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Started reading
May 28, 2020
The psalm, though, is not about hazards but about help. The hazardous work of discipleship is not the subject of the psalm but
only its setting. The subject is help: “Oh, blessed be GOD! . . . He didn’t abandon us defenseless, helpless as a rabbit in a pack of snarling dogs.
GOD’s strong name is our help, the same GOD who made heaven and earth.” Hazards or no hazards, the fundamental
reality we live with is God who is “for us . . . GOD’s strong name is our help.”
The final sentence, “GOD’s strong name is our help, the same GOD who made heaven and earth,” links the God who created heaven and earth to the God who helps us personally.
takes the majesty of the One who pulled a universe into order and beauty, and
finds this same God involved in the local troubles of a qui...
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When possible we keep Brillo pads hidden under the sink. No one would think of hanging one on a nail or hook for people to admire. Yet under magnification the Brillo pad is one of the most beautiful of kitchen items. The swirl of fine wire is pleasing to the eye. The colors of blue fade in and out of the soap film. What we assume is not worth looking at twice, and best kept in an obscure place, is, on examination, a beautiful construction.
Psalm 124 is a magnification of the items of life that are thought to be unpleasant, best kept under cover, best surrounded with silence lest they clutter our lives with unpleasantness: the dragon’s mouth, the flood’s torrent, the snare’s entrapment; suffering, catastrophe, disaster.
Faith develops out of the most difficult aspects of our existence, not the easiest.
speak our words of praise in a world that is hellish; we sing our songs of victory in a world where things get messy; we live our joy among people who neither understand nor encourage us. But the content of our lives is God, not humanity.
It is Christ, not culture, that defines our lives.
is the help we experience, not the hazards we risk, that shapes our days.
Those who trust in GOD are like Zion Mountain: Nothing can move it, a rock-solid mountain you can always depend
Climbing is difficult. The tug of gravity is constant.
But sometimes the foothold gives way and there is a slide backward.
Backslider was a basic word in the religious vocabulary I learned as I grew up.
I was taught to take my spiritual
temperature every day, or at least every week;
I got the feeling that backsliding was not something you did,...
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I had the responsibility for guiding the spiritual development of others, I acquired a very different way of looking at the conditions under which the Christian walks the way of discipleship.
Living as a Christian is not walking a tightrope without a safety net high above a breathless crowd, many of whom would like nothing better than the morbid thrill of seeing you fall; it is sitting secure in a fortress.
“Mountains encircle Jerusalem, and GOD encircles his people.” We don’t always have to be looking over our shoulder lest evil overtake us unawares. We
Singing Psalm 125 is one way Christians have to develop confidence and banish insecurity.
One threat to our security comes from feelings of depression and doubt.
A couple of years ago a friend introduced me to the phrase “the saw-toothed history of Israel.” Israel was up one day and down the next. One day they were marching in triumph through the Red Sea, singing songs
of victory, the next they were grumbling in the desert because they missed having Egyptian steak and potatoes for supper.
But all the time, as we read that saw-toothed history, we realize something solid and steady: they are always God’s people. God is steadfastly with them, in mercy and judgment, insistently gracious.
My feelings are important for many things. They are essential and valuable. They keep me aware of much that is true and real. But they tell me next to nothing about God or my relation to God. My security comes from who God is, not from how I feel.
Discipleship is a decision to live by what I know about God, not by what I feel about him or myself or my neighbors. “As the mountains are round
Great quote
Another source of uncertainty is our pain and suffering.
If the evil fist is permanent, if there is no hope for salvation, even the most faithful and devout person will break and respond in “wrongful violence.” But God does not permit that to happen. Danger and oppression are never too much for faith. They were not too much for Job, they were not too much for Jeremiah, and they were not too much for Jesus. Evil is always temporary. “The worst does not last.”2
Love love love
he’ll never let you be pushed past your limit; he’ll always be there to help you come through it” (1 Cor 10:13). “He knows when to say, It is enough.”3
The third threat to the confidence promised to the Christian is the known possibility of defection.
The general truth under which the Christian lives in this regard is “once saved always saved.”
However true that is generally, and I think it is, there are exceptions. It would seem that if God will not force us to faith in the first place, he will not keep us against our will finally. Falling away is possible.
it is possible to defect, how do I know that I won’t—or even worse, that I haven’t?
It is not possible to drift unconsciously from faith to perdition. We wander like lost sheep, true; but God is a faithful shepherd who pursues us relentlessly.
We break our promises, but he doesn’t break his.
Discipleship is not a contract in which if we break our part of the agreement he is free to break his; it is a covenant in which he establishes the conditions and guarantees the results.
Yes
But it is not the kind of thing you fall into by chance or slip into by ignorance. Defection requires a deliberate, sustained and
determined act of rejection.
All the persons of faith I know are sinners, doubters, ...
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Being a Christian is like sitting in the middle of Jerusalem, fortified
and secure. “First we are established and then entrenched; settled, and then sentinelled: made like a mount, and then protected as if by mountains.”5
“Relax.” We are secure.
There is nothing more certain than that he will accomplish his salvation in our lives and perfect his will in our histories.
“Do not be anxious” (Mt 6:25, 31, 34 RSV). Our life with God is a sure thing.
may slip and stumble and fall, but the rope will hold us.
One of the delightful discoveries along the way of Christian discipleship is how much enjoyment there is, how much laughter you hear, how much sheer fun you find.
