As the deer drinks from the creek; We want to drink God, deep draughts of God.
We’re thirsty for God, our living acting on our behalf God.
Jesus stood up and called out in a loud voice, “If anyone is thirsty,let him come to Me and drink. Whoever believes in Me, as the Scripture has said: ‘Streams of living water will flow from within them.'” John 7:37-38
We wonder, “Will we ever make it
Will we ever arrive and drink in God’s presence?
I’m on a diet of tears—tears for breakfast, tears for supper. All day long people, we’re being pestered, They’re mocking us saying: “Where is this God of yours?
In Psalms 42:1-3 we read: We’re panting! We’re hacking in paroxysmal uncontrollable coughing
Our lungs are burning in panting need of You
Our soul is panting after enjoyment and communion
We want to be breathing in our God in Christ.
Our breath is gasping in an insatiable thirst
We feel with each gasp of weak and a vehement desires after You God.
We’re under siege
We’re chased,
It’s the pursuits of Satan
We look to You Jesus who alone has our needed living streams
It’s in God in Christ our soul wants are found ;
Without Him we convulse in tears of our soul’s disappointment.
Deliver the eye of our soul from being lost from You.
Let us know You. Let us experience You.
Let us be intimate with You in adoring worship
Luke, 24:16
But it’s by our tears we call for grace to taste Your spiced wine of the pomegranate. Song, 8:2.
We’re chased by our oppressors
We’re taunted as we climb in breathtaking collapses
We’re On Your hill of the mount Olivet weeping as we climb
2 Sam. 15:30; 16:5–8
You’ve been there through the ages
You make our afflictions sacred by Jesus
We keep in view our Master as we bow, climbing on our knees
We’re crying and sighing for our longed for-loved
Keep us from falling under depressions,
Keep us longing for the renewal of Your divine presence,
Deliver us from struggling with doubts and fears,
Favor us with strength to hold Your ground by faith in our living God.
This drought of oxygen inside
This poor fainting longing for Your streams of life giving air,
We’re hunted by death
We’re instinctively seeking Your streams of life for are scorched flanks
We’re weary, exhausted and persecuted
Our soul pants after You Lord our God.
We’ve been Debarred
We’re parched in this wilderness of breathlessness
All the wells on earth are dry,
We must drink You or we die—
We must have our God or faint.
Our soul, our very self, ur deepest life is You Jesus,
We are insatiable for a sense of Your presence.
As the deer thirsts, so our soul prays, our inner being begs and pleads for You.
slakes our thirst Lord Jesus
Without You our heart heaves,
Without You our chest caves,
Without You our whole frame is convulsed,
We gasp for breath, we pant in aches for You.
Our soul
All our nature,
all our inmost self
“Thirsts.” With intense craving “For God.”
“For the living God.”
For our life giving God
Because He lives,
Because You rose from the dead
Because You’re our perennial fountain of life and light and love,
There are two kinds of meditation There is mindless meditation which is a mental oversight This is a mental relapse a failure in comprehension of true values
There’s mind-full meditation. This is a freeing and fulfilling musing of God’s Word
This is disciplining our thoughts and flooding our hearts with phrases of spiritual truth
When weighted down with wrinkles and worries. When bogged in with the fears and frustrations of the foolish of our cultures. The only thing that can liberate our hearts is Jesus healing truth and His perfect perspective.
FAULTY WRINKLE V.1-3
THE PRESENT STRUGGLE
FOUNDATIONAL PROPOSITION
OUR POSITIVE RESULTS
Truly God is good to Israel,
Truly, or, more correctly, ONLY, “God is good to Israel.”
He is all we have that is good,
Nothing else is good and better
He gives the best to all of His own,
Yes us, we are His special ones.
Jesus our God can’t act unjustly or unkindly to us; His goodness. to us is beyond dispute; His goodness to us is without lack.
OUR PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITIES
even to such as are of a clean heart
Are we clean in the inward parts
Are we pure in the vital mainspring of action.
Are we sure of what we do know,
Are we molested by those mysterious storms which arise from things which we do not understand.
These cryptic enigmatic and inscrutable things,
Suddenly we’re wondering, are there certainties somewhere?
Our experience has placed some tangible facts within our grasp;
we have to cling to these.
We need prevention from being carried away by hurricanes of infidelity. These come from the wilderness wanderings. These are. like whirlwinds, and can lift the four corners of our house and threaten to overthrow it.
O my God, however perplexed we get, never let us blame and accuse You.
We don’t understand You, but let us never stop believing in you.
You’re good to us as You’ve made us good;
You’re good to us as You’ve renewed our heart
You’re good to us and You’ll never forsake us.
THE POTENTIAL STAGER V.2
DOUBT
But as for me, my feet were almost gone
Here begins the narrative of a great soul-battle, a spiritual Marathon, a hard and well-fought field of conflicts is being waged,
But here the half-defeated became in the end wholly victorious.
He contrasts Himself with his God who is ever good;
He admits his personal want of good,
He then also compares himself with the clean in heart,
He then goes on to confess his defilement.
The Lord is good to his people, “but as for me,” am I one of them?
Can I expect to share His grace? Yes, I do share it;
But I have acted an unworthy part,
I’m very unlike one who is truly pure in heart.
Errors of heart and head soon affect the conduct.
There is an intimate connection between the heart and the feet.
Asaph could barely stand,
His uprightness was drooping, drifting and then going,
His knees were bowing like a falling wall.
When we doubt the righteousness of God,
When we linger questioning that Our Lord Jesus does everything right
When we distrust the Spirit of Christ’s presence
When we’re uncertain of His purposes in us
Then our own integrity begins to waver and we shiver in fear
DISAPPOINTMENT
my steps had well nigh slipped
Asaph could make no progress in the good road,
His feet ran away from under him like those of a man on a sheet of ice.
He was weakened for all practical action,
He was in great danger of actual sin and of a disgraceful fall.
We have to plead to our Father to watch over our inner person, Our inner waverings and instabilities are fragile. This unnerving can have a forcible effect on our outer character and responses.
Help us Lord to confess our weakness in plain, explicit need.
Phillips shares how he was raised at the seas edge:
“There was a muddy tidal river which flowed through our home town.
When the tide was out vast mudbanks were exposed. As children we could get too close to them, and I can still feel the chill of sheer terror which gripped me as my foot slipped and I felt myself sliding toward a horrible death.…
Fortunately, my foot hit a protruding rock, and I was saved. I learned the wisdom of obedience the hard way.
“My steps had well nigh slipped.”
It is a good idea to think this problem through and then to stay away from the treacherous mudbanks the psalmist describes.”
Our steps had well nigh slipped
THE PREDICTABLE SUSPICION V.3
RESPECTING REJECTERS
For I was envious at the foolish
The foolish is the generic title of all Christ rejectors
The foolish are the ones who twist and muck up everything:
There are fools and there are leaders of fools who are perverted beyond all other fools. We corrupt ourselves in extreme ways when we envy fools.
Some read it, in place of fools “the proud”
These, by their ostentations and pretentiousness, invite envy
They plunge our mind out of gear spiritually,
This is a deadly viral infection with that wasting disease.
This is a pitiful thing for us who will inherit heaven to have to confess
“I was envious,”
But, it’s worse that we say,
“I was envious at the foolish.”
“I was envious at the proud.”
This acknowledgment is really what we can confess daily.
FULL OF WEALTH
when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.
Our eye gets fixed too much on one thing;
We see their present
We forgot their future,
We see their outward display
We overlooked their soul’s discomfort.
Who envies the steers fat when he sees him in the slaughter house?
When we’re afflicted we’re jealous of the Christ rejectors temporary plenty.
As one has noted:
“We never know that we have a grip on Christ, Or that He has a grip on us, as well as when the devil is using all his forces to attract us from Jesus; then you feel the pull of Christ’s right hand”
Extreme afflictions shouldn’t be viewed as punishment, but extreme trials are our opportunity of extraordinary graces.
Archbishop Leighton writes
“God has many sharp-cutting instruments
Our Father has His rough files for the polishing of His jewels;
Those He specially loves, He make the most resplendent,
Those who are precious to Him He has often His tools upon”
“In a factory building there are wheels and gearings,
There are cranks and pulleys, beltings tight or slack–
Some are whirling swiftly, some are turning slowly,
Some are thrusting forward, some are pulling back;
Some are smooth and silent, some are rough and noisy,
Pounding, rattling, clanking, moving with a jerk;
In a wild confusion in a seeming chaos,
Lifting, pushing, driving but they do their work.
From the mightiest lever to the tiniest pinion,
All things move together for the purpose planned;
And behind the working is a mind controlling,
And a force directing, and a guiding hand.
So all things are working for the Lord’s beloved;
Some things might be hurtful if alone they stood;
Some might seem to hinder; some might draw us backward
But they work together and they work for good,
All the thwarted longings, all the stern denials,
All the contradictions, hard to understand.
And the force that holds them, speeds them and retards them,
Stops and starts and guides them–is our Father’s hand.
For the secret power of lawlessness is already at work; but the one who now holds it back will continue to do so till he is taken out of the way. 2 Thessalonians 2:7
John Phillips notes
The “mystery of iniquity” is the secret working of lawlessness.
From the beginning, it has been a goal of Satan and his demonic wicked spirits in the heavenlies. to overthrow God’s purposes regarding this planet
The word for “work” here means “to work actively.”
Satan is tireless in his efforts to achieve his plans, but he is up against a major obstacle.
There is One who “hinders and will hinder, until he be taken out of the way.”
The word for “letteth” (hinders) in can be translated “withholds”
Satan encountered God’s restraint when he wanted harm to Job Job 1:6–2:8
There is a Restrainer.
The only One who can restrain Satan and his angels is the Holy Spirit.
The instrument of that restraint, us the mystical body of Christ the church all Christ followers
Nothing can happen, prophetically, until a change occurs and the mighty power that is now restraining Satan and his demonic minions is removed:
He who now hinders will hinder until he be taken out of the way.
As long as the Holy Spirit and all Christ followers remain on earth, the day of grace continues.
As long as it is a day of grace, God won’t pour out His judgments and His wrath on our planet.
The Flood could not come until Noah was safely in the ark.
Fire could not fall from heaven until Lot was safely out of Sodom.
Judgment can’t come until the church is removed from this planet.
The removal means there’s no longer any hinderance to the rapid acceleration of all the twisted wickedness in the world.
The way will be clear for Satan and the Antichrist to take over the world. People will be left to learn for themselves what the world will be like once unrestrained wickedness is given full rein.
The book of Revelation gives us the dread drastic details.
God’s Spirit will no longer restrain the development of the mystery of iniquity,
It’s my theory that there is a progressive lessening of restraint on the debacle of perverse depraved wickedness.
A gradual letting loose of the twisted armies of the Devil.
Once the complete removal all salt and light through Spirit in-dwelt Christ followers all hell will break loose everywhere on everyone.
I’ve never been a roller coaster guy. The couple of times I’ve gotten into these torture chambers I’ve ended up spewing the contents of my innards and polluting the amusement ride.
The abrupt fluctuations where one moment your cresting and then you trough in jerks that could give a person a closed head brain injury are anguishing psychic traumas.
There are times I feel Jill and I are belted into our own unique ride with unlimited thrills. Fortunately it’s not a physical roller coaster although there are some details through each day where it feels we’re getting bashed by abrupt fluctuations that are out of our ability to control.
We reach out and try to help and comfort each other and it’s tricky. It’s like when you lose your grip on the wheelchair on a steep hill. The results are disastrous.
We need a Psychiatrist. We need a Counselor. We need a surgeon who can dig out the nasty stuff with his sharp scalpel.
I know a great Psychiatrist who can reach into our heart and mind and disperse the PTSD with his expert sensitive words.
He can reverse the battle fatigue and restore the stress disorders
I know a counselor can sooth our souls of the tangled web of hurts and emotional bruises that are raw with pain.
What a privilege to have the one who holds all these titles and achieves supernatural interventions in us every moment of the day
He’s got us on the path of our final healing where we’re catapulted into His physical presence to mansions above in a new body that will never again feel loss, decline, sorrow, death or grief.
Now this one never puts us on hold when we call. His appointment book is open every second as His availability has no limitations.
He’s assured me that He controls every virus, every bacteria, every opportunistic germ, every cancer, every organ failure.
In fact there’s not a disease or breakdown that He doesn’t have a special purpose for it.
These interruptions that appear as a traumatic inconvenience are really open opportunities for connecting with our master Psychiatrist and Counselor
He has us in His germ free O. R. for 24×7 microsurgery as He burns away the gunk and cuts out the cancer.
His ventilator is incredible. It sucks out the poison gasses of sin and breathes in the filling of His Spirit of love, joy, peace, long suffering and patient endurance.
His mouth to mouth resuscitation brings gifts of His life giving breath into our lives. His luscious fruit is the sweet juice of affection for others, exuberance about everything in our life, and a supernatural serenity with poised composer in the face of trauma.
His breath in us develops a willingness to hang in there when things are going sideways
His breathing in us is exceptional as He brings His life in us living through us a sense of compassion in our heart
He makes us both salt and light giving us convictions for a holiness that permeates other people we enjoy being around.
We find ourselves deeply involved in loyal commitments. But as He keeps breathing in us His mouth to mouth fragrance we don’t feel a need to force our way on the life of others.
Instead we’re able to direct our energies wisely and discipline our inconsistencies with His consistent nonfluctuating purposes.
Not only is my wonderful counselor and soul adviser breathing in to us. But, His voice pours in as we open our mouth to Him.
But His breath also sucks out from us the pollutants.
You know the stuff. This nonsense where we’re trying to get our own way all the time.
He sucks that out: He sucks out these repetitive habits, these loveless indifferences, the cheap junk; which is an accumulation of mental and emotional garbage;
He sucks out all the paranoid frenzied grabs for happiness; all the fake trinket gods; all the neurotic loneliness; and the moody grumpiness of my brutal temper;
He takes out my impotent attempts to find love in every wrong place and every wrong person;
He restores our divided lives; He resizes our small-minded and lopsided pursuits;
He redirects our vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival;
He corals our uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; He replace each of our ugly parodies, the counterfeit burlesque of pharisaical travesties.
All He asks of us is that we open wide our mouth and He’ll fill it.
He says:
I’m GOD, I am your God, I’m the only real God who rescued you from doom and continues moment by moment to rescue you and reverse every trauma in you, I’ll feed you all you need and all satisfy your hungry souls.
He asks us to open our heart and He comes in with the bread of Heaven and the water of life and He’ll live in us with His supernatural amazing presence
He asks us to open our ears and He’ll place His lips on our ears washing us internally through our listening with His tender voice
He controls every aspect of our being and every opportunistic negative that’s storming all around us. The destruction of devastating plagues and violence and perversion are enabled under His rule.
We won’t die a second to soon nor will we live any longer then we need to.
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