DANE FOWLKES

“There we saw the Giants” Numbers 13:33

Yes, they saw the giants, but Caleb and Joshua saw God! Those who doubt say, “We be not able to go up.” Those who believe say, “Let us go up at once and possess it, for we are well able.”

Giants stand for great difficulties; and giants are stalking everywhere. They are in our families, in our churches, in our social life, in our own hearts; and we must overcome them or they will eat us up, as these men of old said of the giants of Canaan. The men of faith said, “They are bread for us; we will eat them up.” In other words, “We will be stronger by overcoming them than if there had been no giants to overcome.”

It is when we are in the way of duty that we find giants. It was when Israel was going forward that the giants appeared. When they turned back into the wilderness they found none. There is a prevalent idea that the power of God in a human life should lift us above all trials and conflicts. The fact is, the power of God always brings a conflict and a struggle. . . . Unless we have overcoming faith we shall be eaten up, consumed by the giants in our path. Let us have the spirit of faith that these men of faith had, and see God, and He will take care of the difficulties. (Streams in the Desert)

Eyes are mischievous instruments that increase their impish teasing as we age. Mine have acquired an exceptional ability to transform shadows into whatever I choose. Just yesterday, I scanned the not-too-distant fence line for a wild turkey I had spotted far to my right and then lost sight of as she marched with a twitch behind a stand of elms and pecans. Evening shadows morphed into a myriad of birds until I grabbed nearby binoculars for closer inspection. I did not find the turkey; instead, I discovered stumps, fallen limbs, and tall grasses that relinquished any resemblance to a bird in the light.

Much of my energy is expended wrestling with shadows. Granted, that may sound strange coming from a follower of the Light. After all, Jesus said that he is light, making me a child of the Light. Herein lies the crux of the problem. Wherever light exists, shadows are inevitable. Anything allowed to come between an object below and a source of light above casts an inescapable shadow. And to be quite honest, shadow wrestling is entirely of my own doing. The shadows darkening my existence are there because I have allowed an object to intrude between myself and the Lord. Will this be a passing cloud, or something lodged there long-term due to my own obstinence? Shadows by nature elongate and distort their objects of origin, so the pressing matter for me is to identify the habits, choices, emotions, vices, etc., that I tolerate, and eradicate them so that once again I may “walk in the light as he is in the light,” (1 John 1:7 NIV) and stop shadow boxing giants.

“A door opened in heaven.” Revelation 4:1

You must remember that John was in the Isle of Patmos, a lone, rocky, inhospitable prison, for the Word of God and the testimony of Jesus. And yet to him, under such circumstances, separated from all the loved ones of Ephesus; debarred from the worship of the Church; condemned to the companionship of uncongenial fellow-captives, were vouchsafed these visions. For him, also a door was opened.

We are reminded of Jacob, exiled from his father’s house, who laid himself down in a desert place to sleep, and in his dreams beheld a ladder which united Heaven with earth, and at the top stood God. Not to these only, but to many more, doors have been opened into Heaven, when, so far as the world was concerned, it seemed as though their circumstances were altogether unlikely for such revelations. To prisoners and captives; to constant sufferers, bound by iron chains of pain to sick couches; to lonely pilgrims and wanderers; to women detained from the Lord’s house by the demands of home, how often has the door been opened to Heaven.

But there are conditions. You must know what it is to be in the Spirit; you must be pure in heart and obedient in faith; you must be willing to count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Jesus Christ; then when God is all in all to us, when we live, move and have our being in His favor, to us also will the door be opened. (Streams in the Desert)

I never thought much about windows before living in a house with ones you could not see through. My wife and I are fortunate to live in an older farm home nestled comfortably into a somewhat private parcel of land dotted with only three other homes; in fact, our country lane bears the official monicker “Private Road.” One would be hard pressed to find a more idyllic homestead for a former African bush missionary more comfortable with azure sky and open country than sky scrapers and traffic congestion. I office in our barn, and routinely walk nearby Horseshoe Bend lined by occasional dairies spread far enough apart to grant breathing space. My wife serves a backyard smorgasbord that attracts everything from wild turkeys and broad shouldered hawks to phoebes and painted buntings. Apart from undesirable dust rising from the caliche road and intermittent clatter of vehicles navigating the black top that snakes by our oasis, tranquility dominates Private Road.

The windows on our little world gave up the ghost years ago. Seals installed to contain gas for insulation were compromised long before we moved in, leaving the farm house blind to its surrounding paradise. We tolerated the situation twelve years, not knowing how much we were missing until new windows were installed a few weeks ago. Peering at the world through clear glass is comparable to the first unobscured glimpse following cataract removal. Windows were made to disclose God’s glory, not distort it.

Clear windows do not draw attention to themselves; rather, they are catalysts to the Glory that surrounds. Each of us is a window through which someone gains their only glimpse of the Father. We are portholes to Providence. Pure hearts do more than grant right standing before the Almighty, they grant access for those who look to us for hope.

“The Lord hath sent strength for thee.” Psalm 68:28, PBV

The Lord imparts unto us that primary strength of character which makes everything in life work with intensity and decision. We are “strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man.” And the strength is continuous; reserves of power come to us which we cannot exhaust. “As thy days, so shall thy strength be”—strength of will, strength of affection, strength of judgment, strength of ideals and achievement.

“The Lord is my strength” to go on. He gives us power to tread the dead level, to walk the long lane that seems never to have a turning, to go through those long reaches of life which afford no pleasant surprise, and which depress the spirits in the sameness of a terrible drudgery. (Streams in the Desert)

Our oldest grandchild is a strapping teenage boy who now stands a good bit taller than either my wife or myself. I love observing positive development in him, most of which is a delightful personality spiced with playful wit. He and I enjoy friendly banter laced with a competitive edge, often transposing into head-to-head challenge. On vacation the other day he bragged to my wife that he is now much stronger than I am, to which I promptly responded with a push-up challenge. I dropped to the hotel carpet and rifled off two sets of 20, ending with a grin and parting shot something to the effect that “I may not be as good as I once was, but I’m as good once as I ever was.” I was admittedly quite pleased with myself; that is, until the next morning when I could barely lift my arms to brush my teeth and dress myself. Momentary bursts of physical exertion do not equal strength.

When I trust intermittent bursts of independent spiritual exertion to carry me through crises, I quickly deplete all reserves and am left sore and vulnerable. The moment I relinquish control and allow the Lord to save more than my soul, I find an inexhaustible cache of spiritual fortitude that carries me through belligerent seas and deposits me safely onshore. Trust equals security with no negative after-effects. I will never be strong enough to conquer the demons that dog my past and threaten my future. Christ does not call us to “man-up” when trouble finds us; instead, He demands we step aside and allow Him to fight the battle for us. “The Lord is my strength.”

“For what if some did not believe? shall their unbelief make the faith of God without effect?” Romans 3:3

I think that I can trace every scrap of sorrow in my life to simple unbelief. How could I be anything but quite happy if I believed always that all the past is forgiven, and all the present furnished with power, and all the future bright with hope because of the same abiding facts which do not change with my mood, do not stumble because I totter and stagger at the promise through unbelief, but stand firm and clear with their peaks of pearl cleaving the air of Eternity, and the bases of their hills rooted unfathomably in the Rock of God. Mont Blanc does not become a phantom or a mist because a climber grows dizzy on its side. (Streams in the Desert)

“My deepest awareness of myself is that I am deeply loved by Jesus Christ and I have done nothing to earn it or deserve it.” (The Ragamuffin Gospel – Brennan Manning)

A former staff member from my time as a pastor wrote to me yesterday to say that he wishes he had read The Ragamuffin Gospel when I gave to him a dog eared copy years ago. I responded by saying, “I will spend the remainder of my life trying to get my mind and heart around Christ’s relentless love.” I will indeed invest the time I have left attempting to apprehend grace. The Father’s unfathomable forgiveness pertains not only to pardon from sin, but to every breath I take. Since it is true that I cannot do anything to convince God to love me more, and that there is nothing I can do to cause God to love me less, I stand before Him irrevocably clean and irreversibly a son. I am, in a word, free. Responsibility accompanies freedom, but there are no strings attached to grace. We are everything the Father wants in a child, simply because He imparts the righteousness of His Son to every son and daughter of grace.

“Grain is crushed, though one certainly does not thresh it forever. The wheel of one’s wagon rolls over it, but his horses do not crush it.” Isaiah 28:28

Many of us cannot be used to become food for the world’s hunger until we are broken in Christ’s hands. “Bread corn is bruised.” Christ’s blessing ofttimes means sorrow, but even sorrow is not too great a price to pay for the privilege of touching other lives with benediction. The sweetest things in this world today have come to us through tears and pain.

“God has made me bread for His elect, and if it be needful that the bread must be ground in the teeth of the lion to feed His children, blessed be the name of the Lord.”__St. Ignatius (Streams in the Desert)

Beware the trap of placing need above Christ. We are not after humanitarian effort; we are pursuing a love relationship with the Triune God. As a matter of course, our hearts awaken to all manner of human suffering; we intervene because God is love. When we operate in reverse, we place band-aids on the terminally ill. Christ is everything; love Him supremely and you will lay your life down to alleviate suffering wherever you encounter it.

“Our Lord’s first obedience was to the will of His Father, not to the needs of men; the saving of men was the natural outcome of His obedience to the Father. If I am devoted to the cause of humanity only, I will soon be exhausted and come to the place where my love will falter; but if I love Jesus Christ personally and passionately, I can serve humanity though men treat me as a door-mat. The secret of a disciple’s life is devotion to Jesus Christ, and the characteristic of the life is its unobtrusiveness. It is like a corn of wheat, which falls into the ground and dies, but presently it will spring up and alter the whole landscape” (O. Chambers).

“Therefore, strengthen your listless hands and your weak knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint but be healed.” Hebrews 12:12-13

This is God’s word of encouragement to us to lift up the hands of faith, and confirm the knees of prayer. Often our faith grows tired, languid, and relaxed, and our prayers lose their force and effectiveness. The figure used here is a very striking one. The idea seems to be that we become discouraged and so timid that a little obstacle depresses and frightens us, and we are tempted to walk around it, and not face it: to take the easier way.

There are many ways of walking around emergencies instead of going straight through them. How often we come up against something that appalls us, and we want to evade the issue with the excuse: “I am not quite ready for that now.” Some sacrifice is to be made, some obedience demanded, some Jericho to be taken, some soul that we have not the courage to claim and carry through, some prayer that is hanging fire, or perhaps some physical trouble that is half healed and we are walking around it.

God says, “Lift up the hands that hang down.” March straight through the flood, and lo, the waters will divide, the Red Sea will open, the Jordan will part, and the Lord will lead you through to victory. (Streams in the Desert)

I am struck by clarion chords of delight that accompany Paul’s praying. The Apostle’s vertical climb was joyfully congruent with his horizontal connections. Persistent intercession proceeds from meaningful relationship. In other words, I will never wrestle with endurance over that with which I am only casually acquainted. Relationship is critical in both directions; I pray passionately for those I care deeply about, and I pray to the Father with the degree of intensity consistent with what I believe of Him to be true.

I am not arguing for what Thomas Merton argued against: “To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything is to succumb to violence.” I am effective in prayer to the degree to which I am personally invested. What seems clear to me from Scripture and personal experience is that disinterested prayer may be the most decisive descent into violence.

“Then there was a voice from above the platform over their heads when they stood still.” Ezekiel 1:25

People so often say, “How do you get the voice of the Lord?” Here is the secret. They heard the voice when they stood and let down their wings.

We have seen a bird with fluttering wings; though standing still, its wings are fluttering. But here we are told they heard the voice when they stood and had let down their wings.

Do we not sometimes kneel or sit before the Lord and yet feel conscious of a fluttering of our spirits? Not a real stillness in His presence.

How much time is lost by not letting down the wings of our spirit and getting very quiet before Him! Oh, the calm, the rest, the peace which come as we wait In His presence until we hear from Him! Then, ah then, we can go like lightning, and turn not as we go but go straight forward whithersoever the Spirit goes. (Streams in the Desert)

It is impossible to discern the voice of God when obsessed with my own. Self-centeredness is more devastating than one might suspect; the self-absorbed life is a godless life. When I define my own universe, the Creator is relegated to nothing more than tule and lace; He is mere adornment rather than the One I adore.

“The first thing God does is to give us a spiritual spring-cleaning; there is no possibility of pride left in a man after that” (O. Chambers).

A great many evils spread like cancer when the center shifts. Prayer becomes an attempt to manipulate rather than a path to intimacy. Ministry morphs into erecting my own kingdom rather than that of the Father. Instead of lifting Jesus so that He draws the world to Himself, I promote myself and people turn away to seek a more remarkable model. Selflessness tunes my heart to the harmony of Almighty God, and allows space for Him to work and receive all according praise.

He named the second child Ephraim, saying, “Certainly God has made me fruitful in the land of my suffering. Genesis 41:52

The summer showers are falling. The poet stands by the window watching them. They are beating and buffeting the earth with their fierce downpour. But the poet sees in his imaginings more than the showers which are falling before his eyes. He sees myriads of lovely flowers which shall be soon breaking forth from the watered earth, filling it with matchless beauty and fragrance. And so he sings:

“It isn’t raining rain for me, it’s raining daffodils;

In every dimpling drop I see wild flowers upon the hills.

A cloud of gray engulfs the day, and overwhelms the town;

It isn’t raining rain for me: it’s raining roses down.”

You indeed see the rain. But do you see also the flowers? You are pained by the testings. But God sees the sweet flower of faith which is upspringing in your life under those very trials. You shrink from the suffering. But God sees the tender compassion for other sufferers which is finding birth in your soul. Your heart winces under the sore bereavement. But God sees the deepening and enriching which that sorrow has brought to you.

It isn’t raining afflictions for you. It is raining tenderness, love, compassion, patience, and a thousand other flowers and fruits of the blessed Spirit, which are bringing into your life such a spiritual enrichment as all the fullness of worldly prosperity and ease was never able to beget in your innermost soul. (Streams in the Desert)

I recall vividly the angst of drought in East Africa, and the hopelessness that accompanied failed rainy season after season. Rain is life in Africa. I drove through clouds of dust on dirt roads lined with wilted crops and dying livestock. I wept with villagers in the northern frontier district as we walked around corpses of emaciated cows and donkeys. I remember just as clearly the day the rains returned. They began slowly with intermittent pinging on our metal roof, quickening into steady sheets that swept across the parched land, reviving all in its wake like CPR to a fallen man. We were so overjoyed, my daughters and I skipped outside and danced figure-eights in the downpour until we were water-logged.

Every difficulty holds potential as a blessing for the child of God. With each successive trial we encounter new degrees of God’s love and fresh awareness of Providence. Problems require us to look outside ourselves, and push us into the arms of a loving Father. We fade into useless independence apart from the rain.

“But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. When you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.” Luke 22:32

Christian, take good care of thy faith, for recollect that faith is the only means whereby thou canst obtain blessings. Prayer cannot draw down answers from God’s throne except it be the earnest prayer of the man who believes.

Faith links me with Divinity. Faith clothes me with the power of Jehovah. Faith insures every attribute of God in my defense. It helps me to defy the hosts of hell. It makes me march triumphant over the necks of my enemies. But without faith how can I receive anything from the Lord? Oh, then, Christian, watch well thy faith. “If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth.” (Streams in the Desert)

We enjoyed a visit last night from a grand daughter while her mother took her sister to riding lessons down the “S” curve and up the blacktop from our home. Hannah B walked in wearing a purple toboggan adorned with Disney ‘Frozen’ patch, t-shirt, shorts, and rainbow colored sandals; our family’s very own Punky Brewster. The toboggan was more than slightly out-of-place as it was warmer than 90 degrees outside when she arrived.

Hannah likes to draw, so our first order of business was to walk hand-in-hand outside to my office located in the north end of our barn, in order to gather the necessary art supplies. I went inside for paper, and on the way out my grand daughter touched the rough barn-wood door and collected a splinter in the end of one of her pudgy fingers. I learned on the spot that splinters and Hannah cannot casually co-exist. I attempted to calm her by assuring her in between sobs that I am a professional splinter remover. She wasn’t buying it. Each time I maneuvered tweezers near the black speck in her fingertip, she wailed and jerked her hand away. She obviously did not trust that I held her best interest at heart, and preferred the splinter to my rescue efforts. I finally did what all self-respecting grandfathers do in just such a situation—I sent her to her grandmother.

Much later, long after Hannah had left for home (with blue masking tape around her finger) and my wife was in bed, I sat on our front porch and contemplated life and the universe to the gentle swaying motion of our glider rocker. I smiled and shook my head in the dark as I thought of Hannah’s revulsion at my efforts as first-responder, but admitted out loud to no one in particular that I recognized in her reaction my own faith failures. I confess I do not know God well enough to believe He always chooses what is best for me. Distrust is a powerful force that repels the One who loves me most and wants only good for me. I am unwilling to endure momentary discomfort of removing unnecessary habits and hurtful attitudes, preferring to wrap my fears in masking tape rather than trust a loving Father to tenderly take away the toxic things that conjure pain and poison my heart. Trust results from nothing less than intimate knowledge of the Father’s perfect love.

“And we know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.” Romans 8:28

“In one thousand trials it is not five hundred of them that work for the believer’s good, but nine hundred and ninety-nine of them, and one beside.”

—George Mueller

How wide is this assertion of the Apostle Paul! He does not say, “We know that some things,” or “most things,” or “joyous things,” but “ALL things.” From the minutest to the most momentous; from the humblest event in daily providence to the great crisis hours in grace. . . all things “work together.” It is a beautiful blending. Many different colors, in themselves raw and unsightly, are required in order to weave the harmonious pattern. Many separate tones and notes of music, even discords and dissonances, are required to make up the harmonious anthem. (Streams in the Desert)

Following three weeks away from home, it was especially satisfying to be surrounded by family for an afternoon at our daughter’s home and pool. The water was garden variety H2O with the correct Ph balance, but to me it felt more like a healing spring—washing away layers of fatigue built-up over the past few months. During a brief break in the action, I surveyed the family scene and was struck by this personal application of Romans 8:28. I am not sure there is such a thing as “normal” family, but if there is, my place in ours is, at the very least, complicated. My wife and I each once sang our own version of the blues that morphed into a joyful harmony when God brought us together. That granted admission into a family in which I inherited two step-daughters, two step-sons-in-law, and one step-grandson. Time and love erased the prefix; I emerged as Papa to them all.

On this afternoon in the sun, to my left swam a namesake grandson and oldest grand daughter, while the eldest grandchild held center court from a chaise lounge adjacent to the hot tub. In front of me swam grand daughters in stereo—one stared at me behind the poly carbonate goggles we purchased earlier for her from the Five Below store; the other moved in pulsating circles around me like a frog. She is special to me in that she and I share the same designation—“adopted.” Adult “children” formed the backdrop for this aquatic American Gothic snapshot, and the panorama was—in a word—satisfying.

Where we are and who we are is the accumulating effect of a divinely orchestrated ebb and flow. Although convergence awaits eternity, at any given moment in time we are a complex masterpiece forged on the providential anvil of disappointment, bewilderment, mercy, and redemption. Recognize your past as one crammed full of spiritual markers that outline your path of discipleship, and you will face forward resolutely to embrace what awaits with grit and determination. Regardless of all sensation to the contrary, God is weaving these moments of pain or ecstasy into a larger tapestry of grace.