Mikki's Blog - Living in the Grace and Love of God » God http://mikkiblogs.com Spiritual encouragement - relationship with God Sat, 24 Jul 2010 16:09:27 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 en hourly 1 The Mysteriousness of God http://mikkiblogs.com/the-mysteriousness-of-god/ http://mikkiblogs.com/the-mysteriousness-of-god/#comments Sat, 03 Jul 2010 14:47:38 +0000 Mikki http://mikkiblogs.com/?p=936 mysteriousI love formulas. You know, 1 + 1 = 2; A + B = C; x – y = z. Formulas are predictable. You just plug in the right terms and voila, there is the answer!

We, in the church world, have often tried to approach God through our formulas. For example, if I do A + B, God will do C. Hey, sometimes it works! But what I find as I know God more is that He loves mystery. Yes, He does have principles in His Word that are immutable, unchangeable, sure, and firm. In fact, it is not his principles that I am speaking of. It’s His ways. And they are mysterious.
When someone tries to sell you a gospel of formulas, you need to beware. Formulas can be our attempt to control God.  He is untamable and mysterious. Our individual journeys with Him are just that, individual. Yes, we can learn about God’s ways. We can learn His truths. We can learn His precepts. But applying them and living daily as believers in covenant with God through Christ, filled with His Spirit, involves mystery. He daily invites us into the mystery. He is doing something uniquely individual in each of us.
From the beginning of time, as God’s Spirit hovered, moving in creation, the mysteriousness of God has invited us in.
The mysteries of God are not meant to make Him unreachable. They are not designed to confuse us. They are designed to draw us into Him. To lead us to seek Him out. To intrigue us.
When you find yourself facing life and faced with questions, feel invited! You are being invited deeper into the mysteries of God. Living in His mysteries is living in the richest, most beautiful depths of Him.
To define our God as one who can easily be explained by a formula is to limit Him to the parameters of our humanity. His ways are truly beyond our natural knowledge. In this life, we can only glimpse into His amazing  ways.
To define our God in ways that box Him in is an attempt to make Him safe. And as John Eldredge so wonderfully says, God is anything but safe. Oh, He is altogether good, but life with Him is not to be thought of as a safe formula bound trip. It is an amazing adventure!
I find this is true when we think of how God brings healing to us. Yes, there are principles God Himself has instituted for us. But then those principles are subject to the mysterious ways of God. Again, this is not meant to make God sound confusing (although can we admit that His ways are confusing to us at times as we try to make Him fit our formulas).
I think the mysteriousness of God’s ways is, in part, necessary for our humility. When I bow at His feet in awe at how He has worked something bad for my good, I acknowledge His mysteriousness and my humanity.
When my life fell apart at its seams, I had no way to know that God was redesigning me, doing deep corrective surgery, and bringing an opportunity for the deepest healing I’d ever known. Now that is mysterious!
As layer upon layer of my life progressively shattered, I came face to face with my own deep brokenness. God offered me a gift. Would I, in one hand, hold the pain and grief, acknowledging my own humanness, and at the same time, in the other hand, hold the truth about Him? That He is all-knowing, ever present, promising never to leave me or forsake me? Could both things be true?
Would I acknowledge that God, in His mysteriousness, was at work in my life during what appeared to be utter disaster? Oh, it took me a while. Honestly, for a while I questioned the reality of God. Had everything I had based my life on been an illusion? And God allowed me to wrestle with Him. In fact, He invited me to.
Faith can look into mystery, darkness, complexity, ambiguity, and doubt, and come out on the other side, stronger still.
Eve, in the Garden, wanted to know all the mysteries of God. She thought in a formula. (The tree is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil) + (I eat its fruit) = I will be like God.
Mary, the mother of Jesus, pondered, waiting, willing to not know. Was that hard? Oh yes, her heart was torn apart, yet she one day saw the wonder of the coming of the Spirit and the birthing of the church. One day she bowed at Jesus’ feet in heaven as the mystery became clear.
As we walk through this life, there will be unexplainable, painful events and seasons for all of us. There will be things we cannot fix. There will be no formula that works. And it will be during those times, that we are afforded the greatest opportunities to know Him.
We will find that our healing is not sequenced but is in the context of mystery. Then we can truly say that there is no one like our God, who brings good out of bad, life out of death, miracles out of disasters, and hope out of darkness.
Will you look into the mysteries of your life and acknowledge that God, and God alone, is able to transform your life? Doing so will mean giving up control, and your formulas, and your well-intentioned best-laid plans, and will make it possible for you to join God on the great adventure He has destined for you!
 
 
 

 

]]> http://mikkiblogs.com/the-mysteriousness-of-god/feed/ 1 Who Wrote the Book of Love? http://mikkiblogs.com/who-wrote-the-book-of-love/ http://mikkiblogs.com/who-wrote-the-book-of-love/#comments Sun, 17 Jan 2010 13:51:50 +0000 Mikki http://mikkiblogs.com/?p=641  In the late fifties, a group called the Monotones wrote and recorded a song called “Who Wrote the Book of Love?”  I woke up singing that old song this morning which led me to thinking about who really wrote the book of love. Of course, you know that I am referring to God.  But I wonder sometimes if we really understand that the Bible is the book of love. Yes, we may give mental ascent to that. God is love.  But knowing the love of God is totally different than having a head knowledge that says that God is love.

Knowing the love of God has changed my life more times than one. For me, the knowledge of God’s love has come bit by bit, piece by piece. When I committed my life to Christ as a very young girl, I distinctly remember wanting to avoid hell. And of course that is important.  But my journey to knowing the love of God has been a life-long one. In my early twenties, I was overtaken by the love of God when I first knew that God had called me into ministry. I was so overwhelmed by the fact that God wanted me.  I became consumed with knowing Him. I read the Word for hours and hours.  However, in a few short years, I became drained by religion. I had somehow equated knowing God with keeping a list of rules (i.e., read five chapters of Psalms every day, 1 chapter of Proverbs, and part of the New Testament; keep a prayer journal which covered all the needs of the world and everyone else I knew, etc.) Now the rules represent important principles but living for the rules replaced living for God and I found myself hopeless. You can be sure that God doesn’t lead us into hopelessness.

Another season of encountering religious rules in my late 30’s almost took my spiritual life. And through the pain of these encounters, I increasingly learned the difference between religion and relationship. But I confess, I am very much still on that journey.

Encountering the Holy Spirit in a dramatic way in 1999 plunged me into another realm of knowing God’s love. I remember describing it as going from loving God to being IN LOVE with God. Again, I was overwhelmed with His love for ME. You see, the love of God is very personal.

In the last two years, I have known the love of God through the love of God’s people in practical, tangible ways as so many have walked with my family through a terrible storm and believed in us, ministered to us by their words and their actions, giving words of encouragement, hugs, prayers, and all sorts of practical gifts, and again, that love has changed me. I know more about unconditional love than I have ever known before.

Knowing the love of God in a personal way changes more than just my perceptions and understandings; it changes me. I become more like Him. I not only experience His love for me, but I find I am passionate about sharing His love with others.  And of such is the ministry of the Holy Spirit. Acts 1:8  You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be witness…

My prayer for you today is that you know the love of God in increasing ways and that as His love changes you, you will be a witness to that love.

Mikki

]]> http://mikkiblogs.com/who-wrote-the-book-of-love/feed/ 0 Encounters of the God Kind http://mikkiblogs.com/yearning-for-god/ http://mikkiblogs.com/yearning-for-god/#comments Thu, 22 Oct 2009 15:01:37 +0000 Mikki http://mikkiblogs.com/?p=473 Many times I find myself reading in the Psalms, and many times I find “myself” in the Psalms. Their beauty leads me to do what they themselves often recommend. Selah. Pause and think about it. Layers and layers of truth and richness. The entire range of human emotions. The entirety of the Psalms including the Psalms of David  express a true picture of humanness. Love and hate. Joy and grief. Praise and cursing. Ah, David, a man after God’s own heart, unafraid to feel and express his heart.
 
One of my favorites is Psalm 42, a Psalm written to describe one’s yearning for God in the middle of distress.  The depth and truth of the Psalmist’s longing resonates within my heart.
 As the deer pants for the water brooks,
         So pants my soul for You, O God.
 2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
         When shall I come and appear before God?
 
The picture is of a mature deer, not a Bambi, a powerfully beautiful animal thirsting, longing for running, moving, living water. And then the Psalmist declares, “God, that is how I long for you! My soul, my inner being, my emotions, long for an encounter with a living God.”
 
Maybe there are two ways we learn about thirst. One is by natural processes of our humanness. We need water to live and thrive. Secondly, once we experience the power of having our thirst satisfied, we are forevermore dissatisfied with any other experience.
 
Paralleling that human experience with our spiritual thirst, we are created to know God in an intimate way. We were made to run our spiritual fuel tanks on God-a-nol. Secondly, once we have tasted what it means to have God quench our inner thirst, we can no longer be satisfied with any thing or any experience that falls short of encountering the true living God.
 
What does it mean to experience a living God? Well, what does life mean? Life must be distinguished from death. Easy, huh? Well the definition of life includes the fact that it is identified by growth, by changes that originate internally. A living God moves, speaks, sees, hears, and touches.  Encountering a living God causes us to live, to grow and change internally.
 
What is going on in the Psalmist’s heart in Psalm 42 as he declares his longing? Is it, at least in part, a feeling of abandonment? The Psalmist says “How long will it be before I see your face God?” That’s my interpretation of appearing before God. In His presence. Seeing His face. When we are able to see someone’s face, we can look into their eyes and they can look into ours and we can know much about what is in their heart. It is hard to hide your emotions when someone peers into your eyes. We have heard that the eyes are the window into the soul and maybe that is true.
 
The Psalmist’s emotions rose up to accuse him. “Where is your God?” His enemies rose up to accuse him. “Where is your God?” Can we also conclude that his friends accused him? He was breaking the law and failing in his commitments. His emotions said that God had abandoned him. He was mourning because of the oppression of the enemy. His circumstances said that God had abandoned him.
 
In verse nine, the Psalmist cries out to God, “Why have you forgotten me?” The Psalmist found himself disconnected, disappointed, discouraged, disquieted. Disconnected with God, others (I used to go with the multitude), and his own soul. He was experiencing a loss of fellowship with others. He was experiencing a loss of the form of worship he was used to. I used to keep the pilgrim’s feast with the multitude. (How do you know God apart from your traditions?)
 
There was a way that he could stoke the fire of his experience of God. He spoke to himself. Sometimes we have to remind ourselves, aloud even, of what the truth is. The Psalmist declared, “I will hope in God. I will praise him.” Then this word “yet” is there staring at us. Here is the commitment…
Even though I am overwhelmed emotionally… Even though I don’t feel you God… Even though I feel alone…




Even though my circumstances scream that you have abandoned me… I will hope in You. I will praise You anyway. I will remember You from the land of my heritage.  As I hear the noise of Your waterfalls and feel the brokenness as You wash relentlessly over me, I will believe in You day and night. I will pray to You. You are my life. I will be honest with You about my heart, my emotions. And yet, yet, yet…(as difficult as it may feel), I will hope in You, I will yet, yet, yet… praise You.


And then this beautiful phrase…”He is the help of my countenance and my God.” This theme runs quietly through Psalm 42. A face to face encounter with God. Verse two…”When will I be in God’s presence –the place where I can see Him?” Verse 5 “I need the help of seeing His face.” Verse 11 “He will help my countenance – my face.”

Change from the inside out. Encounters with a living God. Affecting our voice. Affecting our emotions. Affecting our face.

Yearning for God. You and I were created for relationship with Him. Nothing else can fill our deepest longings. No addiction can cover our longing completely. Alcohol, drugs, sex, shopping, pornography, religion, nothing can completely quiet that inner longing within us. Nothing else is living water. Nothing else quenches our deepest thirsts. So even in times of distress, we reach out for His help. He is the only One who can change us from the inside out.

If you find yourself yearning, thirsting, and yet perhaps feeling abandoned, emotionally wiped out and broken, hope in God. Praise Him. Cry for His help. Remember how He helped you in the past. Look for His handprints around you.  And know that He is not offended by your truth even if that means you feel abandoned by Him. That truth is the beginning place inside you. The place of growth. The place of life. The place of change where you can encounter a living God and be changed from the inside out.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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