Author: danefowlkes

“For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: so shall we ever be with the Lord.” 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17

It was “very early in the morning” while “it was yet dark,” that Jesus rose from the dead. Not the sun, but only the morning-star shone upon His opening tomb. The shadows had not fled, the citizens of Jerusalem had not awaked. It was still night—the hour of sleep and darkness, when He arose. Nor did his rising break the slumbers of the city. So shall it be “very early in the morning while it is yet dark,” and when nought but the morning-star is shining, that Christ’s body, the Church, shall arise. Like Him, His saints shall awake when the children of the night and darkness are still sleeping their sleep of death. In their arising they disturb no one. The world hears not the voice that summons them. As Jesus laid them quietly to rest, each in his own still tomb, like children in the arms of their mother; so, as quietly, as gently, shall He awake them when the hour arrives. To them come the quickening words, “Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust” (Isa. 26:19). Into their tomb the earliest ray of glory finds its way. They drink in the first gleams of morning, while as yet the eastern clouds give but the faintest signs of the uprising. Its genial fragrance, its soothing stillness, its bracing freshness, its sweet loneliness, its quiet purity, all so solemn and yet so full of hope, these are theirs. (Streams in the Desert)

My good friend and neighbor across the lane enhanced my vocabulary this morning. Our paths typically intersect en route to set out trash for pickup. I look forward to these casual opportunities to swap snippets of theology and offer morsels for meditation throughout the week ahead. A handful of us gather for worship on Sunday nights in Dick’s recording studio near his house, so Monday mornings are a good occasion for reflection. Dick is essentially a philosopher who happens to also be an accomplished musician, and I enjoy when he shares what he is reading at the moment, or an experience that sets him to thinking. Today, my musically inclined philosopher friend shared over trash cans a new word added to his vocabulary from his current reading. The word is “dotage.” He explained that at first he thought it had something to do with doting over someone, like a proud mother does to a cherished son, but that isn’t it at all. It holds a far more sobering meaning. Dotage is the stage of life when health, vigor, and mental faculties deteriorate (“you could live here and look after me in my dotage”). These are declining years, the autumn or even winter of one’s life.

Dick dropped this linguistic bomb then bade me farewell, leaving me to contemplate my own dotage while wearily toting garbage the remaining distance to its appointed place. For some odd reason I suddenly felt years older. Perhaps the soreness in my lower back is not merely muscle strain, it is muscular degeneration, and the fatigue I feel isn’t caused by overwork, it is due to deteriorating physique. Almost as suddenly, Scripture sprang to the rescue and arrested my mental downward spiral: “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness” (Lamentations 3:22-23, ESV). Oh, the wonder of the thought—fresh mercy every morning! I may be sauntering into the autumn of life or slogging unaware through aging’s winter snow, but God’s grace never tires and Christ’s mercy is always young.

“And the hand of the Lord was there upon me; and he said unto me, Arise, go forth unto the plain, and I will there talk with thee.” Ezekiel 3:22

Did you ever hear of any one being much used for Christ who did not have some special waiting time, some complete upset of all his or her plans first; from St. Paul’s being sent off into the desert of Arabia for three years, when he must have been boiling over with the glad tidings, down to the present day? God’s love being unchangeable, He is just as loving when we do not see or feel His love. Also His love and His sovereignty are co-equal and universal; so He withholds the enjoyment and conscious progress because He knows best what will really ripen and further His work in us.

God provides resting places as well as working places. Rest, then, and be thankful when He brings you, wearied to a wayside well. (Streams in the Desert)

I am, to state it mildly, directionally-challenged. My wife frequently wonders aloud how I ever found my way to any destination prior to the advent of the handheld GPS. I assure her that I navigated the African savannah quite well on my own, thank you very much. All I had to do was steer toward the next outcropping on the horizon. The truth is, I have always struggled to keep my bearings without a visual reference point. Losing sight of where you are headed is a fast track to becoming lost.

Today’s trials threaten to steal my hope and confidence that all of this makes sense somehow. Hopelessness is a strain of spiritual amnesia; I lose sight of whose I am and where I am headed. God never induces a comatose existence, leaving me numb and disconnected from the moment; while not always removing or resolving my strife, grace reminds that this momentary struggle is part of a journey that leads back home. One of the prized books on my shelf is entitled, “No Picnic On Mount Kenya;” it describes the ordeal of Italian prisoners of war who escaped and climbed their way to freedom over Africa’s tallest peaks. Today may not resemble a picnic in any shape, form, or fashion, but the beauty of it all is that our Father is helping us over boulders on our way back home.

“And Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost returned From Jordan, and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, being forty days tempted of the devil.” Luke 4:1-2

Jesus was full of the Holy Ghost, and yet He was tempted. Temptation often comes upon a man with its strongest power when he is nearest to God. As someone has said, “The devil aims high.” He got one apostle to say he did not even know Christ.

If a man has much of the Spirit of God, he will have great conflicts with the tempter. God permits temptation because it does for us what the storms do for the oaks–it roots us; and what the fire does for the paintings on the porcelain–it makes them permanent.

You never know that you have a grip on Christ, or that He has a grip on you, as well as when the devil is using all his force to attract you from Him; then you feel the pull of Christ’s right hand. (Streams in the Desert)

“The word temptation has come to mean something bad to us today, but we tend to use the word in the wrong way. Temptation itself is not sin; it is something we are bound to face simply by virtue of being human. Not to be tempted would mean that we were already so shameful that we would be beneath contempt. Yet many of us suffer from temptations we should never have to suffer, simply because we have refused to allow God to lift us to a higher level where we would face temptations of another kind” (Oswald Chambers).

Temptation is not unnatural or necessarily devastating. Each temptation is an opportunity to reveal what we are made of, and to step forward into greater character strength and Christlikeness. Fearing temptation is largely due to subliminal doubt built upon layers of previous failure. Thankfully, we may turn the tide at any moment. The next strong response fosters future strength; overcoming leads to overcoming. Just as exposure produces immunity, rightly handled temptation steels against a repeat of the same and yields enhanced rigidity against assorted future attacks. Work at building godly character; withstanding temptation is the hallmark of holiness.

“What I tell you in the darkness, speak ye in the light.” Matthew 10:27

Our Lord is constantly taking us into the dark, that He may tell us things. Into the dark of the shadowed home, where bereavement has drawn the blinds; into the dark of the lonely, desolate life, where some infirmity closes us in from the light and stir of life; into the dark of some crushing sorrow and disappointment. Then He tells us His secrets, great and wonderful, eternal and infinite; He causes the eye which has become dazzled by the glare of earth to behold the heavenly constellations; and the car to detect the undertones of His voice, which is often drowned amid the tumult of earth’s strident cries.

But such revelations always imply a corresponding responsibility—‘that speak ye in the light—that proclaim upon the housetops.” We are not meant to always linger in the dark, or stay in the closet; presently we shall be summoned to take our place in the rush and storm of life; and when that moment comes, we are to speak and proclaim what we have learned. (Streams in the Desert)

I make the hour-and-a-half drive from my home to Dallas on Monday evenings to teach a class of graduate students. The hour is late and the drive becomes increasingly demanding as the semester lingers and other responsibilities hold priority; still, I look for ways to make the drive time beneficial so that I do not begrudge the three hour commute as wasted time. On longer trips I listen to books on CD, and my wife and I do the same together on vacation drives, but the shorter journey is more conducive to listening to music. Half way through this Monday’s trip northbound on Interstate 35 I inserted a musical CD I received back at Christmas.

I drove impassively, minding my own business on the construction laden freeway when track three began. The Tommy Coomes Band crooned its own arrangement of the age old hymn, “I Stand Amazed in the Presence.” The hymn, written by Charles H. Gabriel in the late 19th Century, is so familiar to me from my childhood in church that I know the lyrics by heart, but for some unexplained reason on this drive at that particular moment, I listened to the words as if hearing them for the first time.

“I stand amazed in the presence
of Jesus the Nazarene,
and wonder how he could love me,
a sinner, condemned unclean.
How marvelous! How wonderful!
and my song shall ever be;
How marvelous! How wonderful!
is my Savior’s love to me!”

I sang out loud with the soundtrack and began bawling like a baby as my heart erupted:

“… He took my sins and my sorrows

And He made them His very own

And bore the burden to Calvary

And suffered and died alone…”

I am not prone to emotional outbursts, and certainly not accustomed to outstretched arms and having tears trail down my face while driving on a busy interstate, but the intersection of divine revelation and personal need released a flood of gratitude and praise that would not be silenced. Light destroys darkness, and joy shatters silence. Worship breaks free when God’s Spirit touches our spirit in a way that allows us to see both He and ourselves as we are. When heaven in the heart is exposed for all the world to see, we are changed as well as those around us.

“And when with the ransomed in glory

His face I at last shall see

It will be my joy through the ages

To sing of His love for me.”

“Show me wherefore thou contendest with me.” Job 10:2

God trains His soldiers, not in tents of ease and luxury, but by turning them out and using them to forced marches and hard service. He makes them ford through streams, and swim through rivers and climb mountains, and walk many a weary mile with heavy knapsacks on their backs. Well, Christian, may not this account for the troubles through which you are passing? Is not this the reason why He is contending with you?

To be left unmolested by Satan is no evidence of blessing. (Streams in the Desert)

There is no saving faith apart from a crisis of faith; there can be no new horizon for faith without a mountain to climb. Discipleship demands growth, and growth results from addressing and conquering successive challenges. Worship that lulls into narcissistic slumber is not authentic. Genuine faith always draws me out of myself and refocuses all on Christ. It is not enough to have your heart moved; you must move your feet. Take the first step or the next step. God orchestrates moments of holy discontent to prevent us from settling for the comforts of this world.

Do not fear. Acknowledge your problems on your knees, then get back on your feet and advance. Jesus relentlessly offers us unsafe situations to make us braver Christians. Adversity requires us to either seek safety or seek courage. The Father wants us to be brave for our own benefit—God knows there is no joy in fear. We lead sad and small lives when we are afraid. He needs brave people to do His work in the world. We are called to tell the truth in a world of lies, to love people in need in a hurting world; this will be dangerous. Following Jesus eventually demands us to either be brave or be safe; we cannot do both. Choosing to be brave means choosing not to be safe. The goodness of God shows through the courage of the people of God. Discipleship is by design a dangerous adventure. When you catch yourself saying “I’ll follow if,” or praying, “Tell me the path, tell me the cost, tell me it will succeed,” you can know the Father responds by saying:

“But if I do that, I wouldn’t have to make you brave. I love you more than that.”

“All these things are against me.” Genesis 42:36

“All things work together for good to them that love God.” Romans 8:28

When God wants to bring more power into your life, He brings more pressure. He is generating spiritual force by hard rubbing. Some do not like it and try to run away from the pressure, instead of getting the power and using it to rise above the painful causes. Opposition is essential to a true equilibrium of forces. The centripetal and centrifugal forces acting in opposition to each other keep our planet in her orbit. The one propelling, and the other repelling, so act and re-act, that instead of sweeping off into space in a pathway of desolation, she pursues her even orbit around her solar centre.

So God guides our lives. It is not enough to have an impelling force—we need just as much a repelling force, and so He holds us back by the testing ordeals of life, by the pressure of temptation and trial, by the things that seem against us, but really are furthering our way and establishing our goings.

Let us thank Him for both, let us take the weights as well as the wings, and thus divinely impelled, let us press on with faith and patience in our high and heavenly calling. (Streams in the Desert)

Spiritual power is produced by hard rubbing, but there is a fine line between strength and callous. Few of us determine the degree of hardship and challenge we face, but each of us decide their effect upon us. I prayed just this morning for a former college classmate serving at great personal sacrifice in an orphanage in Uganda, who endures wave after wave of difficulty, yet does so with a heart of worship and faith. Another dear former missionary colleague tenderly cares for his wife who is succumbing to Alzheimer’s. They display strength and beauty despite the ravages of a hideous disease. Still another family I love and served with in East Africa is pushing through arduous treatment for a son with leukemia. I would alleviate the suffering of these if it were within my ability to do so, but doubt they would choose an out if offered to them. Sacrifice does not exempt from suffering, but deepens the weight of glory in those that turn to the Father rather than away from Him in the press.

“Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ’s sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong.”  2 Corinthians 12:10

The literal translation of this verse gives a startling emphasis to it, and makes it speak for itself with a force that we have probably never realized. Here It is: “Therefore I take pleasure in being without strength, in insults, in being pinched, in being chased about, in being cooped up in a corner for Christ’s sake; for when I am without strength, then am I dynamite.”

Here is the secret of Divine all-sufficiency, to come to the end of everything in ourselves and in our circumstances. When we reach this place, we will stop asking for sympathy because of our hard situation or bad treatment, for we will recognize these things as the very conditions of our blessing, and we will turn from them to God and find in them a claim upon Him. (Streams in the Desert)

God never gets the blues. For him to be moody would imply that one moment he is better than he is at another, and that would be heresy. “God is the same yesterday, today, and forever.” Yet, I wrestle regularly with the self-imposed inclination to gauge God’s goodness (or its opposite) according to the transitory and unreliable emotion (my own) of the moment, as if his character fluctuated like the Dow Jones. Why do I insist on attempting to recreate God in my own image? For lack of any better explanation, I am forced to admit that I do so when feeling powerless because I want a God who knows and is intimately involved, but when life unfolds the way I want, I prefer his mood to shift toward indifference.  I seem to prefer a god who is little more than the elongated reflection of myself.

“Father, break through my self-orientation and bend me to the wholly Other. Radically impose your heart and superimpose real faces on your will, but do not allow them to be my own. Open my eyes to recognize you at work in my aching joints, in strained relationships, in family members I desperately long to influence toward the Cross, in my wife who I pray detects in me Jesus implementing a towel. Reproduce yourself in me so fully that I embody the hope of glory.”

“to whom God was pleased to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.” Colossians 1:27 RV1885

“Their strength is to sit still.” Isaiah 30:7

In order really to know God, inward stillness is absolutely necessary. I remember when I first learned this. A time of great emergency had risen in my life, when every part of my being seemed to throb with anxiety, and when the necessity for immediate and vigorous action seemed overpowering; and yet circumstances were such that I could do nothing, and the person who could, would not stir.

For a little while it seemed as if I must fly to pieces with the inward turmoil, when suddenly the still small voice whispered in the depths of my soul, “Be still, and know that I am God.” The word was with power, and I hearkened. I composed my body to perfect stillness, and I constrained my troubled spirit into quietness, and looked up and waited; and then I did “know” that it was God, God even in the very emergency and in my helplessness to meet it; and I rested in Him. It was an experience that I would not have missed for worlds; and I may add also, that out of this stillness seemed to arise a power to deal with the emergency, that very soon brought it to a successful issue. I learned then effectually that my “strength was to sit still.” (Streams in the Desert)

Stillness is a gift that requires a goodly measure of effort on my part. I find that that sacred space fuels the right frame of mind to be still and remember Who is God. My own sanctuary is a small wooden structure with metal roof and stained glass windows that I designed for house plants but find well suited for meditating and writing. I built the greenhouse for my wife, but sit here often, accompanied by a small assortment of Kimberly Queen ferns, a potato vine that insists on conquering its surroundings, a Bird’s Nest fern, a grapevine that yielded grapes last month and then needed an escape from the summer sun, and an understated begonia. It is an eclectic mix. Tonight I am able to see across the way to our neighbor’s fire pit. We have had enough rain this spring to lift the burn ban, so “Sparky” (my wife’s nickname for our neighbor) is making the most of his window of incendiary freedom. Life on a country lane is simple, especially after dark. Nights are a gift from God.

As a child the dark terrified me. I remember crouching in bed, pulling covers overhead like a cotton force field, and quoting mantra-like the first Bible verse I ever committed to memory—“What time I am afraid, I will trust in Thee” (Psalm 56:3). The night no longer frightens me; in fact, I embrace it as solace for body and spirit. Insects exclaim the glory of their Creator while I do the same in mind and heart. Distant traffic sounds encourage me by virtue of the fact they remain in the distance. This space to be and the close of a day to consider what it means to be, are divine gifts, ones I guard jealously. When schedules become hectic and demands on my time exceed my ability to fulfill them, I experience the full grief cycle, albeit in a shortened span: denial, anger, acceptance. But tonight there is no grief, no anger, and nothing to accept apart from a peace so strong that it must be a sweet shadow of the greater peace that awaits beyond time and space. Author Barbara Brown Taylor encourages just such a transformed view of the night in “Learning to Walk in the Dark.”  Instead of avoiding the dark’s mystery or opposing it as some nocturnal enemy, try seeing it as a gift. Pause, remember, evaluate, meditate, dream, pray, and most of all, enjoy.

“I will give you the treasures of darkness and riches hidden in secret places, so that you may know that it is I, the Lord, the God of Israel, who call you by your name.” Isaiah 45:3 KJV

“I will stand upon my watch, and set me upon the tower, and will watch to see what he will say unto me.” Habakkuk 2:1

There is no waiting on God for help, and there is no help from God, without watchful expectation on our part. If we ever fail to receive strength and defense from Him, it is because we are not on the outlook for it. Many a proffered succour from Heaven goes past us, because we are not standing on our watch-tower to catch the far-off indications of its approach, and to fling open the gates of our heart for its entrance. He whose expectation does not lead him to be on the alert for its coming will get but little. Watch for God in the events of your life. (Streams in the Desert)

I sat in a white wooden rocker gently rocking back and forth to the rhythm of a grand piano held captive by a white haired artist recalling classic movie themes a mere twenty feet away. By all appearance and sound one would think I was easing into Saturday from a relaxed rural setting; instead, I sat on the edge of a congested walkway between the ‘B’ and ‘C’ concourses of Charlotte-Douglas International Airport. The music and motion were both so pleasant that I could have drifted naturally into a pre-flight nap if not for the cell phone chatter, arguing children, and irregular clacking of someone’s broken wheel as they tugged their carry-on behind them like a hay wagon. I could have inserted the ear buds strategically poised in a front pocket of my own carry-on for moments just like this, but ignoring the cacophony would mean missing the live music that beckoned from the periphery opposite the chaos in between.

Spiritual formation is nothing more, but certainly nothing less, than doggedly filtering out distraction. God speaks without my asking; my role is distinguishing His voice from the competing clatter. Such filtering is a cumulative effort. Recognizing Him now, requires a heart already bent toward Him like a heavily surrounded hardwood strains toward the sun. I foster this leaning through reading and scriptural meditation, encountering the Creator in creation, and by representing Him to the hollow eyed ‘least of these.’ His melody is discernible above the base line of circumstance, but voice recognition requires familiarity. Relationship alters everything.

“Thou shalt shut the door upon thee and upon thy sons.” 2 Kings 4:4

They were to be alone with God, for they were not dealing with the laws of nature, nor human government, nor the church, nor the priesthood, nor even with the great prophet of God, but they must needs be isolated from all creatures, from all leaning circumstances, from all props of human reason, and swung off, as it were, into the vast blue inter-stellar space, hanging on God alone, in touch with the fountain of miracles. Here is a part in the programme of God’s dealings, a secret chamber of isolation in prayer and faith which every soul must enter that is very fruitful.

There are times and places where God will form a mysterious wall around us, and cut away all props, and all the ordinary ways of doing things, and shut us up to something Divine, which is utterly new and unexpected, something that old circumstances do not fit into, where we do not know just what will happen, where God is cutting the cloth of our lives on a new pattern, where He makes us look to Himself.

Most religious people live in a sort of treadmill life, where they can calculate almost everything that will happen, but the souls that God leads out into immediate and special dealings, He shuts in where all they know is that God has hold of them, and is dealing with them, and their expectation is from Him alone. . . . In the sorest trials God often makes the sweetest discoveries of Himself. (Streams in the Desert)

An inevitable element of mystery surrounds Almighty God and His affairs with man. A veil hangs between the eternal and the temporal. Eventually we will pass beyond the curtain and all mysteries will melt away like snow in a Spring thaw, but until then we stumble awkwardly along through the frigid slush of doubt and worry, fear and disillusionment. Faith is the necessary companion for mystery. Confidence that our Sovereign knows the future frees me to explore divine mystery. Like following clues in a whodunnit, we examine mundane moments and detect mercy; we search for a pattern in our complicated lives and recognize Providence at work. Conviction that there is more to life than meets the eye bolsters courage to face the commonplace. Mystery strengthens faith when our hearts are aligned with Heaven.