In Touch With Reality

"O Lucifer, son of the morning...[thou] that made the world as a wilderness, and destroyed the cities thereof; that would not release his prisoners." Isaiah 14:17
"That thou [i.e., the Messiah] may say to the prisoners, 'Go forth,' to them that are in darkness, 'Show yourselves.' They shall feed along the roads, and their pastures shall be in all desolate heights." Isaiah 49:9
"For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil." I John 3:8b

Do you believe that God is in the business of unraveling all of Satan's evil? Do you believe that God seeks and will have the eradication of suffering and death? Do you believe that redemption means the world becoming like a star, and all the traces and effects of Sin will burn away? Do you believe that redemption is as much now as it is the future? Do you look for redemption in your present day circumstances? Do you believe that the Cross has set all things upon the objective reality of redemption, or is darkness your only view? It is the strength of the Christian to be able to realize and claim the truth that darkness is real, but it is not the end. At the bottom of all things, the reality of evil has been undercut, and it will fade away; even today it is happening, if you will only look for it. Are our eyes filtering all through redemption, or is everything merely material, nonsensical?
You remember past evils; do you remember the good that God worked out of them? You acknowledge the power of man's fallenness; do you acknowledge the almighty power of God's grace? You have seen the ravagings of Sin; do you see the reality of Redemption? If we focus solely of Sin, we will despair. If we focus solely of Redemption, we will daydream. If, however, we focus of the reality of Redemption working within a world of Sin, then we shall live like the children of God. We are ever aware of a great upheaval that has taken place within the very framework of the universe, an upheaval whose effects flash here and there now and again, which will one day be fully unleashed in purging fury (Romans 8:18-23).
The good news that we have is this: God has struck Sin at its very core, and all evil will die with it; if ye be evil, then repent! Perhaps you preach this news; do you believe it? Do you believe that Redemption is the reality that is consuming Sin off the face of the earth, or do we sequester Redemption to merely salvation experiences: ecstatic moments in time, and nothing more? For every moment that Redemption is not our reality, we will become fearful, bitter, angry, and cynical. The children of God are never to be these things; we are the never naive nor despairing flames in the night who believe in and point to the reality of the Sun. We are the children of the Burning Heart. Do you see the Fire that purges away all evil; or do you know only the night, and forget the light given to you? If the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!

"Holy light of the world,
Save us from ourselves:
We are out of touch.
Take us out of our shadows
And up to Your Reality..."
-Jon Vowell

In church today...

A little something the Lord showed me in church today:

"The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. This was the Lord's doing; it is marvelous in our eyes. This is the day that the Lord has made; we will rejoice and be glad in it." Psalm 118:22-24

The context here turns every assumption one has had about vs. 24 on its head. "The day that the Lord has made" is not merely any and every day. It is specifically the day when "the stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone," i.e., the day of deliverance--within the contexts of the Psalms, it speaks of the Exodus (Ps. 112-118 are Exodus Psalms), with Moses (the stone), who is rejected by his Jewish brethren (the builders), is God's chosen one (the chief cornerstone). Within the full context of the Scriptures, however, it speaks of Christ, with Jesus (the stone), who is rejected by his Jewish brethren (the builders), is God's chosen one (the chief cornerstone).
So, the "day" that we are to "rejoice and be glad in" is not any and every day; it is the day, the day of deliverance, the day of the Cross, the day that is the center of Time and Eternity, the day that the Lord made "before the foundations of the world" were laid (Ephesians 1:4; see also I Peter 19, 20). There is only one day that we are to forever rejoice and be glad in, and that is the day the Lamb of God was sacrificed for our sins. Whenever you see a sign or bumper sticker or whatever that says, "This is the day that the Lord has made; we will rejoice and be glad in it," remember its true meaning, and rejoice and be glad in the salvation of the Lord.

The Weapon of God

"[God] hath made my mouth like a sharp sword; in the shadow of His hand hath He hid me. He hath made me a polished arrow; in His quiver hath he Hid me...." Isaiah 49:2
"Think not that I am come to send peace on earth; I came not to send peace, but a sword." Matthew 10:34

The Jewish hope that the Messiah would be a weapon in the hand of God was most certainly fulfilled, but not as they had imagined. The Romans did not fall; the Gentile empire did not crumble. Instead the Jewish beliefs about God crumbled (I Corinthians 1:23), and all precious loyalties were challenged (Matthew 10:35-38). The Messiah had come to kill, but apparently to kill His own followers (Matthew 10:39). It was the price that would have to be paid, and Christ demonstrated it in graphic fashion: the pathway of life lies through the gateway of death. All things must be made desolate before they become glorious.
"When the law came, sin revived, and I died." (Romans 7:9) "The law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ." (Galatians 3:24) Salvation is an impossibility unless we realize that we are lost; glorious redemption is a myth if there is no desolate damnation. It is the stern claim of God that in order to feel wonderful, you must first feel dreadful; in order to find Him, the weapon of God must shatter us apart completely, until there are no more delusions left, no deceptions, no masks, just the wretched, blind, naked, miserable self handed over to God in surrender. If we are to be lifted up by God, we must step down from our pedestals, for it is the broken and dirty things that God has come to make His children (Luke 19:10). Only sinners can received grace; Pharisees cannot (Luke 18:9-14). Redemption belongs to the broken and desolate things of the world, for they alone recognize and accept it when it comes.

"Sword of Heaven,
Missile of God:
Shatter me! Batter me!
And make me whole..."
-Jon Vowell

To Be "Created"

"The Lord hath called me from the womb; from the inward parts of my mother hath He made mention of my name." Isaiah 49:1
"Before I formed thee in the womb, I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb, I sanctified thee, and ordained thee a prophet unto the nations." Jeremiah 1:5
"[God] hath made of one blood all nations of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and marked out for them an appointed span of life and the boundaries of their lands." Acts 17:26 (KJV & WNT)

Purpose and creation are two concepts that are intrinsically linked. If you were not created, not caused by a creator/maker--if you merely happened, if your cause was accidental, if your source is arational haphazardness--then there is no pleasure or pursuit under the sun that will change the fundamental fact that you and your existence are ultimately meaningless. I say, "ultimately," because you may live a relatively meaningful life, with accomplishments, feats, progeny, and legacies. In the end, however, all that you are and have done will fade away. You will die (death is the only certainty in an arational, haphazard universe), and all of your doings will die with you. Seriously ask yourself: how many people's doings have outlived them for generations? Perhaps a handful or two. How many will have their doings span eternity? None. Our Sun will die; all suns will die, all worlds will freeze. Equilibrium will have been reached; entropy will have finished its deathly task. Ultimately, we will all fad into frozen darkness, with all of our doings entombed with us. If our beginning was mere happenstance, so too shall be our ending. Even science knows that as a fact.
IF, however, our beginning was not mere happenstance, if our beginning was the caused product of a rational mind, a rational being, a rational soul, what does that mean? What does it mean to be "created" and not to merely have "happened"? It means a lot, because "created" implies purpose. Everything that is created has a purpose, even if the purpose is small (like dust, or a thumbtack) or non-utilitarian (like a painting). If we have been created, then there is no need to "find" or "make" your own purpose. As a created being, purpose is a fundamental fact of who you are.
"The Lord hath called me...." If purpose and creation are intrinsically linked, then the knowledge of a certain purpose is contingent upon the knowledge of a certain creator/maker. You can know nothing of a thing's true intentions until you can ascertain its creator's true intent. To ascertain such knowledge, we either ask the creator, or (if they are unavailable) we read what they have written about it (if such a record exists). In regards to ourselves, we can do both: we have God's written record (the Scriptures), and Christ has died and rose again so that we can be brought back to God and have fellowship with Him again. They are available to us, if we choose to use them. We can reject them, but we will be living (as T.S. Eliot said) in a constant evasion of ourselves.

"We are not of chaos born
And to chaos thrown.
We are of Logos born,
For God and God alone..."
-Jon Vowell

That's Where the Joy Comes From

"I am the Lord...who teaches thee to profit, who leads thee by the way that thou should go. O that thou hadst hearkened to my commandments! Then thy peace would have been as a river, and thy righteousness as the waves of the sea...There is no peace, saith the Lord, unto the wicked." Isaiah 48:17-19, 22
"Every good and perfect gift is from above..." James 1:17

The heart of man will ever sick to satisfy itself, and ever and again it will tumble into every side eddy and distraction under the sun. We must learn: there is no such thing as peace and happiness outside of God. All joys are joyous because they point unto Him. Taken for themselves apart from Him, they become hollow and empty, and no wonder. Nothing that is good can stay good when it is separated from the Good; nothing that is joyous can stay joyous and apart from Joy.
"O that thou hadst hearkened to my commandments!" The directions and decrees of God are not the limitations of a tyrant; they are a map for those lost in the woods, a map that leads them to the Good, i.e., Himself. To be "free" (so called) from His direction is to remain lost, and lostness is most assuredly not freedom--there is nothing "free" about being caged forever in confusion and chaos. However, to be loosed from that cage, to be set on the pathway out of the woods, the pathway that finally leads home, that is the only freedom that deserves to be called such, they only good and joy that there is, for such freedom is from God and leads us to God.

"Only Light of the world,
Source of all Joy:
Light up the pathways,
Lead wandering hearts to You,
Lead all the wanderers Home..."
-Jon Vowell

The Elements of Faith

"I am the Lord thy God which teacheth thee to profit, which leadeth thee by the way that thou shouldest go." Isaiah 48:17
"Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning." James 1:17

There are two elements to faith, and they are found in Hebrews 11:6. The first is to believe that God is real. The second is to believe that He is good. Both are the main battle fronts of our lives. The enemy will flood your life with so much noise of the world that you will either forget about God ("How am I going to do this!") or you will doubt His goodness ("Why are You doing this to me?"). We would be wise to always pray, "Father, help me to remember that You are real and that You are good."
The enemy will never turn you to himself; he will always turn you to yourself: your strengths, your circumstances, your thoughts, your self. It is there where the battle can be lost: God falls away in our minds ("It's all up to me!") and His goodness falls away in our minds ("Look at what's happening to me!"). Always keep Hebrews 11:6 before your eyes: God is, and He is good.

"God who is there,
You are good,
You are good,
And Your Love endures,
Forever..."
-Jon Vowell

A Place for Darkness

"Behold, I have refined thee, but not as silver; I have tested thee in the furnace of affliction." Isaiah 48:10

It is to the glory of God that pain and suffering are not meaningless. The ravages of sin upon this earth have done nothing to deter His holy will, and the evils of affliction He has harnessed as refining fires. Any Christianity that does not make room for the horror of great darkness is a false Christianity.
Those who claim that darkness and despair, pain and suffering are issues separate from Christianity know nothing of Jesus Christ: "He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.." (Isaiah 53:3-5). The life of our Lord was bound up in the glorious victory that God had wrought over affliction, a victory wrought by passing through affliction. Would to God that His children would grasp this truth: Christianity touched upon all the areas of life, including the dark ones. The Christianity of amiableness and gaiety, of sunshine and flowers, is not the Christianity of the Cross, the Christianity of refining fire. Do we really believe that all things work together for good? That afflictions are the fires that refine us and draw us to God? The world needs such good news.

"The Refiner's Fire,
Has now become my soul desire.
Purged and cleansed and purified
That the Lord be glorified..."
(from Steve Green, "The Refiner's Fire")
-Jon Vowell

Eyes Wide Open

"...for I knew that thou wouldest deal very treacherously, and wast called a transgressor from the womb.... Behold, I have refined thee...." Isaiah 48:8-10
"But Jesus did not commit Himself unto them, because He knew all men...for He knew what was in man." John 2:24, 25

God knows the heart of man; He knows mankind's natural inclinations. As Mr. Chambers put it, Jesus is the authority on the human heart. Needless to say, he does not trust man; he trust what He can do in and through man. The Cross of Christ speaks nothing towards our potential as humans, and speaks volumes about are inability to save ourselves.
Christ's attitude is to be our attitude. Our Brother trusted no man, yet He was never bitter or cynical, because He knew the potential of the power of God and what it could do in men. Consequently, the only person that He trusted was His Father.
Our distrust of humanity is not to be a matter of cynicism but a matter of realizing that the abiding Reality is God. The instant we stop accounting for God, our distrust becomes biting and cruel. When we account for God, however, our distrust is augmented by our trust in God, and His presence is free to have its way in our lives. To trust man is naive. To merely distrust is cynical. To distrust man but trust God is the only way to live with eyes wide open and spirit irresistibly sweet.

"With eyes wide open
Under the Light of God.
See my Father's Hand
Working wonders again..."
-Jon Vowell

To "Know" and To Know

"Because I knew that thou art obstinate...I have even from the beginning declared it to thee...lest thou shouldest say, 'Mine idol hath done them....' I have shown thee new things from this time, even hidden things, and thou didst not know them." Isaiah 48:4-6

It is when we think we "know" that God upsets our applecart; when we think all points are accounted for and all loose ends covered, that is when the reality check of God's will crashes through all of our schemes like a sledgehammer. There is only one thing that we can know for sure: what God reveals to us. We can never know anything else for sure about people, circumstances, or events past or present: there will always be one fact that we have not accounted for, one point that we missed; and that singular omission is enough to throw a monkey wrench into the whole thing. The only sure thing is God: who He is and what He says.
Now, this is not at all to say that we should not acquire knowledge; far from it. God made you a rational soul, and your ability to reason is not to be wasted. However, when our reason makes us think that we know exactly what is up, that is when God will check us, for only He knows exactly what is up, only He can see all ends, only He has accounted for all of the facts, We are often surprised; God is never surprised.
Even what we think we know about God is often checked by Him. We know that He is good (for His word says so), but the moment that we think we know exactly how His goodness will be manifested, God upsets our knowledge; in that instant, we can either die away of denial ("I cannot be wrong!") or let God enlighten our minds with this further revelation of His character. This is not about being a knucklehead; this is about God's children honestly living like He is their ultimate teacher and final authority. All that we know, or think that we know, must fall before Him; and since He is the Truth, Him checking our knowledge is because we were in error or our knowledge was vitally incomplete. God is no enemy of the Truth; He is the enemy of what we call the "truth."
Those who call us "sheep" are right and wrong; right in their assessment, wrong in their negative connotation. We are followers of God, but that is not blind following. To follow God is the exact opposite of blind following, for to follow God is to follow after the Truth. It is to follow with eyes wide open and your mind alert. We are ever and always suspicious of men, governments, organizations, and institutions (even religious institutions) that claim to "know" exactly what is up. Only God knows all, and we are the ones who account for Him when we list all of the facts that we know.

"To not know You
Is to not know,
For we are cut off
From the source of Truth
And all things..."
-Jon Vowell

My Own Worst Enemy

"Because I knew that thou art obstinate, and thy neck is an iron sinew, and thy brow bronze..." Isaiah 48:4

God anticipates our foolishness. He accounts for our arrogance, our vanity, our blindness, our disbelief; and through all of those things He still reaches to us. God will do whatever it takes to save us from ourselves (vs. 5-7).
It takes us a long time to realize that we are our own worst enemy. We may comprehend in a moment, but forget it the next. We have a strange combination of spiritual Alzheimer's and ADHD: we immediately forget what we have learned and are at once distracted by the same old ploys. It is the plight of James 1:22-24, and the cause is the same: we hear God say that we are our own greatest threat, but we do not allow His Spirit to do anything about it. God will let us trip over our own feet as many times as necessary until we finally grow tired of ourselves.
"...I knew that thou wouldest deal very treacherously, and was called a transgressor from the womb" (vs. 8). God is not fooled by human nature. Even after we are redeemed from sinners to saints, He is to unaware of our propensity to be lured by the enemy back to ourselves. Rest assured, if you are His, you will eventually grow weary of yourself.

"I grow tired of this weak and frail man;
Make a Son of God out of him..."
-Jon Vowell

Nominality

"Hear ye this, [you] who swear by the name of the Lord, and make mention of the God of Israel, but not in truth, nor in righteousness." Isaiah 48:1

Nominality is one of the greatest plagues within the Christian Church. Sometimes is seems that our cup runneth over with people who claim Christianity, but are not Christians; those who follow after Christian precepts, but know nothing about "Christ-likeness." Perhaps this is the Church's fault: too much fluff, not enough substance; too much therapy, not enough doctrine; too many traditions of men, not enough biblical authority, too much questioning doubt, not enough truth. By the hallmarks of Modern Christendom, we are breeding a whole generation of nominal Christians.
"...in truth..." Solid, grounded reality must be the norm again. No more skepticism or "partyline" mentalities. We can be critical thinkers and still arrive at conclusions. "...in righteousness..." Enough nonsense about "following Christian morality." Doing that does not make you a Christian; it only makes you "moral," and that in only human terms. In God's terms, you cannot be righteous because the only true righteousness is His own, and the price to obtain it is the blood of His Son. If you are a Christian, you do not claim morality; you claim the Cross of Christ.

"Away from delusions and closed-minds,
And into Your certainty and mystery..."
-Jon Vowell

Firestorms

"Behold, they shall be as stubble; the fire shall burn them. They shall not deliver themselves from the power of the flame...." Isaiah 47:14

The strength of Babylon was her enchantments and sorceries (vs. 12) and her counsel of magicians (vs. 13). All of them would fall before God's judgment; Babylon's powers would be revealed as futile, and all of her strengths undone.
The fires of God consume all that is not made of the hardest and realest stuff, i.e., all that is of God. All things that are not of Him, no matter who noble or logical or beautiful it seems, will burn away in the end. All strengths, talents, foundations, ideas, institutions, dreams, plans, orders, structures, hopes, desires, etc., that are not based upon God are nothing but hollow chaff that will whither before the holy fire.
This is not merely about final judgment. All through our lives, God will send firestorms our way to burn out all the deadness that weighs us down. How much stubble, deadwood, dross, and tin still linger in us? Will we dare cling to them when the fires come? We will be burned with them if we dare stand with them. The only sure thing left after the fires have come and gone is God Himself; all other ground is a deception.

"Christ the Solid Rock:
Who weathers all the storms of life,
And all the Fires of God..."
-Jon Vowell