The early hours

Ah, morning. The most significant hours of the day!

I dearly yearn to be one of those strange people that wake up at 5:00am and manage to be greatly productive in the early hours of the day. I don't imagine I'll ever become so disciplined, but I do wish that 7:00/7:30/8:0ooam wasn't such torture for myself. By nature, I'm a night owl. Thus, I shall always be. However, I'm sure I'll continue to complain about it for the rest of my life! ha! I'm constantly challenged by this spiritual discipline because of how difficult it is for me to adjust to the morning hours. Lately, I have had to recall a helpful passage by George Mueller concerning Scripture meditation and prayer. I remember the mark it left in my mind several years ago when I was first coming to learn of the Christian devotional life. Even still, I'm pressed by these words. Feasting upon God should not be a brief affair in the morning. Nor should it be dull or directionless! The challenge is to make this your ONE thing that you pour energy into and, yet, it also requires a patient dependence upon the Spirit to warm and humble your heart. Day by day by day by day...to set to make this the one part of your life which will never alter or change in the importance or scheduling of it. Many have set first importance upon other things, but we, Christians, are different people. We are stranger and sojourners in this world. We set first importance to getting our souls satisfied in our Maker. We set first importance to the strength and richness of our souls! And this comes by way of careful meditation in the early hours of each day.

‎"Above all things see to it that your souls are happy in the Lord. Other things may press upon you, the Lord's work may even have urgent claims upon your attention, but I deliberately repeat, it is of supreme and paramount importance that you should seek above all things to have your souls truly happy in God Himself!..." ‎"...Day by day seek to make this the most important business of your life. This has been my firm and settled condition for the last five and thirty years. For the first four years after my conversion I knew not its vast importance, but now after much experience I specially commend this point to the notice of my younger brethren and sisters in Christ: the secret of all true effectual service is joy in God, having experimental acquaintance and fellowship with God Himself." "But in what way shall we attain to this settled happiness of soul? How shall we learn to enjoy God? How obtain such an all-sufficient soul-satisfying portion in him as shall enable us to let go the things of this world as vain and worthless in comparison? I answer, This happiness is to be obtained through the study of the Holy Scriptures. God has therein revealed Himself unto us in the face of Jesus Christ" "Now in brotherly love and affection I would give a few hints to my younger fellow-believers as to the way in which to keep up spiritual enjoyment. It is absolutely needful in order that happiness in the Lord may continue, that the Scriptures be regularly read. These are God's appointed means for the nourishment of the inner man. . . .Consider it, and ponder over it. . . . Especially we should read regularly through the Scriptures, consecutively, and not pick out here and there a chapter. If we do, we remain spiritual dwarfs. I tell you so affectionately. For the first four years after my conversion I made no progress, because I neglected the Bible. But when I regularly read on through the whole with reference to my own heart and soul, I directly made progress. Then my peace and joy continued more and more. Now I have been doing this for 47 years. I have read through the whole Bible about 100 times and I always find it fresh when I begin again. Thus my peace and joy have increased more and more." "I saw that the most important thing I had to do was to give myself to the reading of the word of God, and to meditation on it. . . . What is the food of the inner man? Not prayer, but the word of God; and . . . not the simple reading of the word of God, so that it only passes through our minds, just as water runs through a pipe, but considering what we read, pondering over it, and applying it to our hearts." "... that thus my heart might be comforted, encouraged, warned, reproved, instructed; and that thus, by means of the Word of God whilst meditating upon it, my heart might be brought into communion with the Lord... The first thing I did (early in the morning), after having asked in a few words the Lord's blessing upon his precious Word, was, to begin to meditate on the Word of God, searching, as it were into every verse to get blessing out of it; not for the sake of preaching on what I had meditated upon; but for the sake of obtaining food for my soul. The result I have found to be almost invariably this; that after a very few minutes my soul has been led to confession or to thanksgiving or to intercession or to supplication; so that though I did not as it were previously, give myself to prayer but to meditation yet it turned almost immediately more or less into prayer. The difference then between my former practice and my present one is this: Formerly when I arose I began to pray as soon as possible and generally spent all my time till breakfast in prayer or almost all the time... But what was the result? I often spent a quarter of an hour or half an hour or even an hour on my knees before being conscious to myself of having derived comfort, encouragement, humbling of soul, etc; and often, after having suffered much from wandering of mind for the first ten minutes or a quarter of an hour or even half an hour, I only then began really to pray. I scarcely ever suffer now in this way. For my heart being nourished by the Truth, being brought into true fellowship with God, I speak to my Father and to my Friend (vile though I am, and unworthy of it!) about the things that He has brought before me in his precious Word. It often now astonishes me that I did not sooner see this point... (some years later he writes) I generally read after family prayer large portions of the Word of God when I still pursue my practice of reading onward in The Holy Scriptures, sometimes in the New Testament and sometimes in the Old and for more than thirty-nine years I have proved the Blessedness of it. I take also either then or at other parts of the day, time more especially for prayer." ~ George Mueller

Secondly, I have re-learned the significance of daily worship as a part of morning meditation and prayer. As A.W. Tozer puts it, "Without worship, we go about miserable." I feel as if this truth is addressed to me. With hearts bent to worry and doubting, worship is a NEED. I need eyes off of myself and life's problems. And worship is what enables me to focus upon my God on those days when my insides are racing and discontent.

It is delightful to worship God, but it is also a humbling thing; and the man who has not been humbled in the presence of God will never be a worshiper of God at all. ~ A.W. Tozer

The Psalms speak of these things as well. David continually raises his petitions, praises, and prayers by the morning light!

O Lord, in the morning you hear my voice; in the morning I prepare a sacrifice for you and watch. ~ Psalm 5:3

But I will sing of your strength; I will sing aloud of your steadfast love in the morning. ~ Psalm 59:16

Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. ~ Psalm 90:14

Let me hear in the morning of your steadfast love, for in you I trust. Make me know the way I should go, for to you I lift up my soul. ~ Psalm 143:8

Lord, renew these precious truths in me, day by day!

If I fail to spend two hours in prayer each morning, the devil gets the victory through the day. I have so much business I cannot get on without spending three hours daily in prayer. ~ Martin Luther

He who runs from God in the morning will scarcely find Him the rest of the day. ~ John Bunyan

To Him whom my soul loves...

There are many people, things, places, and blessings that I'm eternally thankful for. However, when I think upon this past year, the emphasis of my gratitude is placed on my King, my Beloved.

My heart cries thanks....

...that the Lord reproves those whom he loves, as a father the son in whom he delights (Prov 3:12, Heb 12:6) and learning to embrace the rod of His discipline with a tearful smile.

...that He has led me to embrace and know Him as my Husband, my Maker, my Redeemer (Isaiah 54:5).

...that He has enabled me to truly hate my life in this world and seek to become the seed that dies to bear fruit (John 12:24-25).

...that it is His spirit who gives life and that the flesh availeth nothing (John 6:63).

...that I belong to Christ and my flesh is crucified (Gal. 5:24) and I now walk in the freedom of the Holy Spirit (2 Cor. 3:17).

...for the pressure and weight of the Holy Spirit upon and within my soul; stripping, surrendering, releasing.

...that He has been building within me a 'tensile strength' of soul.

...that He has shared His burdens with me for the lost, the oppressed, the afflicted.

...that He has been teaching me to pray, quite literally, until break of day as well as learning to stand upon His promises and live/feed upon His Living Word.

...that He has led me into tasting the riches of the glory of the great mystery hidden for ages and generations (Col 1:27).

...that He made me willing to become the like man who, in joy, sells all he has to purchase the field with the hidden treasure (Matt 13:44).

...that in stripping everything from me, He's given me an insatiable thirst every day for more of Him.

...that I am decreasing and He is increasing (John 3:30)

...that although the season of trials is long and wearisome, the joy that He's given me in Him only continues to abound (Psalm 16:11). The joy of the Lord as my strength has truly become a reality in my life!

...that the past two hardest years of my life have become the sweetest, most fulfilling years I've known thus far - all working for my good and His glory (Rom 8:28)!

...that by His grace, He has entered me into the "endless frontier" of the true victorious Christian-life, which is Christ in me, the hope of glory (Col 1:27).

...that He is forever, eternally, and always mine and I am His: my treasure, my portion, my Beloved.

I will leave it to an old father in the faith to place into words the kind of life that the Lord brought me into this year:

"I was converted in November of 1825, but I only came into the full surrender of the heart four years later, in July 1829. The love of money was gone, the love of place was gone, the love of position was gone, and the love of worldly pleasures and engagements was gone. God, God alone became my portion. I found my all in Him; I wanted nothing else. And by the grace of God this has remained, and has made me a happy man, an exceedingly happy man, and it led me to care only about the things of God. I ask affectionately, my beloved brethren, have you fully surrendered the heart to God, or is there this thing or that thing with which you have taken up irrespective of God? I read a little of the scriptures before, but preferred other books; but since that time the revelation He has made of Himself has become unspeakably blessed to me, and I can say from my heart, God is an infinitely lovely Being. Oh, be not satisfied until in your own inmost soul you can say, God is an infinitely lovely Being!" ~ George Mueller

(Photo credit goes to photographer Brooke B. - Ellerslie sister :-)

Qodesh

We cannot talk to God strongly when we have not lived for God strongly. The closet cannot be made holy to God when the life has not been holy to God.

Our praying, to be strong, must be buttressed by holy living. The life of faith perfects the prayer of faith.

~ E.M. Bounds

For the past two or so months, my thoughts have continually turned to set-apart, holy living and how it is kept and maintained in all the day-to-day, practical, nitty-gritty details. Just to emphasize: my use of set-apart and holy are radically opposite from the works-based mentality that modern Christianity often assigns to those words (nor am I determining to jump head-first into a Messianic-Hebraic lifestyle and lay on my shoulders all the customs and traditions of the Jews). I speak of a life that is built around Christ, constantly pursuing Him with holy fear, trembling, and sweet delight! A life that is showcased in Scripure and all throughout historic Christianity. A life that is completely purified and dead to self that it will not seek after those innocent fleshly indulgences for comfort, rest, or energy.

The hebrew word for holy is qodesh which means apartness, holiness, sacredness, separateness, set-apartness, consecrated. I love the word qodesh, mainly because I grew up listening to the well-known Messianic praise-song, Kodesh (which I highly encourage all to listen to). But the full weight of qodesh in relation to my Lord has only become a greater reality to me since last year at this same time. I've had a great amount of struggle transitioning from a life of self-importance to Christ-importance (being at Ellerslie: School of Honor this summer really equipped me with that which I had been missing by turning me to cultivate a deeper, prayer life, thanks be to God!). Perhaps one of my greatest wrestlings has been with "holy" decisions made out of my own will and strength. As the Lord began to show me the beauty of a set-apart life and a pure heart, I was deeply convicted and immediately felt compelled to completely change my lifestyle (what I listen to, what I watch, what I spend the majority of my time on, where I choose to veg-out or escape to when I'm stressed/tired, etc.). To be honest, it's not like I was into a bunch of blatantly terrible, bad things. But oftentimes, even the good, innocent things in our lives aren't doing anything to build us in Truth or turn us to Christ. If we are all honest ourselves, we would admit that those innocent, "neutral" things are often a huge hindrance in our spiritual lives because of the amount of time, thought, or energy we place into them. Not to mention, they do not feed or purify our souls. And so it was in this area that I've greatly strugged and desperately sought to give up all at once. However, at times I couldn't give them up, despite my self-resolve, or I'd find myself terribly confused and questioning myself on many areas. I also fought arrogance and pride on these decisions by anticipating how those closest to me would react or say. In fact, I felt really sour towards them because I knew they'd question and not understand. I found myself living by man's opinion and, thus, it led me to hold back on making certain decisions for fear of their opinions.

I needed His will to replace my will in this decision-making or else it would have been merely the result of legalism. The Lord does call us to a full surrender of our lives (even those innocent and good parts of our lives) but He doesn't ask us to surrender without Him first enabling us (heart, soul, strength, mind) and purifying us so that we're not in an attitude of arrogance, still looking towards man's approval, or doing these things because we will it out of our own desire for holiness. I needed His desires and love for purity and holiness to become mine. When we have His will and desires working through us, we're able to pursue a set-apart life with purity of heart and joy - no pride, no fear, no arrogance, no confusion! This is what Jesus spoke of:

The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. ~ Matt 13:44

The man gave up his things in joy. And, no doubt, we can assume that this man was not defensive or turned to self-pity when those around him did not understand and questioned him. The joy of the Lord was his strength!

These are some verses that have spoken to me in times of meditation on holiness:

God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness. Therefore whoever disregards this, disregards not man but God, who gives his Holy Spirit to you. ~ 1 Thess 4:7-8

Therefore, if anyone cleanses himself from what is dishonorable, he will be a vessel for honorable use, set apart as holy, useful to the master of the house, ready for every good work. ~ 2 Timothy 2:21

Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. ~ 1 Cor 6:19-20

Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God. ~ 2 Cor. 7:1
- The Hebrew word for spirit in this verse is pneuma, which is defined from Blue Letter Bible as: the spirit, i.e. the vital principal by which the body is animated
the rational spirit, the power by which the human being feels, thinks, decides
the disposition or influence which fills and governs the soul of any one
the efficient source of any power, affection, emotion, desire, etc.

Therefore, it's not just about living lives pure of physical defilement but also pure of everything that can taint or influence our spirit - our feelings, thoughts, decisions, etc.

These verses from 1 Cor. 4 made me think heavily on the fact that the Lord has entrusted us with something great and precious and we're not to squander His high gifts:
This is how one should regard us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. Moreover, it is required of stewards that they be found trustworthy. ~ 1 Cor 4:1-2

May we be brought to a place where we can honestly say by the Spirit of our Lord that dwells within us:

There was a day when I died; died to self, my opinions, preferences, tastes and will;
died to the world, its approval or censure; died to the approval or blame even of my brethren or friends; and since then I have studied only to show myself approved unto God. ~ George Mueller

And lastly, an entry-post by Steve Gallager:
“O God, Thou art my God; I shall seek Thee earnestly; my soul thirsts for Thee, my flesh yearns for Thee, in a dry and weary land where there is no water.” (Psalm 63:1)
This world is a dry and weary land. Nothing will deaden a person’s spiritual appetite like the spirit of this world. Even believers with the best of intentions find that their passion for God wanes in the spiritually polluted atmosphere around us. And the more immersed we become in it, the more dry and weary become our souls. Every minute we spend watching television, listening to secular radio, surfing the Net, playing video games, reading newspapers & magazines, strolling through the mall—and a thousand other activities which beckon us—the more barren we become spiritually.

The deception of it all is in the innocuous nature of these different pastimes. While many TV shows could have a quick and powerful effect on me spiritually, watching a segment of Headline News is not going to drive me away from God. Reading the Sports page—in itself—is not going to make me spiritually dull. The problem is how much accumulated time people spend in these different pursuits. By the end of any given day, it is not abnormal for a believer to have spent two or three hours filling his mind, in one fashion or another, with the voice of the spirit of this world.

Most believers understand from past experience that the more time they spend in worldly activities, the more difficult it will be to break into the presence of God during their devotions the following morning. They will have to fight through that fog Jesus called “dissipation:” the spiritual hangover that comes from being drunk with the things of this world. It is simply a fact that the world deadens spiritual sensitivity.

One would think that spending time in the world would create a great thirst for the rivers of life, but actually it has the very opposite effect. The things of this world give a person a false sense of fulfillment. It’s like filling up on soda pop when the body needs pure water. The more cola a believer drinks, the less thirst he will feel for the real thing. I made this same point in an article I once wrote regarding the place of pleasure in the life of the believer:

Making pleasure the most important aspect of one’s life could be compared to a teenager who thinks he can live on candy bars and soda pop. True, he won’t drop dead within a few days of such an unhealthy diet, but his quality of life will be seriously impaired. The constant intake of sugar will gradually rot his teeth, deplete his overall energy level, and could even lead to something serious such as diabetes. Worse than that, by substituting healthy food with sweets, his body will not receive the nutrition that is required to ward off sickness and to sustain life. Undoubtedly, over a long period of time the results of such a lifestyle would be a sickly life and an untimely death.

May we have a constant joyful, sacred regard and delight for the Spirit of the Living God which dwells within us.

And he said, Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground. ~ Exodus 3:5