One way to nurture high thoughts of God is to borrow them from the best library on earth: the Bible. And every high truth about God is another reason to praise Him.

So today, just this. These high thoughts from Isaiah the prophet in Isaiah 57, and Samuel’s mother Hannah, in 1 Samuel 2, and David the Sweet Psalmist of Israel, in Psalm 29…  

MORE REASONS (IN GOD HIMSELF) WHY WE SHOULD PRAISE HIM

From Isaiah 57:

• Because He is the High and Lofty One
• Because He inhabits eternity
• Because His name [is] Holy
• Because He dwells in the high and holy [place], with him [who] has a contrite and humble spirit,
• Because He will revive the spirit of the humble, and the heart of the contrite ones.
• Because He will not contend forever, nor will He always be angry, for the spirit would fail before Him, and the souls [which] He has made.
• Because He was angry and hid, and struck His own for the iniquity of his covetousness, as he went on backsliding in the way of his heart.
• Because nevertheless He has seen his ways, and will heal him
• Because He will also lead His own,
• Because He will restore comforts to him and to his mourners.
• Because He creates the fruit of the lips
• Because He says, “Peace, peace to [him who is] far off and to [him who is] near, and I will heal him.”
• Because He also says, “[There is] no peace for the wicked.“

From 1 Samuel 2, Hannah’s Song:

• Because there is no one holy like the LORD
• Because there is no rock like our God
• Because He is a God of knowledge by Whom the deeds of men are weighed
• Because He causes the bows of the mighty to be broken
• He causes His people who stumble to be girded with strength
• Because the LORD kills and makes alive
• Because He brings down to the grave and raises up from it.
• Because the LORD makes poor and the LORD makes rich
• Because He brings low and He lifts up
• Because He raises the poor from the dust and the beggar from the ash heap to set them among princes
• Because the LORD makes them to inherit the throne of glory
• Because the pillars of the earth are His
• Because He has set the world upon them
• Because He will guard the feet of His saints
• Because He will cause the wicked to be silent in darkness
• Because His adversaries shall be broken in pieces
• Because from Heaven He will thunder against the wicked
• Because He will judge the ends of the earth
• Because He will give strength to His King
• Because He will exalt the horn (strength) of His anointed.

A bare tree. A chill day. A high view.

Beginning low, and small, and simple — but growing like the images painted across his mind —

A thought…

That leaves would come anew. Then flowers. Then the fruit…

And through that simple musing, more sense of soul than calculated figuring of mind, it birthed forth: a growing apprehension of the magnitude and power and providence of God.

It bloomed and ballooned huge and huger, and in that expansion his life changed forever, for he, like the coming leaves and flowers and fruit, was being born anew.

Not his gospel message, this (for his parents had long taught him in the things of Christ), but a providential watering and warming that woke to life that waiting seed planted in Brother Lawrence’s heart, that brought it suddenly out into shimmering light.

Ever after that, he entertained high thoughts of God — traveled them as stepping stones of soul, as means to lead him closer, closer to his Lord and Savior, so close he could sense God’s very presence, so close he could know his own entire being lay encompassed within its embrace.

“High thoughts of God.”

“We should feed and nourish our souls with them,” he taught — for they “would yield us great joy in being devoted to Him.”

How do we best do this? From whence do we call forth those high thoughts? From our own imaginations?

Never, A. W. Tozer warned in The Knowledge of the Holy. “A god begotten in the shadows of a fallen heart will quite naturally be no true likeness to the true God.”  He assures us that idolatry isn’t just kneeling before some carved object. “The essence of idolatry is the entertainment of thoughts about God that are unworthy of Him.”

Tozer went on to affirm, and deepen, the advice of Brother Lawrence for us living in the now:

The heaviest obligation [of] the Christian Church today is to purify and elevate her concept of God until it is once more worthy of Him… We do the greatest service to the next generation… by passing on to them undimmed and undiminished that noble concept of God which we received from our Hebrew and Christian fathers of generations past.”

And where did they get it but from the scriptures themselves?

And so can we,

by combing through their treasure, marking words that spotlight His glories and His greatness;

by jotting down just a verse, or two, perhaps, to carry in a pocket on a walk in summer stillness,

to draw out and read and ponder on, as the light filters soft down through full-blown leaves, to illumine the words of wonder,

and let them lift our hearts up and upward, beyond the branches or the beaches or the quiet streets,

to entertain high thoughts of God,

and bask in joy.

…..

*****

Linked to

I know it’s a lame play on words, but the title’s homonyms help me remember what I must — about pride in its different manifestations. Could we put them in two simple categories: “Pride in the Peaks” and “Pride in the Piques”? I think so.

Pride in the Peaks:

Dinner cleared away, we haul out our Bibles — dragging a little — to look some more into Ezekiel.

It’s one ponderous, mysterious book, and long…

We’ve made it to Ezekiel 28:1-19, where Tyre’s king morphs into Satan. Here God’s light penetrates with such strength, we can’t miss the hideous face of Pride hiding behind its veil of beauty.

Inner ugliness fills both the earthly king and the fallen angel. Oh, outwardly they’re splendorific, both. Gorgeous! But inside, ew! “…filled with violence… corrupted…  defiled… multitude of… iniquities…”

In both cases, the root of all this gross diseased filth — pride — has budded and grown by feeding on several blessed gifts, which these two creatures did not form in themselves, but received from… guess Whom?

1) the high state of “perfection” with which their Creator endowed them

2) their beauty (bestowed by their Designer)

3) their wisdom, which the All-Wise gave them, but which they perverted to advance and glorify themselves.

4) the abundance of their trading: high end possessions, “personal” wealth. But Who really owns all the silver, gold, seas, lands, and animals? Both made personal boast in  the gracious bounty God provided!

5) their prestige (the high place in which the Ruler of all had placed them, which led each to think of himself as a god) 

These characters deserved all the contempt God could load on them. But what about me? Us?

Do I get smitten with my “own” occasional good appearance, achievement, ability, or abundance?

How can I know when I do?

The best way I know is to test this in the moments rather than in vague generalizations. Here the idea of “peak” helps me, with a simple question:

How high do I inwardly soar in a split second at someone’s flattery, or “honest compliment”? (It doesn’t matter which. The important issue is my response.)

That quick rise to the peak is one big red-flag signal, cluing me in to pride inside.

Then there’s “Pride in the Piques”…

that sudden inner (even if hidden) anger that shoots up like an instant fever when someone has the nerve to…

insult me

correct me

evaluate me negatively

order me around, telling me how I ought to behave

nab a prize or opportunity (s)he “doesn’t deserve” but “I do”

…

*****

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Thought Provoking Thursday

There it is, this year’s cherry crop.

Or was. A robin got it!

Last year was such a fruitful year, branches weighed heavy with apples, peaches, pears, plums…

This year, nada.

That false spring, that early warm time, fooled all those trees into pushing forth tender blooms… then, bam! The “winter that wasn’t” suddenly poured down such piles of snow and sudden cold, that all delicate small things sighed and died!

My life runs rife with such surprises. “Fruit-filled” days, heavy-blessed, can (and have) suddenly become… not! What do I do?

Is there a lesson in the garden?

Peppers burgeon with blossoms and “fruit.” I’ve already snip-harvested fresh ones twice because their weight would break still-fragile stalks.

Peas came so abundantly we need not sow more rows come fall.

Broccoli’s third picking sits waiting right now for processing.

Digging for the treasure of bright “new potatoes,” we’ve already unearthed (and cooked up) four batches. (Yum! There’s no potato like a fresh-dug “new” potato!)

And summer looks threatened with burial beneath great piles of zucchinis! 

So much for veggies, so far, anyhow. The corn, sweet potatoes, and winter squash are yet to show their stuff. But yes, the corn stalks were “knee high by the Fourth of July.”

And though the fruit trees give nothing this year, among the bushes, it’s a berry good year!

Finally, the herbs wait, lush and lavish… I must harvest lavender fragrance this morning, and wash and tie up bunches of basil, tasty thyme, good Greek oregano, and savory sage. And… and…

When my life — or yours, dear Christian friend — hits what seems a time of fruitlessness, we need to look around. More possibilities may stand present, waiting, than we were noticing, staring at those empty trees — possibilities we never noticed, although perhaps present all along: Maybe new growth those low-bent branches obscured. Or, amid the weeds now needing attention may lie new surprises. (Like lettuce, garlic, and parsley that sprang back up from last year here, with winter so mild and all.) Different years (or other time periods) often produce different fruits.

And what if, what if…

or no chickens in the coops… ?

What then?

Why? Because He is my source of all my fruit. Because He’s the one Who makes water into wine, Who blossoms the desert as the rose, Who gives manna daily in barren wasteland and springs water up from rocks. Because…

“The LORD God is my strength…”*

and even then

And He, the faithful Promise Keeper, gives this promise:

May God keep my eyes open to all His possibilities.

…..

 *Habakkuk 3:17-19