He has not forsaken us

One of the deepest emotional pains that one can feel, I believe, is the fear or belief that God is not love, or that one is not loved by God, or that God's grace is not sufficient to cover one's sins, or that God is distant and displeased (they are all permutations of the same feeling, I think). When one has known and seen God, and experienced His love and mercy, He becomes the deepest desire of one's heart; He overwhelms us with the torrents of His love, and we respond with adoration. So at any point after that, if we begin to fear that we have lost that love through some sin we have committed or righteousness we have left undone, the pain of that fear will penetrate to the depths of our heart like a dagger that stabs and a club that crushes.

Unfortunately, the emotional nature of this fear makes it incredibly difficult to counter! Reminding ourselves of the truth of God's love, going back to the cross and remembering the pain He suffered on our behalf, and repeating the assurances of His grace to ourselves time and again are all good things to do, and they can help restore a soul to joy and confidence in Christ - but I think it is also good to cry to God in the midst of our fear, as the author of Psalm 6 does. For an emotional pain there must be an emotion outlet and an emotional healing.

"O Lord, do not rebuke me in Your anger,
Nor chasten me in Your hot displeasure.
Have mercy on me, O Lord, for I am weak;
O Lord, heal me, for my bones are troubled.
My soul also is greatly troubled;
But You, O Lord - how long?
Return, O Lord, deliver me!
Oh, save me for Your mercies' sake!
For in death there is no remembrance of You;
In the grave who will give You thanks?" - Psalm 6:1-5

The truth that he knows - God's mercy and deliverance of His people, His righteousness and healing power - is interspersed with what he feels and fears - that God is angry with him, and has forsaken him, and is abandoning him to death; the desperate plea of v3 captures it perfectly: "But You, O Lord - how long?" In his head, he knows that in God is deliverance and salvation; he knows that God will rescue him and not abandon him. But in his heart, he feels that God has already forsaken him - that the pain and the trials have continued longer than he can bear already, and that God is not with him in them. It's a place we've all been in, I think, particularly if a specific trial or struggle (read: external problem or internal sin issue) has lingered with us for any length of time. You said You would sanctify me, Lord! Why do I still struggle and fail so much with this one temptation? And You said You would be with me always and work all things for good, Lord! Why is my life such a wreck of circumstances, then? Why do my endeavors wither and die instead of prospering when I'm trying to follow You?

But there is beauty even in that emotional plea, twisted as it is by the lies the world has spun about the impermanence of love and the impossibility of grace, because he is trying desperately to feel and believe the truth that he knows - and because, at the end, there is hope. Our cries to God do not have to be perfect or sinless for Him to hear us; He hears our weeping and our supplication, no matter how weak and frail and faithless we are, and He will receive our prayers. He has not forsaken us, and He never will; His love has not failed us and His grace will endure through all eternity.

A God of mercy

If it is true that God takes no pleasure in wickedness - that He "hate[s] all workers of iniquity" and "abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man," as Psalm 5:4-6 says - than it is a problem of incredible concern and importance for each and every one of us. I wouldn't say I was bloodthirsty (far from it, in fact!), but when I see the bitterness, hatred, and resentment my heart holds on to and even takes pleasure in, I can't deny that there is wickedness and sin inside me. And the general consensus of the rest of humanity, and the doctrine of Christianity, is that I am not alone in this deep internal sinfulness: for "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." (Rom. 3:23)

What do we do, then? What is the next step to take, when we see the sin inside us, when the weight of it breaks our hearts and leads us to the edge of despair, because all our efforts cannot eradicate it completely from our lives? I think the same psalm that described the righteous position of a holy God towards wickedness describes equally well the only beneficial next step for us to take:

"But as for me, I will come into Your house in the multitude of Your mercy;
In fear of You I will worship toward Your holy temple." - Psalm 5:7-8

Continuing to try to perfect myself will never succeed; the only option that can bring life, joy, and contentment is to come to God riding the waves of His mercy, carried in the arms of His mercy, lifted on the wings of His mercy: forgiven and reconciled by His mercy. Striving to lift myself to heaven or to give myself worth and value, to earn the respect and adulation of others and even of God, can only lead to the empty and cold triumph of pride that is more failure than victory even in its highest moment; but coming to God with reverence and humility, to lift unto Him the worship and adoration of a heart in love to a God worthy of praise - that is the key to peace and fulfillment, the one thing necessary to find meaning and freedom.

It is indeed true that God takes no pleasure in wickedness, but it is also true that He is a God of mercy, and because He is a God of mercy we can be a people of hope. We can cry to our God in our trouble, even when our trouble is brought on by our own sin, and we can wait eagerly, watching as for the morning, for His answer to our prayer. Because we have put our trust in Him, we can rejoice in the surety of His faithfulness, and let the burdens and pains of this life and of our sin be carried for us by the God who defends us with strength unassailable.

You have put gladness in my heart

Sometimes it seems that we are alone in our pursuit of truth - or rather, because the plural "we" gives a different feel to the word "alone", sometimes it seems to each one of us that he or she as a single individual is alone in his or her pursuit of God, that there are no fellow-companions fighting the same battles, seeking the same good, or walking the same path. In Psalm 4, I think, we see someone feeling just that way: someone who is attempting to follow God and who desires to live in righteousness and truth, but who sees all around him people seeking after the lies of this world and setting their hearts' love on worthless and insignificant things. And it is discouraging, for the psalmist and for any of us, to feel that way. When the psalmist says in verse 5 to "offer the sacrifices of righteousness," I think that persevering through this kind of loneliness and discouragement by faith is one of the sacrifices that he might have had in mind (another one, from v4, would seem to be controlling our anger and frustration with those who are pursuing sinful or temporal things and perhaps scorning our pursuit of goodness and truth). For righteousness does require sacrifice, and the denial of our pride and self-centeredness, on at least a daily level.

But sacrifice is not the end of the story, and the psalmist, fittingly, doesn't end there. When temporal things fade or fail, as they invariably must, or when worldly expectations or human relationships disappoint, if we have made those things the goal of our life then we will be left asking, in hard times, "who will show us any good?" (v6) - but if our heart's desire is to know and follow God, then even in those hard times we will know His joy and be filled with His peace. The joy that comes from knowing God surpasses even the greatest happiness that temporal prosperity can bring. It can be hard to believe that sometimes - when the harvest is coming in with its abundance of riches and rejoicing, and it seems as if no joy could ever be more complete, or when the world is falling apart into tattered gray rags and it feels as though no happiness could ever break through into that dismal half-light. But the joy that God can put in our hearts - the gladness that comes from the Lord of eternity - can endure through the dark times and shine brighter in the good than even the sun himself at his zenith.

Building love upon knowledge and joy upon truth

From The Practice of the Presence of God, by Brother Lawrence:

"That we ought to make a great difference between the acts of the understanding and those of the will: that the first were comparatively of little value, and the others, all. That our only business was to love and delight ourselves in God."

Note first that he does not say acts of the understanding are of no value. In attempting to correct one error, we have a tendency to swing to the other extreme - to say that, because we have previously strayed (or seen others stray) by valuing and seeking intellectual knowledge without the corresponding practice of virtue and devotion, we must completely abandon the pursuit of knowledge and simply attempt to live ethically and with love. But what we see taught here is that the acts of the understanding do still have value for the Christian. And when we think about it, we see that it must be so, for the acts of the understanding create for us a compass of truth, giving direction and guidance to the acts of the will. Without that compass, our will would be adrift in the chaos of ever-changing opinion, confused, "tossed to and fro and carried about by every wave of doctrine" (Eph. 4:14), without direction or purpose, never attaining to the great and glorious end for which God has created us.

However, it is equally clear that to stop here, having obtained a working compass, would be insufficient. Simply knowing the direction we ought to travel will not lead to the completion of the voyage! This is why the acts of the will are of such great value: it is by them, by choosing to "love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind" (Mt. 22:37) and to find in Him our soul's true pleasure and delight, that the ship actually sails. By the acts of our will we show whether we are following the direction our understanding has established, or ignoring it in favor of some other course; by them also - and only by them - we advance towards the destination of our voyage: full holiness and true unity with God.

Love beyond comprehension

"And when I think

That God His Son not sparing

Sent Him to die

I scarce can take it in,

That on the cross,

My burden gladly bearing,

He bled and died

To take away my sin."

This week we remember the primary reason why Jesus came to earth as a man at all: to suffer and die, that we might be freed from sin and restored to life in Him. He did not come to be merely a Teacher and an example for us to follow; the moral standards God desired His people to obey were already revealed and codified in the Mosaic Law, and in every culture there have been great philosophers and moral teachers who have given us the basic information we need about what is right and what is wrong. God did not need to come Himself in the flesh - to utterly humble Himself and live in poverty and die in agony and shame - to simply give us more teaching. No, He has come to make us new. He has come to give us new life, to reconcile us to God, to redeem us from the depths of sin, to release us from the burdens of fear and judgment and condemnation by taking those burdens on Himself. He chose to pass through incredible depths of suffering and humiliation that we might be raised to incredible heights of glory and joy. We see this week, as we remember the sacrifice Jesus made, that His love for us truly is beyond all our comprehension - but we are also reminded that we can know that love experientially, in Christ, even as it is revealed to be deeper and higher and wider than we can intellectually understand.

"Then sings my soul, my Savior, God, to Thee:
How great Thou art,
How great Thou art!
Then sings my soul, my Savior, God, to Thee:
How great Thou art,
How great Thou art!"

He Regards the Lowly

One of the things that interferes with our relationship with God is our own pride. Pride is what makes us resist or resent God's grace (or our need for that grace) and makes it difficult for us to accept God's love for us - we dislike the necessary admission of our weakness, imperfection and sin that accompanies grace, or we believe that our sin is too great for even His love and forgiveness to cover. Either we exalt ourselves or we make God less, when we walk the path of pride. And because we very much do need God's grace, because His forgiveness is far more than sufficient to cover our sins, and because His love is unfailing and unconditional, our pride puts us out of sync with reality. Eventually, keeping our heads and hearts in a dream world will result in colliding with something in the real world that we didn't see because it didn't exist in our delusions. That is, if we base our lives on perceptions and principles that don't align with reality, the disconnect and the tension will in the end lead us to pain and despair. After all, wherever God is not, despair takes root - and a proud heart has pushed God out.

For we have a great God who works in very different ways than a great king would. A great ruler in this world will usually seek out or allow into his presence those who have some special distinction or merit. A championship sports team, for instance, or the winners of a scholastic competition, or other heads of state or their ambassadors, might be allowed to meet the President. An average soccer mom from the Midwest would most likely be laughed at by the security guards if she tried to visit him at the White House! The greater the power and glory of the ruler, the less likely it is that the poor, normal, lowly people of his country will actually be allowed into his presence. It is an honor, after all, to see and meet someone so highly respected, and it is natural to expect that one ought to earn that kind of honor. And then, afterwards, one has every right to be proud of the achievement that merited the reward. But in the Psalms we read that,

"Though the Lord is on high,
Yet He regards the lowly;
But the proud He knows from afar." - Psalm 138:6

God is far greater than any earthly ruler, and yet He doesn't demand that we earn our way into His presence. He doesn't accept only those who have done great things or have some special distinction or notoriety to capture His attention. In fact, He does almost exactly the opposite! He gives grace to the humble, and lifts up those who do not exalt themselves. When He became a man, He lived among the poor and the oppressed, and rejected those who were mighty in this world. His desire for us is not that we should strive to win His favor by our own merits - first, it is impossible, and second, it centers our minds firmly on ourselves: we must always be thinking about what we are doing and how we are doing and whether or not we are good enough. He wants us to let go of our pride, of our need to earn His approval and make ourselves good enough, so that we can once more sing in tune with reality, and come to know Him deeply and genuinely in humility.

Pursuing Christ, and letting righteousness follow

In Philippians 3, Paul writes of the surpassing greatness of the knowledge of Christ - how to know Christ is so much better than anything else that all those other things can be considered rubbish or even loss in comparison. What seems incredible to me is that knowing Christ is this much better even than being righteous. God wants us to be righteous (indeed, He commands us to be), and we have to be righteous to be in His presence with joy and love instead of terror and condemnation, but ultimately righteousness is not the highest goal. That distinction goes to knowing Christ. And it is so much more important and more wonderful to know Christ that all the labor and time we have invested into becoming righteous through the efforts of our flesh in submission to the law, even if it has made us as near perfect as humans can be, is loss.

What God desires is for us to know Him as He knows us, and becoming righteous is a part of that process. But sometimes I think we mistake the ends and the means, and we treat knowing God as a means to becoming righteous - we make our own perfection the goal we seek, and use our relationship with God as a tool in our labors toward that end. I know I sometimes think and act this way, anyways. Unfortunately, it doesn't work. God doesn't allow Himself to be used as a means to any other end (at least not for very long), because He is the only end in which we will find joy and fulfillment, and He wants us, if we will, to find the true happiness and meaning for which we were created. So in the end, if we have not sought to know Him first and wholeheartedly, we will lose all that we thought we had gained instead of Him. The castles of righteousness we had built so proudly on our own will come crashing down, because they were built on the foundation of our sinful nature rather than on the foundation of Christ. But if we seek Him - if we press forward toward that goal, the goal of knowing Christ, with all our heart and mind and strength - then we will find that we have not only found Christ and come to know Him, but have attained to righteousness as well: the righteousness which is from God by faith. And this righteousness obtained in this way is the only righteousness that will not someday be a loss to us, that will be in the end of any worth.