A Song of Remembrance, For a Time like This

“Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance.” Psa 42:5 

“For none of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself.” Rom 14:7 

The psalmist mourned the great thirst he felt for his God. He missed Him. As the hart pants after the water brooks, so did the psalmist pant after his God.

Why?

His soul was in great distress. He was oppressed. His enemies had ridden like a torrential river over his head. Waves and billows of sorrows beat hard against him. He didn’t have peace. For solace he had turned to the one who was closest to him. He turned to his soul. And as in the night, when a man is under the oppression of the darkness surrounding him, he gave vent to the other dark oppression he felt inside his heart.

His drought for his God ravaged him. He missed Him. Where was He? The sense of desertion reeked heavily upon him.

Such a drought, and such questions as wreaked havoc inside the psalmist’s mind, might well explain the oppression currently reigning in our hearts and minds at a time like this in our country. The disquiet is pregnant and palpable. The mind is cast down. It is caught in that boundless itinerant of mundane and wearisome expostulation. The night is long and there is no gleam of light in the distance.

The soul is thirsty for the departed ones. The soul is thirsty for news. Why did this happen? Where was God? Lives have been destroyed. Properties lost. A gloom hangs over our lives like the Sword of Damocles. Whom will it crush down next? A plague has visited us, and the landscape of the heart is dry and scorched.

Questions like sea waves pummel incessantly against the shores of the mind. The answers are swept back to the sea before we reach them.

The leaves have sweated and they have cried together with us. The grass has stared in shock, and withered. Birds have fallen silent and the animals have dug themselves in their burrows. Thorns have pierced the heart and it is bleeding.

The vintage has failed us again in our land. The vine has dried up. The wine is spent and the vaults are dry. And mirth has flown out of the window.

The House of God

At a time like this it is better not to keep silent. At a time like this it is better to be bold and hold converse with the soul - as the psalmist did. He may be the only friend who understands us at a time like this.

“Why art thou cast down, O my soul?” The psalmist had been in tears day and night. The matters before him were hard, deep and heavy. He cried to his soul – and by extension he cried to his God – “Why hast thou forgotten me? Why go I mourning [day and night]?”

“O my God, my soul is cast down within me.” Talk to me, please God, he seems to say. Say something. At a time like this God does say something after all. God does not keep silent. Listen, listen very carefully and you will hear Him. God never leaves us alone especially at a time like this. “A bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench.”

The psalmist knew this. Knew that in his muted communion with his soul, it was actually God who was in action inside him. That the words he spoke were really the words God had given him to speak.

Therefore he says, “When I remember these things…” God called him to remember. The psalmist was awakened. God swept through him like a flood. Then the psalmist saw, and the psalmist remembered. God lit his torch inside him, and His powerful light dispelled the darkness inside him. The psalmist began to see, and he began to remember things – and he began to hope again.

When I Remember These Things…

What did he remember? He had gone with the multitude to the house of God once. Another psalmist had said, “When I thought to know [these things], it was too painful for me; Until I went into the sanctuary of God; then understood I [these things]” (Ps 73:16-17).

God is not unrighteous to forget your pain. God always answers when we call on Him, especially when we pay Him a visit in his own house. His word never goes out in vain but that it must accomplish his purpose. How does one get acquainted with such knowledge? Go to the house of God. After his plagues, after his pain, the psalmist went to the house of God and there he found his answer.  There he found peace.

He remembered God had not left him alone. He remembered the love of God, the kindness of God “in the daytime, and in the night his song shall be with me, and my prayer unto the God of my life.” The psalmist was confident his prayer – and his dialogue with his soul – was not in vain. He knew God – speaking through his soul – would answer him.

 

The famous psalmist had come to such a remembrance once; he had come to such a knowledge once too. And it left him in great awe. Listen to his words:

O LORD, thou hast searched me, and known me.

Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, thou understandest my thought afar off.

 Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways.

For there is not a word in my tongue, but, lo, O LORD, thou knowest it altogether.

Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine hand upon me.

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it.

What sort of knowledge was that?

That God loved him. That God knew everything about him – knew his loss, his consternation, his pain – that God loved him still, that God was still on the throne; that God knew and was working against what had happened. That the wicked will be found, that they will appear before Him; that they will answer to their charge one day…

Paul knew too, knew that even now God was in action; and the Holy Spirit, our Comforter and our help was in action too; “the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together [with us] until now.” We are gladdened that God has not left us alone without a comforter. “Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered” (Rom 8:26). 

Our souls may be withered but our God is still strong. He will order our strength, He has commanded our strength. Therefore we will not be afraid, cried the psalmist. When the wicked, even our enemies and our foes come upon us to eat our flesh, they will stumble and fall. Though a host should encamp against us, our hearts shall not fear: though war should rise against us, in this will we be confident: That our God lives, and it is Him who fights for us. Our God will not leave us nor forsake us.

There is always joy in the house of God. It is huge; it conflates and swallows all our other passions, like pain and sorrow. The joy of God does that. It becomes our strength. Go to the house of God and discover for yourself that joy – and that knowledge. And that peace.

In the end nothing will be left unanswered. All will be made plain. The doers of good will get their reward. The wicked will receive their comeuppance. In the end it will happen. All things will be made plain. “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”

Soon the light will appear. The darkness will be dispelled, and “until the day dawn, and the day star arise in [our] hearts.” “Then shall we know, if we follow on to know the LORD.”  For the Lord is not slack concerning his promises, “as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance” (2 Pet 3:9).

Therefore we are confident of this promise: that in the end everything will become new. The old will pass away. So even now the hymn of the psalmist is becoming new. From “Why art thou cast down, O my soul?” to “Why art thou so joyous, O my soul?”

The knowledge of Jesus Christ makes such a song – and such hope - possible. So one can end his song like the psalmist ended his, resting in this knowledge; “for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God.”

In the end such knowledge made all things possible in the psalmist’s sight. Such knowledge can make all things possible in your sight too, no matter what the circumstances - no matter if it is a time like this. Do you believe that?

God be merciful unto us, and God bless us; and God cause His face to shine upon us, and keep us. God be gracious unto us, and give us peace.

To Deny Fear is to Deny to be Human

Fearfulness and trembling are come upon me, and horror hath overwhelmed me - Psa 55:5 

What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee - Psa 56:3  

For, when we were come into Macedonia, our flesh had no rest, but we were troubled on every side; without were fightings, within were fears - 2Co 7:5  

You would think the little boy who had killed Goliath, and a bear and a lion had no more fears in his later life as an adult. But you would be wrong. Fear eventually caught up with David as it always does to all of us as the years strenuously march on.

Youthfulness is a time of robust and extemporaneous living. Their strokes on the canvas of life are bold and rugged.  In youth the faculties are sturdy and untrammeled by the dust of death. It is not so when one has bloomed into maturity. At this stage wear has set in and the veins that throbbed with strength once can now hardly stretch without a wince. At such a time fear is often a regular visitor in one’s life. He comes in unbidden and he doesn’t knock at the door.

 

There were times David felt as powerful as a rock, and other times when he felt deeply punctured and emasculated.

We go through the same episodic motions in our lives too. But the difference is that we do it in the closets of our lives. The loneliest and the most fearful persons are in our midst but we don’t see them. David did it in the open before “all Israel.” And whether he was crying or dancing like mad it did not shame him. Rather it elevated him to a greatly ennobled status among his subjects. He proved to them that he was human too.

 

But of course David is a type of Christ. He is an emblem of truth, of which our Lord Jesus Christ is. We are to bring everything to the light, including our fears, that we might obtain His help.

David would feel courageous enough to face Goliath alone at one time. At another he would be running away from his own son. Elijah would at one time massacre eight hundred and fifty false prophets of Baal. The next day he would be stampeding for his life because of a lone woman called Jezebel. The famous schemer Jacob may have wrestled God once, but he was once brought to his knees by his brother Esau.

These all stood at one time in their lives at the behest of great fear. But they also stood at behest of an indomitable courage once. In the end they became great not because they were born great, but because they did not obscure their humanity.

But the grace of God is an amazing grace. These were ordinary men greatly used by God. They were men of like passions like you and I. They fought and won tough battles at one time. At another they despaired even to death. But in the end they were victorious. They rose up from the dust of fear to stand at the pinnacle of strength. And that is always the road with this life.

So don’t hate yourself or feel embarrassed because you are afraid. You are in good company. Even Christ trembled at the agony that was about to befall him. That is why he understands us. That is why he is compassionate towards us. He has been down that road. He knows its bumps and its worn places.

They were afraid but it was for only one dark moment. In the morning shafts of light broke through and scattered to smithereens the gloom that had stubbornly attached itself to the landscape like glue. Their eyes readjusted their vision. Then the path they had lost in the darkness became clear again in the morning. Always there is a way out. Wait until morning and you will see it.

Trust God too. Trust him like a child trusts a father and He will come through for you. He will bring the depths that you are in to the surface again. You will see it and in the morning you will laugh out aloud.

But some fears are good. Like the fear of God. That is respect.  Other fears are comrades to our common sense. Like the fear of imminent danger. Therefore we don’t run towards a hurricane but we run away from it. This sort of fear is healthy. But too much fear can become pathological. In Christendom we call that demonic or a stronghold. Only Christ can bring such into captivity. On our own we can do nothing (2 Co. 10:4-5).

Have faith. But without faith it is impossible not only to please God – but also to please self. The perpetual fear mode saps energy. It shrinks the flesh. It dries the brain. Roses vanish overnight and thorns overrun the plains of the mind.

Fear is a fire. And no one loves to be in the place Daniel was unless God is on their side. To utterly cringe in fear is to come upon an embankment.  To despair is to fail one’s exam in the school of life. “If thou faint in the day of adversity, thy strength is small.”

So gird the loins of your mind. Think straight. Weigh the circumstances. Is there really no way out absolutely? Be encouraged that though “a just man falleth seven times, [yet he] riseth up again.”

Then sometimes you will need to come out of the closet. Get out into the open and admit you are afraid. Admit that you are human after all. After that life will be easy. God never meant it to be complicated. We make it so ourselves.

And watch out for the devil. He is a comrade of fear. He magnifies it. He articulates a hundred ways to convince one that everything is impossible. But God stands on the other side throwing a rope with the banner “Nothing is Impossible with Me!” It is up to you to catch it.

Now the heart has been at school and it has accomplished its study in life. Weariness has set in. Even a bit of cynicism has slowly but arduously crept in. “Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us.” So is there a new fear? - “it hath been already of old, which was before us”!

All people are afraid at the beginning. All tasks seem impossible at the beginning. Our parents were likely fearful once when they contemplated having us as their children. What, pray, was in store for them? But because of their faith they now look at us and are glad that the risk they took was worthwhile. Some may be regretting, probably, but that is life. It hardly starts and ends in a straight line.

Magnificent cities, and lights, and all sorts of good inventions dot the landscape of our living because people robustly fought their fears once. They fought their unbelief. Their minds went to work and not to sleep. They gave vent to their imaginations. And that gave birth to their ideas. They are the cities and avenues and motorways that we now see. I believe you can do that too if you believe. If you robustly fight off that fear. God is on the side of all that is good. Make it good and good luck!

From a Distance Things Look Right but They are Not

The Challenges of New Wine in Old Bottles

No man also seweth a piece of new cloth on an old garment: else the new piece that filled it up taketh away from the old, and the rent is made worse.

And no man putteth new wine into old bottles: else the new wine doth burst the bottles, and the wine is spilled, and the bottles will be marred: but new wine must be put into new bottles. Mar 2:21-22.

 

Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a man's foes shall be they of his own household.  Mat 10:34-36 

A long time ago people knew who their neighbors were, and their brothers and sisters. But Christ appeared and overturned that, by not showing special treatment to his own mother and brethren. Instead He said anyone who did His Father’s will was his mother and sister and brother.

Suddenly divisions erupted everywhere among the Christ’s disciples and their unbelieving families. Fathers put down their foot and declared no child of theirs would become a Christian. But sons and daughters rebelled against their parents and joined the Christian religion, as they still do. Their parents were left with no option but to curse them or kill them. We have come a long way.

Sometimes people listened to Christ’s teachings and they shook their heads. Many even turned away from following Him. To Paul they said he had read too many books. To Christ they said he was mad. But some were not so kind and labeled him the chief of devils.

Christianity, like all higher ideals, will seem like it is for the hopelessly maladjusted in nature.

Then Paul taught that one acknowledges to be a fool first, that they might become wise. Christ taught that unless one becomes like a little child one cannot be converted. Then Paul really rubbed it in by teaching such foreign things as “It is good for a man not to touch a woman.” At that point men who are called men decided this religion should be made extinct.

The apostle also taught that fathers should not provoke their children. But fathers thought not to provoke their children were to deny them the privilege of being called men. And for Paul to ask mature men to become foolish first so they may become wise is to provoke them. It is insulting and treating them like children.

Didn’t these Christians know what qualities constituted a whole man? Real men don’t forgive. They fight. And when they are caught in a lie they will swear it is the truth. To apologize is to be weak and it is not manly at all. It is better to die than to say sorry.

Again you don’t give praise to your children or their mother in their presence. To do so is to make their heads grow bigger. The next thing they will do is to measure their own heads against yours. That is the sure way of losing respect in society and in own family. Finally don’t talk softly. Shout and shake the earth. That way everyone will recognize where the thunder is coming from, and people will avoid your path like the plague. 

But Christ came and poked holes into these beliefs. He taught that real men are meek and humble. Taught to forgive your enemy “seventy times seven” and not to revenge. To consider others better than oneself. And to give to every man “that asketh of thee; and of him that taketh away thy goods ask them not again.”

To “bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you.” And that if she slaps you on the left cheek it is blessed to offer her the right cheek as well. He also intimated that it is rather convenient to “lend, hoping for nothing again.” Some people thought, as they still do, that this is a perfect recipe for murder.

These are Christ’s teachings on the Sermon on the Mount. You will not hear them being preached in your church at any time soon though.

Touching on marriage and divorce this really vexed the multitude. Even his own disciples loudly wondered what profit there was of all a man’s labour under this sun. The prospect that a man could, in a stroke of a pen, sign his own life sentence left many people shivering.

Then Christ antagonized the rich when he told them bluntly that a camel could easily pass through the eye of a needle than it would be for them to hit heaven. He antagonized men when he taught that husbands should love their wives as themselves. Some mistook this to mean that they become like their wives. So men who knew what it means to be a man felt slighted. On loving your neighbor as yourself Christ antagonized the selfish and the insufferably narcissistic in nature. These became atheists in revenge.

Wherever you look at, then and now, you are sure to find someone who is sourly antagonized by Christ’s teachings. And many hearing Him asked, “From whence hath this man these things?” And men “were astonished with a great astonishment.”

Many got chafed. Many had their hearts calloused.    

These were traditions which men had weighed carefully, had revised in themselves, had formulated them, and that they had writ in large letters in the books of their minds. Their roots extended from their heads to their toes. Now they listened to Christ’s teachings and they felt like He was pulling off their hair one thread after another.

Christ’s religion continues to spark fireworks all over the world. And hatred. And murder.

It is that which men still resist seeing or believing. That a man should leave his house to go and live in another man’s house? Or what did Christ mean by “In my Father’s house are many mansions”?

The New Heights

We crave hard things, and abhor the simple. We crave a really hard salvation, a hard to get heaven and even a harder hell. Christ’s things are too easy. Christ’s salvation is too easy and cheap. It is wrought with “myths and superstitions.” How can a clever man believe these things?

Life is hard. Therefore for one to find its meaning requires that one becomes like a flint. We crave hard things because we believe these hold the real meaning to life. But Christ brings us the simple and we detest Him for insulting our intelligence.

Christ’s love was a love the world did not know, and does not know even now. But He still brings out “the thoughts of many hearts [that the truth] may be revealed.” Then it is in seeing such truth with our own bare eyes, and acknowledging that indeed it is ours, that the door to true freedom is thrown wide open. Apart from that we will continue to harden the doors of our minds.

Christ is the truth. He is the end of all wisdom and knowledge. That constitutes as truth what He has said concerning our hearts, our souls, our minds and our bodies.

Christ lifted the standards of Christian living to new heights. Few Christians living would measure to them. The majorities espouse this new wine but their bottles are in a sorry state. Some have burst and the wine is spilled to the ground. The rent on their cloth grows larger, and their nakedness is exposed. Truth is fallen and it is set out there. In the street.

The challenge is on all true believers, to, as Jude says, “earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.” For “If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?” This is what we can do according to Paul. “Therefore, brethren, stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word, or our epistle” (2Th 2:15).

  

“Stand fast” has the sense of standing steadfast and unmovable. To “remain standing” in what has been taught.  Not to divert or move away. “Hold” means to “seize or retain” according Strong’s Hebrew and Greek Dictionaries. Traditions are those words which have been transmitted to us. This is the Word of God, which is infallible and unerring, and is without contradiction.

The Christian life is termed by Paul as a “high calling.”  We have been called to “great and noble efforts,” according to Barnes. “It is a calling which is “high,” or “upward, that is, which tends to the skies. The calling of the Christian is from heaven, and to heaven. He has been summoned by God through the gospel of the Lord Jesus to secure the crown. It is placed before and above him in heaven. It may be his, if he will not faint or tire or look backward. It demands his highest efforts, and it is worth all the exertions which a mortal can make even in the longest life.”

Christ called people to abandon their dark days, and to come to the light. Their dark days were and still are their human traditions. Trouble came, as it still does, in trying to break through these fortifications.  But there is nothing impossible with God. You offer yourself to Him and He will do the rest. Or what do you see in yourself, when you view yourself from a distance? Is that the truth or lies contained in there? And are you “man” enough to confess it, to acknowledge and repent? May God grant you the grace of courage to see and to do the right thing – in His eyes.

Behaving like Men

Quit yourselves like men, be strong. 1 Co 16:13

God encourages us to be courageous. To lack courage is to be afraid. The Bible has various very interesting expressions to describe the act of courage. In a positive note, one says to make one’s head as hard as a stone.

 “therefore have I set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be ashamed” (Isa 50:7b).

Ezekiel was told to stick his forehead out, and behave like a man, “Behold, I have made thy face strong against their faces, and thy forehead strong against their foreheads. As an adamant harder than flint have I made thy forehead: fear them not, neither be dismayed at their looks, though they be a rebellious house” (Eze 3:8-9). 

Negatively, to make one’s heart (not head) hard as stone is to be stubborn and without shame; as Zechariah says, “Yea, they made their hearts as an adamant stone.” On the other hand Isaiah felt no humor or flattery when he wrote “Because I knew that thou art obstinate, and thy neck is an iron sinew, and thy brow brass.” 

And so the Bible is full of exhortations not to be afraid or scared, but to be strong. The most famous are the exhortations are from God to Joshua.

“Be strong and of a good courage” v.6.

“Only be thou strong and very courageous” v7.

“Have not I commanded thee? Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the LORD thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest” v9.

“I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee” v5.

Benefits of Courage

It inspires faith. Courage encourages. Fear makes the heart wither. It shrinks courage. Fear kills faith. When God calls us to go forth in courage He means to go forth in faith.

Faith takes courage. Faith especially in God takes courage. You will be laughed and you will be ridiculed. Other times you will be very lonely. It takes a lifetime of wearing one’s face as hard as a flint to endure that. Luckily it is God’s grace that works that courage in us.

Courage affects not only faith but every other aspect of our lives such as loving. Yes loving too takes courage. It is not for the faint in heart. Here too you will require hardening the brow but albeit with a sly spin as if to announce you are the next best thing to happen after sliced bread.

Being generous, cheerful and happy also takes courage in these cold days. Here is where the difference between a small heart and a big heart comes into play. It is the difference between a warm heart and a cold one; between the earth here below and the heaven above.

A generous and hospitable heart does not shy and hide inside the chest. It gets out and embraces the people where they are. One is cringed and shrank. The other is expansive. The chamber of the chest cannot hold it. It jumps out and runs to face the enemy.

A courageous spirit brings glory to God. A fearful spirit quenches the spirit. It denies God the glory due to his name.  God is not pleased with fearful people. It shows they don’t believe him. It shows they can’t trust him. It reflects badly on the character of God. And it reflects even worse on our own.

Israel before Goliath failed God badly. They saw the hugeness of Goliath and forgot about the hugeness of God. Goliath filled their stomachs with water. They forgot the strength of God which hardens the brow like a flint. They forgot to behave like men.

It is the same with the lot who went to spy the land. They brought back a very damning report. They said they saw “the giants, the sons of Anak, which come of the giants,” so that they were in their own sight “as grasshoppers.” “The land, through which we have gone to search it, is a land that eateth up the inhabitants thereof; and all the people that we saw in it are men of a great stature.”

Even after the intrepid Caleb encouraged them not to fear, they remained adamant in their hearts, “We be not able to go up against the people; for they are stronger than we” (Nu 13:31).

These lost the battle long before it started. These were very bold in their graphic expressions of their enemies’ strength, and equally of their own weaknesses, but that was as far as they were willing to go. Their faith and their hope remained stuck at the bottom.  These were fellows who actually sounded very proud of their own self-denigration.  They wore it like a super accolade.  

So today act like “a man.” What is your fear? What can you do about it to bring God glory? Fear keeps us in comfort zones. Fear keeps our hearts shrunken. Courage expands it. Fear sees lions outside. Courage expels those lions.  

So today who is your enemy and what is your attitude about it? Is it a disease or finances or a huge human being? Are you the giant or are you the grasshopper? Are you big “too” or are you very small? Can you harden your own brow like David did, who saw not Goliath in front of him, but saw the all powerful God with whom nothing is impossible?

David uttered unto Goliath thus, “Thou comest to me with a sword, and with a spear, and with a shield: but I come to thee in the name of the LORD of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom thou hast defied… And all this assembly shall know that the LORD saveth not with sword and spear: for the battle is the LORD's, and he will give you into our hands” (1 Sam 17:45, 47).

David had God on his side. Whom do you have on your side?

Personally “I would seek unto God, and unto God would I commit my cause.” I wish you would do the same. God will give your enemy into your hands. “Be of good courage, and he shall strengthen your heart, all ye that hope in the LORD.”