Dulles Family Life Church

     Isaiah 55:8-9 reads, “My thoughts are completely different from yours, says the Lord.  And My ways are far beyond anything you could imagine.  For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts higher than your thoughts.”  Now, I don’t think any of us have any problem agreeing with what the Lord is saying here.  Most of us would likely say that we have real difficulty trying to “figure out” what the Lord is doing, and therein, perhaps, lies the problem.  We spend so much of our time trying to figure Him out.  And in our figuring, so often seem to get Him, what He’s doing, or desires, completely wrong.  The end result is frustration, anger, confusion, and our just giving up.  Yet, how often do we take the time, the real time, to go to Him, dwell in His Presence, seeking His heart and mind, and asking to know His ways and His thoughts?
    Too often, most often, I think we end up doing what John Eldredge calls, “filling in the blanks.”  Circumstances arise, situations come about, decisions need to be made, and in the midst of it all, we may know that He’s sovereign and that He’s in control, but we try to understand these things in the flesh, in our own understanding and reasoning.  That response will never lay hold of Him, and will never enter into the fullness of His purposes for us in all of it.  Our best efforts in that will never yield anything other than less than His best, His fullness and His purpose for us.  We will, as the Bible says, “miss the mark.”
We will miss Him, and all the beauty and wonder that He has for us in that place.  All because we have become so dependent upon our own reasonings, our own understanding, our own vision.  On our own thoughts, and our own ways.  Just like the culture we are surrounded by, yet we fail to see it.  After all, He gave us a mind, and reasoning, and wisdom.  We’re to use them aren’t we?  Indeed we are, but in unison with, as a part of, His mind, His reasoning, and His wisdom.
    It’s true that the Lord tells us He is a mystery, that He dwells in unapproachable light, yet His Word tells us He is a mystery that He invites us to explore and discover, to know.  This was seen in Jesus and all the teachings and parables that He spoke in.  Those who tried to understand within their own reasoning and intelligence, never did.  Those who sought to know what He was saying, found, in and with Him, real understanding and knowledge.  They sought more than just answers, or what to do.  They sought Him, His Presence, and they found it.  They were to ask of the Lord questions that could possible have very hard answers.  Yet they asked them nonetheless.  As I heard Christian activist Star Parker once say, “We don’t want to think about hard things, but in doing so, life gets harder.”  So, instead, we fill in the blanks, rely on our own understanding, acknowledge the situation, but don’t really acknowledge Him in the midst of it all.  We fill in the blanks, and usually, draw a blank.  Could it be time for a new way for us?   The Father said, “You will seek Me, and you will find Me, when you seek for Me with all your heart.”  This means real time, spent in the Presence of our very real God.  A God Who longs for us and will reveal Himself to those who truly seek Him out.  He doesn’t respond with quick soundbites.  He seeks conversation, intimacy, true relationship with us.  His ways and thoughts are definitely far above us, but He calls us to come up to Him, not in our strength, but in His, as He shares with us, His thoughts, His ways, His heart.  We’ll no longer need to fill in the blanks,  We’ll be filled with Him.

Blessings,
Pastor O
       

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     Unmet longings.  That’s the title of one of the entries in John Eldredge’s book, “Walking With God.”  I think it’s a phrase that speaks to every one of us, as, to some degree, we all have them.  Unrealized desires that have not come to pass.  The question for each of us is this: How do we live with them?  In the midst of the unmet desires, what becomes our focus?  Frustration?  Obsession?  Anger? Dreaming and longing for the life we wished we had?  Hating the life we do have?  As Eldredge writes, “You can’t go through your day continually pining for the life you don’t have.  You have to live the life you do have.”  Yet how many of us are willing to, let alone wanting to, do that?  How many of us sleepwalk through our lives, wishing we were living another?
     In response to Eldredge’s words, I wrote this in my notes.  “There’s a great difference between desiring the life we wish we had, and seeking the life we are meant to have.”  Hebrews 11 speaks of the hero’s of faith, and said of them “…….they were no more than foreigners and nomads here on earth.  And obviously people who talk like that are looking for a country they can call their own.”  They were seeking the country they were created for, and it would never be found here.  As verse 16 puts it, “But they were looking for a better place, a heavenly homeland.”  All of us desire that better country.  We’re born with that desire.  Our tragedy is that we think it’s to be found here.  We really do think “home” is here.  That better country is found in only one place.  In the heart of the Father.
     Few of us are willing to be nomads, following wherever He leads, enjoying all the blessing and bounty He may bestow on us through the journey, but the blessing and bounty do not make for our home.  Our home is in Him.  My friend, Pastor Bob Yarbrough, talks of wanting to live his life as Christ did, in the bosom of the Father.  For Jesus, that was home, and no place on earth could compare or bring like satisfaction.  Jesus was a nomad, calling to Himself a tribe of nomads.  Have you and I ever truly become a part of that tribe?
     So, does all this mean that we’re to deny our desires, or resign ourselves to the fact that He’s never going to meet them?  Not at all.  What He calls us to is to live in Him, completely in Him, in the midst of the desires.  Even the deepest, most pure of them.  Not allowing the desire to become a “need,” a “must have,” for when that happens we’ll never have peace, joy, or satisfaction in Him.  We’ll always feel we’re missing something, being deprived of something, something that we have a right to.  Something He’s holding back on, holding out on us with.  The object of our desire becomes out “better country,” our idol, and we no longer live in Him, but in pursuit of “it.”
     I have spent much of my life looking for the better country here, thinking it’s to be found in relationships, ministry success, and many other “good things.”  So many of my desires have been met, but not all, and what I have learned, know, is that whenever I allowed them to go from desire to must have, I no longer truly had my home in Him.  I’d lost it, and along with it, my peace, joy, and sense of wellbeing.  The better country will never be found “here,” no matter what beautiful dwelling places we may construct.  It will only be found in Him, going where He goes, receiving all that He gives.  Living the life we’re meant to live…..as nomads.  Nomads in the tribe of the Father.

Blessings,
Pastor O

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     The story of the Israelite’s molding of a golden calf while Moses was with the Lord on Mt. Sinai, is familiar to many of us.  Rightly, we read that with a very critical view of the people and their turning away from the Lord.  Yet, I wonder if we really understand what was happening there, and more, if we ever see ourselves as guilty of the same thing?
    I think many of us tend to view this as the people rejecting the God of Israel, and instead choosing to worship the pagan gods of the Egyptians as well as the gods of the nations they had come into contact with on their journey.  While the cultures of these peoples, and their beliefs had defintely affected them, that wasn’t really what they were doing.  What had happened was that the people had become familiar with, and comfortable with, the images of the gods of the people living around them.  They were not so much refusing the reality of Jehovah, but more seeking, in the golden calf, to have Him be a god they were much more comfortable with.  They were used to gods that were cast in images of gold.  The golden calf would be a God who fit into their idea of just who God should be, and how He should behave.  The thundering God Whom Moses was meeting face to face even as they poured the mold, was not a God they were at ease with.  He terrified them.  A God they themselves could create out of molten gold, and shape according to their wishes, was much more to be desired.  That’s what they were guilty of.  Have you and I ever been guilty of the same?
     Well known writer Henry Blackaby has coined a term he calls “evangelical idolatry.”  Commenting on this in her book Magnificent Obsession, Ann Graham Lotz says these are “Christians who worship and serve a god they have made up.  A god who meets their needs.  A god who serves them.  A god who is convenient.  And comfortable.  A god they can market and promote and politicize for their own agendaa.  A god they can use to justify their prejudice and oppression and greed and selfishness and shallowness and sin.  A god who bears no real resemblance to the Creator of the universe, the God of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob.  The Father of Jesus Christ.  A god of religion.”
    That’s what the Israelite’s wanted.  A god of religion, created by them, controlled by them, there to serve them, be on call when needed, absent when his presence was uncomfortable, or inconvenient, and who made no demands upon them, yet was honorbound to grant every demand of theirs.
They wanted a religion, not a relationship, and especially not a relationship that recognized only one Master.  The Lord Himself.  They wished to know Him as they believed Him to be, not as He really was.  Has that ever been true of you and I?  Is it true right now?
     I know there have been times, too many times, where I have created a golden calf in my life, a false representation of who I wanted Him to be.  What I wanted Him to do.  How I wanted Him to behave.  And I stubbornly clung to that image, and worshipped it, though I never saw it that way.  I expect you haven’t either.  Yet how many times have we gone to Him with our needs and requests, be they healing, provision, family, or circumstance based, claiming a scripture, grasping some “spiritual steps program” and felt that in doing so, He was obligated to do what we wanted?  The Father was not someone we really wished to know, and His Word was not something we really desired to live in us.  As Pastor Stephen Broden puts it, it’s more a matter of “Rubbing our Bibles like a lamp, asking God to appear and ask, ‘What can I do for you Master…. (insert your name)’ ”
    It may not be so to that degree for you, but are we willing to admit, confess that it has been so, at least in part, in each of our lives?  There are places where we have crafted a golden calf, places where we’ve become evangelical idolators.  If so, our response is not to merely admit, but repent of it, and turn from that calf, and turn to the true and living God.  The very One Moses was speaking to face to face.  The One Abraham knew as Friend, that David knew as his Shepherd and Guide.  That Jesus knew completely as Father and Lord of all.  Let’s melt down our many kinds of golden calfs, and worship the God Who reveals Himself.  Not as we might wish Him to be, but as He really is.  There is not enough gold in this world, or in our own imaginations, to make a god who can begin to compare to Him.

Blessings,
Pastor O

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     Galatians 5:25 reads, “Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.”  That I would keep in step with the Holy Spirit is something I have ben praying for increasingly of late, because it seems so easy for me to get out of step with Him.  Maybe that’s so for you too.  To be walking in step with Him isn’t something that comes naturally, but as a result of our daily choices, even our moment to moment choices.  In John, Jesus said that, “I am the vine and you are the branches,” and that we are to “abide in Him.”  This too is a choice.  A moment to moment choice.  We can’t do this from a distance, which will always result in our embarking upon a series of “missteps,” leading us ever deeper into chaos and confusion, and eventually, into a lifestyle of unbelief.
     How do we so easily get out of step with Him?  I think a great deal of it comes from the fact that we tend to base everything on what we’re feeling or seeing, or what we’re experiencing at the moment, rather than on the truth of what He’s said and promised.  John Eldredge in Walking With God, puts it this way: “We don’t believe the scriptures because they don’t seem to align with what we’re feeling right now….people are clinging to their unbelief because that’s what they’re feeling in the moment.  We’re so stubborn in our unbelief because we aren’t at that moment experiencing whatever it is God says is true.”
     In our lives we’re going to be constantly faced with situations that will demand a choice by us.  The choice will be, Will we believe what God has said, is saying about this?  Or, Will we believe what the enemy is saying about this?  Either answer will involve agreement on our part.  We’ll either be agreeing with what the Father is saying, resulting in the increase of the power of His truth in our lives, or with what the enemy is whispering, which will bring about the increase of the power of his lie in our lives.  Which do you feel is happening in you right now?  Are the agreements you’re making drawing you ever closer to the steps of the Father and His Holy Spirit, or into the crooked, destructive pathway of the enemy and his lies?
     Both the Father and satan are constantly issuing invitations to you and I.  God invites us to agree with Him and believe.  The enemy invites us to agree with him, and be deceived.  The Lord’s invitation usually comes with no frills, quickly realized benefits, or emotional appeals.  Just a bold calling to believe and trust…..Him.  The enemy’s invitation will usually be accompanied by a bombardment upon our emotions, reasonings, and an appeal to “use our heads” and be realistic.  In the end, we’re going to agree with one or the other, and it will become a pattern in our lives.  What’s your life pattern in all this today?  Are you moving in step, in harmony, with the leading and Lordship of the Holy Spirit, or in the disharmony and missteps of the enemy?  Just who, and what have you been agreeing with?

Blessings,
Pastor O

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     In his book, Walking With God, John Eldredge tells the story of the time he took a group of friends and family on a canoe trip down the Snake River in Teton National Park.  He was very excited about it as past excursions had yielded a bounty of wildlife along the river, moose, bear, otter, elk, and more.  It was getting toward evening and they had yet to see any wildlife at all.  Frustrated, Eldredge insisted they paddle on for another mile, sure they would come across something to make the trip worthwhile.  Yet, they saw nothing.  At least, Eldredge didn’t.  Consumed with his disappointment over what he felt was a failed trip, he didn’t notice, or even hear the others exclaiming over the gorgeous beauty of the sunset taking place before them.  Only later, when he looked at the photos the others had taken of the beautiful scene, did he realize what he had missed.  In his words, “I was totally focused on what he was not giving, and missed what he was giving.  He had the photos, yet photos of something are never a worthy substitute for seeing it with our own eyes, are they?
     How often as we walk through life have you and I been guilty of the same failure, the same sin, as Eldredge confesses to?  How often have we become so obsessed with what we feel He is holding back from us, what He is not coming through on, and miss what He is so wonderfully doing in the midst of it all?  How many times have we pounded the door of His throne room with our “prayers” that are really nothing more than demands, so focused on getting them answered, or on the fact that they aren’t being answered, that we miss entirely what He is doing in, for, and around us?  How many times, , after the fact, have we had to look at “photos” of His work, because we completely missed the workings of His hands and heart while in the midst of our own selfish pursuits?  How often have we missed what He was giving us because we were so wrapped up in what we were sure He was not giving us?  How many real and deep blessings have we missed because of it?
How many more will we miss if we persist in that same attitude before Him?
     Eldredge closed that passage in the book with a prayer asking for forgiveness, that I pass on to you.  It’s one I feel I need to keep before me, before Him, to guard against demands made in pride and a sense of entitlement, as well as to bring me to a humble sense of His real love and provision for me.  Maybe you could use it too.  It goes, “Father forgive me.  Forgive my demanding posture that life has to come to me on my terms.  O Lord, how many gifts have I missed?  Forgive me.  The posture is ugly and narrow.  I pray for a more gracious posture, to be more open and grateful for what you are giving me at any time.”  I think if we cultivate such an attitude before Him, we’ll find ourselves no longer needing to look back upon “photos” of wonderful things gone unnoticed, but be able to bask in the full enjoyment and beauty of what He is doing in our lives now.  What do you think?

Blessings,
Pastor O

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     We’ve entered into another new year.  Each of us may be facing this new year with varying attitudes: Optimism.  Anxiety and fear.  Resignation.  Indifference.  A number of us would agree that only the first is an attitude that should be found in a believer, and there was a time I would agree with that, but not now.  Now, I would say the Lord’s people should face each year with an attitude of realism.  We need to be realistic about what life on earth is all about, and believe it or not, there’s no negativity in that at all.
     In his book, “Walking With God,” John Eldredge tells of running into a fellow believer he’d not seen in some time.  Life had gone very wrong for the man.  As Eldredge put it, “…….he had simply been eroded by a number of confusing years, strung together by disappointment.”  Eldredge felt that the man’s root problem had not been the devil, or the failure of the Father, but one of assumption.  As he writes, “This may be one of the most common, most unquestioned, and most naive assumptions people who believe in God share.  We assume because we believe in God, and because He is love, He’s going to give us a happy life…this man assumed the Christian life was basically about believing in God and doing good.  Be a good person.”  In this man’s life, and in the lives of so many of us who are just like him, there was no sense of need for deep intimacy with Him, to be in relationship with a God Who truly and regularly longs to and will speak with him….and with us.
     Through many years of my walk with Him, I was guilty of this very assumption.  Maybe you were too.  Maybe you still are.  When we do assume this belief we are ill prepared for the unexpected, most especially the unexpected pain and heartache that is most definitely a part of life….all life.  And when it comes, it will, as it did with man Eldredge wrote of, wear us down, erode our faith, our confidence in Him, and totally distort how we view life and what it holds for us.  This is not how it is to be, and it is never the intention or plan of the Father for us.
     I think most of us know the devil is real and he does attack us, but it’s how we meet that attack that makes all the difference.  When he does come against, and always at our weakest points, our response is to cry out to the Lord to deliver us, provide for us, encourage us, cleanse us, and so on.  These are not wrong requests, but they are also very general.  Wanting victory is a good thing, but we need to know just what it is we need victory over.  God desires not a temporary deliverance, but a total and complete one.
     James 4:7 tells us to “Resist the devil and he will flee from you.”  Resisting is more than just calling the devil names, or even quoting scripture.  It will also mean knowing a good deal about yourself, what your weaknesses are, what it is the enemy is attacking and why, and why he is able to consistently defeat you in this way.  To do this, it will require real, honest, and intimate conversation with the Lord.  As Eldredge puts it, “…….stop and ask God what you’re dealing with….be willing to have a look.”
     If we’ll be willing to live and walk with in such a way with God, with Jesus, it is unlikely we’ll fall prey to the type of spiritual malaise that was upon the man Eldredge spoke of, and that is upon so many who profess to follow Him.  It is foolish and naive to assume life will always go well.  Jesus promised us we’d have tribulation in this life…but He promised as well that He has overcome the power that brings the tribulation, and as we live in Him, we will too, but living in Him is far more than an assumption.  It’s a lifestyle of intimacy, and one that grows stronger and deeper each day, each week, each year.  Has this been the case with you?  Is it your “reality” right now?
     Yes, another new year is upon us, and we must expect that in it will hold challenges, trials, perhaps even setbacks, but if we walk through this year as He calls us to, in intimate, honest, relationship with Him, there will also be manifold blessing and joy.  Many, as Eldredge writes, think ”Life is about surviving–and getting a little pleasure.”  Joy seems to have little place, but as Eldredge says, “….it is essential to you life.  Something God insists on.”  Whatever comes our way this year, He means for our joy to be full in the midst of it.  As we walk with Him, talk with Him, meeting each and every challenge, not with naive optimism and assumption, but in full knowledge of who we are, and Who He is, our joy will be full, and so will our victory.

Blessings,
Pastor O

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