Stand

Taking up the armor of God and bearing fruit

Introduction

Could there be two more disparate images of the Christian life than the battle cry to put on the Armor of God in Ephesians 6 and the Fruit of the Spirit listed in Galatians  5? Yet, when the Israelites were living in “the land of milk and honey” promised them by God, they were constantly battling to preserve the fruitful land and the “peace on every side” that would allow them to cultivate it. All through Judges and the books of history: Samuel 1 & 2, 1^st and  2^nd Chronicles and 1 & 2 Kings, battle after battle is recounted, where the people of God won or lost, were victorious or oppressed. There you find David, the Shepherd King, who gave us Psalms rich with the imagery of sheep, trees, and a peaceful, pastoral life of trust and fruitfulness.

            It would seem that having the fruitfulness of our faith requires a readiness for warfare. Joshua, before entering the Promised Land, conferred with the “Commander of the Lord’s Army” to receive his marching orders.   Gideon could not thresh wheat on the threshing floor instead of in the winepress, hidden away, until he grew to the stature of God’s decree, “The Lord is with you, mighty warrior,” and defeated the Midianites. 

                Yet, preparation for the battle comes from growing in the fruitfulness of a God honoring life. David prepared for his role as a warrior in the meadows with the sheep, tending them while singing his heart out to God. His own lineage springs from the story of a fruitful barley harvest that brought two lovers, Boaz and Ruth, together. Their quiet lives, lived after the pattern God established, sowed the seed from which Jesus, our Messiah, would one day spring.

                One night, before I was to attend a Marriage conference with my fiancée, I was in such intestinal distress that I was unable to sleep. So, I sat up in a recliner and watched a video of a powerful worship service recorded in Jerusalem.  This led me into one of the most powerful times of prayer I have ever experienced. In his song, “Dreaming Again,” Wayne Watson said, “If I could see myself through your eyes/ It would be easier to breathe.”  I did not find that to be true.  I had no breath in me to sustain my sobs as God showed me myself, as a beautifully made, finely honed sword, that He had poured all of His love and skill into fashioning.

                Then, God revealed to me that though He had created me as a weapon of warfare, He wanted me to tend the gardens of people’s hearts.   I have always identified greatly with the character of Eowyn in Lord of the Rings.  She speaks of herself as a “Shield maiden of Rohan”, ungentle and eager for battle and deeds of great renown.  She, like myself, fretted over the womanly roles she was cast in and feared spending her life trapped in a cage of other people’s ideals. 

                However, in the end, after a deed of great renown wounds her deeply, she is healed by a gentle love that woos her back to wholeness.  At the end of the book, she declares that she wishes to plant and tend gardens, finding her happiness as the wife of Faramir, and restoring a land that the darkness had devastated. I too long more and more for the day when we will “beat our swords into plowshares” and know the peace and restoration of that final, eternal reign of Jesus, Son of David.

Elijah's challenge at Mt. Carmel stood above religion.

Though the prophets of Baal ritually shed there own blood,

Elijah's altar, drenched in a lavish baptism of water,

Was licked dry by God's unquenchable fire.

Why, then, Elijah, do you tremble in a cave, awaiting wind

When God, your strength, sings over you a gentle song?

I raise to God, my strength, a joyous song.

My soul, weighted down with the demands of religion

Flies unfettered, released to sail the Spirit's wind.

My righteous striving subsumed by the blood

Of Christ. His righteousness a refining fire;

Burning, purifying, soothed by living water.

The public proclamation of water

Baptism floods out in joyful song.

The inner light of Pentecost's fire

Illuminates the shades of religion.

Dried bones revived by sacrificial blood

Breathe in the life of Holy Wind.

We seek for the Spirit's wind

To stir the stagnant waters

Of our souls. Bought by blood,

We still succumb to the siren song

Of false gods and self serving religion.

Lord, rekindle our coals with revival fire.

Flee the wrath to come in Hell's eternal fire.

Hearken to God's call upon the wind.

The time has come to abandon dead religion

And plunge deep into the Spirit stirred water.

Your life has a place within God's song,

Sung for all time by those washed in Christ's blood.

The Gospel road is paved by the blood

Of the martyrs who willingly passed through fire.

Robed in white they sing redemption's song

From beneath the altar. Their voices on the wind

Carry across to us on this side of Jordan's water.

A great cloud of witnesses to the truth of this religion.

In Heaven our song will glory in Christ's blood.

Shedding our religion as we pass through fire

We will dance in a freer wind by streams of living water.

© Mary Elizabeth Whitlow 2011

A couple weeks ago when the weather was warm and beautiful, I took a long walk through the woods, made longer by getting myself thoroughly lost.  While I wandered, God reminded me of a call He has been continually placing on my heart.  

"Take my yoke, for it is easy and my burden is light."  I never want to believe that, being a nose to the grindstone kind of girl with worrywart tendencies.  Yet, He keeps calling me to joy.  What He asks of me is prayer, praise, writing, and pursuing the things that bring me joy; such as creative endeavors, time in nature, and sharing conversation and experiences with those I love. 

So, I have been attempting to focus on these things.  Then, just as I am doing well and starting to experience joy... a filling comes loose in my tooth and it feels like the bottom is falling out of my barely ordered world...our finances get a little out of whack and I harbor thoughts of blame toward my husband, who is more of a spender than I am.  Goodbye joy.  Farewell focus and spontaneous flow of ideas.

I have picked my spot to stand and carved out a space in which to truly live.  Should I be surprised when I get hit with all sorts of things that have always been guaranteed to topple me?  Do I still need to get my tooth filled? Yes.  Do I still need to be as faithful as I can with my finances? Yes.  Do I let this sort of thing control my joy and keep me from pursuing what God Himself has told me repeatedly to pursue?  May it never be!

After all, if I am being pushed from all sides, harried and harassed, doesn't that mean I am doing something right?!  Why is the enemy so afraid of what I might write or pray for or knock loose in the Heavenlies by my praise?  I must have more power and potential than I ever imagined.  "His yoke is light," not just light on my shoulders and heart, but brilliance, like those who live in darkness long to see.

Bread, warm, crusty, nourishing...the staff of life.  So much is evoked by this word, and the reality it stands in for.  Very few homes with the means to buy it are without it.  It is the foundation or compliment of nearly every meal.

"This is my body, broken for you."  The loaf is raised, the matzo is broken, and we take in again the reality of Jesus as our Bread of Life.  He paid the ultimate price so we could have, without price, His sustaining nourishment for our starving souls.

If starving and offered bread, we would take it.  If we had bread, and someone stood before us, ravenous, we would share it.

"This is Christ's body, broken for you."  Take it, share it along with all His people.  There is never a lack.  It keeps being broken and shared out until all are more than satisfied. 

"Come, for all has been made ready."  You are welcome at this feast.  There is a place for you at the table named Whosoever Will.

Yet, the Bread is unopened, unbroken, uneaten, unshared...

The very Words of Life lay neglected or despised.

The Theme for GEMS this year is wisdom.  We are looking into Proverbs a great deal.  This is a book I have not tended to dig into much because it seemed like a big "to do" list, especially Proverbs 31.  I always had the unsettling feeling that I didn't measure up and might just be the fool Solomon the Wise and your mother warned you about.

Wisdom really does not get a lot of press these days.  People are smart or savvy or intelligent, but no one talks much about having wisdom or discernment.  Yet, these things are highly valued by God.

I am feeling right now like I lack wisdom in a lot of areas.  I can't seem to get a handle on finances.  Money just seems to be running through my fingers lately.  So many things I depend on, like cell phones etc.  that cost money to replace, just seem to be self-destructing on me. 

I am stalled in my "career" but have no idea how to move ahead.  I cringe at sending out the resume I have, and I don't seem to have any "feet in the door" anywhere at the moment.  I also don't seem to interview well.  I do seem to make a good impression when I actually am in a situation, substitute teaching or volunteering, but when more long term or permanent opportunities come along I always either miss them or am passed over.

These and other situations seem like sorts of things I "should" be able to work on and "make better."  However, when I try, I just spin my wheels and get more anxious and frustrated.

When I go to God and ask for wisdom, He offers me the wisdom of the branch.  "Abide," He says.  "Rest and remain firmly grafted.  Accept with joy the seasons of your life; spring budding and growing, summer fruit and harvest, then the riotous release of beautifully lifeless leaves to the wind." 

Strange, that they are most beautiful at the moment of their death and separation from the branch that nurtured them.  Yet, it is no use to cling to last year's leaves when spring buds come.

"Except even, the bleakness of winter, stretching bravely toward the sky and accepting the chillingly exquisite burden of snow and ice.  It is a season of resting in the promise of spring to come."

So, I am seeking to relax and let the sap flow from the trunk that is Jesus, let the Wind of the Spirit blow me and my leaves where He will, and dig deep into the sustaining soil of the Word and prayer, so I can wave joyful leaves of verdant life in praise and bear fruit in season.  Silly me to try and bear my own fruit, when I am just a branch.

When I started, several weeks back, to write about creation, I was pondering the darkness of the abyss before God spoke His first word of creation and sent Light to our shrouded world.  I was questioning just how long the darkness lasted, as the Spirit brooded our egg of an earth.  Walking through Holy Week, especially the Maundy Thursday service,  I was struck by Jesus' "descent into darkness" as we celebrated the Service of Shadows.  As Jesus hung on the cross, the world once more plunged into literal and figurative darkness such as had never been seen since creation and will not be again while the earth endures.  The Light was dying, and He cried out to His Father, receiving no answer.  He was left to die in darkness, to be laid behind a stone in silence, while the whole earth waited for the Word of the Lord.  Had He been stilled, once and for all, trampled under our callous feet and hardened hearts?

Then, finally, three days later, the Word burst forth, in glorious light, light enough to shine to the ends of the earth and beyond the end of time as we know it.  Hallelujah!!

I have heard the creation story so many times I have lost the sheer wonder of everything springing from nothing at the WORD of God.  So, I am going all the way back to the dark, watery sphere of earth before....anything we know.  From The Message Bible: First this: God created the Heavens and the Earth-all you see, all you don't see.  Earth was a soup of nothingness, a bottomless emptiness, an inky blackness.  God's Spirit brooded like a bird above the watery abyss. 

Nothingness...darkness, water, emptiness, inky blackness.  I cannot even begin to picture this, because every image I conjure presupposes something.  My concept of nothing is a lack of something, but there is not anything here.  I understand water in relation to its wetness, but there is no one  to feel it.  I know what water looks like based on how light reflects and refracts from it, but there is no light, so the water mirrors the dark around it.  Even saying "inky blackness"  implies an intellect that knows what ink is, and all the language that flows from it.  To say black, you must understand that true black is an absence of color and light.  So, I have no concept of this, no matter how hard I try to wrap my mind around it.

But wait...there is something.  God.  God The Spirit knows that this nothingness, beneath its watery shell, has the potential for life.  Any bird knows an egg from a rock, even if the uninitiated would see them as the same in shape, color, and potential for life.  The Holy Spirit did what any wise "bird" would do when confronted with a seemingly lifeless spheroid, He brooded it.  I do not know how long.  No time length is given between verse 2 and verse 3.  For an unknown time there was only the embryonic earth in its watery shell, suspended in the pitch black nothingness of space with the Holy Spirit patiently brooding it, waiting for signs of life.  How can I help but be amazed at all this incomprehensible nothingness and the bold audacity of God to believe in the possibility of life.  Perhaps the earth was more stone than egg and it would have been pure foolishness for any Being but God to hope for life from it.

It seems that in just about every religion created by people, either in fiction or the real world, any masculine deity has a feminine counterpart.  For every god there must be a goddess to act as counterpoint and consort.  Yet, the one religion that comes from God to man portrays God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, three in one, using masculine pronouns and masculine relational identities.  There is one God, who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  There is no need for a goddess, because God is a complete totality of all identity and personality traits.  He does not need a counterpoint separate from Himself, a yin to His yang.  He is a symphony complete in Himself, containing all the melody, harmony, and rhythm necessary to resonate the music of the spheres.

That does not mean He does not desire a consort on whom to lavish His love.  However, the bride He seeks is not His equal in power, wisdom, or longevity.  Instead, this infinite Being seeks to craft His bride from the frail, foolish, finite creatures He has created.  No wonder human beings cannot conceive of this sort of cosmic union.  Sure the gods of the Greeks and Romans were known to dally with humans, but not to raise them up as a Bride, fit to consort with, and even reign with, for eternity.  That is unfathomable to the human imagination!  How could this fairy tale of epic proportions have ever originated in the minds of men?  Would they ever dare to reach so high as to think God would desire them for His Bride? 

Yet, He clearly is reaching down to us "frail children of dust" to raise us up, mold us, and breathe life into us so that we can stand beside Him in the New Jerusalem as His "pure, spotless bride."  Mind-boggling.  Only God could have conceived and orchestrated this plan.  I am so glad to be part of His beloved Bride to be.  I just can't wait for the wedding!! 

My husband and I were just talking about free will and how it is a common theme in Science Fiction for a group of explorers to come across a perfectly peaceful, happy, well-ordered society where there was no free will.    The explorers want to "liberate" the poor people, and, in the process of introducing free will, totally ruin the society.  He then asked me if I would like to love in a society with no free will.

I replied that heaven will pretty much be the ultimate utopia of a people who have completely surrendered their wills and, as C.S. Lewis put it, "Are no longer capable of wanting wrong things."  A song song by Chris Rice states, "Freedom from myself will be the sweetest rest I've ever known."  So, yes, not only would I want to live in a society with no free will, I am looking forward to it!

The biggest difference here from a world where there never was free will is that Heaven will be a place of people who had free will and surrendered it to the Love of Jesus, letting His Spirit take control  in greater and greater measure until the day when they passed through the veil of earthly struggles and found the heavenly bliss of total surrender of all their own self will. 

God gave us free will because He wanted our wills returned freely as a gift.  He wanted "glad vassals"  who are slaves of love, walking in the freedom of surrender, rather than slaves who never knew the freedom of giving over what they thought was rightfully theirs.  God's gift of free will as allowed us to make a hell for ourselves, but we need to live in the dank slave dungeon of self-will to understand the free and spacious paradise of surrendering to God's will.

I am currently reading 1st Corinthians in the Message paraphrase of the Bible.  Reading chapter 10, this struck me for the first time, "They drank from the Rock, God's fountain for them that stayed with them wherever they were.  And the Rock was Christ."

Now, that being the case, some things about the story of Moses striking the rock to provide water for the Israelites take on new meaning and significance.  The first time, Moses was commanded to strike the rock so water would flow out.  Jesus, our Rock, was struck down to provide us with the living water of redemption and resurrection power.

However, the second time Moses was commanded to speak to the rock to get water.  He was angry at the people because of all their grumbling and complaining, so he struck the rock.  God, in His infinite mercy, knowing the people would perish without water, provided it.  However, he punished Moses severely, telling him he would never enter the Promised Land. 

I always thought that was a little harsh.  After all, it was a rock we were talking about here.  Who talks to rocks?  What would you say to a rock if you did talk to it?  "Hey there rock, could you give me some water?"  It sounds pretty ridiculous, since rocks, by their very nature, don't have water to hand out, especially in a desert.

However, if the Rock was Jesus, in both cases, then what a picture of our relationship to Him!  Jesus was struck once to give us water.  If we feel spiritually dry, there is no reason for us to grumble and complain, like the Israelites, or strike out at Jesus, like Moses.  We have only to speak to the Rock, and He will grant us rivers of living water, springing up to eternal life.

What an affront that was, after all, for Moses to treat Jesus the way he did!  Jesus, the Rock, had already been struck once and for all, to provide water for the people.  To continue using that method, subjecting Christ to further unnecessary abuse, out of anger or, worse, because it had worked once and should work again, is unpardonable!  Moses punishment of not setting foot in the Promised Land is merited when I consider what he did in that light.

So, speak to the Rock.  The Living Water, won through the striking of Jesus at the Cross, is ready and waiting to gush forth and slake your thirst for eternal life.

400 years of silence. All the promises from God throughout the struggles and upheavals of history now gone cold. Prayers falling on deaf ears. So many generations of lives lived, wars fought, exiles endured, within this immensity of waiting, with no word or sign.

How can we who do not wait, have no capacity of endurance, even fathom living our lives within such waiting? And there was nothing. No word, no glimmer of possibility, simply a wall of silence. Even Abraham, that paragon of patience, had new words of promise as doubt began to invade. And he did not wait well. Not really. Otherwise there would not have been an Ishmael.

Yet, despite how well or poorly people wait, the time is not any longer of shorter. 400 years is 400 years for faithful Jews living thier lives as best they can, for rebels and would be messiahs ending their lives on wooden crosses, for all the rest of the world, groaning in expectation.

When the waiting ended, a babe, born in a humble place to lowly parents, heralded by angels and stars, but who of any import saw those? Not what anyone expected. So, many still wait, having missed the point of it all, their expectations still unmet.

If I have the promised Messiah that all of history revolves around living within my heart, why am I still struggling against the waiting, still expecting so much more than I already have in full. Could I have missed the point somehow?

I have been chasing after and not capturing the joy Jesus claims He can give us in our lives. Some have told me, and I think it is part of it, that I feel I don't deserve joy. What I keep being brought back to is that surrender is what brings joy, peace, and contentment.

That is hard, because being in control of your own life is hammered into us from a young age. Never surrender. Never give up. If it is to be, it is up to me. I don't know about you, but a lot of the things that are up to me just are not coming to be and won't, no matter what I do. This frustrates and shames me to no end.

I don't know that control is something I cling to because I am a control freak, but because I was taught that no one else would or should take care of me. Don't ask for help, because people won't, they'll just squash you and brush you off into the gutter.

If I can just work harder, make more money, do more stuff to help others, at some point I'll have the money I need, the fullfillment I crave, and that ever elusive joy. Nope....I keep going back to this formula and it keeps not working.

So...surrender already! Just say, "I cannot do this. I cannot make enough, I can't serve enough, I don't have the words to say to motivate my husband or myself to get out of this rut we are in."

So, Lord I surrender. I give over my finances, my hoped for career, the family I desire, the husband I have and everything I want for our relationship. I give it all to you because I cannot do anything more with it.

I praise you for all I do have: your extravagant undeserved love, the wonderful husband you have given me who loves you and loves me, the wonderful Angel of a dog you've given us, the ministries you've blessed me to be part of, the friends you've given.....

I rest now in you and wait for you to tell me what to do.