COMPOSED

Our fragile hearts are easily bruised. During childhood, we suffer innumerable wrongs, some due to wounds unknowingly inflicted by caregivers. Noticeable gaps in their development, owing to their unresolved injuries, pull them into a flooding river where they grasp for something solid to keep from going under. Parenting, while rushed along, swamped by emotional refuse, becomes a clumsy, haphazard effort – nearly always from a place of love, but blind to the impact of insufficiencies. Most parents are doing their best, but things like absence, distance, neglect, enmeshment, addiction, rigidity and abuse, extract a high price. For some children, the ratio of harms to beneficial compensations of meaningful care is too high; they fall headlong into deep tributaries of their own.

As time goes on, leaning heavily into another for support seems to help us regain our balance. As waterways become more placid, we feel steady and safe for a while – basking in the fun of new friendship or the affection of a new romance. But once we begin to rely solely on someone else to deliver the internal goods of happiness, joy and contentment, we either drown in this unpredictable whirlpool, or are flung out onto dry ground, gasping for air. In both cases, desperate relational dependency is frightening, exposing shame and vast insecurities. And it is a futile way to find the reliable, sustaining peace and security that we’re all looking for. 

As the sins of our ancestors perpetuated, we quite naturally became the flawed individuals that we are, jumping at the chance to be loved and cared for, then relying on an equally troubled person to provide the source of our well-being. The devil knows too much about our weaknesses. Satan designed this particular interpersonal snare to draw victims unwittingly into a seemingly inescapable trap. It is a simple tactic, easily customized for many different settings. 

Once embedded in such a relationship, like hoarded manna that rots, the attachment decays underneath our clutching possession. Selfish, fearful motives backfire quickly. Obliviously, the tighter we cling, the more we choke the life we love so dearly. Instinctively, we respond to perceived slights with either a retreat or an attack, self-protection or retaliation. Lacking the calm confidence of one more well-adjusted, our emotions whip us around, much like the wind whips up bits of garbage on the ground. The irony of this is maddening – these responses will only make matters worse. 

Relationships spin dismally in these self-defeating patterns; discouragement recycles our misery. How often have we fallen on this particular battlefield, defeated by a soldier so strangely familiar? Alone, ashamed, distraught, our tender souls are depleted, just as Satan intends. The enemy can roam elsewhere -- this one will stay down beneath its own weight.

AMPLIFIED

Into this haze, the Wonderful Counselor is a crushing force over the enemy’s surprised ranks. With regiments of grace and forgiveness, He alone heals our brokenness – the anguish we never quite dealt with from our past, which spills out sideways into the anguish of our present. Merciful battalions of His light gently illuminate the dark corners where we hide in our sin-filled guilt, a warm beam of clarity shining into our circumstances. As we lift up our eyes, we are met with a steady, reassuring gaze, rich with compassion and a promise of healing. We realize with waves of relief that we are fully loved. Unconditional care, thoughtful intervention, laughter, joy and wise counsel softly bring us to our feet, shame slipping quietly off our shoulders. Cleansed, healed, restored, now we may fully love ourselves, and that changes everything.

Learning how much we are loved by Him, allows confidence to replace fear and security to fill the holes that once left us empty. The paralyzing regret of our foolishness amid a disorienting echo of consequences, harmlessly disappears. No longer caught in a cycle of miserable oppression, free from the grasp of repetitive sin, our feet now are planted in the fruitful soil of hope.  

The truths of His Word teach us how to relate with one another effectively, lavishly, mercifully. God’s Spirit within us breathes new life into us – becomes the new life within us. We no longer have to claw and scrape for life from others. With new respect for ourselves, we move with greater dignity, rampant emotions now a gentle breeze instead of gale force winds. Bitterness or blame we errantly placed on others holds no value, so we forgive and that great weight of poison melts away. The look back to our childhood history becomes a softer, clearer version of our caregivers’ heartfelt effort, with new understanding of the challenges they met along the way.

We relish good relationships when we are not solely reliant on them for all our worth – when our worth is instead fully determined by the magnificent, dependable love showered on us from streams of His goodness and truth. We are washed in a revitalizing river of life, as His Spirit takes up residence in our heart. His Word, His presence, His provision, His wisdom, His healing, His forgiveness, His power, His comfort – all of Him reverberates inside all of us. We overflow with the fullness of His love. Wholeness comes through the certainty, and mystery, of God, and the recognition that we are His. Peaceful, refreshing, soul-filling energy flows continually, as He invites our entire dependence to rest on Him. The demand for something or someone else, to satisfy and to provide our joy, thankfully, is released. 

POSTLUDE

“There is only one Being Who can satisfy the last aching abyss of the human heart, and that is the Lord Jesus Christ. Why Our Lord is apparently so severe regarding every human relationship is because He knows that every relationship not based on loyalty to Himself will end in disaster. Our Lord trusted no man, yet He was never suspicious, never bitter. Our Lord’s confidence in God and in what His grace could do for any man, was so perfect that He despaired of no one. If our trust is placed in human beings, we shall end in despairing of everyone.” O. Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest, July 30

“Our Lord implies that the only men and women He will use in His building enterprises are those who love Him personally, passionately and devotedly beyond any of the closest ties on earth… Jesus takes us over for His enterprises, His building schemes entirely, and no soul has any right to claim where he shall be put.”  O. Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest, May 7

“If you hoard a thing for yourself, it will turn into spiritual dry rot, as the manna did when it was hoarded. God will never let you hold a spiritual thing for yourself, it has to be given back to Him that He may make it a blessing to others.” O. Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest, January 6

“The experience of salvation means that in your actual life things are really altered, you no longer look at things as you used to; your desires are new, old things have lost their power…If you are born again, the Spirit of God makes the alteration manifest in your actual life and reasoning, and when the crisis comes you are the most amazed person on earth at the wonderful difference there is in you. There is no possibility of imagining that you did it. It is this complete and amazing alteration that is the evidence that you are a saved soul.”  O. Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest, November 12 

“Suppose there is a well of fathomless trouble inside your heart, and Jesus comes and says -- ‘Let not your heart be troubled’; and you shrug your shoulders and say, ‘But, Lord, the well is deep; You cannot draw up quietness and comfort out of it.’ No, He will bring them down from above. Jesus does not bring anything up from the wells of human nature. We limit the Holy One of Israel by...saying, ‘Of course I cannot expect God to do this thing.’ The thing that taxes almightiness is the very thing which we as disciples of Jesus ought to believe He will do. We impoverish His ministry the moment we forget He is Almighty; the impoverishment is in us, not in Him.”  O. Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, February 27

“To have a master and to be mastered is not the same thing. To have a master means that there is one who knows me better than I know myself, one who is closer than a friend, one who fathoms the remotest abyss of my heart and satisfies it, one who has brought me into the secure sense that he has met and solved every perplexity and problem of my mind. To have a master is this and nothing less…Our Lord never enforces obedience: He does not take means to make me do what He wants. At certain times I wish God would master me and make me do the thing, but He will not; in other moods I wish He would leave me alone, but He does not…If our idea is that we are being mastered, it is a proof that we have no master; if that is our attitude to Jesus, we are far away from the relationship He wants.” O. Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest, September 22

“To be so much in contact with God that you never need to ask Him to show you His will, is to be nearing the final stage of your discipline in the life of faith. When you are rightly related to God, it is a life of freedom and liberty and delight, you are God’s will, and all your common-sense decisions are His will for you unless He checks. You decide things in perfect delightful friendship with God, knowing that if your decisions are wrong He will always check; when He checks, stop at once...” O. Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest, March 20

“God seems to have a delightful way of upsetting the things we have calculated on without taking Him into account. We get into circumstances which were not chosen by God, and suddenly we find we have been calculating without God; He has not entered in as a living factor…we are apt to think it is an impertinence to put Him first in the practical issues of our lives. If we imagine we have to put on our Sunday moods before we come near to God, we will never come near Him. We must come as we are.” O. Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest, July 5

“We must never allow anything to injure our relationship with God; if it does get injured we must take time and get it put right. The main thing about Christianity is not the work we do, but the relationship we maintain and the atmosphere produced by that relationship. That is all God asks us to look after, and it is the one thing that is being continually assailed.” O. Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest, August 4

“Friendship is rare on earth. It means identity in thought and heart and spirit. The whole discipline of life is to enable us to enter into this closest relationship with Jesus Christ. We receive His blessings and know His word, but do we know Him?...When once we get intimate with Jesus we are never lonely, we never need sympathy, we can pour out all the time without being pathetic. The saint who is intimate with Jesus will never leave impressions of himself, but only the impression that Jesus is having unhindered way, because the last abyss of his nature has been satisfied by Jesus. The only impression left by such a life is that of the strong calm sanity that Our Lord gives to those who are intimate with Him.” O. Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, January 7

ENCOURAGING WORD

2 Timothy 1:7  For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but a spirit of power, of love and of a sound mind.

Psalm 143:8-10  Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love, for I have put my trust in you. Show me the way I should go, for to you I lift up my soul. Rescue me from my enemies, O Lord, for I hide myself in you. Teach me to do your will, for you are my God; may your good Spirit lead me on level ground.

Lamentations 3:22-24  Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, ‘The Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for Him.’

John 8:31 - 32  To the Jews who had believed Him, Jesus said, ‘if you hold to My teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’

2 Peter 1:2  Grace and peace be yours in abundance through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.

Jeremiah 31:25  I will refresh the weary and satisfy the faint...

John 1:5  The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

1 John 4:18-21  There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother.

2 Corinthians 9:8  And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work. 

Galatians 5:1  It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. 

Isaiah 57:18  I have seen his ways, but I will heal him; I will guide him and restore comfort to him…

Colossians 3:1-4  Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

1 Thessalonians 4:11,13-24  Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing…Live in peace with each other…encourage the timid, help the weak, be patient with everyone. Make sure that nobody pays back wrong for wrong, but always try to be kind to each other and to everyone else. Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus…Test everything. Hold on to the good. Avoid every kind of evil. May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful and he will do it.

Psalm 119:147  I rise before dawn and cry for help; I have put my hope in your word.