08 Dec To Make Him More Dear
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To Make Him More Dear
She was an expert skier, out for the day sharing the sport she loved with her husband and a friend. They were skiing across a narrow ridge that fell off precipitously on both sides, when she lost her balance. One moment she was there, the next she wasn’t. I can’t imagine the harrowing ordeal for her husband and friend left behind on those icy heights.
The sobering life message that comes through this haunting story is that no matter how expert or agile we may be in our area of strength and fitness, a combination of unexpected factors in the midst of highly challenging terrain may pose more peril than we can handle.
In one season of her life, Audrey was leading a Bible study. Then one day her son left home and never returned. The long anguish of waiting and praying and never knowing proved more perilous than she ever imagined. But I didn’t know any of this the rainy September afternoon we found ourselves closed in together. I was young and exuberant, tentatively sharing my faith with this lovely older woman, who listened gently, nodding her head in slight affirmation from time to time as if she knew what I was describing. But then she took my breath away. “Valerie, dear, once I believed just like you. But I don’t anymore.” And then she told me what I’ve told you above. Decades later I am still unsettled by the hard empty look in her eyes as she rose to leave, firmly putting the subject to rest.
I’ve come to realize that God knows the perils before us, and one of His purposes in His dialogue with us is to harness us to a lifeline that will not let us go—by making Himself so dear to us that we are held fast, no matter how challenging the terrain.
A Shared Language
The harness around our heart and chest is loving God; it represents the relationship we have with him alone, woven out of the give-and-take established over time. The lifeline that snaps on to our harness is what God has taught us about Himself in Scripture. It takes both to secure us to Him.
Every relationship develops its own shared language. You alone will be able to understand the language you and God speak. No one else can grasp the subtlety of hidden meanings in a vocabulary that has been built upon experiences that only the two of you have shared. When He speaks this language to you, He reaches back into your shared history to surface the symbol, memory, or word that will instantaneously communicate what He wants you to understand. In the shared memory, He not only makes His Presence known (as He was with you then, He is with you now), but He makes Himself more dear—weaving your harness.
The prerequisite to learning the language you share with God is to be supple and open to the creativity of His spontaneous and unpredictable ways.
When we expect Him to speak to us only in predictable ways, we forget that God is much more complex than our perception of Him. In times past, God spoke in dreams and visions. He used nature; miraculous signs; prophets; a still, small voice; fire; trumpets; fleece; the casting of lots; and angels. He spoke in the middle of the night, during worship services, at meal times, during funerals, while people were walking along the road, through sermons, in the middle of a storm, and through His Son… Don’t limit yourself to a method, expecting only to hear from your Father in predictable ways. Rather, open yourself up to other means by which God wants to commune with you. Allow the Holy Spirit to sensitize you to God’s message at all times, in every location, under any circumstance. Then you will experience God in entirely new dimensions, as you are receptive to His voice.
Henry and Richard Blackaby[i]
We were on vacation at a dude ranch in Wyoming, when I met Rachael. An active Christian throughout high school and college, she lightheartedly reminisced of spring breaks at Daytona Beach, as a Campus Crusader sharing her faith. But that was then and it was different now. One season she was there, the next she wasn’t. It just never seemed real to her, she explained. So she moved on to promising, more exciting ideas that edged the old ones out.
Rachael told me her story on a long walk down a dirt road beneath a wide-open Wyoming sky. As she talked, I became aware of His voice gently urging me over hers. “Tell her about Me.”
And so I began, awkwardly! Few people do a worse job of “witnessing” than I. Give me a believer any day, and I can talk my head off. But with unbelievers I choke, the words come out all wrong and I make it unbearable for both of us.
Our last day, we sat for hours together, watching the children’s rodeo from a fence. I decided to take a chance and share the story of what had led me to choose the cross of Jesus over the beautifully crafted religion I had left behind. It is a story I share with very few. As I poured my heart out, I couldn’t help but feel slightly disconcerted as Rachael’s eyes kept leaving mine to gaze up into the sky. I wondered if I was losing her interest—but then her attention would return to me, with a delighted smile breaking across her face. When I finished my story, we sat for a few moments in an easy, shared silence; but I couldn’t help but wonder what she thought.
“Lots of times,” she leaned in close, “when God is telling me something, He sends me a red-tailed hawk.” She gauged my response for a moment, before continuing. “Valerie, the whole time you’ve been talking, a red-tailed hawk has been circling over our heads.”
Turning to look, I saw high and overhead God’s hawk wheeling with wings outspread, telling Rachael—in their shared language—that He was telling her something through my story. God was tenderly weaving her harness and lifeline, working at their relationship, developing a shared language to make Himself more dear to her, giving her a more scriptural understanding of Himself.
The harness around our heart and chest is loving God; it represents the relationship we have with him alone, woven out of the give-and-take established over time. The lifeline that snaps on to our harness is what God has taught us about Himself in Scripture. It takes both to secure us to Him.
Polls tell us that 83% of Americans claim to be Christians. Nearly 65% claim to be born again, but only 6% have a Biblical world view. That Biblical world view—what God would teach us about His activity, presence, purpose, and power at work in the world—is our lifeline. I know and love many who have a closeness to God, see His protection, sense His guidance, pray with all their hearts—but are adrift because they have their harness but no lifeline locked on, to keep them close to Him. It is very difficult for them to interpret events and circumstances for what they mean, because they are lacking the core of what shapes a shared language with God.
Lacking a Scriptural basis for how to understand God, Rachael did not have the lifeline of knowing what she could count on from God (and not count on), what was important to Him, how He has acted historically, what He is after in the big picture. She needed that lifeline clipped to her harness to hold her secure. And Audrey—my guess is that this lovely lady had a fairly good grip of the lifeline—but lacked the harness to hold her. So when she came to terrain more treacherous than she could handle, she lost her grasp of the rope, slipped and fell away.