Category: Brokenness

Walking In Peace (When Your Life Is In Pieces)

“I am like a broken vessel.”
Psalm 31:12

“But as for me, I trust in You…”
v14

Hold fast
Help is on the way
Hold fast
He’s come to save the day
What I’ve learned in my life
One thing stronger than my strife
Is His grasp
So hold fast
–Mercy Me, Hold Fast

walkonwater.jpg

Someone I know is falling apart at the seams. I have been watching them make all the wrong choices for some time and now I see them paying all the retail prices on their purchases. On a recent day my heart hurt watching them get pummeled by life. In a ten hour span of time, this poor soul could barely come through one crisis without getting sideswiped by another and their already “very bad day” culminated with the most dreaded phone call they had ever had to answer. I wince for them even now as I recall watching the emotional bloodbath they were dragged through. It was pathetically painful to watch. R-rated, even.

I desperately want to reach in and rescue them but that is a pipe dream. Could they have come through the worst of it? Possibly. Maybe. Ummmm, no. Not by a long shot. There is still a Valdez-sized clean-up ahead. A gargantuan slick on the ocean. And pieces and shards of life scattered everywhere, much like flotsam after a wreckage at sea.

(God, show them a hope. Gather up the pieces of the mess they have made and put them together again. God, get the glory. Take them to the place of Grace where peace rules and heaven is graspable.)

I wish they could have been with me tonight as I prayed with a man whose body is covered–every inch of it–with an auto-immune disease only one in a half million suffer with. There is no treatment. No cure. It must run its course, sometimes taking as long as four years. It is painful. It burns. It is horrific. I went to pray for this giant of a man of God but, marvel of marvels, he prayed for me! Tears ran down his face and swollen arms were lifted to the heavens as he thanked God for his valley! “I know Your purpose in this,” he cried out to the Lord in triumph. “You reign in me! I am Yours!” he shouted to the ceiling tiles. The man laughed in joyful surrender. Laughed!

He is a man who is walking in peace.

I wish my loved one could stand in the same faith of a woman I know who is in the hospital tonight. She and her husband were recently faced with the most difficult decision of their lives: should he stay home and be by her bedside or return to the mission field? What would you do? As in everything in their lives, they took it to the Lord. With reckless abandon, her husband is en route to their field in a hostile country where countless millions need Jesus. Did they choose ministry over marriage? Heavens no! They chose God over ALL things…

I have no doubt that her hospital room is a sanctuary of heavenly peace tonight. I just betcha that that plane ride her husband is taking, though filled with second-guessing and painful separation, is met with a grace worth the risk.

I wish, oh how I wish, this soul could have listened in on a phone conversation I had with a lady just yesterday. It was her sad misfortune to send her son away to a home for troubled sons for a full year. Next month she and her husband will be able to visit him for the first time in six months. She told me that it has only been recently that she can say his name in her home without breaking down. Now she is carried by a grace that sweeps her to peace-filled places and she smiles knowing God is shaping her son and he is finding out for the first time who he is in Christ. His letters home are a diary of the power of God to transform. Predictably, even in the Body of Christ, some have questioned her move, even gone so far as to be angry and think she has thrown the poor child away. She listened for awhile and even agreed somewhat. Until, that is, the glassy calm seas of peace surrounded her and told her to have faith. He is the One who rules the storm. You haven’t thrown him away, My Child. You have given him to Me.

There is no safer Place.

Speaking of “Place,” David gave the secret of his oft-tormented existence. In the Hebrew Hymn Book, chapter 31 and verse 12, he says of himself that he is a “broken” man. The word he uses is also used of Adam in the book of Genesis when he is told to “tend” the garden. It means to break up the soil for planting. God’s minstrel is saying that the hoes and rakes and plows of life had ripped him to clods and bits and uncovered his earthiness.

What a sad predicament, and one to which we can all relate.

But (oh, don’t you just love the Biblical “buts”?), two verses later he lets us in on a little secret. He says that when he is in such a bind, he “trusts” in God. The word translated “trust” is an active verb and it pictures a place where David runs to when he is broken to bits, scattered hither and yon, like jetsam from a dashed sea vessel. He finds a tide that will carry him to a Harbor of Refuge where he can safely winter out the storm. Or in the field of battle when the bombs are bursting in air, he is stolen away into a citadel of protection. He tells us God is a Person who shows him a Place everytime and in any situation.

The couch where my friend suffers from the horrific skin disease has become David’s threshingfloor where God shows mercy and healing (2 Samuel 24:18). The porch where my sister in Christ waits for her son’s return is her Baal-perazim (1 Chronicles 14:11) where God “breaks through” against the enemy. And that courageous wife in the hospital tonight? She’s really in Ziklag where David “encouraged himself (literally, ‘latched onto’) in the Lord” (1 Samuel 30:6) despite great loss and popular opinion.

Take a page from David’s hymnbook. Run, don’t walk, to the Place God has prepared for you in your calamity. He is there. He is able. He will come through for you.

Sad to say, my friend right now is not ready to take the way of restoration. “I’ve gotten this far without God,” they glibly stated. “I can get myself out of this too.” That’s just their pain talking. I know them well and I know that in time they too will run to Jesus. And when they do, I can predict the outcome: He will gather them up, love on them, put them aright and set them free.

I know. I have a story too.

World Getting Rocked? Send For ‘The Sopranos’

It happened again today. Yet another pastor I had run into wanted to know about the church, how it’s faring, who’s left. You’ve lost a lot of people, haven’t you? he quipped. There was no compassion in his words, just a man who needed to feel better about his own ministry, I suppose. What could I say? Yep, the ranks are skinnying up some more. But God is good, doncha think? How’s your church? Growing? Fantastic, and God bless you more (grumble, grumble)!

Each week Sandy and I find ourselves at a venue where some of those who have left our fellowship also attend. We smile and greet, but the pain of separation is there. Most of them are quite warm and gracious. That’s not the problem. The issue is the insidious voices inside our minds that tell us to keep our heads down. Don’t look anyone in the eye, they say. If you must speak, make it short, sweet and move on. You are a failure. You have let these people down. It’s your fault. They hate you. I confess, if I let myself go there, I can begin to believe these sulfur and brimstone rumors. My throat gets raw and scratchy from vomiting back up the poison the devil wants me to swallow.

When the voices started in on me the other evening, I just tuned into another frequency and listened for the opera of Heaven. I listened for the sopranos.

What do you do when a person for whom you prayed over to receive healing of cancer, saw the miracle happen, then months later that person tells you on their way out that your church will close its doors in a year? How, pray tell, can you keep your heading when a companion with whom you’ve shared bread and life walks away from the dream you’ve built together, thus ending a valued friendship?

You call in the sopranos. No, not those Sopranos.

When the sons of Asaph watched the noose of hate and turmoil tighten around the neck of their nation’s existence, they wrote a song. The inscription over Psalm 46 reads, “set to Alamoth.” The word in Hebrew is plural for ‘virgin’ or ‘maiden’ and it is generally thought the chorus was written for the high voices in the choir. Not the earthy, grainy croonings of Joe Cocker or the screechy nails-on-chalkboard stylings of Steven Tyler. Pure voices. Melodic voices. There’s nothing like the grace of blending sopranos to “make it all go away”. Picture a child, fearful and crying over the boogeyman he thinks hides in his closet, and his mother who soothingly lullabies him into slumber. Now picture that multiplied by a crystalline choir of heavenly Sarah Brightmans. Oh, yeah, you just got duck bumps, didn’t you?

When life deals a hard hand, learn to listen for the sopranos. And if you listen really hard, you will be able to download their lyrics. And, man, they’re good!

1. LEARN TO SAY “IT’S GOD”!

And what is the message of Psalm 46? Let’s consider two things. First, notice God’s Name is used in four different ways in these few verses. The psalm starts out with ‘Elohim’, a plural proper noun illustrating His power and authority. Also we find ‘Yaweh’, or Jehovah, which is God’s covenant name. It comes from a root ‘haya’ which means ‘to make or cause to happen’. The prefix ‘ya’ (Lord) brings out the harmonic beauty of “The God Who Makes Things Happen.” (thanks, Lloyd John Ogilvie!)

Two other names float from the refrains. ‘Sabaoth’ is a military term meaning He is the commander-in-chief of all the angel armies. He is the Warrior’s Warrior. He fights for us. And wins EVERY battle. Then there is ‘Elyon’ which denotes His absolute supremacy. Elohim. Elyon. Sabaoth. Yaweh. Four names for God in a scant eleven verses. See it? I think the lyricists mean for us to know that whatever happens in life, good or bad, we say, “It’s God.” That doesn’t mean He knocks down tall buildings with jets or molests children or fired you from your job. I’m not saying He caused it, but He’s most certainly in it.

There is certainly something He is working out in me (the operative word being “out”) whenever I suffer humiliation or criticism or brokenness or despair. These things drive me to God. What safer place is there for a troubled soul?

2. LEARN TO LOOK FOR A RIVER

In the three movements found in this Psalm (each punctuated with “Selah” which could mean either a pause or modulation), the glorious voices crescendo in verse four to discover an amazing truth for those who are getting hammered (ummm, no, not drunkenly hammered). A literal rendering could be “Lo! A river!” When we find Him in our trials, we always know there is a River nearby. He is the River of Life. To me, the River speaks of Resurrection. Every time He works something “out” in me, He also does a corresponding work of bringing new life, new glory from the deaths I die (2 Corinthians 3:18; 4:16).

Hallelujah! No wonder there is gladness in the “City of God.” We are the City of God, by the way—the habitation of the Holy One (Revelation 21:9,10). And in the midst of her is a River that washes, nourishes and revives. Take heart, oh beaten down one. God is showing you a river if you will only open your eyes. Remember Hagar? Crying in the desert, watching her child die, waiting for her own demise, and the Lord shows up and creates a well for her to drink from out of the dusty earth. Lo! A river, indeed.

There’s more but let me just wrap it up with a quick baseball anecdote. Alex Rodriguez plays third base for the hated Yankees (‘scuse my gratuitous editorializing). His career has been festooned with MVP seasons and All-Star performances, but this year his otherwise illustrious career has hit some bumps on the road to the Hall. The Yankee fans have been on him about his hitting, fielding and throwing. He’s heard it all. “Dat Bum,” he’s been called along with an assortment of other colorful not-to-be-mentioned-here colloquialisms.

Imagine going to the office and having 60,000 people watching your every move and booing you when you make a mistake. If I could encourage A-Rod (which I won’t because, remember, he is still a Yankee), I would tell him to forget the Bronx-ish diatribes lobbed his way but picture a choir of sopranos offering the very best of their golden-tongued arias.

Heaven isn’t booing you, either, saint of God. Just listen. It’s music to your ears.