Thoughts on "Call"

Monday, January 23, 2006

"And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. For in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there shall be those who escape, as the Lord has said, and among the survivors shall be those whom the Lord calls." - Joel 2:32 (ESV)

This verse amazes me "...everyone who calls(and)...whom the LORD calls." Those who call and are saved, are those whom the Lord has called!
I never really saw that verse before, but it is something like John 6:37:
"All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.."

Joel 2:32 brought to mind this hymn:

"Lord, 'tis not that I did choose Thee,
That I know could never be.
For this heart would still refuse Thee
Had Thy grace not chosen me.
Thou hast from the sin that stained me
Washed and cleansed and set me free,
And unto this end ordained me,
That I ever live to Thee.

"Twas Thy grace in Christ that called me,
Taught my darkened heart and mind.
Else the world had yet enthralled me,
To Thy heavn'ly glories blind.
Now my heart owns none above Thee,
For Thy grace alone I thirst,
Knowing well that if I love Thee,
Thou, O Christ, didst love me first."

- Josiah Conder, 1843, alt.

Gold instead of Bronze

Friday, November 4, 2005

" Instead of bronze I will bring you gold, and silver in place of iron. Instead of wood I will bring you bronze, and iron in place of stones. I will make peace your governor and righteousness your ruler." - Isaiah 60:17 Meditating on this verse showed me that God wants to and does give the best to His children, for He loves us. We must realize, though, that what He gives may be far different from what we have thought best all along. What we think gold may only be wood, but He knows what is truly best. We are in want of nothing better what He shall give us, but much must be gained by prayer. Knowing His desire and purposes are altogether good, shall we not pray "Thy will be done" with utmost pleasure? "He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?" - Romans 8:32 ESV

Ask, and it shall be given unto you - a story.

Wednesday, November 9, 2005

Yesterday was Tuesday, visitation day for our church. The Lord had laid it upon my heart to visit my friend Anna, a girl about my age who lives in Edinburgh near our church but goes to a very small Pentecostal church nearby with her family. I hadn't talked to her in a long time. Throughout the day I just asked God to fill me with His Spirit and give me wisdom and let me glorify Him in what I say to her. Mother said I should also visit Asha, a Muslim girl from Georgetown (the capital) who had come back from there and was staying with her aunt in Edinburgh. (I'd had a Bible study with her before.) I felt so helpless to accomplish anything, but God has never failed me, and I asked him to use me once again. So my mother and I went to Edinburgh (the village of our church about 2 miles away from Glasgow, where we live) First we visited a lady who goes to our church, whose little son was very sick, with tonsilitis as we found out. She was sitting on a bench in her side porch, holding a piece of styrofoam. Mother talked with her while I kept quiet, watching three of their dogs tumble and walk around nearby. When we were about to leave, the lady said she'd tried to call us but our phone was busy. Mother asked, "Do you have our cell-phone number?" "No" "Do you have a piece of paper?" "I can just write it on this" (the styrofoam) "Um, I can't remember it, Alyssa?" Aha! That's the whole providential reason I came along, to say "619-5682". Well God works out little things too. [When we got back into the car, we were greeted by the pungent smell of ripe mangoes. Through the whole time, we couldn't figure out what it was coming from.] Anyway, Mother took me to Nali's house/shop where Asha was. While I was with Asha, I asked her what she remembered from the last time, when we studied in Romans. She said, "The good and the bad". That's all she could remember. I reminded her that who is bad is us, and who is good is God. Then I sought to explain to her Isaiah 53 and the gospel, Jesus bearing our sins, our righteousness not sufficient - we must have His, which we get by believing in Him who will take our sins and be our righteousness. I don't know how much she understood, but she listened attentively. She is not a strong Muslim, and likes Christianity, that's why my mother got me onto her. But oh may God open her eyes to see and understand and believe. Leaving that house, I walked down the street to remind Kelly that I was only coming for her reading lessons every other week now. She looked as if she had forgotten I wasn't coming and was ready for me and I felt reluctant not to stay, but I had a mission - Anna, so I told her to keep on studying. I decided that I didn't want to walk on the busy main road to go to Anna's so I turned into the next street, where I learned a lesson - always look the whole way down a street before you enter it. There were 4 oil barrels forming a barricade to large vehicles at the head of the street and I walked around them. The side of the street was freshly laid with tar and gravel, so I stepped over that and walked on the little dirt strip on the far side. A hired car driver was trying to enter the road and was moving the barrels. A middle-aged man was standing in front of his house yelling at the man for messing with other people's property - I hurried on my way. As I walked I realized that men were still working on the road - oh no, workmen. I doubted that this white girl could get past them without some comments. I ignored one who said, "How are you this afternoon? - hey, you can't even give a 'good afternoon'?" Well I managed to get through the street without too many more comments and soon reached Anna's house. Her mother was there, but she was at church practicing worship dance and would soon be back. So we sat on the porch and talked. I love how easy it is to go to Guyanese people's houses and visit them. While we sat there, a girl who lived on the same street as the church passed on her bike, and Anna's mother hollered for her to tell Anna to come home because somebody was here for her. Anna's mother told me about Anna's being in the President's Youth Club program and how she had gotten the Silver Award for her walking expidition (A kind of 'scouts' program) She wants to go for the gold - walking from Lethem to Brazil! When Anna came, we talked about that and I shared some verses with her. I asked her what her goal for her life was. She said, "In the church, I want to be a preacher and teach people God's word, and in my life I want to be an accountant." I knew that there church promotes women leadership. She had also told me that in her Bible she mostly reads the gospels and some of the beginning. Well, I showed her the passages in Timothy and I Cor. about women, that they should not speak in the church. She had NEVER heard those verses and it seemed they just blew her mind. Well I talked to her about that and later told her my testimony. God empowered me so much and gave me so much joy and freedom in speaking to her. When I left she said, "I feel so different." and I told her to think about and pray about the things I'd told her. God never fails. He uses earthem vessels to display His glory. When I opened my Bible in the Psalms that night, I saw one verse, "When I called, you answered me; you made me bold and stout-hearted." Amen.

"And He will win the battle. "

Tuesday, September 6, 2005

On Monday, our family went to Whim beach, about 45 minutes up the coast. On our drive along the single coastal road we saw clusters of uniformed school-children streaming onto the road, wandering cows, big new houses and shops - and an Islamic school. It was a large, newly built wooden structure and we passed just as the children, all dressed in dark green and white uniforms were being let out. Young girls with burkas and backpacks, young boys with white skullcaps and others dressed like "christian" schoolchildren - bareheaded. I watched their faces as we passed and felt discouragement weigh upon me, discouragement over the spread of Islam that we have been seeing more and more of, and sadness for their souls. How this region could benefit from a Christian school…but our organization of churches here is so tiny, so lacking in resources and Christian leaders, that the prospect of a Christian school seems beyond unimaginable. Not only did we see one new Muslim school, I saw on our trip that the Muslims are building a big new school beside their huge mosque in New Amsterdam, and we saw a large new Muslim youth center as well. On the way home from the beach we stopped at a big white store where we go to buy "American" things. I stayed outside, and while sitting in the car, I looked up and saw the muslim moon and star symbol painted thrice, high on the buiding. How the Muslims seem to prosper. While they build big new buildings, we meet in a tiny, wooden bottomhouse addition - unpainted except for the FOR SALE spray-painted on every wall by the owner, with his phone numbers added to the graffiti. I know that God is Sovereign but felt like the psalmist in Psalm 73 - why do the wicked prosper? And the dread feeling that Islam would take over Guyana jostled the foundations of my heart. In the midst of this, the Lord whispered His word to my heart. At the beach I finished the missions chapter of Desiring GOD. "What is impossible with men is possible with God." John Piper quoted. And in my heart sang "The Lord knows those who are his....", "Those whom he predestined he also called...", and the remembrance of the foretold end, the redeemed worshipping the Lamb who has conquered everything. It lifted my soul in hope - the war will be won! ... but what about this battle? What can I do? "I will build my church" said Jesus. What a disconsolate creature I must be, since all this did not cheer my heart as it ought to have. Finally, at bedtime, our ever gracious Lord caused the Psalms to burst upon my longing heart with almighty truth: "I will praise you, O LORD, among the nations; I will sing of you among the peoples, For great is your love, higher than the heavens; your faithfulness reaches to the skies. Be exalted, O God, above the heavens, and let your glory be over all the earth. Save us and help us with your right hand, that those you love may be delivered. God has spoken from his sanctuary: "In triumph I will parcel out Shechem and measure off the Valley of Succoth. Gilead is mine, Manasseh is mine; Ephraim is my helmet, Judah my scepter. Moab is my washbasin, upon Edom I toss my sandal; over Philistia I shout in triumph." Who will bring me to the fortified city? Who will lead me to Edom? Is it not you, O God, you who have rejected us and no longer go out with our armies? Give us aid against the enemy, for the help of man is worthless. With God we will gain the victory, and he will trample down our enemies. - Psalm 108:3-13 May God someday shout in triumph over Guyana - He will win the victory and trample Satan, our enemy. He is King and his glory will someday be over all of the earth.

Eureka! According to the Providential Kindness of an Ever-Watching Lord

Monday, August 8, 2005

Has it been weeks, days, months - years? - or just dull seasons, that I have stumbled groggily through morning devotions; praying, but only realizing that I was thinking about my wardrobe or one thousand other trivial things, sitting to pray for 30 minutes, but only praying for 10 or 15 of them and just feeling frustrated? Oh what a drag it was on my soul!

Yesterday around noon, I sat down on the couch - there were a few minutes before lunch - and asked God to just help me; can't even remember what I prayed. Beside me was Desiring God which I have been reading for awhile (and which I will say to anyone that if you haven't read this, read it!).

Picking it up, I opened to the end of the chapter on "Scripture: The Kindling for Christian Hedonism" where I had left off. John Piper wrote about George Mueller [some excerpts from a long passage]

"I saw more clearly than ever, that the first great and primary business to which I ought to attend every day was, to have my soul happy in the Lord......I might in other ways seek to behave myself as it becomes a child of God in this world; and yet, not being happy in the Lord, and not being nourished and strenghened in my inner man day by day, all this might not be attended to in a right spirit. Before this time my practice had been, at least for ten years previously, as an habitual thing, to give myself to prayer, after having dressed in the morning. Now I saw, that the most important thing I had to do was to give myself to the reading of the Word of God and to meditation on it...The first thing I did, after having asked in a few words the Lord's blessing upon His precious Word, was to begin to meditate on the Word of God; searching as it were, into every verse, to get blessing out of it... The result I have found to be almost invariably this, that after a very few minutes my would has been led to confession, or to thanksgiving, or to intercession, or to supplication; so that though I did not, as it were, give myself to prayer, but to meditation, yet it turned almost immediately more or less into prayer. When thus I have been for awhile making confession, or intercession, or supplicaion, or have given thanks, I go on to the next words or verse, turning all, as I go on, into prayer for myself or others, as the Word may lead to it; but still continally keeping before me, that food for my own soul is the object of my meditation...

"The difference between my former practice and my present one is this. Formerly, when I rose, I began to pray as soon as possible, and generally spent all my time till breakfast in prayer, or almost all the time. At all events I almost invariably began with prayer....But what was the result? I often spent a quarter of an hour, or half an hour, or even an hour on my knees, before being conscious to myself of having derived comfort, encouragement, humbling of soul, etc.; and often after having suffered from wandering of mind for the first ten minutes, or a quarter of an hour, or even half an hour, I only then began really to pray.

"I scarcely ever suffer now in this way. For my heart being nourished by the truth, being brought into experimental fellowship with God, I speak to my Father, and to my Friend (vile though I am, and unworthy of it!) about the things that He has brought before me in His precious Word."

Now, that was EXACTLY what I needed; and this morning I did this - prayerful meditation on God's word. It was such a blessed way of doing morning devotions. I want to do this for the rest of my life! Thanks be to God for the wisdom passed on from saints gone before.

Be Still Busy Bee!

Tuesday, August 2, 2005

I finished “Incredible Christian” by Tozer today and was highly encouraged (and corrected) by the last article, entitled “Meditating on God”. How many of us are like this: If I’m not getting something done, making something, fixing something, giving something, cleaning something, or visiting somebody – I’m not living, I’m wasting my time. There is this awful force in me : A Restless Need for Productivity. That’s where I was that morning as I sat (sewing while I read). “To know God well he must think on Him unceasingly. Nothing that man has discovered about himself or God has revealed any short cut to pure spirituality... I am convinced that the dearth of great saints in these times even among those who truly believe in Christ is due at least in part to our unwillingness to give sufficient time to the cultivation of the knowledge of God. We of the nervous West [what an apt phrase!] are victims of the philosophy of activism tragically misunderstood. Getting and spending, going and returning, organizing and promoting, buying and selling, working and playing – this alone constitutes living. if we are not making plans or working to carry out plans already made we feel that we are failures, that we are sterile unfruitful eunuchs… “The worldly man can never rest. He must have “somewhere to go” and “something to do.” This is a result of the Fall, a symptom of a deep-lying disease, yet a blind religious leadership caters to this terrible restlessness instead of trying to cure it by the Word and the Spirit." I realized: “THAT’s my problem! It had nagged me and this just - thank you Lord!- snatched off the scales from my eyes." "Brood on the Scriptures and let faith show you God as He is revealed there. nothing else can equal this glorious sight." - Tozer Is this not what Jesus meant when he said: "Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted about many things. But only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better and it will not be taken away from her." - Luke 10:41-42

A Thought from A.W. Tozer

A Thought from A.W. Tozer

I like to read Tozer's writings. This is an excerpt from his article, "To be Understood, Truth Must be Lived":

"At what point, then, does a theological fact become for the one who holds it a truth? At the point where obedience begins. ...Theological facts are like the altar of Elijah on Carmel before the fire came, correct, properly laid out, but altogether cold. When the heart makes the ultimate surrender, the fire falls and true facts are transmuted into spiritual truth that transforms, enlightens, sanctifies."

The reason why we must be doers, and not hearers only, of the Word of God. Before I read this, I never thought of truth in that way.

Another thought from A.W. Tozer

Tozer is a dead saint that God has used in my life. His book,"The Pursuit of God." is so utterly spiritual, it seems to glow from nearness to the person of God. In keeping with my blog title, I will post a few great thoughts from this book:

"Much of our difficulty as Christians stems from our unwillingness to take God as He is and adjust our lives accordingl. We insist upon trying to modify Him and to bring Him nearer to our own image....We can get a right start only by accepting God as He is and learning to love Him for what He is. As we go on to know Him better we shall find it a source of unspeakable joy that God is just what He is. Some of the most rapturous moments we know will be those we spend in reverent admiration of the Godhead. In those holy moments the very thought of change in Him will be too painful too endure."

Malachi 4:1 - "I the LORD do not change" This ought to be better news to us than: "You will never get cancer or any disease for all your life." or "From this day forward your children will be saints to perfection" or "you have just received one million dollars." The LORD does not change. This is far greater.

If we knew our God better, knew how truly wonderful and satisfying He is, then knowing that this will not change, and that we possess Him, in Jesus Christ our Savior, oh how happy we may be! "The very thought of change in Him will be too painful too endure" if this is our only pain, then we are in for everlasting pleasure, in the presence of God, because of his unchanging promise to justify those who have faith in Jesus.