On the road to Emmaus there were two disciples walking and talking with Jesus. Scripture tells us in Luke 24 that “they drew near to the village where they were going, and He indicated that He would have gone farther. But they constrained Him, saying, “Abide with us…
They constrained Him. They didn’t just ask. They urged and insisted and compelled Him. There is an element of force implied in the word. Jesus planned on going further, but I get the impression that they weren’t going to take no for an answer. And as he came in to share a meal with them, it says “their eyes were opened and they knew Him”
When Jesus came to the disciples walking on water (Mark 6) it says He would have passed them by. But they cried out and immediately He talked with them and said to them “Be of good cheer! It is I; do not be afraid”. Jesus got into the boat and the storm was calmed. Their desperation stopped Him and brought His peace into their situation.
The blind man at Jericho (Luke 18) heard that Jesus was passing by and he cried out. The word there indiciates that he was shouting in a tumultuous way. Probably embarrassing the people that were standing near, so they told him to be quiet. Yet he cried out all the more. Jesus called for him and restored his sight. Had he been afraid of what everyone else might think about him, he may have held his peace and died a blind man.
In all three of these accounts Jesus is right there, but about to pass by. Yet when someone cried out and insisted on His presence, He stopped. Why did He stop? Because there was a longing, a desperation for His Presence. How many times have we felt that same thing rising up within us, yet because such a crying out isn’t “proper” or “acceptable”, we suppress the longing and ignore the desperation as Jesus passes by.
I want to constrain Him. I want to stir myself up to take hold of Him. I want to know Him; to experience His miraculous peace in every storm; to have my vision restored. I am not content that He should ever pass by.
Reaching out in desperation
Thirsting, longing
For Your presence
Ascending the hill of God
The peak, it seems, in view
Until the claws of this earthly existence gripping me
Pull me back into the mundaneness of the temporal
Kicking and screaming?
No, all too willingly I retreat
Easier to admire the hill from the bottom than struggle to the top
And so for yet another day I refuse to climb, to seek
Not realizing how eager You are to aid me in this journey
This pursuit of the Holy
My spirit yearns
My flesh is weak
I am a contradiction.
For My people have committed two evils: they have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, and hewn themselves cisterns – broken cisterns that can hold no water. Jeremiah 2:13
Why is it that men will forsake the fountain in favor of the cistern?
With the fountain there is an endless supply, not just of water, but of living water. A never ending source and an unmatched quality. There is no effort to be expended in order to drink your fill, except that which is necessary to come to the fountain.
Yet we humans, always desiring to attain by the works of our own hands, reject that which is freely offered in favor of that which we can produce by the sweat of our brow……even when the quality is so terribly inferior and the end result imminently unsatisfying. At the fountain we are offered water of life. All the cistern can offer is something stale and stagnant.
So how are those cisterns working out for you? What cisterns, you ask?
How about the cistern of religious activity that we choose instead of the fountain of encountering God?
How about the cistern of saying prayers that replaces the fountain of real soul travail that touches heaven?
How about the cistern of singing worship songs instead of the fountain of true worship in spirit and truth that pours itself out at the feet of Jesus?
Dig with all your might the cistern of your choice. Meanwhile all of heaven is astonished at our foolishness. Will we never learn that only at the fountain of our precious Lord Jesus will we ever find satisfaction? Or will we go on ever building cisterns….and ever thirsting?
I love going to restaurants that serve bread before the meal. Sometimes I enjoy the bread so much that I don’t have room left for the meal and end up taking most of it home in a go-box.
One thing about bread though, it needs something with it otherwise it’s just kinda plain and dry. It needs butter, or honey, or sandwich meat and mayo. Something. By itself it just isn’t quite satisfying.
“Then Jesus said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, Moses did not give you the bread from heaven, but My Father gives you the true bread from heaven.” John 6:32
The bread from heaven that came down in the wilderness for Israel was symbolic of the bread that was to come. But it wasn’t that bread and couldn’t satisfy. We read of Israel’s complaining about the manna because they became weary of it. It wasn’t the true bread.
How often are we found trying to satisfy ourselves with something that the Father only meant to be a pointer to lead us to Jesus? Even our spiritual disciplines, which are important and necessary, can fall into this category. We pray and fast and read the Bible, but find that we keep looking for something to add because we just aren’t quite satisfied. It is only when these things lead us into true communion with the living Lord that we will find contentment and satisfaction.
Jesus needs nothing added. The true bread doesn’t need any butter.
“No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, Who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him.” John 1:18
What more intimate place could there be than the bosom? It is the place where the infant is comforted and nourished. It is the place where the lover will rest his head to be near the beloved’s heart. It is not a place appropriate for the casual acquaintance. Only those truly known and dearly loved are welcome in the bosom.
The Son was in the bosom of the Father, receiving His love, knowing His heart and His secret counsels. There was such an intimate communion and knowing, that He could declare the Father and make Him known to those who had never seen Him. In the bosom of the Father, for those who will venture near enough to recline upon His holy, heavenly bosom, there is a spiritual seeing and knowing that all our study of theology and listening to sermons will never produce. And from that place of learning Him, we too are made able to declare Him.
My church has a time of prayer before the Sunday morning service. I have my own little spot where I go to pray. I like to sit on the floor between two pews so I am hidden away. Earlier this year during one of these morning prayer sessions, a lady I hadn’t seen before came into the prayer service and came and sat down on the floor right next to me. She looked at me and smiled with a big smile. I was a bit shocked because nobody had ever come and sat down on the floor with me. I didn’t quite know what to say. She broke the silence with a question – “God doesn’t like it when we sin, does He?” In the brief interaction that followed I could tell that she had some level of mental disability. For whatever reason, she latched onto me. Ever since then she would walk to church in the morning from the nearby apartments and then ask me to bring her home after church. She didn’t always act “appropriately” in our Sunday School and church service. Sometimes she said Amen in the wrong place, or ate way too many donuts in the church kitchen before Sunday School. Things like that. She’s just a little bit different from the rest of us.
Last Sunday during the altar time after the service was over, I could hear her voice. It kept getting louder, until you could surely hear it throughout the whole sanctuary. Over and over she kept saying “Hallelujah!” with deep and loud emotion. It wasn’t proper in our reserved little church. I heard her one last time exclaiming “let everything that has breath praise the Lord” and then she collapsed on the floor in tears.
She was the most simple minded among us that morning, and I am convinced the most pleasing to God.
Last Sunday in Sunday School we watched a video. The purpose of the video was to help us understand God’s bigness and our smallness. The man who was speaking gave fact after fact about the size of our universe, the complexity of it all and quite frankly, most of it went way over my head. When you tell me that something is 5.8 million light years away, I really have no concept of that number.
But then at the end of the video he showed a picture taken from the space shuttle Voyager I as it neared the edge of our solar system. NASA sent instructions for the shuttle to turn back towards the earth and take pictures, which it did. It took months for the images to make their way back to earth, but when they did, what they revealed was breathtaking.
I sat in stunned silence as I realized that we were not, in fact, the center of all importance. This world that had seemed so large only moments earlier was suddenly reduced to the size of an insignificant speck – a pale blue dot.
Yet it was to this pale blue dot that the Lord of creation came. For the insignificant inhabitants of this speck, He did the unthinkable – He joined us in our speckness. The meaning of Philippians 2:8 “He humbled Himself” now explodes in my mind.
I feel that there are multitudes of words that want to come tumbling onto the page – yet somehow only silence seems appropriate.
I recently took some time off from work to be alone with God. I went away to a place near the water and spent a lot of time outside, reading my Bible, praying, loving Jesus.
In the evenings I would eat supper outside, watching the beautiful colors of the sunset. Each evening a group of about five birds would appear and they would fly above the tree tops. They would flap their wings a few times and then catch a current of air and be lifted and soar. There didn’t seem to be any purpose to their flight. They weren’t going anywhere, but seemed to just circle around and around, as though they were enjoying the ride.
And as I watched them I thought “They were made for this and look how great a delight they take in it.” And I imagined that this brought God much pleasure.
There are things that God gives me opportunity to do, and in the doing I realize “I was made for this.” In these things my heart is lifted and I feel as though I could soar there forever. And my delight in God nearly explodes in my soul and I sense His pleasure in it.
“One thing I have desired of the Lord, that will I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in His temple.” Psalm 27:4
If the temple had been in existence at that time, David’s longing would have been more understandable. Who wouldn’t enjoy meeting with God amidst the ornate carving and abundance of gold in Solomon’s temple?
But during the life of David there was no temple. The ark of God remained in a tabernacle of skins and curtains as it had done since the days of Moses (2 Samuel 7:2) King David had built for himself a house of cedar, certainly something grand and palatial – suitable for a king. Yet his heart longed more intensely for the tent where God was than the comfort of his own dwelling.
But kings belong in palaces David. Not tents.
Yet Almighty God dwelt in a tent, and that made it a palace to David.
He is my Delight 