“I want you always to believe that God is faithful. However dark and mysterious any of his dispensations may appear, still confide in him. He can make you happy when every thing else is taken from you.”

“David had purposed to build God a house, and, in requital, God promises to build him a house, 11. Whatever we do for God, or sincerely design to do though Providence prevents our doing it, we shall in no wise lose our reward.”

Sharing some of my journey from last month . . .

Yesterday afternoon I felt a great confusion and consternation and darkness. I have continued to feel the door not opening, even closing, regarding my hope of a study at our church, and this has been a terrible strain to me… Of course, to my flesh, not pressing on to pursue such a thing makes no sense, and it grated on me, but I knew I had to submit to the will of the Lord in it. To trust HE would make me happy – even if this thing might be taken away from me. I knew for me to press on in the flesh would have been no different than Abram and Sarai making their plans with Hagar! My desire to have a group of women gathered is a good one. My desire to study the Bible and pray with them and speak of the Lord’s work is a good one ~ Malachi 3:16ff. All that said, if it is not God’s time for that, then it is NOT a good thing.  It greatly distressed me and I felt under a cloud, as it were. But one thing I kept holding onto was that God is not the author of confusion, but a God of peace and I knew His ways were perfect and just, but I didn’t FEEL that.

I read some more of Payson last night and was once again reminded (not that I should have needed to be reminded, since I do know better, but I DID need to be reminded! – the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak!) that GOD’s ways are perfect, and that there would be NONE of that perfect peace and NO Sabbath rest – unless I was willing to be all He had for me, that all including my being nothing at all, if that were His will for me.

Edward Payson wrote this about six weeks before his passing:

Of course, I have known this, and once more I was cut to the heart. I had been wondering and been impatient at His leading. And yet, I had no absolutely NO reason to be act that way for I have seen time and again that God’s ways are always best and I have NO cause whatsoever to distrust His love for even a moment.

Anyhow, this morning, I awakened with the chorus to “Trust and Obey” in my mind.

O, I have to tell you that it was KILLING me to put aside my desire for such a group and such a study, but I knew I had to. Though it makes no sense to ME, all I can say in response to the question: “Why do that?” I can only say this:  “I don’t know why. But this I know: the Lord has need of me to do so… Only trust Him… Only trust HIM…”

And then immediately the word came to me, a word that had eluded me, but it came swiftly, without my trying to think of a Scriptural example, but the recollection of Acts 16: it SEEMED GOOD to the disciples to go into Asia, BUT they were forbidden by the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus did not permit them.

Well, I can tell you that right then and there I KNEW I had no choice. It grieved me, but I knew what I had to do. I got my folder with all my papers and notes for the study, and I pulled out some papers that were not just for that study that had gotten mingled in with them, and then I placed the entire folder in the back of the closet. I had no other choice. I laid Isaac on the altar.

Then I pulled out a hymnal and turned to “Trust and Obey” and found this in verse 3:

And then I reread that portion of Acts 16.

I wrote this is my journal:

And then this from Payson:

I wrote: “HE supplies ALL my wants. HE IS MY SUPPLY.”

And then I went back and found these words of Payson and was wholly melted down at it, well, at God’s never failing goodnesses to me in spite of myself!

“He has done NOTHING but heap favors.”

And that became my song! … Well, HE became my song!

O to be nothing, nothing but He wants of me… that is the greatest enjoyment. Why do I fight Him at every turn? To be happy in Jesus is to trust and obey. To trust and obey is to be happy in Jesus. The confusion and clouds are gone. HE HAS DONE NOTHING BUT HEAP FAVORS. How foolish and brutish and vile we are to ever, ever doubt Him, even for a moment!

And then, this from Payson from several years prior (emphasis, mine):

EVERY burden, sorrow, toil, grief, loss, frown, cross – in and through them ALL, He KEEPS scattering blessings to us! How can He refrain from doing so? We are HIS! He is for us!

Can ANYTHING separate us from God’s love for us in Jesus Christ? Can burden or sorrow or toil? Can grief or loss? Can frown or cross? No! Certainly not. HE KEEPS SCATTERING BLESSINGS TO US! HE DOES NOTHING BUT HEAP FAVORS!

“God can sweeten the bitterest cup.”

I began reflecting on this blessing of Jesus, and can we not possibly consider that at least a part of that blessing was the Levitical blessing from Numbers 6, but now imparted to the children of Israel (we are all Israel through Abraham’s seed!) by the Lord Jesus Christ Himself – the God-man, the all-superior great high priest appointed by His Father, the only begotten Son of God, a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek, the priest who ever lives to make intercession, whose priesthood is unchangeable, our Advocate and Mediator!

But yet, we also have such a High Priest who has come to dwell in our hearts by faith so we might know the love of Christ and be filled with all the fullness of God!

And all the while, in even the hardest and hardest and most blustery and rainy providence, even when all is dark, even when He hides His face, HE DOES NOTHING BUT HEAP FAVORS ON THE ELECT!

Thanks be to God for His unspeakable Gift!

I walked in darkness, but I have seen a great light. I dwelt in the shadow of death, and upon me a light has shined!

For with Thee is the fountain of life: in Thy light I have seen light.

His mercies are new every morning! Great is His faithfulness! He is faithful when we are not!

Hallelujah! What a Savior! What a Friend for sinners! Saving, helping, keeping, loving, He is with us to the end!

I’m a child of the King! I’m a child of the King! With Jesus, my Savior, I’m a child of the King!

Oswald Chambers wrote:

As God closed this door, yet another seems to be opened, one which had already been opened, but only due to my stubbornness and blinding pride, I was unable and unwilling to see… I would appreciate your prayers, that I would be made willing clay in our Father’s hands (Isaiah 64:8) and He would make me willing in the day of His power (Psalm 110:3).

Throughout the year ahead and all the days of our lives, may our God give us souls as weaned children, the grace to be trusting, obedient and happy wherever HE places us, to truly know Him and enjoy Him and the favors He continues to heap upon us! We can trust that God always leads us in triumph in Christ WHEREVER He places us! His thoughts and His ways are always higher, always sweeter, always lovelier, always happier, and always fuller than ours! Ephesians 3:20-21.

~ your sister Karen

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Related:

“if I would but cease struggling … I might be happy” (Edward Payson)
Let us therefore strive to enter that rest (Hebrews 3:7-4:13) ~ Sing and rejoice, O daughter of Zion
Lent II.-God’s calling: “As my Father hath sent Me, so send I you.” | Oswald Chambers

All the references from Payson are from the Memoir, Select Thoughts and Sermons of the Late Rev. Edward Payson by Edward Payson (1783-1827) and Asa Cummings with the page numbers in parentheses.

Work found at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Champaigne_shepherd.jpg | {{PD-Art|PD-old-100}}

 
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.

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Thank you for your continued prayers and encouragements. As of late I have found increasing challenges and powerful temptations, including many fears and doubts rising up in my mind in a hellish fashion. I don’t use the word “hellish” flippantly here or in an exaggerated manner. There is a battle going on for my own soul and the souls of men. But God has been faithful to meet me and strengthen me throughout. And so, once again today I am asking Him to supply what I cannot. Without Him we can do nothing. That is just not a nice Bible verse to memorize and regurgitate. It is not a trite cliché. It is the true reality of the Christian life. We have no life apart from Jesus Christ and His all-sufficient supplies.

In God’s wonderful providence, as I’ve been led to focus in on Psalm 84 as a start to our women’s study (please see here for a little more on that), I’ve become even more keenly aware of the struggles we (I!) face on our Christian pilgrimage, as we (I) strive to make our (my) calling and election sure, to press onto the prize of the high calling.

I love the whole Psalm, but here are some of my favorite verses (from the NKJV):

We need to continue to go back to our God – time and again – there is never a time we can stop doing so. That is our blessed privilege and calling as children of God who have been redeemed with the blood of the Lamb. We are wholly dependent on Christ for each and every step of our pilgrimage. After all, this is a spiritual pilgrimage and we are in need of spiritual supplies; earthly supplies simply will not do! They will not get us to the Celestial City! God alone is our strength and our life. He is everlasting strength and everlasting life. Apart from Him, we have no true strength and no true life. We will never be joyful or overflow with living water in the weeping and thirsty Valley of Baca unless we continue to go back to eat and drink of Christ. And if we are not eating and drinking as we ought, if we as Christians are not going from strength to strength, if we are not abiding in Christ, how will the joyless and thirsty souls in the world ever be drawn to Christ? We are sent into the dry and parched world so Christ’s living waters might bubble up from within us and flow out through us.

If we aren’t drinking, how will the rivers flow?

I wrote most of the above post about a week ago, but then put it aside. I “rediscovered” it this morning and noticed how it wonderfully expressed my heart’s cry today. Plus, I was especially excited to see how it flowed from the thoughts I’d posted yesterday on my other site in my post this earthly manna ~ the Christian hedonist’s plea. (I’ll probably repost it there sometime, but I know I’ve been remiss in giving you an update here and wanted to do so…even though I know there’s a pretty big overlap in my readers.) This morning I’d opened Whitefield’s Journals to read a bit and then came across his wonderful words which helped to tie it all together.

May our God keep us hungry and thirsty for Him!

I Samuel 2:5  Those who were full have hired themselves out for bread,
but those who were hungry have ceased to hunger.

Luke 1:53  …he has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent empty away.

Accepted in and fed and filled by the Beloved,
Karen

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Related:

our insufficiency for ministry
“Our bones are dried up, our hope is lost; we are clean cut off.” (Ezekiel 37:11)
a famine of hearing the words of the LORD
Where do you go when the world is unlovely? (Psalm 84 & the theology of Biblical counseling)
the pilgrim’s Assurance ~ His Sovereign pouring | letter 110 on assurance & fighting for joy