Daily Thoughts about God Posts

Published June 22, 2014

View from Back of the Desert

There are three classes of people: those who have been in the desert, those still in the desert, and those who have your day coming in the desert!  If you have been there, you need no explanation from me.  If you haven’t been there, no words of mine will explain it to you.  It is not a popular topic, and God’s people perish for lack of knowledge.

Being “on the backside of the desert” is not a self-inflicted inconvenience or a detour because of our spiritual slackness.  It is one of God’s major destinations for those He wants to take deeper.  He is deliberate in leading us into the desert to speak tenderly to us and to make our trouble a gateway of hope.  God says, “Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her. There I will give her back her vineyards, and will make the Valley of Achor a door of hope” (Hosea 2:14-15). There we give ourselves to Him in a new way, and He affirms to us that we are bound to Him forever in righteousness, justice, unfailing love, and compassion (Hosea 2:19-20).

God has purposes and blessings for us in the desert and afterward.  From there, we will know Him as Lord more deeply.  He wants to sharpen our listening skills to His voice alone.  He wants us to know that the only proper response when there is nothing we can control is to trust that He is in control, and He can’t get it wrong.  He wants to show us that there are only two places to go: down and out, or right up into His lap.  He gets us where we can’t move in our flesh, because He must do everything of eternal significance by His Spirit.  In the heat of the desert, He burns up or blows away all the wood, hay, and stubble of our pride, confidence, and striving.

The Bible says that John the Baptist grew strong in spirit in the desert (Luke 1:80). There, he preached the message of the new entrance of God into the affairs of earth (Matthew 3:1).  The Holy Spirit led Jesus into the desert (Matthew 4:1, Luke 4:1).  Luke 4:14 tells us that Jesus came out of the desert in the power of the Spirit and preached his first public sermon: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18-19).  This was His mission statement for the three years of His earthly ministry and His ultimate ministry to us and for us.

What lies ahead?  Based on the experience of the Israelites, we can expect more giant obstacles, more resistance by the heathen and hell itself, fiercer battles, and more confrontation with the forces of darkness.  That is the bad news.  The good news is that there are great things to come: more positioning as the Body of Christ to move corporately, more victories, more blessings, more light, more power in the anointing of the Holy Spirit, more of His presence, and more of His glory made manifest in our world.  For the joy set before us!

by Sylvia Gunter

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Thoughts by All thoughts by Sylvia Gunter Thoughts by Women

Published June 20, 2014

The Kingdom of God is Like…

I spoke at a conference a while ago.  Two events had a deep impact on me, both on a single night.  The first was the baptism of three Iranian women,  “Persian“, as they prefer to be called.  The second was video footage of the Karen people in Burma (or Myanmar), Christians brutally persecuted for their faith.

The three Persian women all gave testimonies, in halting English, with heartfelt emotion.  All are recent converts from Islam – a religion they described as “rule-bound and joyless“.  Their decision to follow Christ will cost them their families: their fathers and brothers will disown them, their mothers will be forbidden ever again to speak with them.  Yet what stood out in these women was their joy and thankfulness.  They reminded me of the Apostle Paul – “I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things.” (Philippians 3:8). They drenched in the waters of baptism, and the rest of us drenched in the tears of astonishment.  I spent some time with the Persian pastor and his wife, and told them that next time I’m in Toronto I’d come and visit their church.  He was overjoyed: “You will bring us such encouragement,” he said.  I don’t think he has any idea how much it’s the other way around.

The pastor from Burma, who brought the video footage, spoke of the stubborn faith of the Karen people – though displaced, tortured, imprisoned, killed for what they believe, they cling to Christ.  He showed gruesome footage – a young boy whose leg was sheered off after stepping on a mine, men and women gashed from machete attacks, parents whose 9-year old daughter was abducted by the Burmese army.  It reached the point that many people could hardly watch. Ten minutes into it, the pastor stopped it. “Let’s end it there,” he said, “before we get to the violent parts.” Before? You mean this gets worse? Yet, again, what stood out was this pastor’s unbridled joy.  He exuded confidence in Christ and in his victory.

It brought me to my senses. It returned me to my first love. It restored the joy of my salvation.

And it made me feel like a wimp.

My conversion to Christ and my commitment to him have cost me almost nothing: Not relationships, not possessions, not limbs. Yet I find things to whine about anyhow.  I can, with minimal provocation, feel hard done-by, “persecuted,” under-appreciated.  To refer to my sermon last week, it takes me very little time – sometimes no more than 12 hours work in the vineyard – for my thankfulness to turn to bitterness, my joy to entitlement.

Lord, have mercy.

Did you practice losing this week?  I did, with varied results.  A few times I forgot myself  – once, a driver raced in to beat me on the merge in a roundabout, and feelings not exactly akin to praise rose in me.  Then I remembered, and thanked God.

A small step. Hardly heroic. Cost me nothing.

I have much to learn about the Kingdom of God from Persian women and Karen villagers.

By Mark Buchanan

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Thoughts by All thoughts by Mark Buchanan Thoughts by Men