Psalm 20 was one of my readings this morning (that I actually listened to via online audio bible). I made it my prayer for today—for myself and for many others.

May the Lord answer you in the day of trouble! May the name of the God of Jacob protect you! May he send you help from the sanctuary and give you support . . . ! May he remember all your offerings and regard with favor your . . . sacrifices! Selah.

May he grant you your heart’s desire and fulfill all your plans! May we shout for joy over your salvation, and in the name of our God set up our banners!

May the Lord fulfill all your petitions! Now I know that the Lord saves his anointed; he will answer him from his holy heaven with the saving might of his right hand.

Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God. They collapse and fall, but we rise and stand upright. O Lord, save the king!

May he answer us when we call.

Here is a recent post Scott McKnight wrote in response to a popular book that’s out. I think it’s a GREAT post but you have to read all the way through to the end to get the full picture. Here are some highlight: (I also recommend his book, “The King Jesus Gospel” by Scott McKnight.)

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2012/04/02/the-gospel-of-acceptance/

“Anyone who has to explain why commands are present in the NT has misunderstood something very seriously. The fact is, God speaks from Genesis to Revelation through commands and almost never says “but first you have to understand that this command stuff only works if you are grace-soaked so that you can obey them, and if you are grace-shaped you will do them, and really don’t even need them.” Jesus loads his teachings with commands; Paul loads his moral sections with commands; read 1 John sometime — or read James, which is soaked in commandments.”

“My complaint here is that if one has to justify commands in the Bible, one has made some wrong turns. If commands make you uncomfortable you’ve got something wrong theologically. If you want to say preach only God and God’s grace and never commands… well, then, you’re telling God that he should have done things in another way. Of course, we do these commands of God by God’s grace, but part of God’s grace is revelation — and Torah is part of how God communicates to us.”

“The proper method for defining gospel in the NT is to examine where the NT is defining gospel, not by making our theological center the gospel and explaining our theology as gospel. The place to begin is 1 Corinthians 15:3-5 (3-8, 3-28), the gospeling sermons in Acts, and the Gospels as the gospel. I’m simply not convinced that method will yield Greear’s gospel of acceptance by what God has done and not by our performance. That gospel is more about the Story of Jesus; his gospel is about a theological mechanism in a justification worldview.”

Another great devotion from Oswald Chambers yesterday.

“God makes us pure by an act of His sovereign grace, but we still have something that we must carefully watch.” This goes with a message I heard last week that I think was excellent. Some of my notes from that message include: “Grace is not earned but it DOES work.” Grace is God’s power for purity—Titus 2:11-14. If you have time to listen to the message, the link is here:

http://trinityanglicanmission.org/sites/default/files/sermons/12/03/032012_7_1.mp3

More from Oswald:

“If we want to maintain personal intimacy with the Lord Jesus Christ, it will mean refusing to do or even think certain things. And some things that are acceptable for others will become unacceptable for us.”

To read the rest click here: “Spiritual Vision Through Personal Purity”

Oswald Chambers’ devotion from March 18th was excellent and challenging.

“Am I allowing the mind of Christ to be formed in me? (see Philippians 2:5). Christ never spoke of His right to Himself, but always maintained an inner vigilance to submit His spirit continually to His Father.”

“Is God having His way with me, and are people beginning to see God in my life more and more? Be serious in your commitment to God and gladly leave everything else alone. Literally put God first in your life.”

Full devotion here: http://utmost.org/will-i-bring-myself-up-to-this-level/

Erik and I were also encouraged by a message we heard on Sunday at Trinity Anglican Mission here in Atlanta. It was along the same lines—bringing our God-given, not-bad-in-themselves passions into submission rather than letting them rule us. If you’d like to download it you can “right click” the link below or you can just click to listen on your computer.

http://trinityanglicanmission.org/sites/default/files/sermons/12/03/032012_7_1.mp3

February 17th’s selection in Oswald Chambers’ “My Utmost for His Highest” was excellent. One person I shared it with said she felt that it put everything into perspective for her in regards to her current situation.

I loved this excerpt: “If we were never depressed we should not be alive; it is the nature of a crystal never to be depressed. A human being is capable of depression, otherwise there would be no capacity for exaltation. There are things that are calculated to depress, things that are of the nature of death; and in taking an estimate of yourself, always take into account the capacity for depression.”

There is not a person alive who has not or will not suffer some form of depression or despair. Jesus Himself wept and mourned (He also suffered what some would call a “panic attack” when He sweat blood before going to the cross). For some, depression is a life-long battle that can only be dealt with moment by moment. For others, depression is an unwelcome foe that only occurs occasionally, at a certain time in life, or after a crisis.

It is unfortunate that in this age we feel a need to fix everything. My doctor recently shared with me that there are many people who come into her office after a week of the blues thinking they need medicine to fix their feelings. Why? Because the commercials told them it is possible to feel better. Psychiatric care, medicine, and counseling can offer assistance for those with serious problems but they are not the “quick fix” many hope for. As a matter of fact, there is no “quick fix” for ANY type of depression because depression, like every other physical weakness, is not just mental instability, it’s part of life. It can be numbed, but it can’t be fixed.

Perhaps we need to change our mindset when it comes to depression and anxiety. Instead of denying it or fighting it we should do what we do when we experience any other crisis or sickness: accept our weakness/weak moment, day, month, or year, and embrace the strength of Christ. Sometimes we can do this by just getting up and doing the “next thing” despite our feelings, other times, we accept God’s strength by simply laying down and letting the Holy Spirit minister His peace to us until we are able to get up again.

“The angel did not give Elijah a vision, or explain the Scriptures to him, or do anything remarkable; he told Elijah to do the most ordinary thing, viz., to get up and eat.”

The angel ministered to Elijah by simply giving him what he needed in order to keep going (at the present time what Elijah needed most was sleep). God will be faithful to do this for us, too. He doesn’t always take away our natural feelings (if you have lost a loved one, you know this). But He does enable us to endure them—He endures them with us.

“If we do a thing in order to overcome depression, we deepen the depression; but if the Spirit of God makes us feel intuitively that we must do the thing, and we do it, the depression is gone. Immediately we arise and obey, we enter on a higher plane of life.”

Like anything else in life, if we fight the battle with the weapons of the flesh the end result is more frustration and despair. But if we embrace the love of God and fight in His strength, we will find the power to do the simple things we need to do to keep going until the cloud disappears again.

When I read the Psalms I am comforted, not because they fix my problems, but because they remind me that I am not alone in them. Life is not always beautiful. It can be perplexing and frustrating and ugly.  It is the deepest struggles in our lives that lead us into deeper understanding of our desperate need for God. Our weakness can become our strength when we recognize that when we are at our weakest, we are actually dwelling in strength. “Therefore I am well content with weaknesses . . . with distresses . . . with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong.” 2 Corinthians 12:10

“Depression is apt to turn us away from the ordinary commonplace things of God’s creation, but whenever God comes, the inspiration is to do the most natural simple thing – the things we would never have imagined God was in, and as we do them we find He is there.”

To read the rest of the devotion, please click here:

http://utmost.org/classic/the-initiative-against-depression/

I just finished reading, “A Double Story” by George MacDonald. As usual, MacDonald did a fantastic job of bringing this reader to a deeper understanding of God’s dealings with humanity.

Written in fairytale form (probably published for children), it may not be the first book an adult would pick up to learn about human nature and how to be set free from selfishness and pride. But I would recommend this book to anyone because although it is a simple fairytale it profoundly convicts and challenges the reader. We are all spoiled, rotten children who consider ourselves to be very important, just like the two main characters in this book. We may appear to have dignity but, as this book reveals, we all have childlike delusions about ourselves and our own goodness.

In a nutshell, the moral of the story is that in order to be set free from our wretchedness we must first come to an understanding of it. Most of us do not even realize our actual condition. Once we realize our condition, it takes a while for that to sink in. We often think we are “getting better” when we have not yet begun to realize our desperate need to lean on something other than ourselves to be better.

“People are so ready to think themselves changed when it is only their mood that is changed!”

The princess in the story had to come to the end of her own strength—she became so exhausted trying to change herself.

“I am made horrid, and I shall be horrid, and I hate myself, and yet I can’t help being myself!”

…

“Couldn’t you help me?” said Rosamond piteously.
“Perhaps I could, now you ask me,” answered the wise woman. “When you are ready to try again, we shall see.”
“I am very tired of myself,” said the princess. “But I can’t rest until I try again.”
“That is the only way to get rid of your weary, shadowy self, and find your strong, true self. Come, my child; I will help you all I can, for now I CAN help you.”

Once we begin to be changed (because we realize our need for help from Someone stronger), the change has just begun—it is not complete until we have purity and truth (Christ’s nature) reigning completely in our hearts and lives. Sanctification is a journey—a learning process.

MacDonald also does a great job explaining why so many of us misjudge each other. We’re skeptical of the good until we are made good. Light seems dark to us until we are walking in light.

“But whatever she might have said would have been only perverted by the princess into yet stronger proof of her evil designs, for a fancy in her own head would outweigh any multitude of facts in another’s.”

“For whoever is possessed by a devil, judges with the mind of that devil.”

Perhaps the most powerful message of the book was at the end—it really challenged me.

“You must not think, because you have seen me once, that therefore you are capable of seeing me at all times. No; there are many things in you yet that must be changed before that can be. Now, however, you will seek me. Every time you feel you want me, that is a sign I am wanting you. There are yet many rooms in my house you may have to go through . . . do not think . . . that the things you ahve seen in my house are mere empty shows. You do not know, you cannot yet think, how living and true they are.—Now you must go.” (the wise woman)

“I saw, though it all, what you were going to be. . . but remember you have yet only BEGUN to be what I saw.” (the wise woman)

I recommend this book to EVERYONE. It is very short and you can download it for free on the iPad!

Here are some other quotes:

” . . . they were the same in this, that each cared more for her own fancies and desires than for any thing else in the world.”

“Rosamond then understood that the mere calling herself a princess, without having any thing to show for it, was of no use.”

“There is but one true way, however, of getting out of any position we may be in, and that is, to do the work of it so well that we grow fit for a better.”

“Perhaps you will understand me better if I say it just comes to this, that you must NOT DO what is wrong, however much you are inclined to do it, and you must DO what is right, however much you are disinclined to it.”

And that’s the end of my little book review of “A Double Story” by George MacDonald.

Stephanie

Conversation between the ghost of a painter who just arrived in the land and one of the “solid” people:

“When you painted on earth—at least in your earlier days—it was because you caught glimpses of Heaven in the earthly landscape. The success of your painting was that it enabled others to see the glimpses too. But here you are having the thing itself. It is from here that the messages came. . . “

{To me, this implies two things: being an artist or a musician is a calling. Men and women who have been given the gift of “seeing” the “higher countries” see and hear things others cannot. They enable others to see and hear by painting, writing, singing, or playing music. Most true artists are moved to do so by a desire to capture and share the glimpses of the greater realities. They not only desire to share what they have already seen or heard, but they also desire to see more clearly. Creating is discovering. But this also implies that it is very easy to distort the “glimpses”—to begin sharing, not true realities, but perverted pictures of what paradise looks like. Perhaps this is because humanity is shortsighted. Or maybe it’s because the artist loses touch with reality by focusing on the creative process rather than the creation. The writing process rather than the subject, the paint rather than the painting, the musical notes rather than the song.}

Conversation continued:

“Why, if you are interested in the country only for the sake of painting it, you’ll never learn to see the country.” (Solid Person/Spirit)

“But that’s just how a real artist is interested in the country.” (Ghost of the painter)

“No. You’re forgetting,” said the Spirit. “That was not how you began. Light itself was your first love: you loved to paint only as a means of telling about light.”

“Oh, that’s ages ago,” said the Ghost. “One grows out of that. Of course, you haven’t seen my later works. One becomes more and more interested in paint for its own sake.”

“One does, indeed. I also have had to recover from that. It was all a snare. Ink and catgut and paint were necessary down there, but they are also dangerous stimulants. Every poet and musician and artist, but for Grace, is drawn away from the love of the thing he tells, to love of the telling till, down in Deep Hell, they cannot be interested in God at all but only in what they say about Him. For it doesn’t stop at being interested in paint, you know. They sink lower—becoming interested in their own personalities and then in nothing but their own reputations.”

{I think every artist and musician should read that once a year, at least!}

. . .

“If there is any of that inflammation left it will be cured when you come to the fountain. . . . when you have drunk of it you forget forever all proprietorship in your own works.”

So much to be gleaned from this book. Wanted to share a few things that seemed to go along with the subject of my last BLOG post (“The Path To Joy: Acceptance”).

The excerpts below are taken from a conversation between the main character and the “spirit” of George MacDonald (ironically, my favorite author and the man who Lewis said was his “master”).

MacDonald:

“Son, ye cannot in your present state understand eternity . . . but ye can get some likeness of it if ye say that both good and evil, when they are full grown, become retrospective. . . That is what mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporal suffering, ‘No future bliss can make up for it,’ not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory.”

” . . . what happens to {the Saved} is best described as the opposite of a mirage. What seemed, when they entered it, to be the vale of misery turns out, when they look back, to have been a well; and where present experience saw only salt and deserts, memory truthfully records that the pools were full of water.”

“Heaven is not a state of mind. Heaven is reality itself. All that is fully real is Heavenly. For all that can be shaken will be shaken and only the unshakeable remains.”

———

“But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; for He has prepared a city for them.” Hebrews 11:16

On “The Man Who Was Thursday” by G.K. Chesterton.

I haven’t completely digested this fantastic story yet. I actually think I’d have to read it a dozen times before the main ideas would even begin to settle in to my brain.

Here are some of my initial thoughts:

The book centers around the subject of anarchy. There seem to be two forces at work in the world, the first being Law and the second being anarchy (lawlessness). Those on the side of Law believe there is an order to everything in life. To a person of Law the world is “concrete”; there is a right and a wrong, there is a natural and a spiritual, black and white, etc.

The anarchist lives in an abstract world—there is no “right” or “wrong.” In their opinion, it is impossible to differentiate between reality and fantasy. Everything is “gray.” Anarchists do not want Law and claim they want no leadership. (The interesting thing (something Chesterton points out) is that anarchists always have a leader—usually a very dominate leader to lead them in their fight against leadership.)

People of Law believe in good and evil; people of anarchy believe that the only evil is the belief that there is good and evil.

People of Law seek, for the most part, to protect humanity. Anarchists earnestly desire to annihilate much of it by destroying anyone who clings to a philosophy and theology which contradict their “cause.”

The main characters in this story were passionate men, most on the side of Law (though for a long time they didn’t realize they were on the same side) and their mission in life was to save and defend the essence of Law. Not laws but Law. I found it interesting that the men of Law were extremely concerned with human life. They did everything they could to save the people they knew the anarchists were determined to destroy. Their mission was to defend Law, not for the sake of Law but for the sake of humanity. To them, one human life was important. In contrast, 5,000 human lives meant nothing to the anarchists. They would do anything for their cause—even murder.

The personal philosophies of the men of Law varied according to their life experience and personalities, but their passion was the same. They all desired light (truth) and they not only sought for more of it, they sought to save it.

The anarchists in the story sought to destroy both Law and Religion which they considered to be their “enemy.” There was a lot of interesting dialogue where ideas that are popular even today are mentioned—Nietzsche, etc. {It is important to keep in mind that this novel was written around the same time or a little after WWI. Chesterton observed what was going on in his society and obviously sought to communicate his ideas about it in the best way he knew how: through a novel.}

{As I was reading I remembered that Jesus said that in the last days “lawlessness” (anarchy) will increase. He also said that as a result, “the love of many will grow cold.” The battle is strong!)

More on the men of Law:

Everything they fought to save and defend was brought into question time and time again. As time went on, they each discovered that things were not always as they appeared. What seemed to be evil often ended up being good in disguise (a good reason for us to be very careful about the judgments we make). The “enemy” often ended up the true friend and brother (how short-sighted and blind we often are!). Each man wrestled with fear, perplexity, doubt, temptation, even loneliness, but through it all they showed incredible perseverance. They stayed true to their principles, walked in the light they knew, and thus were given more light. They refused to fight for the “darkness” (or what appeared to be darkness) for even a moment. What faith! (Interesting to note that they were not all religious. They were philosophers and poets who were honestly searching for truth and light.)

This story was intriguing, inspiring, and incredibly thought provoking. It emphasized that there are, indeed, forces of good and evil at work in this world, and that it is the job of every true man or woman to side with Law to fight the evil (Law being light and truth and the protection of human life, not always political leaders).

It also made the point that things are not always as they appear. The battlefield is hazy and confusing and at times it can be difficult to determine who or what is actually the enemy. Perseverance and a love for the truth is key to winning the battle. Even a short-sighted, flawed man or woman will serve a useful purpose in the fight against evil, as long as they stay true to the cause: overcoming that evil (hate, murder, covetousness, etc.)

Some other things I gleaned from the book:

A man must stay true to his principles—even if those principles need to be “refined” so-to-speak. The honest seeker ultimately finds the truth.

Someday everything, even the most confusing things in life, will be explained.

Good wins.

Moving on to another, and to me the most powerful point in the story (there is SO MUCH I could write!):

God is both the God of the light AND of the darkness. The moon is a reflection of the son. There is a purpose for everything—including the gift of free will. “All His works are done in faithfulness.” The struggles of humanity will ultimately result in all of us becoming who we were originally intended to be. The struggle is part of the purpose (Romans 8:18-23—creation is subjected to futility in order that one day they will find freedom)—without struggle we would never completely appreciate good or understand evil. As the first man and woman discovered: sometimes it takes a walk in the dark for one to understand and appreciate the light.

Random things I marked while reading:

“Shall I tell you the secret of the whole world? It is that we have only known the back of the world. We see everything from behind, and it looks brutal. That is not a tree but the back of a tree. That is not a cloud, but the back of a cloud. Cannot you see that everything is stopping and hiding a face? If we could only get round in front.”

“You’ve got that eternal idiotic idea that if anarchy came it would come from the poor. Why should it? The poor have been rebels, but they have never been anarchists; they have more interest than anyone else in there being some decent government. The poor man really has a take in the country. The rich man hasn’t; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all. Aristocrats were always anarchists, as you can see from the barons’ wars.”

“They had all become inured to things going roughly; but things suddenly going smoothly swamped them.”

“It is always the humble man who talks to much; the proud man who watches himself too closely.”

“We say that the most dangerous criminal is the educated criminal.”

“We say that the most dangerous criminal now is the entirely lawless modern philosopher. Compared to him, burglars and bigamists are essentially moral men.

“. . . my heart goes out to them. They accept the essential idea of man; they merely seek it wrongly. Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it. But philosophers dislike property as property; they wish to destroy the very idea of personal possession. Bigamists respect marriage, or they would not go through the highly ceremonial and even ritualistic formality of bigamy. Bu philosophers despise marriage as marriage. Murderers respect human life; they merely wish to attain a greater fullness of human life in themselves by the sacrifice of what seems to them to be lesser lives. But philosophers hate life itself, their own as much as other people’s.”

“The evil philosopher is not trying to alert things, but to annihilate them.”

“There was a second thought that never came to him. It never occurred to him to be spiritually won over to the enemy.”

“When duty and religion are destroyed, it will be by the rich.”

“I have been used so long to uncomfortable adventures that comfortable adventures knock me out.”

Love that last quote…

I highly recommend this book!

S

www.stephaniestaples.com