The Sylvr Pen

My “One Word” for both last year and (now carried over into) this year, is CLOSER. It’s aim: increased intimacy with God.

Sometime last year the idea hit: Make C-L-O-S-E-R an acronym, each letter standing for a key to greater closeness.

C came to stand for “Call”— on Him. Intimacy is not a do-it-yourself project. I need Him for the relationship, and His help (especially with my inadequacies) in building it.

L became “Look” — to (and at) Him. Love looks at the object of its affection, not all around at everyone and everything else. And if I expect my help to come from Him, that’s where I should obviously look to see its approach.

Then came… O.

Uh-O!

To it I assigned an Odious word. Obey. Odious to the rebellious, but also to victims of abuse, especially spiritual, especially those taught that disobeying their twisted leaders, in anything—is disobeying God. I hope my next “Closer” series post rectifies this distortion, showing obedience to God as a spirit of oneness with Him, rather than slavish adherence to cold, hard man-ufactured rules.

Maybe that post should precede this one. I had trouble deciding. But the plain facts in this one are important, and basic.

So… Why is Obedience crucial to getting CLOSER to God?

1 – In one sense it only makes sense: “Just a closer walk with Thee” needs must be a walk with Him, going His way. I can’t walk very closely with anyone by heading out in a different direction! I can’t walk in close intimacy with my sovereign Lord and walk in dis-obedience to His Spirit.

Walking with God, in step with His Spirit — they’re biblically synonymous with obedience! Where scripture says Enoch walked with God it implies obedience, in the deepest sense. Ditto Noah. With each instruction God gave, Noah did precisely as God told him. Ditto Abraham, called “the friend of God.”

2- Disobedience to Christ, no matter how small, wrongs the Lover of my soul. It grieves His heart. He means good for me in His instructions, and when I reject them, I reject Him.

3- Disobedience (sin) separates me from Him. It’s not that God turns away from me the second I go disobedient, it’s that I’ll avoid facing Him.

4- Even if that weren’t true, how can I expect His direction and companionable assistance in one area while I’m unwilling to follow it in another?


5- Obeying is how I get to experience God’s wondrous workings, right in my li’l ole person. I’ve seen the most amazing things happen by obeying the difficult, especially the “impossible.” Compelled to call on God to enable, then putting one foot in front of the other is when I have found myself operating under a whole new power far beyond my own — His!


6- I learn heart-and-soul lessons through obedience that I can’t “get” any other way. Some commandments make little sense until I do them. Only after the fact does the why of them come clear, and the wonder of God’s ways.

7- If the obedience requires great strides of faith, bringing me into a greater dependence on Him, it can give me more confidence in trusting Him and walking with Him in the next situation. The closeness grows.

8- Jesus said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” Not keeping His commandments is therefore not-loving Him. And growing intimate with Him apart from love… well, that just can’t be!

*****

Thinking and writing here in community with Shelly and the Surrendering to Sabbath Sisterhood…

Sunday I woke up writing. Not with pen or keyboard. I labored busy and hard in my head, working out words, rearranging paragraphs. On my Rest-Day morning!

Why, all of a sudden? My writing had hung slack all week!

Alas, I think that’s the reason!

When God brought His people out from Egypt’s bondage, He gave them a weekly Sabbath law that prescribed not just rest, but also work:

“Six days you shall labor and do all your work…” sits right in there with “but the seventh day… you shall do no work” (Ex 20:8-11).

One of my problems with weekend Sabbath? Weeklong neglect!

Of course it’s “duh” obvious: If I wait to think about Sunday’s needs till the day’s upon me, I won’t be prepared!

But another truth hits me about myself and Sabbath: Any procrastinated project of the week tends to come back and haunt me on Sunday, echoing loud through the settle-down stillness!

So there’s serious work to do the rest of the week! And serious planning ahead. Let me think more about this…

What specific Sabbath morning difficulties have plagued my past? Wrinkles impressed deep in husband’s shirt, revelation that the dress I’m about to put on displays one big stain! Inability to find someone’s socks… or shoes—or my Bible or my Sunday school notes for teaching! Car a mud-covered disgrace, made by cats dancing merry all over it with carefully soiled feet. The chicken for dinner forgotten in the freezer, frozen rock solid. And so on. You get the (chaotic, knit-browed) picture.

That’s the biggest misery maker. But rest is also made restless when I’ve lollygagged my way through any of the regular week’s work before that, even my writing, even if I wasn’t really thinking of that as work.  Any daily duty. Suddenly at rest on Sunday, I get the urge to do what I neglected all week. If there’s a Monday deadline (especially Monday morning), the frantic inner fussing can disquiet to a distraction very hard to still.

It’s called Put-It-Off (sometimes seasoned with perfectionism, incongruous as that might seem)—and Pay-Later!

The more I think about this, the more crucial need I see to think ahead about the coming Sabbath, starting right in the week’s beginning. I need to map out my workaday week, starting with Sabbath as my destination, moving backward mentally from there—and then do what needs to be done before then.

I refuse to accept blame for still cluttered chaos I didn’t cause and didn’t have time to correct. Sickness, catastrophes, and children’s joyful-noisy debris of scattered exuberance happen, plans can suddenly change. So I’m not talking perfection of clean or an overburdening expectations list. I’m looking at laxity, neglect, lack of ongoing intentionality that allows distractions to yank me every which way—all summed up as poor use of time. That’s what needs to change, be it bit by bit, as every other good self-change has happened in the past.

For me, these thoughts bring new meaning to “Make every effort to enter that rest” (Heb 4:11 NIV)!

*****

Linked to

from this:

to this:

Now whenever I boot up, these rapturous rhodies spill hope between porch rails onto sun-warmed steps before me, and I’m cheered.

Winter starts getting long now, here in this northern state. And the delight of first, second, and nineteenth snowfall is fading in my hunger for warmth in the air and life showing green in rich soil.

So I gave myself the present of the forward look.

…

They had the forward look…

Paul wrote to them about it:

The wealth in these three golden phrases somehow passed me by in my former readings of his first letter to the Thessalonians. Each deserves a prolonged ponder, and the first two bear some dissecting. But that third one’s what sings to me this morning—this sharp and shivering morning of white hills and gray twigs and long shadows.

“What a bunch!” I think, reading on (1 Thes 1:6-10).  “What a glorious bunch they were!” New but already deep-rooted in faith, glowing with love, sparkling with hope, filled with “joy of the Holy Spirit,” even in “much affliction”! So bright their reflected light, it flashed out to provinces around.

…

Yesterday He told me he’d spotted teeny green spikes of snowdrops in the patio flower bed, but that the cold snap withered them right back down. I feel like that. Even the idea of venturing out on errands, nostrils streaming frost-air clouds, makes me shrink back down in, too.

But on the dining table, nurtured in house warmth, japonica I snipped for the weekend  shows increasing signs of the joy to come. More buds swelling into ivory every day.

Hope is like that isn’t it? 

Not just vain, fairy-tale hope. Hope so real you can almost trace its contours with your fingers. Hope that “does not disappoint” (Rom 5:5), “sure hope” (Heb 6:17-20 ESV), evidenced by the buds and blooms of patient perseverance it brings forth. Nurtured by the warmth of His encompassing love, drinking deep from His wellspring, it bears and multiplies its evidence. Steadfast endurance to keep holding on, even “in much affliction,” comes from knowing it’s coming, that time of new life and bright joy.

Looking with joy to the God of hope this winter morning.

*****

Linked to

Free-writing for Five-Minute Friday on the prompt “beloved”:

“I am my Beloved’s, and my beloved is mine.”

I have just come from a love feast of words proclaiming His incredible love over at Lisa’s, and as I read the prompt word, “Beloved,” it all just resonates again.

We long so for a love like this, and never find it, totally, on this earth. But there it is, always pouring out, “sorrow and love flow[ing] mingled down…”

And at this point, I just sit here, fingers stilled. How can I add anything to what He’s already said and already shown?

My Beloved, Who reaches down into this tiny, tiny world and makes me His beloved…! well, it’s just breath-taking, wondrous beyond measure.

What more can I say? I’m speechless.

*****

Linked to

What if it isn’t dessert that God wants me to give up?

What if it’s my dreams? My deepest, dearest earthly desires? My self-authored life-path? Myself?

Because somehow, somehow, I’m getting that idea…

because He sends these messages that say,

You long for what will please you, but where do fights come from? Do they not arise from desires that war within? Don’t you know this desiring is friendship with the world, which is enmity with God? (James 4:1-3)

In  view of God’s mercies, present your body as  a living sacrifice. It’s only reasonable (Rom 12:1-2).

Take up your cross daily and follow me (Lk 9:22-24).

For you have died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God (Col 3:3)…

and because He raises up these messengers, witnesses who exemplify such giving-up…

She put into the treasury all she had (Mar 12:41-44).

He said, “See, we’ve left all to follow you” (Mar 10:28).

(Another) he said, “I am crucified with Christ…” (Gal 2:20). “I have suffered the loss of all things and count them but rubbish, that I may gain Christ…” (Phil 3:8). 

And there are others… (Heb 11:24-26,36-39)

…

To catch a monkey, I once read, hang a fat bottle from a jungle tree. Fill it with goodies monkeys love. Leave it hanging and just step back and out of sight and watch him catch himself.

He sees the goodies. He wants the goodies. He pushes in his hand to grab the goodies, works it down through the narrow neck. He grabs a nice big fistful, then tries to pull his hand back out. It won’t fit through the needle’s eye opening—but he won’t loosen his useless clutching. He just. can’t. let. go.

I wonder, though, if little Mr. Monkey spotted a better goody, high up in the tree, he might then be able… Might let go, be free.

The giving-up isn’t for sheer suffering, but to reach toward higher, better things.

Looking high today, to the tree [listen].

Looking toward Jesus, the Author and Finisher of my faith, for…

REASONS TO PRAISE HIM:

(Reasons #684 – 703, from Hebrews 4 & Hebrews 5)

• Because He is the Apostle and High Priest of our Confession.
• Because He was faithful to Him Who appointed Him, as Moses was faithful in all His house.
• Because He has been counted worthy of more glory than Moses, for He who built the house has more honor than the House
• Because He was a Son over His own house, and not just a servant like Moses.
• Because we are His house if we hold fast confidence in Him.
• Because we have been granted to be partakers of Him if we hold fast that confidence
• Because He is the living God from whom we must beware of departing.
• Because His promise remains that we who have believed may enter His rest
• Because whoever has entered His rest has ceased from his/her own works.
• Because there is no creature hidden from His sight.
• Because all things are nakedly revealed to His eyes.
• Because it’s Him to Whom we must give account.
• Because He’s not a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses because He was tested in all ways that we are.
• Because He nevertheless remained without sin.
• Because He has enabled us who believe to come confidently before His throne of grace.
• Because in Him we can find grace and help in time of need
• Because in the days of His fleshly life He offered up prayers and supplications with vehement cries and tears
• Because when He offered up prayers and supplications to the Father, He was heard because of His godly fear.
• Because although He was a Son, He still learned obedience by the things He suffered.
• Because, having been perfected, He became the Author of eternal salvation to all who  obey Him.

*****

Linked to