The Sylvr Pen

That word, “Obey.” When you hear it, does it ring beauty like harp strings? Or slam down hard like a bully’s club? Does it seem to free your soul, or oppress it?

1 John 5:3 says,

“For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome.”

If that’s true, why can the very word “obey” seem to fall so heavy, blare in deep tones inside head and heart, sounding so akin to “odi-ous!”

Is it maybe because we have a bent to oppress ourselves?

A bent bent?

Consider: Have you just made a bunch of commands for yourself to obey in the coming year?

Lose twenty pounds!

Read through that Bible, before next January!

Memorize a new verse every week!

Don’t step on a crack!

Run that vacuum cleaner. every. Friday!

List three whatever’s. every. single. day!

Don’t forget to journal something. daily!

Publish a blog post. every. weekday!

They’re little, those nagging orders—well, some of them. In more ways than one. But any one of them alone can. get. oppressive…. When you’re sick, or lying injured, or struck with grief. When your sleep deficit has grown like the nation’s money one, so neither mind nor body are working right, and all the pile of others’ demands is lying right in your path, making O-bedience to your self-commands impossible…!

Be careful with resolutions. Be gracious, as God is gracious—with yourself.

And maybe, maybe… we ought to leave off ordering ourselves about with orders not belonging to God, or His children.

Was it just by chance that I happened on Colossians 2:20-22  this morning, before facing this “odious” word Obey as my writing topic, as a step in the path closer to God? I don’t think so.

When I decided that after                            C-alling on God, then L-ooking to Him for strength and instruction, O-beying only follows as good sense, I was thinking…

only of God’s commands and instructions

only of those things that delight His Spirit and make me more like Him.

Some of His commands do seem hard to obey. In fact, some are, well, truly

impossible!…

in our humanness, in our feeble strength.

But, as Colossians 3:1-3 says, if we were raised with Christ to newness of life, we have died! Our strength and abilities aren’t limited to that corpse of self groveling in defeat at our feet. We have Christ within. And Christ within will easily put on Christ without and do the will of Christ in the Spirit of Christ.

But oh, how we hinder Him with self-designed rules and expectations! How they can become a maze of demands just past the door of each day’s waking, beneath which we can’t even see God’s perfect law of love and liberty!

So, I wish you (and I wish me!) a happy obedient new year, this bright and shining 2013, happy in Him, and obedient to His commands… that are not burdensome.

[More on this in a future post]

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Last year for the first time, I adopted a key or guide word for the year: Closer.

It expressed my desire, and aim, to draw closer to God, to grow in walking more closely with Him as the year progressed. It blessed me, because it gave me focus, direction, intentionality.

I’m not choosing a new word for this year — mainly because I’m not finished yet with last year’s!

Not that I ever will be in this earthly life, but I was working my way through the word’s letters as an acrostic — C stood for “Call” on Him, L for “Look” at and “Listen” to Him… Blogging about that, I barely got to O. So, on I go. Not that the word, or a bunch of sub-words starting with its letters are anything in themselves, but if I act on them, they’re precious.

In the coming months, instead of a new “One Word,” I’m aiming to explore last year’s “CLOSER” further, via these “subwords” that I see as stepping stones in the path to a closer walk and communion with Him:

Obey

Surrender

Exalt (Him)

Repeat, repenting.

…

Past posts about this aim of drawing closer to the Lord

(in the order of their appearance):

“Closer”

What Brother Lawrence Said About Can’t

So “C” Stands For…?

Truly Closer

CLOSER Without the C is… ? (How Not to Lose Out)

Silent But Speaking

How a Call to Him Becomes Conversation

Entertaining High Thoughts of God

Some Borrowed High Thoughts

Non-Conversations with God

New Month, New Start

Voices and Noises

Have you chosen a word, verse, or particular resolution to help direct your path through 2013?

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What do you do when everything goes “all wrong”? Like when you pray for God’s help in specific ways and everything goes exactly contrary to your petition…?

Reality is, it may all be going exactly right. It’s just hard to see how — till all’s said and done. I’ve seen that in scripture, and I’ve seen that in life.

Take the “Christmas story.” Two “wrong” things jut out like broken sticks:

1) Two Bible genealogies of Jesus… that don’t “agree”!

2) “No room at the inn…” or anywhere else decent…

“Wrong Thing” #1:

Luke 3:23-38 gives Jesus’ genealogy. Or does it? What about Matthew 1? After David, these two sets of “begots” differ totally.

It seems a mistake.

And yet…

Their difference actually helps prove baby Jesus to be the prophesied Christ!

Matthew’s genealogical listing culminates with “And Jacob begot Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus who is called Christ.”

It doesn’t say “and Joseph begot Jesus”!

Joseph’s genealogy does show he had royal lineage—but a great problem mars his family line. According to Jeremiah 22:30, no flesh-and-blood son of Jeconiah would ever rule as Israel’s King—and Joseph descended from Jeconiah (Mt 1:12-13)!

Mary’s line given in Luke (as R. A. Torrey’s Difficulties in the Bible shows) reveals Jesus was descended from David through her, but not through Jeconiah!

Together, these two genealogies also point to Christ as fulfillment of Genesis 3:15’s seed of the woman, and Isaiah 7:14’s virgin conceiving and bearing a special son.

What at first glance seems to prove error instead verifies precise prophetic accuracy!

“Wrong Thing” #2:

What about “No room at the inn”?  If God prepared so thoroughly for Christ’s first coming, why couldn’t Mary and Joseph find any decent place in Bethlehem to birth the King of kings and have to settle for some old cave or shed?

The little city seemed totally unprepared for Him!

And yet…

There are other scriptures…

Zechariah 9:9 foretold His earthly humility. Micah 5:2 prophesied his birth in lowly Bethlehem. And Isaiah 1:2-3 just may foreshadow His bodily stay on earth beginning in about as humble a place as it could offer: a feed trough made of mere rough wood—like the cross…

Isaiah 1:2-3 speaks of the “Master’s” “crib.” How often I read that scripture without connecting it to Christ’s first bed! Comparing its Hebrew to Luke 2:7’s Greek word translated “manger” verifies that both mean the same thing.

And Luke 2:12 tells of angels giving shepherds a sign. A boy’s birth in a house or inn is no sign, just an ordinary happening.

Jesus’ lowly start in life also helped obscure him from Herod long enough for Joseph to make safe His and Mary’s escape to Egypt (Mt 2:13-18).

Perfect preparation, and place.

What about in our lives today?

A wondrous example just unfolded this past month for a new online friend I gave “risky” counsel. Nerve-wracking money shortfall was besetting her like what I described happening to me here and here.

Through blogging, comments and email, I learned of her financial desperation—and sent her to those two posts, telling how God worked out my problem when everything seemed going wrong. I encouraged her to hang on and trust God—to the last minute. 

I prayed.

Then I got the jitters!

What if God didn’t do like He did for me?

Almost frantically I kept awaiting news of some surprise provision. Nothing.

Then appeared this post.

Read it and see how God does it again!… by working through things going “all wrong,” exactly the opposite of what she’d asked…

…

Did God ever work unexpected blessing for you in this way, through things seeming to go exactly wrong?

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Tell Me a Story

It’s not that I haven’t written. I have. Post after post that I didn’t post. One or two that I did, then removed, dissatisfied—with what they said, or how they said it, or… just with writing, writing, writing…

Written myself into a corner, perhaps I have. Burnt my inner writer out! Or… run low on goodly fuel.

Ah, I think that’s it.

It’s not that ideas are lacking. My head’s been teeming with them. But the work’s been flesh, just too much flesh, and what I need is oil that burns, clean and clear and strong, igniting all those wooden thoughts together, or one by one.

And the Holy Spirit is the oil. And I am the lamp. And this lamp needs fresh filling. By stilling.

On Still Saturday, as snow falls beautiful and silent all around my nest of rest, I draw aside to wait for Him, for fuel, for filling. Stilling. 

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