Truth Archives - call me pasturescott

secrets between friends

[6 minutes]

Feast your eyes a moment on this surprising promise from the Psalms:

The friendship of the LORD is for those who fear him, and he makes known to them his covenant.
Psalm 25:14

I’m blessed with a close circle of friends. They know less about me than Sandy but far more than anyone else. They are trusted confidants and counselors; a few know my secret burdens and carry them in their hearts and into their prayer rooms. They know God, God knows them, and they know me.

The psalmist (David) had a friendship with God that would make any of us swoon. A man after God’s own heart, the Lord reminds us more than once. They shared secrets. God knew David’s best and worst moments and David was dialed in to God’s heart like no one else who ever lived. Abraham knew God as a close friend and Moses knew Yahweh face to face. But David was entwined with God’s very heart.

The word “friendship” in the above verse is weighty. In the original it suggests being in one’s inner circle. It describes a relationship in which one feels confident confiding in or telling closely guarded secrets to the other.

Wouldn’t it be something to be the person that God always finds in a crowded room? Picture this: you’re in a place that is buzzing with activity and suddenly He leans in and whispers something that lights up your soul. In a room full of people, you are the one he picks. How cool would that be?

I’m not talking about God playing favorites. It’s just that you’ve proven yourself to be trustworthy and loyal over time and He sees your sincerity. He taps into that. Just as the squeaky wheel gets the oil, the hungry heart gets the meal.

One of the proverbs says, “It’s the glory of God to conceal a matter, but the glory of kings to search out a matter.” This is what I’m getting at.

There are forty-eleven ways I could go with this, but I’m focusing on only one today: getting the people of God into the Word of God for the good of their souls and glory of God.

Instagram verses aren’t bad — at all. But they’re crumbs. I don’t mean that negatively, for they do serve a purpose. Bible memes should be used as appetizers for a bigger feast. What I’m talking about is spreading an open Bible on your lap and devouring portions of scripture until one of them spurs a thought that transcends normal ditties. Until God presses in and whispers something sacred into your spirit.

Here now, I’m not imploring us legalistically but rather lovingly. Treating God’s Word as an occasional snack will lead to spiritual emaciation and weakness. There is a famine in the church today and we’ll not fare well within this weird world until we become people whom God finds in a crowded, noisy room, pulls us into Himself, and instructs us.

Isaiah warned us about tromping through the minefields of life without proper intel. He offered a better way when he said,

And though the Lord give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet your Teacher will not hide himself anymore, but your eyes shall see your Teacher. And your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, “This is the way, walk in it,” when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left.
Isaiah 30:20-21

Scripture are the very words of the Eternal God. Peter told Jesus the only thing keeping him hanging tough in a fluid world were the words with which the Savior shepherded him. Those jots and tittles were life to the wobbly disciple.

We wonder why we don’t get more out of our Bible reading. It’s awfully dry for our taste. Why isn’t the ink more wet?? Could it be that we aren’t approaching His Word with the desperateness and reverence of Peter? Where else will I find what’s true and real and living?

You’re not going to find it on the back of a cereal box or in a tweet. No celebrity preacher can fill the dearth in your soul. We may get crumbs but we’ll never get change.

Your words were found, and I ate them, and your words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart.

—Jeremiah 15:16

“A joy.” Yeah, that’s it. Let us go to the Word with that on our lips. Make your Word a joy to my heart today, Jesus. Tell me something I don’t know. Amen.

Christian people will attend conventions, plunge into all kinds of Christian work, read many good books about the Bible and Christian living; but they give the Bible itself the most cursory and superficial heed. And it is for this reason that the Bible does not speak to them.
If you would know all the wondrous beauty of a forest glade, you must not be satisfied with passing through it with hasty foot and in company with a troop of merry children whose ringing laughter carries panic into the hearts of thousands of shy living things that, with trembling hearts, keep still in hole and brake and nest. No, you must go alone and sit quietly down on the log of some felled tree and wait. Then the mystery of beauty will begin to unfold itself: the fairy bowers, the mossy glens, the interlacing boughs. Presently a note will sound from yonder bough, as the signal for the outburst of many sweet-voiced choristers, and the woodland will ring with the music of the birds while the squirrel runs up some neighboring tree, and the rabbits come out to feed, and the young foxes play about their holes.
All this is hidden from those who cannot wait. So there are mysteries of glory and beauty in Scripture hidden from the wise and prudent but revealed to babes. There is no book that will so repay time spent over its pages as the Word of God.
If the people who are now perpetually running about to meetings for crumbs of help and comfort, would only stay at home and search their Bibles, there would be more happiness in the Church and more blessing on the world.
– F. B. Meyer

That’s it for now. Hope it helps.

Selah, beloved.

podcast: where will you be when the dam breaks?

In this edition of the “Pasture’s Podcast” we’ll be contemplating the question ‘which side of the Truth will you find yourself on when all is said and done?’ or, perhaps more graphically, where will you be when the dam breaks?

Galatians 3:2-5, NKJV
This only I want to learn from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?

Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh?

Have you suffered so many things in vain—if indeed it was in vain?

Therefore He who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you, does He do it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?

We’re continuing the new podcast series, “Spiritual Realities” and, once again, my dear friend John Brown is keeping me company at the mic as we discuss how we – who profess Jesus as our Savior – might break free from the malady of (as one friend calls it) “stinking thinking” and embrace Life as we’ve been called to experience it – as Jesus showed us in the gospels – from an ‘amen, Lord’ heart.

In this segment, we’ll discuss how it appears more common than uncommon for the western expression of the church to listen and respond more readily with her head (our own understanding, Proverbs 3:5) than with her heart; saying ‘amen’ to biblical ideas and preaching points, but not sincerely walking them out.

There’s much truth swirling about, but has it caught the church’s sails?

Does the contemporary church resemble less a shining ‘army with banners’ (Song of Songs 6:4,10) and more a flea market of weekend bargain hunters?

My friend John tells us, “the heart is the hearer,” and offers a vivid illustration at the end of how disastrous life can be if we insist on living from old patterns of thinking and reasoning and do not develop a hearing (and responsive) heart…and more so as we enter into an era of greater deception than we’ve yet known.

Thank you for listening along to these episodes. Feel free to email me any questions you might have and, time permitting, we’ll address them in a future podcast.

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new podcast: making ready for the Lord a people prepared

It’s been a long while since my last podcast (the good-intention road being paved and all), so I dusted off the ol’ Blue Yeti mic and Audacity recording software and sat down with my friend, John Brown, to record a series of episodes both circling and landing on the theme of deception and truth.

In this 38-minute introduction you’ll hear where the contemporary church is falling prey to deception in these last days and why that deception is only going to get worse.

John and I are among a (thankfully) growing number who share a love, burden, and hope for the true Bride of Jesus and sense the urging of His Majesty to “make ready for the Lord a people prepared.” (Luke 1:17) And, by the enabling grace of God, we will be…

…if we have ears to hear.

In this episode, John will touch on the following areas of systemic, growing deception – particularly in our current church culture here in America:

1.She (the church) believes she is ‘in faith’ yet there is almost no obedience of faith to what her Lord has commanded. The reality is that most are unaware that faith has two parts to be a living faith: the hearing of faith and the obedience of faith.

Romans 1:5
through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith among all the Gentiles for His name’s sake,
Luke 6:46
Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord’ and not do what I tell you?
James 2:17
Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself.

2. She believes in a gospel that says that she is saved because she accepts that Jesus died and atoned for her sins…and yet her reality is that she has never truly repented of the Sin of ruling and reigning over her own life.

Matthew 4:17
From that time Jesus began to preach and say, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
Matthew 4:23
Jesus was going throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness among the people.

3. She says that she believes (has faith) and claims that she has been born again, and is a new creature in Christ. The reality is that this is too often mere pretense, without any hard evidence. She dare not say to her family and friends that she is no longer of Adam’s race.

Romans 6:4-5
Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.

4. She says that her old man was buried with Christ and is no longer alive. And yet the reality is that she continues to live as the old man and is “just a sinner saved by grace.”

Romans 6:6-7
6 knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; 7 for he who has died is freed from sin.

5. She says that she is in love with the Lord and yet there is almost no obedience though our Lord has said, “If you love Me you will keep my commandments.” The reality is that she isn’t even aware that her Lord has left her commandments to be observed.

Matthew 28:18-20
18 And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. 19 “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

6. She has an unwillingness to purchase the truth concerning her condition; she believes that there is no cost to her as she travels the road of salvation.

Proverbs 23:23
Buy the truth, and do not sell it,
Also wisdom and instruction and understanding.

I trust you’ll click on this and all the episodes in this series over the coming weeks. I assure you, the discussions will challenge you to go after Christ with the fresh legs of renewed faith – the very faith of the Son of God (Galatians 2:20) – His life living through you; this grace of His will empower us to be a people of Truth, shielded from deception, and made ready when He returns.

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