Over the past couple years, God has on me on a journey to prayer. I described it in this post:

Along with that, I've been seeking out like-minded believers locally with a heart for prayer, and I wrote this challenge to you (and myself) on May 14, 2010:

I know I won't do it justice at all, but a few Scriptures come to mind to describe the work God has been doing as of late:

In His wonderful workings, God has been raising up a handful of like-minded men and women in our local church with a burden to pray.

Another Scripture that has continued to come to mind is Psalm 110:

Yes, the LORD will subdue His enemies, but by His electing and persevering love, He also subdues His friends! Your people will offer themselves freely on the day of your power! God transforms and conforms His children into the image of Christ, so we might walk in the works He's ordained for us. That we might do things we once had no desire at all for! It is God who works in us through His Holy Spirit so we might desire and do His good pleasure, so we might say along with our Lord, "Not my will, but Yours, be done." Through the working of His power, we are made willing to do His will! Paul wrote about that constraining love in II Corinthians 5, God's love compelling and impelling us and pressing in upon us. He changes our desires – and first and foremost God becomes our chief desire, the pearl of great price, the all-surpassing treasure for which we would really sell all. We are His friends if we do what He commands, but His commandments are not burdensome to us for we are given His Spirit – as Augustine wrote, "Give, O Lord, what Thou commandest, and then command what Thou wilt." Amen. Buried with Christ and raised by the power of God to walk in newness of life!

Our flesh does continue to fight God each and every step of the way, there's a constant battle, but in His grace, God's Spirit continues to strive with us. Nothing good dwells in our own flesh. Therefore, left to our own devices and our own abilities, we can't make ourselves willing, we can't make ourselves do anything – no matter how much we might try. We know the many resolutions we've made to do things, and we fail time and time again, but in the day of Christ's resurrection power, God works in us to make us willing! God gives sufficient grace so we might turn away from our selfish, worldly desires and turn to God and bow to Him as Lord, so that the mighty scepter is not an oppressive, heavy burden, not a loveless dictatorship, but a light and easy yoke, a welcome Lordship and absolute sovereign rule. We serve a loving and gracious and wonderful Master! He opens our eyes to see that anytime we revolt and removing ourself from His Kingship and His Kingdom authority and go back to our own way is the way of death, misery, heaviness, and vanity – a trip back to the pig sty –– while in contrast, Christ's way of obedience is the way of life and joy and peace and fruitfulness and fulfillment – truly a feast in our Father's house! All that He has IS ours! First and foremost, all that He is IS ours! Hallelujah!

I keep saying I am delighted at what I'm seeing God doing (and I am trusting this is just the firstfruits we are privileged to be tasting!), but delighted is really an understatement. I'm trying to express that which is all but inexpressible...

I am delighted because...

(I know most of those things do overlap. )

I feel very much in a dream, much like the Psalmist who wrote Psalm 126:

And yet with all I have been seeing as of late, though I am certainly delighted with all of this, as I've reflected on God's goodnesses to our congregation and to me in His workings that have now become evident over the past few weeks (and to note here: His workings at this church which have gone back years  and years before I got there!), nothing at all compares with the delight God Himself brings me! May I never become an adulterer and enjoy God's gifts and enjoy ministry for God more than God Himself!

We are in a spiritual battle. I know the little foxes have been afoot and the lion is prowling; I have felt this keenly over the past couple weeks, but I am trusting that the God who has begun this work in us, the God who has made us willing in the day of His power, will bring it to completion to His praise, honor and glory!

Earlier today on my other site I posted a poem/hymn I wrote, which I titled "Though the waves arose," which I'm going to repost here...

Though the waves arose
The solid Rock remained
The name exalted above
All other gods and names

In Your billows You were concealed
Faithfulness fresh, unfailing love
Grace gushed forth, Your glory revealed
Plenteous downpour from above

Though the waves arose
The solid Rock remained
The name exalted above
All other gods and names

In roaring waves, though anxious and afraid
Having found grace once again I found grace
Clouds unveiled Your shining countenance
Yoked to Christ, hidden in the secret place

Though the waves arose
The solid Rock remained
The name exalted above
All other gods and names

When I was thirsting, weary and faint
Your goodness marched through the wilderness
The earth shook, the heavens dropped rain
At break of dawn showed Your lovely face

Though the waves arose
The solid Rock remained
The name exalted above
All other gods and names

My mind wavered, hence I was puzzled
I yielded to fleshly restlessness
But the Word spoke, the storm was muzzled
Joy and peace flowed, blessed quietness

Though the waves arose
The solid Rock remained
The name exalted above
All other gods and names

Jesus alone thoroughly pleaded my case
Compassed my soul with songs of deliverance
In the flood You were my shield and hiding place
In besieged city showed marvelous kindness

Though the waves arose
The solid Rock remained
The name exalted above
All other gods and names

In and through the journey and all around
The Shepherd preserves and holds me tight
Hesed's footsteps pursue me without a sound
The night becomes day, the darkness light

Though the waves arose
The solid Rock remained
The name exalted above
All other gods and names

Each and ev'ry lamb for whom You bled and died
You will never fail to strengthen and sustain
Your inheritance You cannot cast aside
For the praise and blessing of Your glorious name

Though the waves arose
The solid Rock remained
The name exalted above
All other gods and names

Mark 4:35  On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, “Let us go across to the other side.” 36  And leaving the crowd, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. And other boats were with him. 37  And a great windstorm arose, and the waves were breaking into the boat, so that the boat was already filling. 38  But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion. And they woke him and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” 39  And he awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. 40  He said to them, “Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?” 41  And they were filled with great fear and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even wind and sea obey him?”

Jeremiah 50:33: “Thus says the LORD of hosts: The people of Israel are oppressed, and the people of Judah with them. All who took them captive have held them fast; they refuse to let them go. Their Redeemer is strong; the LORD of hosts is his name. He will surely plead their cause, that he may give rest to the earth, but unrest to the inhabitants of Babylon."

I Chronicles 16:25 For great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised, and he is to be held in awe above all gods.

Now I'd like to give you a little background behind "Though the waves arose."

Last Sunday our pastor announced he was going to be leaving to take another pastorate, and his final Sunday with us will be July 31.

When the words left his lips, I found myself in tears, but soon enough, by the goodness and grace of God, I found the tears slowing as I turned to Isaiah 63 and planted myself right there in the sovereign love and care of God, that no matter my feelings or my perceptions about it, as God leads His people, He is not haphazard or cruel, but His love never fails, and He is always purposeful, always working for the good of His children and always working to make for Himself an everlasting and glorious name.

You may wonder how I got to Isaiah 63...

The day before, I'd read Joseph Hart's hymn "Blessed is the Man that endureth Temptation" and was blessed and encouraged by that, and in particular by the final two lines:

I couldn't remember those exact words on Sunday morning, but I did remember the general idea and I had also been looking at related Scriptures the night before, including that passage in Isaiah 63. (Sunday afternoon I did end up posting the hymn and some associated Scriptures here.) So it was as if God had truly provided me with that extra portion of manna for the Sabbath: in this case the assurance that He would finish what he had begun, though it was up to Him as to what that way would be.

God is certainly choosing a way I wasn't expecting, but He is God and I am not! I am trusting Him to finish what He has begun. I don't know what this will mean for me in particular, but I am asking for God's grace to be patient and wait upon God and to have faith to believe God is leading this congregation (and me) in a way that will make for Himself an everlasting and glorious name, for that's really the bottom line, isn't it?

On Monday morning, I went out to a nearby park to sit and read for a while. Afterwards, I wanted to do some walking, so I took my books/backpack back to my car first. On the way, I became quite sad and overwhelmed once again about our pastor leaving and began questioning a lot of things and crying, but right away it was almost as if God lifted me out of time and reminded me of how He had worked wonderfully in our last church, through some very difficult and trying circumstances to draw me closer to Him and increase my love for Him (see here and here) and how my attitude at that point was mostly one of self-absorption and self-pity (the latter Oswald Chambers said was of the devil).

After I'd taken my books to my car, I got a sermon cued up on my iPod and then began walking. I'd not walked very far, and then I heard someone call my name. It was a Christian sister whom I'd not seen in several years... and to add to this – she now lives several hundred miles away (almost a five hour drive) in another state! She was visiting in town and was out walking with another believer. After I shared with them about our pastor leaving, we all prayed together. It was truly a sweet and a wonderful evidence of God's providential care in the storm!

So that gives you some sense as to why I wrote what I did today regarding Christ being that solid Rock in the storm and waves.

God always provides His people with all we need for the journey, and I wanted to give Him thanks and praise for the precious manna He has been providing for me before, during and since Sunday morning, the time the storm hit.

In my last update, after giving some excerpts from the story of William Carey, I wrote that

In spite of what's happening with our pastor and our church, I do not want to be dissuaded, I wish to continue undaunted in the work God has for me to do. I am praying God would strengthen me to do so.

As you are led, I would appreciate your praying not only for me but also for our congregation, that we would be filled with God's wisdom as we go about calling our next pastor and we would be knit together in God's Spirit and be of one heart and mind.

I'll close with a little more from Hart's hymn, which makes for a fitting prayer:

 
As I've written previously (see here and here), I've landed in Psalm 84 (my references here are to the NKJV, I know the phrasing in other versions is a bit different) and have been trying to prepare some lessons from that for a women's group at our church, but it's been going a bit slowly. For one reason, almost every day, I keep finding more that applies to the Psalm since it deals with such large themes in the Christian life. I'm really only through the first four verses (more or less), and though the pace has been a bit frustrating at times, I am absolutely loving digging into the Psalm!

I keep saying I could pretty much answer anyone's concerns about the Christian life from this Psalm. Well, perhaps not quite, but these twelve verses of Scripture do cover a pretty wide range of territory and touch on some really meaty themes.

Off my head, here's a little summary...

First off, an overview of the whole Psalm - the Christian life as pilgrimage. This is key. As soon as we miss this, we may as well say we've not really begun and we're going to fall. We've got to keep our heart on pilgrimage (v. 5) and our eyes fixed on Jesus and on things above, like the men and women of faith in Hebrews 11. We're not going to finish with the race with joy if we're not looking at the big picture and looking to the final destination. And so, Lesson 1: The Christian Life as a Pilgrimage.

And then in verse 1 we read the Psalmist proclaiming the LOVELINESS of God's tabernacles and then moves into the courts of the LORD and finally the psalmist Himself says his heart and flesh are crying out for the living God. In other words, the psalmist has come to see God Himself as altogether lovely. Lesson 2: The LOVELINESS of Christ. Do we see God in the ways the Psalmist does? Do we have that overriding passion to be with Him? Do we know a sense of God's loveliness, like the Shulamite woman in the Song of Solomon, or like Jonathan Edwards described: we can know the concept that honey is sweet, but have we TASTED it – to know it IS sweet indeed?!

Then we have the Psalmist referring to God at the end of verse 2 as the LIVING GOD. How many years of being a Christian did I really have any sense of "the LIFE of God in the soul of man" (using Henry Scougal's words there, his book with the same title)? A whole host of things on what it means our God is a living God, e.g. - our relationship to Him, our communion with Him, His desire to communicate to us, His life in us to help us to live sanctified lives, to be holy as He is holy, etc. That's Lesson 3: The LIVING God.

As you know, I love books and one set of books I've stumbled onto (thank you, google books) is Joseph Addison Alexander's Psalms Translated and Explained (Vol. 1 (Ps 1-50), Vol. 2 (Ps 51-99), Vol. 3 (Ps 101-150) This is not really a commentary but an amplification of the Hebrew, and I've loved reading through Alexander on just a few of the Psalms. I don't know about you, but when I read there are always a few choice words, phrases or sentences that keep at you, things that just won't leave you alone and you carry with you. For me, there are Alexander's words about the living God (re: Psalm 84:2 - "My heart and my flesh cry out for the living God."): "The Living God, really existing, and the giver of life to others." Really existing! Do we live our lives like He's really existing? How do our churches show He's really existing? Do we understand He alone is the giver of life to others? What are we doing with the life He's given us? And so on.

Then verses 3 and 4 of Psalm 84 teach us of the full assurance of our salvation in Jesus Christ and the ongoing rest available to us as Christians, something I keep seeing people missing out on. We see there the wonderful picture of the sparrow finding a home and the swallow a nest. O, by grace through faith, if we are Christ's, we are already safe in the nest, we have found that home in the bosom of the Beloved! This is the lesson I've been working on lately: our peace with God - our justification, no fear in judgment, no condemnation in Christ, our standing as accepted in the Beloved, and then our ongoing peace in Christ - assurance of our sanctification and our trust in His sovereignty at all times and in all circumstances ~ Philippians 4, that nothing can separate us from His love (end of Romans 8), the joy and peace the God of hope wants us to have in believing. Also, that picture of the swallow laying her young in the nest reflects the assurance that we can cast our cares on God, for He cares for us, and so all our requests, all our "young," we can trust Him with absolutely each and every one of them. As we find that Sabbath Rest in Jesus Christ, and as we rest in that rest, in His yoke, how can we not be blessed and praising our God (v. 4)! God doesn't want His children to be miserable, He wants us to be blessed with such assurance, and then as we are blessed we will praise Him! Our blessing is for His blessing and the blessing of others. So, that would be a couple lessons on the God of REST and PEACE.

I struggled with assurance years after I was saved, as I came to see my total depravity and was plagued by my sins, guilt and failures. No, I didn't think I would lose my salvation, but I had no real and true sense of Christ's peace or rest as I kept churning around my sins and failures over and over and over again. That's one reason I've written so much about assurance & fighting for joy on my other site. The other reason, as I already alluded to, is that I keep finding people who are struggling with having a settled assurance of God's love, and, as a result, they lack any sense of His peace and rest. So the topic continues to hit home with me over and over again.

That's about as far as I've gotten in my preparations, though I've been dipping ahead into the following verses about God as our strength, and going from strength to strength, verses I've loved for a while now.

As far as the study and the preparations are concerned, I'd appreciate your prayers for focus, since I've usually got a lot of thoughts in my head constantly about a lot of things! Our elders have been absolutely lovely about it, and our pastor so encouraging; I spoke with him a little over a week ago. I have three outlines pretty done and am almost finished with the fourth. And then we'll see how it all unfolds. Please pray for God to put it into the heart of the women whom He is calling to delve into the living reality of Christ to come to the study. And, as always happens, when you do preparation like this, you are more blessed than you can imagine you would be, which is the case with me, in spite of the frustrations, the slow pace and so forth. I feel it a great blessing and privilege to know God and then to be able to study His Word and be allowed to speak of Him and write of Him is icing on the cake, so to speak!

In addition to the Bible, I always have a small passel of books I'm dipping into. (Small passel - oxymoron, right? )

I've read through Daniel Webber's "William Carey and the Missionary Journey" (Banner of Truth Trust) a couple times. (I posted it on it recently on my other site here.) It's a short book (116 pages), so that's not saying very much that I read it through a couple times.

As I mentioned those words of Alexander that have remained with me, there were some things that Webber wrote about Carey that also continue to stick with me in my heart. Carey had a great God-given passion for missions, which was pretty much non-existent in the evangelical churches of the day, due to hyper-Calvinism.

Here's the account Webber gives of a minister's meeting in Northampton (England) in 1786 (p. 15);

And then Webber continues to describe Carey, the "passionate advocate of world mission":

And later (p. 45) Webber adds that

The portions I continue to come back to are "discouraged but not dissuaded," "preached about it to his little flock," "the indifference of others around him did not stop Carey from seeking to rouse the apathetic," and "a wild and impracticable scheme, but he continued undaunted."

I run into discouragement regularly, it's one of my worst enemies – and I'll add it's mostly discouragement from my own flesh, and yet I'm not dissuaded or daunted in the end. I keep coming back. I know that's by the grace of God alone. I would have quit long ago, but by God's mercies to me. As Lloyd-Jones once said, "I would have been dead long ago if I had depended upon men for encouragement." That's exactly it! Though other people can be an encouragement to us at times, our ultimate sustenance comes from God alone. We've got to go back to The Vine.

I'm no pastor, and I don't preach in that sense, but I'm part of a little flock of people God has brought together who have a passion to see the Church revived and return to reclaim her birthright as children of God. Therefore, whomever God gives ears to hear or or eyes to read, Lord willing and by His strengthening, I'll keep speaking and writing. The concept that God might bring something good out of this Nazareth, this blogging community is certainly a wild and impracticable scheme, wouldn't you say? But isn't that just how God operates – delighting to use the foolish, weak and base things of the world time and time again to spark revival in the Church, all so He alone might receive all the praise, honor and glory! Hallelujah! He reigns. Our God is in the heavens. He does all He pleases!

I'm no William Carey by any means, and at this point I have no calling to world missions directly, but rather in some sense to rouse the apathetic in the lukewarm Church to the reality of that lovely and living God I described above, to help others begin to see the all-surpassing excellencies of Christ. On my other blog and in my conversations with people, I keep speaking about the abundant life Christ wants us to have. I do this because when you begin to get a taste of the loveliness and life of God, just a drop of that Living Water or a morsel of the True Bread, you won't remain the same, and you can't remain apathetic about God's glory and God's Gospel and the condition of God's Church and world missions. I've come to see this living reality of Jesus Christ as true wellspring of evangelism. A revived Church will want to give out God's Word. They won't have to be manipulated by men to go out or have to be put on a guilt trip to evangelize, the Spirit will do His work in God's people and give them the overwhelming desire to make Christ known as they come to know Him as their all-satisfying portion and great reward. This has been part of my journey over the past few years. I was seeking assurance of forgiveness because I was absolutely miserable and ineffective and paralyzed in so many ways. Little did I know where that journey would lead! Now I am seeking revival in the Church. I had no real interest in it, though I knew there was something not right about the Church, but didn't have the right way to understand it, so I started dabbling in emergent/missional theology, but then, thank God, I landed straight into Reformed doctrine, primarily through Lloyd-Jones' commentary on First John "Life in Christ." I had no real interest in evangelism or world mission, and now I'm finally beginning to. Yes, I confess just beginning. But, as Jesus said in John 7, if we are thirsty and we come to Him and drink of Him, the streams will flow. As you begin to know, to experientially know, that loveliness and life of God, you can't help but want others to know of it – of Him – the God who is altogether lovely, the living God! Come and see! Taste and see the Lord is good! The Spirit and the bride say, "Come, all who are thirsty!"

For those of you who don't know, besides my naphtali_deer site, I have a site devoted to revival prayer, tent_of_meeting. If you are burdened over the condition of the Church today, I invite you to visit there. I don't post there as much as I used to, but I still do on occasion. God's means of reviving the Church have always been through prayer and the ministry of the Word. (You can read more about my passion, vision and holy ambition here, here, here and here.)

Thank you for reading and for your friendship and prayers. My desire is that God might use my words to encourage those of you who are Christians and spur you on to serve in the Body of Christ, and particularly in your local congregation, or in missions, wherever God may be leading you. If there's any way I can assist you, please comment below and/or message me.

Yours in Christ's love, for His glory in the Church,
Karen

Habakkuk 2:14.