The Humble God

To me, perhaps the most shocking attribute of God is His humility. Omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, infinitude, immutability…these strike me with amazement in the same way that looking at the night sky fills me with wonder and the sense that I am so very small. They are attributes that one would expect of the grand, unapproachable God who “makes darkness His hiding place” (Psalm 18:11), the God before whom prophets and apostles fell like dead men and burning ones perpetually cry, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was and who is and who is to come!” (Revelation 4: 8). Though I cannot claim to grasp what omniscience or immutability even mean, it makes sense to me that God, being God after all, would be these things.

In light of these attributes which tie my mind in knots, God’s humility seems, to understate, counterintuitive. But as Tozer says, God cannot suspend one of His attributes to perform another; He simply is all that He is, all of the time without changing (Tozer 15). He is the I AM (Exodus 3:14). That the God who is infinite-ness, who knows all, who is rich beyond imagination, et cetera into eternity, is at the same time humble to His very core is truly stunning. The most vivid portrayal of this humility must be in the incarnation, Emmanuel, God with us (Isaiah 7:13, Matthew 1:23), Jesus the Messiah. To gaze into the mystery this Man in whom it pleased the Father for the fullness of God to dwell (Colossians 1:19) is to awaken lovesick awe and gratitude in our hearts.

We should start at the beginning:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being…And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us… (John 1:1-3, 14)

The pre-incarnate Christ, second person of the Trinity, was at the Father’s side in the beginning, the very master craftsman of creation (Proverbs 8:30-31). “For by Him all things were created…all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together” (Colossians 1:16-17). The God of creation, the One who formed Adam from the dust and breathed life into his nostrils on the sixth day (Genesis 2), emptied Himself and took on the form of His creation in a human body. “He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:7-8). Oh, the mystery, that becoming a lowly man and pouring out His life unto death was not giving up infinite glory or power or any other attribute of His person but rather fully expressing all that He is, wrapped in His humility. In Jesus on the Earth, God being wise looks like Yeshua, son of Mary and Joseph, “[continuing] to grow and become strong, increasing in wisdom” (Luke 2:40). The omnipotence of the Most High God looks like the King of the Jews hanging naked on a Roman cross.

Jesus said, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father…The words that I say to you I do not speak on My own initiative, but the Father abiding in Me does His works” (John 14:9,10). The writer of Hebrews tells us that Jesus is “the radiance of His [the Father’s] glory and the exact representation of His nature” (Hebrews 1:3). This means that in His life and His words Jesus tells us what God is really like. He shows us when He changes water to wine at Cana (John 2) that the Holy One who breathed the stars into existence stoops so low as to care about little things that concern the human heart, such as keeping the party alive at a wedding. One of Jesus’ most extravagant displays of humility was in washing the disciples’ feet. When He finishes, He makes the astonishing statement so foreign to human logic: “You call me Teacher and Lord; and you are right, for so I am. If then, the Lord and the Teacher, washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet” (John 13:13-14). In this He clearly shows that there is no contradiction in His supremacy as Lord and His bowing down as the humblest of servants.

Jesus says of Himself, “I am gentle and humble in heart” and then admonishes us to learn from Him (Matthew 11:29). In staring at the humility of God, I find my heart overwhelmed with the beauty of His person and exhilarated by the power of His affection. This God-man is humble not in some abstract context void of emotion but rather as the overflow of a torrent of desire for a people: without a second thought, He will do whatever it takes to win our hearts. This is where His zeal for holiness and His faithfulness and His justice and mercy and love all pour out into a humble human frame through which He expresses love at its highest pinnacle. Again and again my heart is pierced with the cry of Oh, the mystery! What beauty! Truly He is fairer than the sons of men (Psalm 45:2); yes, His name is like oil poured forth (Song of Solomon 1:3), this One who is so far beyond my comprehension yet bows so low for His beloved.  Isaiah says it well:

For thus says the high and exalted One, who lives forever, whose name is Holy, “I will dwell on a high and holy place, and also with the contrite and lowly of spirit in order to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite.”

(Isaiah 57:15)

To set our hearts to “learn from Him” in that He is humility is worthy of a lifelong pursuit.

We Will Run Together

This week I was inspired when a dear friend shared with me a revelation he had from the Song of Solomon…in chapter 2 the maiden cries, “The voice of my Beloved! Behold, He comes leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills…My beloved spoke and said to me, ‘Rise, my love, my fair one, and come away.’” This speaks of the victorious Jesus effortlessly overcoming obstacles and then inviting her to conquer her fears and come with Him to the high places of maturity in love. As I was thinking upon the beauty of this invitation, my heart was overcome with the desire to let go of my fears and fall into the strong arms of the Lord, realizing that I am willing to do whatever it takes to be with Him where He is. So I wrote a song. I posted it mostly for my mom (hi Mom!), but I hope you enjoy it too. Just click on the title to listen, and read the lyrics and references below. Have a blessed day!

We Will Run Together

I will arise and I will go with You   (SOS 3:2)

Skipping over mountains and hills   (SOS 2:8)

Leaving all my fears behind

For I hear Your voice warm and sweet

Echoing off all those mountains saying

Come, arise my love   (SOS 2:10)

And we will run together   (SOS 1:4)

I want to be with You where You are   (John 17:24)

I want to be with You where You are

So I will make my way   (SOS 4:6)

Up the mountain of myrrh and the hill of frankincense

I will arise and I will go with You

Skipping over mountains and hills

Leaving all my fears behind

So we can run together

And we will run together

Revelation 19

Hello friends,

This week as I spent some sweet moments of my sabbath alone in silence before the Lord, the lyrics to a Misty Edwards song were heavy on my heart. (This is not a really a rare occurrence; probably every day of my life I think to myself, “Oh, like the Misty song…” at least twice. That said, I truly believe that the Lord is going to raise up many musicians and singers to be End Time messengers, and Misty and others are forerunners of those who will be annointed by the Holy Spirit to proclaim the word of the Lord through song, so I think it’s a sign of the times that her songs speak to me so much.) The only part of the song I could remember kept rolling over and over in my head: “Will you marry me? Will you take my name? Will you marry me?” she sings from the perspective of the bridegroom God calling to His beloved. I felt the Holy Spirit moving on my heart and moved downstairs to my keyboard.  Ephesians 5:18-19 tells us to “be filled with the Spirit…singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord,” so that’s what I did. Using my handy iRiver, I was able to record part of this spontaneous worship, complete with wrong notes and the sound of flipping Bible pages…I posted it for you to listen to hopefully encourage your hearts in the hope we have in the fact that Jesus is faithful and true in all that He does, from following through on the glorious promise to return for His bride at the end of the age, to coming in the middle of the night with a tender kiss on the heart of a small, weak girl in Kansas City. Click on the title to listen, and read below for lyrics.

Revelation 19

Oh, how I love You, Jesus, faithful and true

You are coming back to marry me

On that day they’ll sing blessed are those who are invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb (Revelation 19:9)

On that day,  the day of the gladness of Your heart, I will crown You with my love (Song of Solomon 3:11)

On that day I will say my Maker is my husband (Isaiah 54:5)

As a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so my God will rejoice over me (Isaiah 62:5)

You are coming back to marry me

Oh, how I love You, Jesus, faithful and true

The Thousand Shekels

One night a month or so ago I was in the Prayer Room carrying a wounded heart and struggling against all of the crutches I turn to and walls I build to cope with pain, when I found myself crying out to the Lord, “The thousand shekels [of silver] are for you, O Solomon!” (Song of Solomon 8:12b). I was surprised by my own prayer and struck by the desire of my own heart. Though I felt I understood the symbolism of this verse,* I had never looked beyond nor expected it to emerge in my dialogue with the Lord. But as I have continued to search out this groaning that the Holy Spirit placed within me, my spirit is stirred and my heart gripped with a renewed vision for living my life before God.

In Hebrews 12, the writer exhorts believers to “lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross…” (v. 1-2). When I think of setting my sights on the faithful Witness, the Firstborn from the dead, the Ruler of the kings of the earth, Him who loves me and washed me from my sin by His own blood (Revelation 1:5), I am overcome with the necessity of working out my salvation with fear and trembling (Philippians 2:12). This is the One awesome in majesty, who formed the heavens and the earth and upholds all things by the word of His power, but also the One who chose love every time, who emptied Himself, who left His Father’s throne to come and woo my heart, who gave it all to have me. Oh, the beauty of this man!

Though fixing my eyes on Him surely comes in many forms, lately I’ve been thinking about the dynamics of looking into the eyes of a Man. There is something intimate about eye contact. There is vulnerability. What is it like to meet the gaze of the One with eyes like flames of fire (Revelation 1:14)? It makes me think of that day in a little while when I will stand face to face before Him, of how I will be overwhelmed by the beauty of His person as I finally see Him just as He is (1 John 3:2). And then suddenly the only thing that seems important is being beautiful for Him when He looks upon me. I am willing to do whatever it takes to not be ashamed when my eyes meet His, to have lived a life in desperate pursuit of love and no lesser thing. I long to present to Him the gift of a heart consumed with holy love. No matter what pains and disappointments I encounter in my life, a heart like that cannot be stolen from me as long as I daily choose to fight for it. Each decision is costly, but when I stand before Him on that day I want to give Him the most costly gift I can give because He is worthy. I am here on this earth to buy gold refined in the fire (Revelation 3:18).

So, as I eagerly await that day, I center my heart on this reality. Each painful choice to go low, to forgive, to bless my enemies, to pour myself out, to lean, to open up before Him, evokes the cry, “The thousand shekels are for you, O Solomon! Here I am, the joy set before You; come and have Your inheritance in me.”

* The basic interpretation is that the maiden of the story works to cultivate the vineyard of her own heart (“My very own vineyard is at my disposal” SOS 8:12a) and then chooses to give the profits of her labors to her lover (Solomon) as the culmination of her progression throughout the song into greater levels of intimacy and maturity in love.

Lilies I have tended

Hello again and happy new year! Here is a poem I’ve been working on, inspired by meditations in the Song of Solomon, particularly 2:2, 4:15, and 6:2-3.

Lilies I have tended

Here I am,
leaning, and You catch me,
I am a vapor
carried by the breath of Your mouth,
riding the eddies of Your Word.
I am bathed in mercy,
I drink deeply of lovingkindness
and then in one lucid moment
a crack in the bulwark within me,
an easing open, if ever small,
and my deepest soul unfurls
like a lily among thorns,
O, the joy of being seen!
I stay, aching, gaping,
wooed by the warmth of Your voice
as it echoes off the bare walls of my heart.
You are kind, You are kind,
so kind it pierces me and I gasp,
I dare to breathe again,
O, the wound of my nakedness!
Here I am,
this is all of me,
I am a garden enclosed;
come and gather the lilies
I have tended for You, my Beloved.

Everything Prophesies

As I sit here on my Sabbath trying to compose my first post, I am struck by the fact that it is one in the morning and, after spending an afternoon working on a project, doing kitchen cleaning duty, grabbing some time in the Prayer Room, and playing games with friends, I still have six more hours until I go to sleep: yes, I am on the NightWatch at the International House of Prayer. A friend shared with me the other day (well, night…) the revelation that the very existence of a community of people turning their lives upside down to stand as friends of the Lord in the middle of the night is a sign to our weak souls and also the burning heart of Jesus that someday soon there will be no night (Revelation 21:25). Clay Edwards, a worship leader on the NightWatch and the director of the Fire in the Night program I’m currently a part of, has a song with this lyric: “The sunrise does prophesy of my Beloved’s return.” Every time I hear that it awakens an ache within me as I wonder at the infinite tenderness and wisdom of God: He who is in complete control of all creation in His commitment to justice chooses not to blot out sinful man but sends His Son to woo us back to Himself so that one day, representatives of every tribe and tongue will of their freewill cry with lovesick hearts, “Come, Lord Jesus!” In His patience He waits for more to turn to Him, desiring that all men be saved and turn to the knowledge of the truth (I Timothy 2:4), leaving His people with reminders and tokens of His return. These mere reflections haunt my yearning heart; I long for the day when I will see Him face to face (I Corinthians 13:12). As for now, I will drink in the assurance of His coming through the sunrise and whatever else will breathe on my heart.

Lately I’ve been thinking about Jesus and what thoughts must have filled His mind as He walked the earth. Did He, like me, feel His heart swell within Him at the sight of the sunrise, knowing that one day there would be no more night in that city coming down, the New Jerusalem, because He would dwell in the midst of His people in unveiled glory so bright that there would no longer be a reason for the sun and the moon (Revelation 21:23)? When He spoke to the crowds in Jerusalem, “From now on you will not see Me until you say, ‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!’ (Psalm 118:26)” (John 23:39), was His heart drawing strength from the joy set before Him, the day of vengeance hidden in His heart when He would come up from Edom with garments stained red and enter into that city to establish forever His kingdom of righteousness in the earth?

And when He traveled down Jerusalem’s dusty streets did He think back to the glory He had with the Father before the foundation of the world (John 17:24), the very torrent of desire within the Godhead that overflowed into the formation of man in His image, out of dust (Genesis 2:7) just like that which clung to His sandals? What was the Lamb who was slain from the foundation of the world (Revelation 13:8), the very master craftsman of creation (Proverbs 8:30), thinking when He fashioned the tree whose descendant would one day provide the wood for the cross on which His body hanged? Did He look forward to the day when creation’s groan will cease (Romans 8:19-21) and the trees of the field will clap their hands (Isaiah 55:12) in joy before Him, when the nations will come to Jerusalem for the healing leaves of the tree of life (Revelation 22:2)?

Each new question opens up a new, deep well of awe in my heart before the beautiful God-man, the Father of whom He is the exact representation, the Spirit who searches the depths of God and reveals them to His beloved.

Thank you for reading my first post! I will pray that the Lord will fascinate your heart with the wondrous mysteries of all that He is. Be blessed!