When the fog clears

One day in 1872, a ship crossing the Atlantic from England to Canada was caught in a dense fog off the banks of Newfoundland. Captain Dutton had been on the bridge for twenty-two hours without a break. An elderly passenger came up to him, tapped him on the shoulder and told him he had to be in Quebec by Wednesday. It was now Saturday. The captain said it was impossible. The passenger said that in that case God would have to find him some other means of transportation because he had never missed an engagement in over fifty years. The passenger’s name was George Muller.

Mr Muller suggested he and the captain go down to the chart room to pray. The captain wondered what kind of lunatic asylum the man had come from.  “Don’t you know how dense the fog is?” The reply came back, “My eye is not on the fog, but on the living God who controls every circumstance of my life.”

Down in the chart room, Muller got down on his knees and prayed a very simple prayer the captain thought was more appropriate for a child. Yet when he finished, the captain himself felt he ought to pray. Muller put his hand on the captain’s shoulder and told him not to. “First, you don’t believe God will answer; and second, he already has. Get up Captain, open the door and you will find the fog has gone.” Muller reached his appointment on time. And the encounter changed the captain’s life.

At 93 years of age, Muller was still looking after two thousand orphans from his base in Bristol, as well as supporting missionaries and Christian efforts all over the world. He never once asked for money. His secret was what he told the captain: “I have known my Lord for forty-seven years, and there has never been a single day that I have failed to gain an audience with the king.”

Muller had learned a secret from Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians 4:18: “We fix our eyes not on the things that are seen but the things that are unseen.” Two words for seeing are used. The first (“fix our eyes”) is skopeo, from which we get the words scope, microscope and telescope. The second (“seen”) is the ordinary word for unaided natural vision. What is right in front of us can be seen by the natural eye. But spiritual vision sees what cannot be seen any other way. There is a difference between shooting by natural eyesight, and shooting using the scope of a high-powered rifle. There is a difference between looking at an unidentifiable smear on a piece of glass, and examining it under the microscope. There is a difference between going outside at night and gazing at the stars, and examining those stars through the most powerful telescope on earth.

Two men stood side by side on the ship’s bridge. One saw himself in Quebec on Wednesday, the other saw only the fog in front of him. By the grace of God, the fog disappeared that day not only from the waters of the Atlantic. It also disappeared from the life of the captain.

Don’t expect God to clear the fog just to make life easier for you. Don’t expect him to do nothing more than facilitate your personal agenda. Muller knew the will of God for his life because long before he had submitted his life to the Lord.

When you walk in obedience to God’s will, God is committed to fulfilling that will in your life. In other words, he will always clear the fog to get you to the place he wants you to be.

Have some fog in front of you right now? You know what to do. Seek an audience with the King.

A pile of stones will help you

A number of years ago, in the middle of a massive challenge, I drove out to the waterfront to a place I often pray. In that place, I cried out a prayer of utter desperation that God would deliver me and my family from a very threatening situation. And I asked him to do it by the end of that month. Well before the month ended, we had two miraculous interventions which saved our family and our church from untold grief. I often remember how God met me there. But the Bible teaches us there is more to remembering than just thinking about what happened in the past.

The question we have to face in crisis is not the reality of God’s sovereignty, or his love or faithfulness toward us. The question is what our response will be to what we are going through. Will we respond with a trust which opens the way for God to do whatever he wants with us? Or will we respond in bitterness or anger, which will close the door on his work in our lives? Or will we be so filled with fear we will panic and make foolish decisions? Much of this depends on how well we have learned to see the hand of God in our lives. And we learn through remembering!

God told Moses to instruct the Israelites to recite the story of their deliverance from Egypt to each generation so they would never forget the mighty works and faithfulness of God. When they first left Egypt, Moses said this: “Remember this day in which you came out from Egypt, out of the house of slavery, for by a strong hand the Lord brought you out from this place” (Exodus 13:3). And when they were about to enter the Promised Land forty years later, he repeated his message: “You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm” (Deuteronomy 5:15).

The Hebrew verb for “remember” (zakar), used in these passages, means a remembering which results in action. For God to remember his covenant means he will act on his covenant promises to save his people: “I will not spurn them... but I will for their sake remember the covenant with their forefathers” (Leviticus 26:44-45). For you and I to remember the commandments means that we commit to obey the commandments: “So you shall remember and do all my commandments, and be holy to your God” (Numbers 15:40).

Twenty-five years ago, we had friends called Martin and Cindy who were experiencing severe financial testing. Reading their Bible, they found God’s people being commanded to remember the past acts of God in their lives. And so they decided to put a stone into a jar on their dining room table every time God provided for them. The jar, which eventually filled up, reminded them of God’s faithfulness. A few months ago, I had lunch with Martin and Cindy and found out they still have a jar on their table -- and it is full.

Remembering the great works of God and his acts of faithfulness gave the Israelites a framework or perspective. It showed them how to understand their hardships and battles from a place of faith, not fear. The same God who had delivered in the last battle would rescue them again.

Can you remember how God has met you in the past? Can you remember how he was faithful when you had lost hope? Can you ask him to do the same for you again? Can you cast yourself on his great mercy? Or, in the words of my son-in-law Josh, can you learn to collapse into his will?

A good Biblical memory will serve you well. You have it. Use it!

Collapsing into his will

Last weekend I co-led a conference designed for younger men which I call the Challenge. This is the eighth Challenge event I have led in Canada and the UK over the last few years. Over eighty men shared in fellowship, tears, love, teaching and even a baptismal service in the frigid waters of an adjacent river. That made me pine for the Presbyterian mode of baptism by sprinkling I was raised in!

Every one of the men comes with an assignment describing a challenge he has faced over the last year, and how God has helped him through it. Then I get as many as possible of them to share, which leads into prayer for those still experiencing the type of challenge described in the assignment. The result has been a massive impact on mens’ lives which again and again has left me in amazement.

My son-in-law Josh walked into the conference centre and dropped his assignment into my lap. It was a minor miracle that he made it, as his wife (our daughter Katie) is eight months pregnant with their second child, and experiencing some complications. In addition, he was trying to meet a deadline for his MA thesis, and look for a job. But Josh and Katie decided his meeting with God took priority. How much of a priority do you make meeting with God? Just a thought.

In his assignment, Josh talked about how the magnitude of the financial challenges facing them as a family had begun to rob him of his peace with God. He had begun to learn how God increases our capacity to receive peace not in spite of, but through times of pain and tears. And he shared how the Lord was drawing him to become “greedy” for his presence, for the tremendous riches of love flowing from the throne of grace.

He shared how in the process of drawing near to God, the Lord had exposed areas of rebellion in his life. He shared his discovery that fighting God’s ways was in the end pointless. And he shared that as their bank account got lower day by day, he made a critical strategic decision: to collapse into God’s will.

I think that is a remarkable and profound statement for anyone, let alone a young man, to make. We can fight God’s will through disobedience. We can ignore God’s will through apathy. We can pay lip service to God’s will through religious exercises. Or we can collapse into his will through radical obedience.

The statement reminded me of the prophetic words spoken by Moses shortly before he died: “The eternal God is your dwelling place, and underneath are the everlasting arms” (Deuteronomy 33:27). We often use these words in funeral services, but in context they are about life, not death. They are about the God who rides through the heavens to help his people (verse 26), and who thrusts the enemy out before them (verse 27). They are about a people “saved by the Lord, the shield of your help, and the sword of your triumph” (verse 29).

The time of crisis is not a time to rush out and do all sorts of things on your own initiative and in your own wisdom. The time of crisis is not a time in which your disobedience, apathy or religious exercises will help you.

The time of crisis is the time to collapse into God’s will. And if you’re a wise person, you might even learn to collapse into it before the crisis comes.

When I was at university, we used to challenge each other to a “trust exercise,” in which one guy had to fall backward, not knowing whether the other guy would catch him or not. Most of the guys were not Christians, and the results were interesting. But God is not like that. God is all-powerful and he is all-merciful. His arms are underneath you, not so much to sustain you in death as to strengthen you in life.

Try collapsing into his will today. Those results will be interesting too.

Getting rid of the warp

What is your biggest preoccupation? What do you spend the most time thinking about? If we were honest, our answers would range all over the map, from money to health to sports to sex. What you think or worry about the most becomes your focus in life.  Everything else gets rearranged around it. The problem is when things are arranged the wrong way, our whole life gets bent out of the shape God designed for it. It gets warped. And then everything starts to go wrong.

The focal point, the central reality of Paul’s life, was knowing Christ. Everything else was entirely secondary. He wanted to know Christ, to know the power of his resurrection, to share in his sufferings and to become like him in his death (Philippians 3:10-11). He wanted to know Christ enough that he was willing to pay whatever price it took to achieve that goal. He knew that when Christ was the focal point, everything else would come into order. The warp would be gone. And to get rid of the warp would be worth the price.

He knew a secret. The only place to find Jesus is on the road to Calvary. But the road to Calvary is the only road that leads on to glory.

How much time do you spend thinking about Christ, about his will for you, about his Word, about his call on your life, about how to please him? Do you spend more time thinking about those things than about your bank account, your job satisfaction or your favourite sports team? 

When Paul found Christ, he set everything else in his life aside. The things that had meant everything to him were now without value. This he makes clear so vividly in Philippians 3:9: “For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish in order that I may gain Christ.” You can’t gain Christ without losing whatever takes precedence over him!

If we have to pay a price, what is the benefit? Well, when our lives stop being warped and get back into the shape God designed for them, we start making a lot fewer mistakes. We make it easy for God to help us. We find that all that time spent seeking stuff the world offers was a waste of time. We lose a lot of fruitless activity and gain a lot of priceless peace.

God has designed our lives to move in an upward trajectory: from the suffering of the cross to the glory of the resurrection, from the place of first accepting Christ to the place of being transformed by him, from the bottom of the pit onto the highest mountain, from under the worst curse into the greatest blessing.

Getting rid of the warp will unfold the magnificent beauty of the garment that God has designed to represent your life. When the warp begins to go, you’ll wonder why you tolerated it for so long.

The strange way to freedom

The world is looking for freedom everywhere, but the answer is right here: “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Corinthians 3:17). There is no freedom on earth like the freedom God gives. Worldly freedom depends on your outward circumstances, which in turn depend on factors beyond your control. True freedom does not come from the outside, but from within. It comes from the eruption of the Holy Spirit bursting through the constraints of the dying world in which we live to bring a life nothing in that world can even remotely match.

But how does this freedom work? Not in the way we might have expected. It doesn’t work through political revolution. In fact, it isn’t achieved by anything we can do in ourselves. It comes this way: “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (verse 18). Moses entered God’s presence and had to put a veil over his face when he came out. The veil came to stand for peoples’ blindness and inability to see God and to know him. But now Christ has destroyed that barrier. At the moment of his death, the four-inch thick veil preventing people from entering God’s presence in the temple in Jerusalem was ripped apart.

We have only one mission, to behold God’s glory. As we do so, we are transformed. Previously only one man, once a year, could enter the presence of the Lord. Now all of us can! There’s nothing else we have to do. We are transformed by what we see. If you really see the glory of the Lord, if you really understand who Christ is, you cannot help but be changed. Peter beheld the risen Christ, and was changed from a coward to a death-defying hero. James beheld Christ, and was transformed from a doubter to a man of faith. Paul beheld Christ, and was changed from the worst persecutor to the greatest preacher. John beheld Christ, and received the greatest prophetic revelation in history.

God can change the course and direction of a person’s life in a minute, and he often does when people come to Christ. But transformation into the image of God is a process. This process is expressed by the verb “we are being transformed.” There are two significant things about this verb.

First, it expresses a present continuous action. The process of transformation is meant to continue as long as we live. One day we will behold him perfectly and be perfectly changed. But in the meantime remember this: you cannot get stalled at the last place you met God. You have to keep meeting him today and tomorrow and the next day.

Second, it is in the passive. We cannot change ourselves. Only God can change us. That happens by the supernatural energy of his grace. By walking away from God, we can hinder change, but we can never in our own strength produce it.

Each one of us is being transformed into the “same image” (verse 18). God’s goal is to have a people rich in outward diversity, yet each shaped into the inward likeness of his Son. What an incredible witness it is when the same Christ shows up in such radically different people! The world will believe when they see the same Jesus manifested in believers of every race, gender, colour, shape, size, nationality, personality type, political opinion and income group! The Jesus we have in us by his Spirit transcends and renders into utter insignificance every external difference we might have.

In the old covenant, only the Holy of Holies contained the power and presence of God. But what a presence it was! That presence shook Mount Sinai and consumed anyone who approached it without permission. Now, incredibly, that same presence dwells within each one of us. We are mobile Mount Sinais, mobile temples of the dwelling place of God.

All we need to do is to behold him. Get away from everything else that’s going on in your life and just take time to behold him, to be with him, to thank him, to worship him. A moment in his presence will revolutionize your day, lift your spirits, increase your productivity and turn your darkness into light. Do you think it might be worth it?

“All this is from the Lord, who is the Spirit” (verse 18). How is it in the body of Christ that we have treated the Holy Spirit as an extra, almost as unnecessary? Do we not know who he is? He is God in our midst. He is transforming us into the glory of Christ.  Let him do his work and set you free!