking;
they simply wanted to know. And as they wanted to know, and are a
child of the King, the King opened their mind to the answer. Opening
their mind to this answer also opened their mind to something that
the voice was trying to tell them, and that changed their message for
the men that evening.
Intimacy.
It
is of such a state that when one small stumbling block is removed,
like a dam burst, it releases a flood of information that is already
organized into a message ready to share.
This
intimacy is a treasure. It is the type of treasure for which the Lord
tells us that a man, on finding it, would hide it back then go and
sell all he has to gain the money to buy the field where he found
it.2
What
would you pay? This old man would suffer pain and anguish and agony
and every sort of trial should it bring this intimacy to him.
And
I—when I decided to accept the pain in my knees, rather than rail
and fight and battle against it, part of me thought I must be mad.
But, also, part of me knew that depending solely on God would draw me
closer to God, and that that closeness, that intimacy, would come
to
be a treasure beyond worth.3
A
long time friend saw this before I did, and yet rejected the feast
they could have also had—and another has come in to take their
place. He came
unto His own and His own received Him not.4
It also says that a native branch has been cut off and a wild branch
grafted in in its place.5
Beware
the intimacy that you reject, for it may never come again,6
and
you may end up bereft without it, for you cannot return to that
place, for another will
have
taken your place. You
will
have become defiled while it is holy.6
One
must repent while repenting is available, and not after it is too
late.
There
is another line to THE SILENT VOICE:
“For Godly are His divine ways, and you don’t understand.” This
is not a rebuke, but a reminder.7
God
is love8
and grace and forgiveness and mercy and light. In
some way His intimacy is available so long as you do not continue to
reject it in this life.9
I
have
chosen intimacy, but intimacy with God is what I choose. There
are many who will reject me, and have rejected me already—some
thinking they already know God—because of this. I understand this
perfectly well, but
understand this: The intimacy I seek is not one they can find; it
must be shown to them by God.
If
He has not shown it to them then they do not know God.
Pray
for me that I would not fall back into the mire of sin. Pray that I
would come to seek and know the grace within; that God would be to me
the seed that flourishes within, and ask that I would come to see the
gift He has for me, that from the sea of sin and doubt I’d be
forever free, that I would come to know Him well in His intimacy.
Be
well, my friends, and seek
God in His intimacy.
1II
Corinthians 12:9
2Matthew
13:44
3See
my hymn, THY SWEAT HEART
for more on this; although consciously, I was seeing a long and dear
friend as the “treasure beyond worth”, and they are, there is a
deeper meaning that begins to show itself.
4John
1:11
5Romans
11
6Deuteronomy
24:1-4
7Isaiah
55:8-9
8I
John 4:8,16
9John
3:19
