Wait

Wait

Desperately, helplessly, longingly, I cried:
Quietly, patiently, lovingly God replied.
I pled and I wept for a clue to my fate,

And the Master so gently said,
“Child, you must wait.”
“Wait? You say, wait!” my indignant reply.
“Lord, I need answers, I need to know why!
Is Your hand shortened? Or have You not heard?
By faith, I have asked, and am claiming Your Word.

“My future and all to which I can relate
Hangs in the balance, and You tell me to WAIT?
I’m needing a ‘Yes,’ a go-ahead sign,
Or even a ‘No’ to which I can resign.

"And Lord, You promised that if we believe
We need but to ask, and we shall receive.
And, Lord, I’ve been asking, and this is my cry:
‘I’m weary of asking! I need a reply!’”

Then quietly, softly, I learned of my fate
As my Master replied once again, “You must wait.”
So, I slumped in my chair, defeated and taut
And grumbled to God, “So, I’m waiting…for what?”

He seemed, then, to kneel
And His eyes wept with mine,
And He tenderly said, "I could give you a sign.
I could shake the heavens, and darken the sun.
I could raise the dead, and cause mountains to run.

“All you seek, I could give, and pleased you would be.
You would have what you want—
But, you wouldn’t know Me.
You’d not know the depth of My love for each saint;
You’d not know the power I give to the faint;

“You’d not learn to see through the clouds of despair;
You’d not learn to trust just by knowing I’m there;
You’d not know the joy of resting in Me;
When darkness and silence were all you could see.

“You’d never experience that fullness of love
As the peace of My Spirit descends like a dove;
You’d know that I give and I save, for a start,
But you’d not know the depth of the beat of My heart.

“The glow of My comfort late into the night,
The faith that I give when you walk without sight,
The depth that’s beyond getting just what you asked
Of an infinite God, who makes what you have last.

“You’d never know, should your pain quickly flee,
What it means that, ‘My grace is sufficient for thee.’
Yes, your dreams for your loved one overnight would come true,
But, oh, the loss if I lost what I’m doing in you!

“So, be silent, My child, and in time you will see
That the greatest of gifts is to get to know Me.
And though oft’ may My answers seem terribly late,
My most precious answer of all is still, ‘Wait.’”

 

(My friend Tabitha recently posted this poem on her Facebook page- as quoted in the book, "emotional PURITY" by Heather Arnel Paulsen)

By grace are ye saved...

This story- about a gospel series our assembly recently completed- ran in The Guttenberg Press. 

(From left are Dan Shutt and David Petterson.)

The Gospel Hall in Garnavillo, 506 S. Washington St., is in the middle of hosting a two-week evangelical series which began Sunday, Feb. 26, and will end Sunday, March 11.

Visiting preachers Dan Shutt, of Northville, Mich., and David Petterson (pronounced Peter-son), of Lincolnton, N.C., speak at 7 p.m. every night except Saturday.

Though the two men preach a different sermon every night for two weeks, they said that the core message is always the same.

“The gospel is that people have a tremendous need to be saved from their sins,” Shutt said. “God has met that need through the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus.”

Neither of the men attended a seminary.

“It’s something we learned personally,” Shutt said. “Like Martin Luther, it was not the religious institution that provided peace. It was the discovery that a man was justified by faith, not his work: Romans 1:17 says, ‘The just shall live by faith.’ Justification is by Christ’s work. Luther understood that, and at that glorious moment, he was born again and went on to ‘turn the world upside down.’”

Before he became a preacher, Shutt, 57, worked at IBM but was also active in his local church, evangelizing, teaching and working with younger people.

“There came a point in my life when I couldn’t do two jobs well and had to let one go. The unimportant one did,” he said. He explained that in his work at IBM, he helped money move back and forth from person to person. As a preacher, he believes his work has a longer-lasting impact.

“Our profoundest conviction is that people are creatures of eternity. The souls of men and women are going to live in heaven or hell forever,” he said.

Petterson was in college studying Spanish and finance but spent his summers helping men who were preaching full-time.

“I was reading the Bible to discern God’s will for my life and became convinced that God was calling me to do this,” Petterson said.

Petterson was working at Bank of America, and he and his wife Alison had their first child before mutually deciding that Petterson would preach full-time.

“I feel strongly that Alison had to be called to this as well. I wanted to be sure that was the case,” he said.

Most of what Petterson does is close to home. His home church is in Denver, N.C., but he is involved in a new church in the nearby Crandon, Virginia. This church is made up of formerly Amish families who were saved and had the desire to meet in the same way that they saw in the Bible. 

“I want to be there as much as possible,” he said.

Shutt has visited Garnavillo since he was in his teens, but Petterson had only ever been to Marion, Iowa.

“This is my first visit to the ‘Gem of the Prairie,” Petterson said. “I’m enjoying the people, the stories they tell and the experiences they’ve had.”

Shutt explained that meetings are held nightly because even those with busy schedules can find one night to come.

“We want to give people in the community as much of an opportunity as possible to come hear about the Bible,” Petterson said.

“It’s a focus on what God says, not about different religious philosophies,” Shutt said.

“By grace are you saved through faith and not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not of works lest anyone should boast.” (Ephesians 2:8)

“It’s good to be good, but it’s not good enough,” Shutt said. “Our disobedience to God, even in areas that we consider to be trivial, is a serious offense. God is our creator, and we owe him perfect obedience, but because of our broken, fallen nature, we can never attain to that. God’s standard for heaven is absolute, perfect righteousness; unattainable by mere man, but fully attained through Jesus Christ and his work on the cross.

The two men said that their work is based on Jesus’ instruction in Mark 16:15.

And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.

“We are a couple of guys enjoying the daylights out of what we do because we get the chance to preach the gospel to people. It’s not mechanical. There’s an absolute joy in living out something Jesus himself said to do,” Shutt said.

Washing my feet

"Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path." Psalms 119:105

A lamp unto my feet: It illuminates my feet-shows where I am now in my fallen, degenerate state. It shows me that I am nowhere near the person God would have me to be. It shows just how far I am from being like His Son.

A lamp pointed at my feet when I am standing still shows my location- far from God, off the path AGAIN and bogged down by guilt and shame. They stick like mud to my feet, making them dirty-showing me where I am and where I've been. But the Word of God is not exposing my shamefulness to leave me there!

The verse goes on.

The Word of God is a light unto my path. It stretches out in front of me illuminating the way I ought to go. I can't see the whole journey- just a short distance, but as I walk in the path set before me, the light moves further on, drawing me ever closer to the God of the Word.

As I move along the path, His Word continues to be a lamp unto my feet- no longer illuminating my failures- but instead, helping me to see the things that could cause me to stumble and fall. This lamp shows me where to place my feet so I have sure footing on solid ground.

A friend of mine wrote this quote by Moody in the front of her Bible:
"This book will keep me from sin, or sin will keep me from this book."

The Word of God has the power to bring our sins to light, but it then shows us the way the Lord would have us to go and says, "This is the way, walk ye in it." (Isaiah 30:21)

In John 13, the Lord Jesus washed the disciples' feet. Simon Peter initially refused to take part in what he perceived as degradation of his Lord, but Jesus said, "If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me" (John 13:8). Christ was not saying that Peter would not be saved. He was saying that He could not have full fellowship with Peter until the defilement of the world He'd passed through had been washed from His feet.

This mirrors the believer's experience of Jesus as Lord. When we are saved, we are cleansed from our sins through His precious blood, and we can never lose that salvation. Positionally, we are His for eternity.

But as we travel through life the defilement of sin gathers on our feet, hindering our ability to commune with God. We need to have our feet washed with water.

Dr. C. I. Scofield in his reference notes on this subject says, "Christ cannot have communion with a defiled saint, but He can and will cleanse him."

Isn't that wonderful?! The perfect, spotless Son of God will cleanse carnal, deceitful me to bring me into His presence. I'm not worthy of the least of His attention, but He stoops and takes my feet in His hands- hands that for my sake were pierced through by Roman nails. Those hands are holding my disgusting feet- feet covered in the defilement of a wicked world, and He doesn't judge or try to make me feel guiltier. He just washes them- lovingly- like it's the first time- even though we both know I've come crawling back before. And though we both know it won't be the last time, there's no mention of that now. He washes them so totally clean that they look new, and it's hard to imagine the state they were in before.

Cleansed, I can have communion with Him. And that's what He wanted all along.

Ginger Ale

Simply because I'm worried that my last post will give unrealistically high expectations:

Ginger ale is quite fascinating. The can I'm currently drinking from is branded Canada Dry. However, according to fine print on the label, the can was bottled in Plano, Texas. I feel a little cheated that my soda wasn't imported.

Also, there is nothing dry about this ginger ale. The can is filled with fizzy liquid, AND the outside is dripping with condensation. This all seems like false advertising.

The label of the can shows a map of Canada. Strangely this map extends south and covers the northern half of the United States. Either the country is having identity issues or Canada is plotting to take over the world. Both are likely possibilities.

Amillennialism

At the conference in Waukesha, Wisconsin a few weeks ago, Mr. Slabaugh was discussing amillennialism. In essence, amillennialism says that the Millennium, the thousand-year reign of Christ on this earth, will never actually occur.

Amillennialism is a complicated theory, and I'm not going to pretend to understand everything it says. However, one aspect of amillennialist thinking has been on my mind a lot lately:

Amillennialism preaches that the promises made to Israel now apply to the Church; that the Nation of Israel had their chance to accept Christ, didn't, and so God will no longer deal with them. Many evangelical churches embrace this theory.

By insinuating that God will not fulfill His promises to His people, the amillennialist calls into question the very character of God. If the promises made to Israel are no longer valid, what hope do Christians have that God won't simply turn His back on the promises He's made to us? What good is a promise from God if He's free to rescind it on a whim?

God's character is consistent throughout time. Often we view Him as judgmental and stern in the Old Testament but gracious and loving in the New. But Malachi 3:6 says, "For I am the Lord, I change not..." His character is steady and unchangeable throughout eternity.

Hebrews 10:23 says, "Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering; for he is faithful that promised." If God's promises are faithful and true once, then they are always true. The promises to Israel and to the Church are true because God made these promises, not because of anything we could do.