Looking Up

November 24, 2012

“As the eyes of slaves look to the hand of their master,
    as the eyes of a female slave look to the hand of her mistress,
so our eyes look to the Lord our God,
    till he shows us his mercy.”

Psalm 123: 2

“This verse is a description of entire reliance upon God… For example, you came to a crisis in your life, took a stand for God, and even had the witness of the Spirit as a confirmation that what you did was right. But now, maybe weeks or years have gone by, and you are slowly coming to the conclusion— “Well, maybe what I did showed too much pride or was superficial. Was I taking a stand a bit too high for me?” Your “rational” friends come and say, “Don’t be silly. We knew when you first talked about this spiritual awakening that it was a passing impulse, that you couldn’t hold up under the strain. And anyway, God doesn’t expect you to endure.” You respond by saying, “Well, I suppose I was expecting too much.” That sounds humble to say, but it means that your reliance on God is gone, and you are now relying on worldly opinion. The danger comes when, no longer relying on God, you neglect to focus your eyes on Him.”

Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest

Oswald Chambers has been a favorite of mine, and a least favorite of mine, since I began reading these daily devotionals when I was fifteen. I never kept up much by way of consistency, which is why I have decided to make my attempts to do so a little more public. Like baptism, this is a public profession of exactly what Chambers has pointed out in this reflection, that there is a fight between God’s opinion and worldly opinion.

There is a spiritual longing that I have that is only satisfied when I am in the Word, worshipping, praying (particularly with others) and in conversation with other Christians. There is a warmth in my spirit, beneath all emotion and intellect, that cries out for more of this union with the Spirit in me.

But where I have always struggled with Chambers, where I am struggling now, is in his use of words like “entire reliance upon God.”

This has become a “Christian-ism” to me, as have other expressions that you hear all of the time in church, but don’t know a single person who is actually living in that particular way. I look around church and see a lot of really good people living a lot of honorable lives. But whereas I have struggles in my life that will always compete with my love for God, where is the man who has cast aside any sort of self-reliance and leaned “entirely” on the Lord – the man with a beautiful wife and three kids, a mortgage or two and several car payments, non-satisfying work, college and retirement savings, medical issues and bills, and a desire simply to cut loose and spend some money on himself from time to time? These are the men that I see (to varying degrees). I don’t see the man who lives in “entire reliance upon God,” because, I think, its absolutely absurd to think this is possible in the year 2012.

But what does it mean to live a life of “entire reliance upon God”? I mean, that’s asking a LOT. Like EVERYTHING!

And, who ever has or ever will live such a life?

Looking back…

…Adam and Eve once had it, but lost it, rather quickly…

…Abraham had it, then fathers an illegitimate son, then had it again…  

…Moses had it, then killed someone over it, then lost it for forty years and never fully recovered from it, with the help of his older brother so speak for him.

…David had it as a boy, became self-serving for a while, then lived it

…Solomon followed almost exactly in his father’s footsteps with it.

I don’t have the complete list of Biblical “characters,” but if I were still interested in the intellectual pursuit of God, perhaps I would find that there was only one man who ever lived in “entire reliance upon God.”

We all know who that Man is.

So, as Chambers points out, when I have my spiritual highs – when I know that the Holy Spirit is within and around me working the supernatural among the natural- there is a tendency to hold to those moments just as Peter clung to the Transfiguration of Jesus on the mountaintop (and thus the Christianism of the “mountaintop experience”).

But what happens when the wisdom of the world comes crashing in? What happens, as Chambers points out, when days and weeks turn into months and years? Is our God any less real and true and holy and powerful then than He was when He gave us those experiences?

Absolutely not.

Has He forgotten us? Has the God who went through so much trouble to create us in Him, knowing that we would choose otherwise time and time again, but who loves us so much that he would somehow through the spiritual realm create a second chance for holiness through sacrificing his son, forgotten us?

Absolutely not.

All of my favorite men of the Bible – Peter, David, Solomon, Moses – go through ups and downs in their walk with God. And David is one so qualified to speak through Psalm 123 to remind us that regardless of how high or low we might be, there is only one direction God asks us to look if we truly desire to live in Him – that is, up.

Trying to stay away from the touchy theological topics that once would have ruled my life, it has become more and more clear to me only in these last eight months or so, that Jesus gave up His godly state to become man and live as man. Had He not done this, our connection to Him as God would be just as vague and uncertain and mythical and indifferent as the ancient Greek or Roman gods, or Hindu gods, or any number of tribal gods that lack a relational connection to mankind. The thing about Jesus becoming fully man is that He had only once place to look to grow and remain in the perfection and holiness by which He was called: that is, up.

In trying to remain honest, I am overwhelmed by a seemingly impossible task. How can I live a life that is entirely dependent upon God? I mean, I trust Him with so much, sort of. And there are a few things that I just don’t want to let go of. But it seems impossible to live a life entirely dependent upon God.

So maybe as I pray, I should pray for God to do the impossible in me. To forgive me for my unbelief, and to build in me the nature to respond in all things with one simple action – that is, to look up.