The Brook in the Way, Psalm 110

I want to share something I was emailing to a friend after a recent discussion. It had to do with waiting on God, and also just simply walking with Him and going along our way as He leads, not having our own agendas or plans to get to the end as we might think seems the best or fastest way. I have edited this slightly to put it in the form of a blog article, but this is basically what I wrote to my friend:
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As I was re-reading your email so I could reply to you, I was suddenly struck with a verse from Psalm 110. I have memorized that Psalm and often use it as a prayer. The last verse says, "he shall drink of the brook in the way: therefore shall he lift up the head". The concept of the Lord walking and journeying with His disciples seems to relate to "drinking of the brook in the way", in other words, as we go along. I think it also ties into the road to Emmaus somehow, but can't explain why.
I think the drinking of the brook "in the way" has something to do with how we must be in the last days (the people who are willing in the Day of His power). A moment by moment abiding, only doing what comes to us as we are walking with Him, and not going ahead of that. This will also be our means of protection. I don't know if what I am saying really expresses what I mean. But I kind of "see" it.
The coffee fellowships in open venues you mentioned are very similar to some that we have done. We aren't currently doing this right now, but have done it in the past and will do it again too, I am sure. The other day we were in a local diner eating breakfast. Right in the middle of eating, we were led to intercede in prayer for a situation we knew about, and right there we started praying just as if we had been in our own living room. I am expecting more and more of this type of thing to happen.
And the crucial part of this "drinking of the brook in the way" is its becoming the means by which the Head (that is, Christ) will be lifted up. -------------------
Susan.

Holding On

This verse jumped out at me last night. In this time of increasing darkness covering the earth and rampant deceptions everywhere, it seems this is what we are to do, earnestly seeking Him and to just hold on.

Jude 20-21----
But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost,
Keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.
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Little Flock

Lately I have been seeing something wonderful going on amongst His people. Small groups of handfuls coming together as a hidden remnant. "Come my people, enter thou into thy chambers and shut thy doors about thee, as it were for a little moment, until the indignation be overpast....".... Isaiah 26:20. That is not an exact quote, but as close as my memory serves me right now.
I have a scattered internet group of friends in various places, and I stay in very close contact with them and they all are saying the same thing, He is leading us back to simplicity, and staying below the radar screen. A deepening of intercession for one another and a deepening sense of everything that can be shaken is being shaken and peeled away. A sense of entering the time when deception is very rampant, and I kind of see us huddled together in little enclaves, clinging to the Lord's Word. Kind of like in Malachi, chapter, 3,... those that meet together and speak of Him, one with another, and think upon His Name.
Often, it is just my husband and myself, gathered to watch and pray, and I always have a great sense of all of my internet contacts being with me, and we pray for them. Other times, we are blessed with others of this small and simple flock here in NW Georgia, often partaking of the Lord's Table together. But we are indeed a hidden away bunch, and that is the way He has planned it in this time.
"Where two or three are gathered together, there I am in the midst of them."

"The desire of our soul is to Thy Name,
and to the remembrance of Thee."
Isaiah 26:8.

The Undying Flame

I am currently reading a book by T. Austin-Sparks called "The Battle for Life". I had been seeing that we are all in a battle to retain our possessions (spiritual), we are all facing onslaughts of various kinds in these days. We really need to hold fast that which we have. I was led to get this book down off the shelf and am overpowered by the depth and strength of it.

Just before this quote, he had been talking about Zechariah 4 and the two living olive trees that continually pour the oil into the pipes to the bowls on the lampstand. They are living trees, not a cistern, but oil being poured continually, ever fresh, not stored up, and maintained at full strength continually. I think this also relates to the parable of the virgins. The marginal reading in Matthew 25 reads "our lamps are going out" which gives a good sense of this necessity of the continual need of the oil.
Here is the quote, I am sure this book is available, maybe even online, just do a search for T. Austin-Sparks---

The Undying Flame (from "The Battle for Life")
p. 9---
"It is the testimony of an unfailing life, an undying life, an all-sufficient life; the testimony of a life which is not an abstract, which is not something stored up, but something which is coming all the time from an inexhaustible stream; a mighty, glorious life. As the light burns, it is a constant declaration of victory, and that a victory over death, death which would seek to quench the light, quench the flame, smother it. It burns in the mist of surrounding death, a continuous declaration that death has no power to quench it."
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On Fasting

Thinking of fasting.

Fasting is a form of continual prayer.

Silence is another form of fasting, fasting from our own words, our own scatteredness, our own forms of thinking, our own activities and interactions, our own busy-ness.

It is also a fasting from the words, the chatter, and the scatteredness of others.

It is a protected place, a place in His presence with an armour of protection.

It is a form of separation from the world.

It is continual prayer, with our inner life tuned to listen. The listening for what He will speak.

Our Lord kept a Holy Silence.

He only spoke what He heard from the Father.

He did not need to speak, but spoke for the sake of others. It only took three words to raise Lazarus from the dead, and even those words were not necessary except for the others who were present.

Silence is another form of love.

A respect for the solitude of our brother or sister.

A respect for what the Lord may be doing in their lives.

A listening instead of storming in.

A non-possessiveness of those things the Lord may speak to us, not having to force others to hear, unless we are led by the Spirit to share.

A keeping and a hiding of His word in our hearts.

Speaking only as we are led to speak by the Holy Spirit.

The freedom to not have to talk because others require it.

The freedom to say what we are given to say.

The enlargement of spirit that stillness, and quietness creates within.

"Be still, and know that I am God." ~Psalm 46:10

(Photo taken this week in NW GA as we approach Lent)

Snow

Psalm 147~~~

He sendeth forth his commandment [upon] earth: his word runneth very swiftly.
He giveth snow like wool: he scattereth the hoarfrost like ashes. He casteth forth his ice like morsels: who can stand before his cold.
He sendeth out his word, and melteth them: he causeth his wind to blow,
[and] the waters flow. (vs. 15-18)

Photo, recent snow in NW Georgia

Speaking to Hearts

I have been pondering the prayer of  Teresa of Avila, hundreds of years ago,.... she prayed that if she would not be able to speak to people in such a way as to cause them to become "mad" for God, (that is to be set on fire for God), then she asked that He would not let her speak at all.

I am relating this to what our Lord said about coming to cast fire into the earth and how greatly He desired that it would be enkindled.

Lord, keep this concept in all of our hearts. 

Hidden Life

“Those whose hearts are locked up with Jesus walk this earth in the present age as princes in disguise. They move around in the temporal duties of life like private detectives in a distant and unfriendly nation. They are breathing prayers, and thinking thoughts, and nursing hot fires of love, and ruminating on vast and amazing events that stretch over coming times and distant worlds. They are silently loading themselves up with a divine dynamite, that Daniel and Jesus both tell us will sone day grind the kingdoms of this present world to powder. Their joys are hidden, for it is written ‘that a stranger doth not enter meddle with it’. And their sorrows, also, are cloistered in the ear and bosom of God, for they know they need not look to the people of the world, and not even to the people of the church, for heart-felt sympathy; and so, like venturesome pioneers, they leave the crowded walks of life and traverse the great, solitary mountains, and take up claims on new and unexplored territory, and hold communion with the unseen God, and are more at home amid the great snowy mountain peaks of the divine perfection, then with the crowds that live only for the flesh and time.
The saints are called in Scripture ‘the hidden ones’. Their life is doubly hidden, in the Son and in the Father. God says to them, ‘call unto me, and I will show you great and hidden things’. Their life is constantly fed by secret prayer…..... God is working, as it were, by stealth, in this present age, and moves softly amid the affairs of life, as if shod with wool.”
… George D. Watson, ‘The Heavenly Life’.

Our Focus

I was thinking about the verse in the Song of Solomon - "Draw me, we will run after Thee." I am stressing the "me" and then the "we". If we maintain our focus and single eye on the Lord and nothing else, (beholding Him as in 2 Cor. 3), then others will also be drawn to seek Him. This reminds me too. of what the Lord tells us in John, that believing on Him is our true work.
And St. Seraphim of Sarov says that if we abide in His peace, then many others will come to salvation through our peace.

The Mass Media

I have a strong sense that the mass media/popculture idolatry is coming to its fulness and a point of no return.
We need to find that place in the wilderness where we can flee from it. I am not speaking of a literal wilderness, I am certainly too old to live off of the land, but the true meaning of what that wilderness is in our inner life and our spiritual reality. I am speaking of the wilderness of that hiding place and inner chamber such as Isaiah 26:20 or Ps. 91 or Rev. 12. The place where we will be protected from all this deception and intrusion into our minds.
I pray we will all be able to come to a deeper insight and pursuit of that place apart from all the madness going on these days.

Inner Life, a quote from Tozer

"A German philosopher many years ago said something to the effect that the more a man has in his own heart, the less he will require from the outside; excessive need for support from without is proof of the bankruptcy of the inner man.

If this is true (and I believe it is) then the present inordinate attachment to every form of entertainment is evidence that the inner life of modern man is in serious decline. The average man has no central core of moral assurance, no spring within his own breast, no inner strength to place him above the need for repeated psychological shots to give him the courage to go on living. He has become a parasite on the world, drawing his life from his environment, unable to live a day apart from the stimulation which society affords him."

.....from "The Root of the Righteous" by A.W. Tozer, published in 1955.

God Has Spoken

A Prayer of T. Austin-Sparks~~~
Lord, Thou who readest all hearts, how reticent we are to add words.
Thou hast spoken, and Thou hast spoken more than we can carry out in a lifetime.
Why Lord?
And so our need is very real,--great, --a matter now of capacity, God given;
to receive, to be able to receive.
O Lord, help us at this time in this very real need,
to speak, to hear, to further profit.
Around us there is help, O Lord, around us Thy help at this time.
For Thy Name's Sake, Amen.
1966.

A Help in Prayer

My heart desperately wants to go to the beach. I have not been in over 6 years. It is the only place on earth I really want to be. I would probably be the same way about the desert, (I have never actually been to one, but the ocean has the same effect on me). Being a desert pilgrim is something that is an inward reality for me, though I have never had the opporunity to experience a natural desert.

The ocean speaks to me of the vastness of our Lord, and also His silence, and the silence we enter into in deep prayer.
I set this old beat up watercolor I did many years ago in the window opposite where I sit in the bed to pray. I noticed the light was coming through it and keeps changing as the day goes on. This makes the painting somehow "alive". Anyway, it has given me a great uplift. So, I am sharing this photo. I wish you could see how the light moves through the painting.

Four Hundred Years of Silence

Christmas Eve, 2008

I was thinking recently of the four hundred years of silence that lies between the book of Malachi in the Old Testament and the first advent of our Lord Jesus Christ. In keeping with that, I would like to post a portion of a letter I received in 1990. I was cleaning out some old files and came across this. It was written in a letter to me from George Moreshead who spoke at a home fellowship meeting we went to in the Altanta area. Although this is 18 years old, the message is vitally relevant to our current times.
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"Given the spiritual level of the Body of Christ, with the consequent immaturity prevailng among older as well as younger believers, can we hold out for..... and does the Lord look for.... anything more than the Malachi condition, which pertained, apparently, all during the last 400 years--at the very least--before the Lord's first coming.

'Then those who feared the Lord talked with each other,
and the Lord listened and heard. A scroll of remembrance
was written in His presence concerning those who feared
the Lord and honored His Name.' .....Mal. 3:10.

May it not have been to the members of just such an unformed fellowship of His lovers and expectant ones in Jerusalem with whom Simeon and Anna were related and to whom Anna 'spoke about the Child'.... as to those 'who were looking forward to the redemption of Jeruslaem'. Lk. 2:38 ?

If we allow our minds unwittingly to form a preconceived pattern or image of what we expect to see dwelling in and with our groups....and then, thereafter even unconsciously, continually measure our groups over against that preformed concept of what we believe the Lord is working for among us, may we not run the risk of ending up somewhere out in left field and also missing the Lord's goal.... and of straining in the flesh to achieve what can be attained only in and by the Spirit .... as with the Galatians. (3:3)?

Could it be that the Lord is asking and expecting at the moment no more than our simple gathering together.... as those who love Him supremely and want nothing more than Himself.... just to talk of Him and share what he has given us of Himself either from the Word, or from our other reading, or through some personal, practical experience on the job or in the home (and even perhaps at times just being there as a channel for His Life to flow through.... and out into the room and into the spirits of the others present for their uplifting and quickening)-- a Malachi scenario in this time preceding the Lord's second coming? Would He have us to reduce down to something of a zero condition together-- a coming down to ground floor, as it were-- and from there, without care or preconception as to what and when and how He will take us higher up corporately, let His Life draw us and beget among us just that form and expression of Himself that will issue organically from the growth of His Life in and among us ("Behold the lilies of the field: they toil not, neither do they spin......)"
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Inspiration in Prayer

Yesterday I took some time out and went to this special place near my home. I have not stopped thinking about this place since then. It became a place of refuge for me as an inward reality. I have received strength in the Lord from being there. Click on the photos for a larger view.

What of the Night?.....Isaiah 21

In Isaiah chapter 21, we have the question--- Watchman, what of the night? This is preceded by the statement, The Burden of Dumah. Dumah in Hebrew means 'silence'. So... in a sense you could say that this is the burden for silence. I was reminded of a quote from Malcolm Muggeridge that goes something like this......
"The media has tried to become the Logos". ( And he said this many years ago!)
For some time now, I have had a sense of foreboding about the internet. I know the Lord is using it in spite of the corruption, and I have made many close connections through the internet, even things that have led to fulfilling what I believe is God's will for my life, but at the same time, I am also seeing that at some point, believers will have to reject the media. The commercialization of media is tied in with the merchandising of mystery Babylon. I have already rejected television, several years ago being literally unable to watch commercials, putting them on mute for a long time, finally giving up television altogether, sensing that the commercialization was the true evil of it.
My only source of news and current events is the internet and some radio. Yesterday while looking at a news story on an online news source, as I was trying to read an article, a figure of a man walked out of an advertising box and walked across the screen on top of the story and walked back into the ad box, seeking to draw my attention to the ad. Something in that struck me as really evil. Not only evil, but as if the gall of the media has come to a fulness. If it were possible, I think the advertisers would send hologram figures into our living rooms. And indeed, something like that may exist eventually, if this thing goes far enough.
....end part one, (I hope to write more on this subject)......

The Early Church in Ireland and our Feathered Friends

"On the approach of the hour of evening prayer, all the birds, in unison, clapping their wings, began to sing a hymn, `O Lord, becometh Thee in Sion, and a vow shall be paid to Thee in Jerusalem' (Ps. lxiv.); and they alternately chanted the same psalm for an hour; and the melody of their warbling and the accompanying clapping of their wings, sounded like unto a delightful harmony of great sweetness.

Then St Brendan said to the brethren: `Take bodily refreshment now, for the Lord has sated your souls with the joys of His divine resurrection. ' When supper was ended, and the divine office discharged, the man of God and his companions retired to rest until the third watch of the night, when he aroused them all from sleep, chanting the verse: `Thou, O Lord, wilt open my lips;' whereupon all the birds, with voice and wing, warbled in response: `Praise the Lord, all His angels, praise Him all His virtues.' Thus they sang for an hour every night; and when morning dawned, they chanted: `May the splendour of the Lord God be upon us,' in the same melody and measures their matin praises of God. Again, at tierce, they sang the verse: `Sing to our God, sing; sing to our King, sing wisely;' at sext: The Lord hath caused the light of His countenance to shine upon us, and may He have mercy on us;' and at none they sang: `Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell in unity.' Thus day and night those birds gave praise to God. St Brendan, seeing all this, made thanksgiving to the Lord for all His wonderful works; and the brethren were thus regaled with such spiritual viands until the octave of the Easter festival.".....quote from the ancient church in Ireland.  photo from FreeFoto.com

A Message from One of His Creatures ??

On a recent drive through the Cloudland area of NW GA, I actually saw one just like this crossing the highway and heading into the woods. A sighting like that is quite rare. I did a little research on Mtn. Lions and found that they are solitary in nature. I keep pondering on this.................

Come Apart a While

A place that is a part of my everyday. It is my own backyard.

Surrender

I recently began re-reading a very old copy I have of a biography of Francois Fenelon and came across something that really spoke to me. The quote is in the introduction of the book.

"Consider your life as a perpetual perishing and lift up your mind to God above all whenever the clock strikes, saying, 'God, I adore your eternal being. I am happy that my being should perish every moment so that every moment it may render homage to your eternity.'"
.........Jean-Jacques Olier.




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