Enjoying God - Week #7

(Just a reminder that the next two books will be Deep Unto Deep (Dana Candler) and The Pursuit of God (A.W. Tozer). We will start the first one in September after a break in August when I will post some simple words of encouragement during the month.)

Chapter Six – Love-Empowered Holiness (through p. 105)
Jonathan Edwards: “…there is no man upon earth who isn’t earnestly seeking after happiness, and this appears abundantly by the variety of ways they so vigorously seek it (happiness); they will twist and turn every way…to make themselves happy…”

This chapter of Enjoying God is about discovering a life of holiness that is rooted in the love and joy of God. (By the way, I have come to understand that this kind of holiness is the only true holiness there is because it is how God is. That which is rooted in performance and religion isn’t biblical holiness; it’s contrary to the nature of God.)

The author points out that we Christians tend to shy away from the idea of seeking happiness. I would say that this tendency is for a couple of reasons at least. One is that we legitimately don’t want to be seeking our own comfort at the expense of others, but the other reason is that we have the erroneous notion that the most heroic and spiritual things are measured purely by the amount of pain and sacrifice attached to them.

As a preacher who I heard recently said (my paraphrase), “In the evangelical and missions world we believe that rather than pursue an encounter with God (which includes His coming to us with tender emotions that touch our emotions) we should be content to live and work without encountering God in intimacy.” This is how we tend to measure true faith; the less we feel of God, the more spiritual we are.

But we were designed to feel and experience God in all areas of our life. We can’t manipulate nor force this, but we can pursue Him wholeheartedly with our heart open to receive His tenderizing touch on our hearts. I’m not referring to “emotionalism” which is a state in which my emotions control me, but I’m referring to being fully alive – mind, will, and emotions. I don't want to be controlled by my emotions any more than I want to be controlled by my mind, but I do want to live with the faculties of my soul (mind, will and emotions) as fully alive and in touch with the Spirit of God as possible.

And so in talking about seeking happiness, the author is referring to how God created us for pleasure and happiness. Seeking pleasure is not sin; the places we go to get pleasure is where sin enters the picture. Adam and Eve were deliberately placed in a garden called Eden which means "delight". God wanted joy and pleasure for them, and as long as God Himself was the Source of their joy, they could enjoy fully the gifts He brought with Him for them. Their sin and misery came when they looked to another source for pleasure and peace.

Psalm 16:11 says, “You have made known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.” David knew the Source of joy and pleasures – the Father’s presence.

“No human relationship can ultimately satisfy us. Taking drugs…getting drunk…illicit sex can’t do it. Money can’t buy it. Only knowing and experiencing the Father can give us the happiness and pleasure that our hearts so desperately crave.”

The author quotes one of my favorites from C.S. Lewis: “The NT has lots to say about self-denial, but not self-denial as an end in itself. We are told to deny ourselves and take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ; and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire. If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea.”

S.J. Hill says, “The belief that holiness and happiness are at odds with each other is a serious twisting of Christian truth…holiness can best be attained by finding our ultimate happiness and pleasure in God. Why do people sin? They sin because they enjoy the pleasures that it brings…The traditional approach to discouraging people from sinning is negative…but if a man’s heart is not being warmed by the passions of God’s personality, his heart will be captivated by the red-hot flames of temptation…just saying no alone doesn’t work. There must be something more appealing to which a person can say yes.”

The Transforming Power of Beauty
This “more appealing something" is the Person of God in all His beauty and holiness! David knew this and expresses it eloquently in Psa. 27:4, “One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple.”

This beautiful God is what we are made for, and He seeks for worshippers who will seek His beauty above all else. We need to help new believers step quickly into the wonderful discipline of meditating on and contemplating the beauty of God and His Word, because it is in this practice and habit of contemplating/beholding His Person that we are transformed (II Cor. 3:18).

At the end of this section of the chapter the author says, “Overcoming sin is not about gritting your teeth and holding on for dear life. The only way for you to successfully resist sin is by maximizing your pleasure in God.” While there is a place for making the hard core choice to say no, just saying no will not carry us into full transformation of our inner life. Only finding the higher pleasure (God Himself) will fully satisfy the human desire and need for pleasure.

I’ll close this week’s posting out with an admonition in relation to this. In this process of growing to enjoy God, you must allow Him to enjoy you. I want to reiterate what I’ve said before, which is that the flesh will protest His enjoyment of you, and you may not like hearing that He enjoys you in your immaturity and failings as well as when you feel you are doing well. In some ways it‘s much easier to declare my love to God than to hear Him say that He loves and even likes me.

A few years ago I was leading a small team of Bethany students on a 3-week short-term missions trip to Mexico. I have rarely been sick in my life and was taken by surprise by a reaction to an antibiotic that contained a substance that I was allergic to. It hit me so hard that I was sidelined the entire first week of the outreach; I was desperately ill one night in particular and hardly able to move. In the middle of that night I really thought I might die; in the face of that, things got crystal clear and I sensed the Lord asking me, “Nita, what is the one thing you are most sure of in life?” Without hesitating, I answered, “That I love You, Lord.” I sensed His smile over me in that answer, but then heard His tender and loving word to follow up on that: “There’s something greater and more fundamental/sure than your love for Me, Nita, and that is My love for you.” In that simple exchange between us, worlds of understanding began to open to me, and I haven’t stopped discovering the depths of the truth of I John 4:19, “We love Him because He first loved us.”

I think it’s perfectly ok to apply this truth of His being the Initiator in all areas and say, “I enjoy Him because He first enjoyed me…I am committed to Him because He first committed to me”, etc. It’s all in the cross where God took the initiative to do whatever it took to win our love, and the greatest human pleasure is to encounter this love firsthand!

A warning – the capacity to be enjoyed by God and to enjoy Him may take a long time to develop because of years of wrong thinking about Him and ourselves and the world, because of woundedness, because of unforgiveness and hidden bitterness, etc. You must be patient and persevering in your pursuit. God is patient, and we must agree with His patience with us, thanking Him that transformation is happening even if we can’t see the incremental growth going on in us.

God bless you and be with you this week…for next week, we’ll finish this chapter on Love-Empowered Holiness.

Enjoying God - Week #6

Chapter Five (2nd half) – The Affectionate and Approachable Father

This week we finish the chapter on God as the affectionate and approachable Father. The author writes about the Father’s embrace by using the story of what we commonly call the “prodigal son.” He says that this story is really about the heart of the father and his response to his lost son. It really is an amazing story of this father when you realize that in Jewish culture, for a son to demand his inheritance before the father has died was to wish the father were dead; likewise, it was unusual for a father to run like this one did upon seeing his son at a distance.

Hill makes an interesting observation: “…the prodigal had hit bottom. Yes, he was desperate. But he could have stayed where he was…What gave the prodigal the courage to return home? I believe that during his childhood the prodigal saw something in his father that let him know he would not be rejected if he returned home…he had a realistic understanding of who his father was. It empowered him to return home and be restored.”

Hill goes on to make his point, which is so important: “For you to fully enjoy the Father, you need to have a deep understanding of His personality. If you’re continually afraid of being rejected by Him and you feel that He’s perpetually angry with you because of things you’ve done, how can you open your heart to Him? How can you freely give yourself to Him and obey Him?”

This is a fundamental reality – that to enjoy God we must know what He is truly like, and part of His nature is His affectionate heart and His joy over His children. When we begin to taste and see a bit of what He is like and how He feels about us, then we will find that the lesser loves and addictions begin to lose their hold on us as we believe His Word and Spirit and walk in obedience to that. “The only thing that will ultimately break the power of lust in your life is a revelation of the Father’s love.”

Speaking of the elder brother in the story of the prodigal son, the author says that because he was performance-driven, he couldn’t understand the response his father gave his younger delinquent brother. As I have mentioned a couple of times before, I am finding that my flesh is offended with the radical love of God, as was this elder brother. There have been times when I have allowed myself to ponder and meditate on the reality that God enjoys Nita Steiner that I have rejected that thought. I’m more and more accepting this, and it’s liberating me deep within from many fears.

Two reasons given in the book as to why we humans struggle with the unconditional love of God:

• Incomplete teaching about the nature of God, resulting in seeing Him as primarily a severe Judge without clear understanding of His goodness and affection for us.
• Our own awareness of our failures, so we attempt to overcome guilt by showing Him how genuinely sorry we are.

The Approachable FatherGod is not like the authoritarian father that is looking for perfection and pounces on anything short of that, always reminding the child of his failure or lack and thinking that will motivate him to do better.

I love this line by the author: “God is different than any authority figure you have ever known.” This is an important revelation to have since we all reflect onto God’s leadership what we have experienced from human authorities. Even the very best fathers and other authority figures taint our view of God since none are perfect.

“God is not an authoritarian Father. He doesn’t want you shrinking back in fear or apprehension of Him. He’s an approachable Father who loves you passionately…In ‘God in Search of Man,’ Abraham Heschel explains that the phrase ‘fear of God’ is derived from the Hebrew word ‘yirah.’ (Heschel) writes: ‘The word has two meanings – fear and awe. There is the man who fears the Lord lest he be punished in his body, family, or in his possessions. Another man fears the Lord because he is afraid of punishment in the life to come. Both types are considered inferior in Jewish tradition. Fear is the anticipation of evil or pain…Awe, on the other hand, is the sense of wonder and humility inspired by the sublime or felt in the presence of mystery…Awe, unlike fear, does not make us shrink from the awe-inspiring object, but on the contrary, draws us near to it. This is why awe is compatible with both love and joy.’”

Essentially the fear of the Lord is not something that makes us cower before Him in fear of punishment but is deep love for Him in His awesomeness that causes me to hate what He hates; anything that separates me from His love is to be feared and hated.

Even in His discipline of us, God doesn’t stop enjoying us as His children. In fact, His discipline and correction is because He loves us. Just like a good earthly father must discipline his child at times for his own welfare but never stops loving and accepting him, so the Father in heaven can separate me as a person from the behavior in my life that don’t align with Him. He doesn’t reject me as a person while correcting my behavior. “The Father’s correction is deeply rooted in His affection for us. Proverbs 3:11,12 admonishes us to ‘not despise the Lord’s discipline and do not resent his rebuke, because the Lord disciplines those he loves, as a father the son he delights in.’”

Immaturity is not the same as rebellion even though it may appear the same in a person’s behavior. God has no problem with our being immature (when do we ever know when we’re “mature”?). He will not tolerate rebellion but immaturity is another thing. He deals with us according our heart of sincerity and repentance, so “as we set our hearts on obeying Him, He will make loving adjustments in our lives until we come to maturity.”

Jesus’ dealing with Peter exemplifies how God feels and deals with immaturity. Peter’s failure of the Lord left him full of shame, and Jesus restored him to confidence through love (John 21). He knew Peter genuinely loved Him in spite of his weakness and failure, and Jesus’ leading him to confess his love to Jesus broke the power of shame over Peter.

In conclusion of this chapter, the author says, “Once you begin to understand the depths of God’s love for you and the nature of His heart, then you’ll be able to be transparent with Him. Intimacy requires communication, vulnerability, and honesty…Like Peter, you may still be carrying the shame of your past failures and may be having a hard time forgiving yourself. You may have even become accustomed to a second-class relationship with the Lord because you’re afraid you might fail again…You can trust the Father. He fully understands…” And knowing all, He loves you and me radically to the point of death!

Rejoice in such extravagance this week! For next week, read the first part (up to page 105) of chapter 7, Love-Empowered Holiness.

To comment on the blog, click on this link and then click on "Comments" at the bottom of Nita's "words" for this week.

Enjoying God - Week #5

Chapter Five (first half): The Affectionate and Approachable Father

I remember so well what a preacher said a few years ago: “The worst case scenario is to be a Christian and not be able to enjoy God!” I’m discovering more all the time that God, like A.W. Tozer says of Him, “is easy to live with” and I’ll add that He’s enjoyable to be with.

And the reason I find Him increasingly enjoyable to be with is that I’m grasping a tiny bit of the reality that He enjoys me! I’ve studied the nature and character of God all my life, both in formal studies but also in my own personal study and mostly through walking intimately with Him, and that has fed and nourished me for years. But until I began to look more deliberately at the emotional part of His makeup, my relating to Him was without full confidence and joy. Not that I didn’t love Him nor even that I didn’t experience Him in all my being – heart, soul, mind, strength – but I lacked the abandonment to love that comes with seeing His jealous love for me, His weak child.

Consequently, I was still caught in the people-pleasing (fear of man) trap. What has lifted me out of that horrible pit has been the revelation of His love and enjoyment of me. It has also given me the courage to act in obedience to His voice of correction and conviction. This revelation hasn’t come in one fell swoop but over time as I have chosen to practice His presence and listen to His affirmation of me.

This chapter, in contrast with the previous one which spoke of broken human fathers, is about our heavenly Father and His affections and approachableness.

Romans 8:14-16: “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, ‘Abba, Father.’ The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.”

In relation to this passage, I’ll quote the author:
“The word ‘abba’ is equivalent to the word ‘papa’ and carries with it the idea of intimacy, dependency, and vulnerability. The concept of God as ‘abba’ was a revolutionary one at the time Paul wrote this.
“Drawing on his experience with Greco-Roman law, Paul used the analogy of adoption to describe the Christian’s relationship and position with God. The legal status of a son in early Roman times was not much better than that of a slave. A son was the property of his father. A father was entitled to his son’s wages. A father could transfer ownership of his son at will and, under certain circumstances, even have him put to death.
“In contrast, the legal status of an adopted son actually put him in a more secure place than that of a son born into the family. He was no longer legally bound to old debts, andif he was a slave, he was set free the moment he was adopted. He had complete access to the father of the family and was guaranteed a position in the family as well.”

The book includes an interesting quote from Martyn Lloyd-Jones who emphasizes the experiential nature of the above Scripture from Romans 18:
“What the apostle Paul is emphasizing here is that not only must we believe this doctrine and accept it with our minds, but we must also be conscious of it and feel it; there must be the Spirit of Adoption in us as a result of this work of the Holy Spirit…Paul is really telling us that we are to feel – and I am emphasizing feeling – in this sense, what our Lord Himself felt.”

S.J. Hill encourages us to believe and receive the truth that like a child “you can crawl up into ‘Abba’s lap’ and experience the warmth and security of His loving embrace. You can know the pleasure of His heart as you allow your emotions to be bathed in the revelation of His love for you.”

Hill then speaks of the affectionate Father, giving the testimonies of men such as Charles Finney and Dwight L. Moody who experienced wonderful encounters with the affections of God. Then he gives a graphic description of the sufferings of Jesus on the cross (taken from an article by C.Truman Davis). Looking at the indescribable suffering of the Lord in His crucifixion speaks loudly and dramatically of the Father’s passion for a Bride for His Son.

We wonder and marvel at stories we hear about someone taking great risks to save the life of another person; and the reality is that we all have this story – a Man has died for me! Only ravished and jealous love will do such a thing, and Jesus has done it for all of us who are in Him and part of His Bride. (See Song of Songs 8:6.)

Just this week a young man was sharing with me the bit of revelation he’s beginning to have about God’s emotions and how that is revolutionizing his view of God and of himself. He’s been spending time in the book of Hosea, meditating on the fiery jealousy of God for His people and how emotional God is about us; our God is not a passive God at a distance but fights to win our affections and to deliver us from lesser loves.

I have been strengthened and healed by studying and believing the emotions that God has towards me. The Gospel is an unbelievable reality!! The longer I live, the more I realize how radical the Gospel of Jesus Christ is; worship and the offering of my life to Him is the natural overflow of this.

The Father looks at you with affection; you are His beloved and adopted child…May the grace of the Spirit rest upon us this week to believe and receive what His Word says about His feelings toward us. Blessings on your week in Him!

For next week, let’s finish chapter five on the affectionate and approachable Father. (Please see my note from last week's posting about when we will begin the next book...)

Enjoying God - Week #4

Chapter Four: The Audience of One

The author begins this chapter with a fable which tells of a spring of pure water with miraculous healing properties, and whoever drank of it was healed instantly. As word got out, people came from near and far to drink of this spring, and eventually, all kinds of businesses and homes were built around this spring to support the multitude of visitors coming. In time an entire city was built.

One day a visitor came looking for the stream; not finding any signs, he asked a resident where the famous stream was, and after hesitating a moment, the resident answered with embarrassment, “I don’t even know. In all of our activity – our building and moving – we’ve somehow lost sight of the healing stream.”

This fable reminds me of the experience I had as a young missionary in Puerto Rico many years ago. In my regular devotional time, I was reading through the Scriptures and was in the book of Judges reading about Samson. When I got to chapter 6, I read of his being seduced by Delilah into telling her the secret of his strength…you know the story.

When I got to Judges 16:20, it was as if the Holy Spirit took out a bright highlighter pen and underscored the words as I read them: “He did not know that the Lord had left him.” A holy fear entered me that morning that has remained with me since. I saw clearly that Samson was anointed and called and chosen by God for a particular purpose in Israel’s life and destiny; he was doing the will of God by defeating the Philistines. But along the way, he allowed himself to slowly be drawn into compromises until one day he woke up from a night’s sleep to find himself stripped of his God-given strength.

What most hit me in that story that day was not the sin and compromises, but the fact that the sin and compromises had so dulled him that when Delilah wakened him to warn him that the Philistines were coming, he jumped out of bed with the same thought he had had the other times she had tried this on him: “I’ll show them…let me at them!” The Holy Spirit’s commentary on Samson at that moment was, “He did not know that the Lord had left him.”

And I realized that the worst part of it all was that this anointed servant of God had reached such a point of dullness in his walk with God that he had no clue that God was not around. I cried out to the Holy Spirit that morning to never allow me to get so engrossed in ministry and doing the work of God that my heart grows cold and hard and dull to the presence of the One I’m serving and I find myself one day unaware that His presence is missing and I’m just going through the religious motions as Samson was doing.

This chapter deals with religious busyness and the spiritual poverty many believers live in because of seeking the approval of men; I hope you can read it for yourself. It’s fairly lengthy and in the interest of keeping this to a reasonable length, I won’t try to cover all of it.

The author says, “Religious busyness drives us to develop programs and machinery that propel an institution rather than promote a relationship with the Lover of our hearts. It takes away the ability to sit at the feet of Jesus. It opens the door to performance-based faith and undermines what Christ did for us on the cross…We then begin developing our own substitutes – settling for good rather than God…We try to satisfy our hearts with the water of obligation and duty, and yet we remain thirsty for something more.”

I’ve spent my entire life within Christian community, particularly within Christian missionary community both as a daughter of missionaries then as an adult missionary among dedicated and genuine followers of Jesus; I count myself one of these. In more recent years, my heart has been given permission (through circumstances the Lord has orchestrated) to run fully with what I was always drawn to as a young woman: a wholehearted, lovesick pursuit of God, and this pursuit has bumped up against human and religious systems that were happier with me being in compliance with them. But the encounters I’ve had with the living God have ruined me for anything less, and I live my days more interested in His praise and affirmation than in that of others around me. (I’m not claiming to do this perfectly, but I’ve lived it enough now to never want to go back to people-pleasing.)

The human heart was made for wholehearted love for God, and I believe the Holy Spirit is stirring desire for God among His people more than ever now. I travel a little to share with different groups about these things, and in the past year or so I’ve seen a marked difference in how God’s people respond to these truths…our desire for Him is overcoming the obstacles that have hindered our seeking him with our whole heart.

The Gospel and the Word of God is given to us to free us to love the Father with all our hearts! That’s what we were created for and that’s why He has given us His Son and the Scriptures.

The great men and women of God have always understood the priority of loving God above all else, even above ministry to people (Mark 12:29-31; Revelation 2:2-5, etc.). The author quotes Watchman Nee in this chapter:

"Work for the Lord undoubtedly has its attractions for the flesh…you may be thrilled when crowds gather to hear you preach…If you have to stay at home, occupied from morning to night with mundane matters, you think: How meaningless life is…If only I were free to go around preaching…
But that is not spirituality. Oh, if we could only see that very much work done for God is not really ministry to Him!...The thing I fear most is that many of you will go out and win sinners to the Lord and build up believers without ministering to the Lord Himself. Much so-called service for Him is simply following our own natural inclinations. We have such active dispositions that we cannot bear to stay at home, so we run around for our own relief…
Many of us can enjoy working among people, but how many of us can draw near to God in the Holy of Holies?...Ministry that is ‘unto Me’ is in the inner sanctuary, in the hidden place…people may think we are doing nothing, but service to God within the Holy Place far transcends service to the people in the outer court."

Another well-known man of God, Oswald Chambers, said this:

"The only way to keep true to God is by a steady persistent refusal to be interested in
Christian work and to be interested alone in Jesus Christ."

S.J. Hill says that the biblical view of success for humans is the realization that we are loved by God and that we are lovers of God. In other words, our whole identity is wrapped up in God, just as the Apostle John’s was. He never names himself “John” in his gospel, but rather refers to himself always as “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” I love that!

The more I believe and receive this truth that my success lies in who I am in Him (dearly beloved) and Who He is in me (my First Love), then I can do what He gives me to do with confidence, because I begin successful before I do anything and don't need to prove anything with what I do...it's simply the overflow of a lovesick heart.

Hill finishes the chapter talking about God the Father’s affirmation and blessing of His Son Jesus and points out five main parts that there are to full blessing that a human father can give to his son or daughter, which is seen in God’s blessing of Jesus at His baptism. (He takes this from Gary Smalley’s book The Blessing.) I will simply list the five components for you:
1. Meaningful touch
2. Affirmation or spoken message
3. Attaching high value to the one being blessed
4. Portraying a specific future for the one being blessed
5. Being actively committed to fulfilling the promise of the blessing.

“Many believers try to serve the Lord without having experienced the Father’s affirmation and blessing.” Our heads may know this but it must be a revelation to our spirit or we serve the Lord with insecurity and in fear of man.

I want to encourage you, as I have done before, to study the emotions of God’s heart in the Scriptures; and then take the time to be with Him without doing anything but having your heart open to Him. Sing to Him and listen for any word He may want to whisper to you or He may simply enjoy being with you in silence. As you give Him the chance to speak, He will affirm you in His love and with His affirmation, you will grow in confidence and minister to others without fear.

This is a life-long process. For some of us the healing that will come by simply being affirmed and blessed by God the Father will take a long time; but even after the healing of past issues, we will always need His affirming words in order to navigate a performance-driven world and church. As an adult woman, my earthly father's affirming words were super important to me; I never outgrew wanting and needing to be affirmed by him.

Living before “an audience of One” (for His praise alone) is only truly possible as we know how ravished He is with us. The Lord bless you and may His bridegroom zeal go after all the obstacles that are in the way of our experiencing His love! I don’t have the energy nor zeal to do this for myself, but I can say “yes” to His doing it on my behalf.

Next week we will cover half of chapter five (to the bottom of page 81): The Affectionate and Approachable Father. We are now a year into this book club, and there are a number of people reading it regularly. Thank you for sharing these books with me. When August comes, I’m going to take a break and not blog about a book but rather make a couple of postings during the month of simple and short words of encouragement. Then in September we’ll go back to a new book.

With this in mind, I’m going to take the remaining three chapters of Enjoying God at a slower pace, spending two weeks on each of these chapters. These chapters are quite lengthy anyway and this topic of the lavish love of God for weak humans deserves to be gone through slowly.

God bless you this week!