For Him Who Has Ears To Hear
“If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
..C.S. Lewis, excerpt from The Weight of Glory, circa 1941“I was sitting in the front seat, trying really hard to be the driver,
Thinking I was making real good time, but always winding up a late arriver.
But now I’ve been trying out the back seat,
And I’m finding it’s a very great relief,
Now I’m riding in the backseat, and I’m leaving all the driving to the Chief.”
..Love Song, Front Seat, Back Seat, circa 1971“Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
..Dylan Thomas, circa 1951.
Half-Hearted Creatures
The truth is a big thing: a great big unavoidable thing. It comes with sharpness, precision, clarity, and a frequent, reticent confession of what we’ve been stepping around. I think the Lord Himself placed such things on the earth to keep us from falling into absurdity, meaninglessness, and hopeless fluff. Something in my soul breathes deep when I see the truth about things, and about myself. I relax and smile and dream bigger. Such truths are flashes and glimpses of the true Light. When I can I love to sit in silence because when I’m quiet I find things that were lost before. Things that seem to have been lost to the casual Christian culture around me for sometime… that only get found on the other side of the wall of sound and clutter we call everyday life. And the passageway — the gateway through to the other side — is reckless abandon and surrender that leads implicitly to stillness of heart. It’s simple sustained listening. Such quietness of soul becomes a reality only for those desperate seekers who are willing to give everything to find it: it is the unmistakable fruit of seeking God. But we are caught trying far too often to sit in the driver’s seat rather than trusting the God who is so much bigger than us. C.S. Lewis says we are half-hearted creatures that shy away from pursuing larger, life-size things and too often settle for less. I agree with him. To counter this fading tendency, we have to go passionately after Him by surrendering central control of our lives. In such moments — when we relinquish ownership and God rushes in — what we see plainly is that:
He has made us for so much more than this beggarly, daily-grind, all-too-commonplace existence. We long for more, and He will lead us to it if we will wake up and follow.
It will take intensity, on our part, because we are adrift in a tepid time that is far too vacuous, hollow, and deprived of soulfood to allow us to easily find rest. But Christ has placed an eternal, unquenchable thirst in our hearts that will lead us to Him if we let it. He wants to speak to us. But if we resist, if we will not listen, the downside is difficult. How we live in God, including what we do in the midst of our spiritual communities and activities, is always either life-giving or death-producing. There is no middle ground between these two. Mediocre religion begets and fortifies dead religion, in us and around us. The opposite is true as well.
We are actively either coming to Christ who has water that can satisfy our deepest soul-thirst, or we are walking right up to the edge of inescapable desperation and oblivion.
Either our life-choices and fellowships are leading us into life by their very nature, or they are blocking the road and fortifying our blindness. There is, quite unfortunately, not another option. There is no comfortable compromise that will lead us to life. The soul is not designed to thrive in stasis. It needs real nourishment from Jesus, the bread of life, and we are too frequently surviving off of less than bread. Too often we are stuck like those wandering Isrealites, surviving on manna, but hungry for so much more. I am so grateful that sometimes when we are in just such a state, God Himself comes near and breaks in. And in such moments, He makes it so abundantly clear just how close He is.
A Thoroughly Radiant Moment
On a Friday morning in October as I was driving to work, I was digging through my media, looking for something to listen to. It was in one of those moments of soul-thirst. I started listening to a sermon from a local pastor… blah, it was dry, empty, and lifeless: nothing there. I paged over to some sermons from a church I knew about a few states away, but again — as the selection played — there was no punch, zest, or flavor, so I was left still quite unimpressed. Sitting there in that moment, driving along, I felt the subtle leading of the Lord to go right to Scripture. So I started listening to the reading plan passage for that day. The opening verses captured my attention immediately. Lamentations 4 read:
v.1 How the gold has lost its luster! Even the finest gold has become dull! The sacred gemstones lie scattered in the streets. v.4 The parched tongues of their little ones stick with thirst to the roofs of their mouths. The children cry for bread, but no one has any to give them.
Intense! When I heard the phrase about bread being absent and unavailable it was clear the bread was representative of Christ and the fullness of the Word. I instinctively thought, “That’s exactly how I feel… there’s no bread out there, no food!” All of it was fresh, lively, and right on the mark. As the voice-over guy read through verse five, I was even more drawn in:
“The people who once ate only the richest foods now beg in the streets for anything they can get. Those who once lived in palaces now search the garbage pits for food.”
And there it was, so clear and strong: the Lord was speaking in such an unmistakable way. I had lived through times and seasons where rich spiritual food had been so freely available. This was not one of those times, I knew it and felt it. What was so intense is how this seemed to make it clear that the Lord knew it, understood my situation, and had compassion for me right in the midst of it. And the instruction seemed equally clear: “Quit digging around in garbage pits for the food your soul craves so desperately and start going right to the source: Me.” I sat and smiled (how could I not?!) as I pondered the effective simplicity and yet, complex rich beauty of such a discovery. I sat and prayed, “Lord, let me be obedient to this. Let my heart be good ground. Help me to listen and not just rush ahead.” I was humbled and delighted, all at the same time. For a moment I was breathing in the atmosphere of heaven, the nearness of Christ Himself.
“Other seeds fell into the good soil, and as they grew up and increased, they yielded a crop and produced thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold. And He was saying, ‘He who has ears to hear, let him hear.’” ..Mark 4.8–9
“You Were a Man, Charlie, a Great Big Man”
“Charlie Skinner was crazy. He identified with Don Quixote, an old man with dementia who thought he could save the world from an epidemic of incivility simply by acting like a knight. His religion was decency, and he spent a lifetime fighting its enemies. So this fight is just getting started, because he taught the rest of us to be crazy, too. You were a man, Charlie, a great big man.”
..Will McAvoy, Newsroom (Season 3, Episode 6)
There are in the world those influential people, innovators within whom an idea takes shape, grows roots, becomes fruitful, and then takes flight; lifting out into the surrounding world with huge potency, intense impact, and powerful effect. I am not confident I am one of those people, like Charlie Skinner was, but I want to be. You want to be too, if you are human and honest. Most importantly, Christ wants us to be. He has made us to do the very thing that He has designed our hearts to long for. Now He waits for us to listen and move. Hanging in there isn’t enough. To thrive we need to see the big picture. We need to do more than exist, we need to live!
“Quo Vadis?”
A phrase meaning “Where are you going?” In the Latin translation of John 13:36, Peter asks Jesus ‘Quo vadis?’, to which Jesus replies, “Where I am going, you can’t follow me now, but you will follow later.”
“Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” ..John 3.7–8
For those who have ears to hear, God will speak with resonant simplicity and straightforwardness. And you certainly don’t have to be some big deal, there is no special talent required, just a humble willingness to pursue and listen, to trust and obey. Oh, and you have to be daring and bold too. Because people will look at you sideways, tilting their heads with strange glances and quiet whispers, questioning this uncommon and less-than-typical behavior. They will say, “What are you doing? Why are you doing that? Where are you going? I don’t understand.” What you are responding to will be as foreign and strange to them as the Latin phrase above is to those who don’t know its origin or understand its meaning. But keep moving, and stay obedient. To these uncertain souls, Jesus will simply explain again that the Spirit moves His people like the wind that blows through the trees: by a silent invisible force. He moves them according to His will, not their own; by His strength and leadership, and not their own. In the end…
This is the sum total of the work of the Church in the earth: to teach us to listen to, understand, and obey the voice of the Spirit as He moves in us. Now to Him, and Him alone, be glory in the Church, forever and ever. Amen.
Be inspired today to listen like never before, to keep your ears open to His voice, to hurry up and wait upon the Lord… and when you hear, to move. He is there and He is not silent, we just are not listening.
“The Spirit and the Bride say, ‘Come.’ And let the one who hears say, ‘Come.’ And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price.” ..Revelation 22.17
