Previously I’d written that I felt like Jonah, put into a time of waiting over the past several months.

On and off over the past several years, not just the last several months, I’ve felt like I’ve been in a great fish . . . much of that time was God’s loving discipline to me because of my own sinfulness and impetuousness, impatience, my stubbornness and unwillingness to trust and yield to Him in our last church.

I really do want to give you more of an update what God has been doing, but I have to say it really pales in comparison to His continuing persevering lovingkindness and mercies that followed me ALL the days of life, including all those days when I doubted and despaired, even those days when I questioned and shook my fist and my head at His workings.

I keep finding my heart drawn out in love to God in the past couple days for all He has done in light of the wilderness journey He has had me on for several years. “Drawn out” is the only phrase I have for it. I can’t express it. I never used that word before in regard to my experiential understanding of the love of God for me in Jesus Christ.

I am overwhelmed at God’s continuing goodnesses to me in light of my continuing stubbornness and unbelief, and so I acknowledge here that IN ALL OF THAT TIME IN THE FISH, FOR EVERY MOMENT IN THE FISH WAS FOR MY GOOD AND HIS GLORY!

In my Bible next to Hebrews 11:6, “He is a rewarder to those who diligently seek Him,” a few years back I had written:

This morning I woke up thinking of the time I’d written that, but then I was rebuked and all but shouted out, “No, no! The rewards are NOT bittersweet – the rewards are sweet! Wholly sweet!” As the Psalmist said, God is good and does good! When is there a time that God is not good? When is there a time that God does not do good? Oh, yes, it seemed bittersweet to me at times (it is true that the discipline of the Lord often seems grievous and painful to us, rather than pleasant), and I confess there are times it even in retrospect it still does seem to be, but know this: our God can give His children NOTHING BUT SWEETNESS. Nothing but sweetness! For Jesus Christ IS nothing but sweetness to us! Hallelujah!

I confess there were times I did not sit with great delight in that chastening time in the great fish! I hope and pray that as I am disciplined in the future (for I certainly will be!), that by God’s grace I will be able to sit with great delight there and be able to taste that His fruit is sweet to me even there and be assured that His banner over me continues to be love – from henceforth and forevermore! He has loved His children with an everlasting love! We were loved in Christ Jesus before time began! God’s discipline is not separating us FROM His love, it is drawing us INTO a greater experiential understanding of His love – to eat of His sweet fruit! Hallelujah! I hope and pray all of you who are Christ’s are enabled to come into a greater understanding of God’s love for you through His discipline toward you.

To explain . . .

I’ve written previously (first mentioned at the end of this post and my last update), it seemed a door was opening at our local church last fall regarding women’s ministry, but things haven’t progressed quite as I expected: it hasn’t opened in the time and the way I’d been expecting. . . . A humbling reminder that God is God and I am NOT….

And so, you may ask, why the reference to Jonah?

First off, our pastor has been preaching on Jonah, and as he preached on this verse recently it was a stark reminder to me that I’ve been in a waiting time like Jonah.

Jonah ended up in the great fish because he flat-out disregarded and disobeyed God’s clear command to rise and go to Nineveh. Jonah hightailed it in completely the opposite direction to God’s will – on a ship to Tarshish.

On the other hand, I’ve ended up in this great fish, well, I’m not quite sure why, though I do believe I have been and am still headed in the way of God’s will. No, of course, I’m not saying I’ve done everything perfectly…

But God brings great fish to swallow His people for His purposes. Great fish never swallow us by accident. They are always appointed by the LORD.

So right now I am trying to appreciate the loving hand of my Father’s discipline in bringing me here, and His sovereignty in this time of waiting in the great fish.

God has a reason for this delay, and I don’t pretend to know His plans in all this. He alone knows the end from the beginning.

What I do know . . .

I do know there have been times that I’ve been tempted to move forward and to try to push myself out of the fish’s belly, but His grace has restrained me. Thank God!

I also know there have been times when I’ve been tempted to doubt God’s calling and second-guess things. This has to do with being haunted by my demons of my past sin, past failures, impulsivity and impetuousness, looking back and seeing how things turned out wretchedly in the past, and as a result I’ve been tempted to be paralyzed and shrink back in unbelief and doubt and uncertainty and confusion.

Having learned a little from my past experiences of chastening, I do know that moving ahead of God’s timing, trying to push myself out of that fish’s belly a minute too soon is NEVER a good thing. Too often in the past I have acted out of my own flesh and my own impulsivity, rather than out of His Spirit and His love compelling me. But I also do need to do follow through in obedience to what He is calling me to do, including my time while I am in this fish – in this time of waiting. I can see how some of my past failures have led to some overcompensation now, i.e. – some hesitancy and doubt rising from my flesh, rather than my moving forward in faith as I ought to be doing. I need wisdom to know what is of my flesh and of His Spirit, and would appreciate your prayers for discernment for me in this.

Job 5:17 has been in my thoughts for several days now. Here’s the KJV:

I want to be happy in this fish. I want to be happy in this waiting.

Behold, happy!

Yes, that’s HAPPY. This is really an Old Testament beatitude – for the word “happy” can also be translated “blessed.”

How can this be? How can we be happy when corrected?

Well, basically, if we are the children of God, we should be able to be happy no matter where we are – and not despise it – and that includes every day we sit in the great fish’s belly – every time we are corrected or chastened or being trained in some way – because we have full assurance our God is our loving Father and He is with us there – and in fact, He has superintended all the circumstances that led to us being there (yes, even our sinfulness and stupidity) and all of it is purposed by Him to work for our good and profit and refining and fruitfulness (see Hebrews 12) and that all our trials are ordained only if necessary (I Peter 1).

I do not want to despise this ordained chastening time in this fish. I want to be happy here in the waiting.

I confess I’d become frustrated and grumbling and distressed and hopeless and impatient and doubting and not happy and not joyful here in the belly of this fish, and I knew it. (See my post here.) And I could see that that attitude made me feel even less happy and less joyful, for I knew I had no good excuse to act that way. So I knew I had to once again entrust myself once more to my Father in heaven. He helped me to begin to ask Him for faith and patience and to trust that His loving hand has put me here and He will not leave me here any longer than is necessary.

Now, regarding what I should be doing while I am still in this fish. . .

One thing I’ve been wanting to do for a little while now, and one thing I know I should be doing, is to write out a short description of the vision of the type of group I would like to see at our church (you’ll get a little flavor of that here).

In short, I am seeking others who are concerned about their souls. Psalm 66 is one passage that keeps coming to my mind, particularly verse 16:

I am seeking people who want to speak with others about what God has done for their souls. God’s first concern is our souls, and this must be our first concern as well.

There is no true and living and life-giving Christianity if the soul is left out of the picture. Too much of what masquerades as Christianity today is about any and all things but the soul.

Henry Scougal (1650-1678) called Christianity “the life of God in the soul of man.” We’ve lost that sense too many places. It took me about twenty-five years of being a Christian to begin to understand that. I say begin . . . for I don’t really understand it much – but if we don’t see Christianity as a life, if we don’t see Christianity as a religion of the soul, then we are greatly misguided and being deceived and missing out on the life that Jesus Christ wants to impart to all who believe through His Holy Spirit.

I’m hoping to post more of my thoughts on this, but I’ve not been able to concentrate well enough to get them down in writing, though I have places I’ve scribbled down some things and I have been pondering them in my head for a while now, which leads to a prayer request. I would appreciate prayer so I might have focus to write some of these things down, so I can communicate more effectively the passion and vision God has been putting on my heart with the leadership and others at our church. And please pray that I would be happy as I am corrected by the Lord and not despise His chastening.

I thank God for each of you. Please let me know how I can be praying for you (either in a comment below and/or by private message) – particularly how I might pray for you in your calling to your local church.

May God’s Spirit stir up in His people a relentless passion for the name and renown of Jesus Christ.

Yours in Christ for His glory in the Church,
Karen

If you’ve been reading my other blog, you know that the past couple weeks have been a struggle for me. (Please my posts here, here, here, here and here and here.) I’m not going to recount all that here, but I will say during that time I felt about as pressed and tempted as I have at any time since I’ve been saved, and though not having been afflicted or burdened as much as Paul was, I felt for the first time that I could genuinely relate to Paul’s words in II Corinthians 1:

The week before last I pulsed

Then later that same day I expanded on that request in my post asking a hard thing.

I had seen I was beginning to look to earthly results for my joy and knew I was headed in a very bad direction, very bad.

My face was not radiant because I was not looking to Him. Psalms 34:5: Those who look to him are radiant, and their faces shall never be ashamed. I was looking pretty ugly and feeling joyless.

After that time I attended a conference at which I received a hand-out on evangelism. It broke the process into three phrases: cultivating, sowing and harvesting. This was truly a God-sent blessing as I read this under the description of the sowing phase:

As soon as I read that, I thought something like, “This is me! That is just what I love to do and thrive on!” I’m not saying I haven’t ever been involved in or wouldn’t ever be involved in cultivating the soil (human hearts) or harvesting the crop (the reproduced life of Christ in hearts), but God has given me a passion and love to sow seeds, and more particularly to sow seeds among those who are already in the church to shore them up in their faith, so their faith might grow deeper. (Notice that Paul told Timothy to do the work of an evangelist and yet Timothy was a pastor.)

Since that time I’ve been praying, “If You’ve made me a sower, then I want to be a happy sower! Lord, make me a happy sower!”

A few days after that I was brought down again and had to scratch and claw back and immerse myself in the Word and God’s promises and to remember that I could always trust God as I am faithful to do what He’s called me to do and not to obsess about the harvest or results.

This is a continuing battle but I’d not had such an extended and intense period of struggle and temptation with it since over a year ago, when God brought joy to my soul in a way He’d never done before. I’ve known His joy in increasing measure since that time, and I’ve come to know that no one or nothing compares. No one. Nothing. So this whole thing continue to grieve my soul as it grieved His Spirit, I know.

I am also more convinced than ever that the messages of joy and assurance are so vital to the church since I keep meeting joyless and unassured Christians over and over and over again.

Jesus Christ came that we might have life and have life abundantly. He came that our joy might be full. The Gospel is a message of great joy to all peoples.

There is so much more I’ve been wanting to write about all this. I hope and pray the Lord will give me the opportunity to do so. This is not only a vital message for others, but I have to say that it blesses my soul to write about God’s love and the joy He makes available to all of His children through Christ and it also brings God honor and glory as we remind one another that Christ alone is our true joy and His love for us endures forever and we need not doubt or fear or waver in our faith.  What glory! What other love compares to Him! What other joy compares to Him!

I’ve been reflecting on Isaiah 55 in the past day. I put my iPod touch onto shuffle yesterday and it ended up on a John Piper message Preaching in the Power of the Spirit. It was really excellent and I highly recommend it, but near the end he referenced verses 10 and 11 from Isaiah 55, and since that time I’ve been pondering those (as well as the whole chapter):

Gospel seed is a gift from God. (Thank You, Lord, for every seed You give me!) I am learning to count Him and that seed ever more precious. I can trust God will accomplish His purposes and it will succeed as He wills.

One of God’s purposes is that I steward that seed well and do so with joy. So, as He gives it to me, I want to be a faithful steward and sower of His seed, to persevere in sowing seed with joy for the sake of the elect.

There’s another thing I’ve been pondering. On my post here, David (TravelingStranger) commented, “God bless; keep up the holy work.”

Holy work. Holy work! The Gospel is holy because God is holy. Anytime we proclaim Christ, we are engaged in holy work. What a wonder that God chooses fallible, broken and feeble vessels like us, but we know it is all to bring God maximum glory (I Cor 1, II Cor 4). What a privilege and joy! As soon as I come to my senses and see the holiness of what I’m doing and the preciousness of the seed I’m sowing, I am melted down and can’t help but weep. I love Jesus and despite my recent wandering, I have known Him as my chief joy and my greatest treasure. I rejoice in Him and treasure Him even more today as I’ve seen His love constraining me back into His fold, to feel His embrace, to hear Him rejoicing over me with singing and quieting me with His love.

Throughout the day today I could particularly relate to the apostle Paul’s words:

Realizing the holiness of the task at hand, the awesome responsibility we have, and the hungry souls needing to be fed I was humbled. I knew that in and of myself I could do nothing. That’s a good place to be. And whenever we’re not there we need to ask Him to put us there once again.

As I said, I’ve been pondering Isaiah 55, and there’s more I would like to write on it, though I’ve not really had time to sit with as much as I’d like, except to say I can’t help but look at verses 4 and 5 and 12 and 13 and see how the Church is in dire need of truly knowing the deep joy of our salvation and having full assurance of God’s love for us:

If we continue joyless and unassured in our faith, are any nations really going to run to us? If we aren’t having joy and peace in believing and breaking forth into singing, are any nations going to have joy and peace in believing and break forth into singing? Are they going to have any interest in a God whose people are miserable and whining all the time? Are we going to be making a name for the LORD (other than bringing reproach on His Name )?

However, if we know God and His love in increasing measure so we might be filled with His joy and walk in deeper assurance, in both the dark and cloudy and stormy days as well as in the bright and sunny and calm days, what a witness that will be of God’s everlasting Gospel!

I do appreciate your friendship and your continuing prayers and support as I strive to be a happy sower by the grace of God at work in me.

One more thing I would ask you to pray about is for wisdom and discernment for me regarding my place in my local church. Long story short, it appears God is presenting an opportunity to me to have an impact on the women’s ministry there. I want to walk in obedience to God’s will for me and not to jump ahead of Him in this. I tend to jump ahead rather than waiting on Him. That was something our Father has had to discipline me several times in the past. This time around He gave me grace to be able to wait and pray, and I did not push, but now a door has been opening by His hand. (This is what I was referring to in my post Trust, delight, commit (Psalm 37:3-5) a couple days ago.)

I am also privileged to pray for you, so please feel free to leave requests in the comments below and/or message me.

The Lord has rejoiced my soul and made me glad!
Karen