Tag Archives: bible

Raging Waters

Posted on by under 2025

A person can drown in an inch of water.

While we may adhere to some cosmic hierarchy of valid storms of life – cancer, murder, death of a child, these may top the charts of acceptably honorific life struggles – the reality is that whatever storm you face has the potential of being one under which you just might succumb.

One of the reasons I failed to grasp the beauty of the Psalms for most of my life is because it didn’t fit into any category of emotional balance I’d ever been taught. I’d seen only a few reactions to troubles like the psalmists so often seemed to face: you rage and vent and regale the world with details of your tragic affair or you sweep the whole thing under the rug and plaster that ‘happy’ face right on top of your pretty little smocked collar.

What I see in the Psalms is neither of those reactions. The psalmists very often draw attention to the fact that there were storms and troubles, but rarely wax ad nauseam on the details. And while they do indeed express emotions that seem completely unfettered, there are never accounts of their having acted on or in their rage.

I taut control. I have often prided myself (unrighteously) on my command of my emotions – as if to have them at all is weakness. I, therefore, naturally lean toward the “sweep it under the rug” reaction. Psalms doesn’t seem to advocate that. Vent in surrender. Rage in prayer. The psalm writers aren’t the only ones to voice complaints in Scripture. Prophets, priests, saints, and sinners bring their brokenness to the Father in words of anguish and emotions in crisis.

Your storms are real. They are valid. And while your storm may consist of the most fierce of one inch waves, they can still feel like they are bringing you to an inch of your life.

If God cares about the mold in your house or the condition of your earthenware vessels or how many years a tree produces fruit before you pick from it (all of which He discusses in the Word), then He cares about your one inch storm as well as your tsunami and every detail of life besides.

If you’re in the raging waters today, God has a word for you. If you are enjoying the peaceful tides of calmer waters, God has a word for you too. To the former, hold tight to the truths of clearer days. To the latter, grow in the truths of these clear days that when the skies darken you will be prepared to glorify your Maker in the coming storm.

Truth to cling to: if you are looking to God to help you, you have much to be thankful for. You have been granted a window into the eternal and the God of all creation calls your name and desires that you would be His own. This powerful and inconceivably great God desires and delights in favoring you, blessing you, loving on you. And while what you are walking through might not feel at all like an act of love, He has spent all human existence impressing upon the hearts of man and the intricacies of creation a knowledge of the depths of His love for His children. In His sovereign and infinite wisdom He has a long history of being trustworthy to take us to places we want to go – even when the path we must take to arrive there isn’t one we delight in traveling.

Quiet your soul with knowledge of this: though He seems distant, as far as the sun and as unreachable as the same, He has chosen to draw near to you. Train your eyes upon the glimpses of Him found in the Word, in your own story, in the lives of others who know Him, and watch expectant for your King to rescue.

Like a watchman I wait expectant for the mercies of the Lord to dispel the raging waters that threaten (though are unable) to engulf me.

Socks? Off.

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I discovered some years ago that my innermost motivation for doing much of what I invest my life in is not just what the surface level would suggest. Missions? I love evangelism and the Church and culture and travel and that instant bond between brothers and sisters in Christ. But. Teaching? I love diving into the Word and spending my days at the Teacher’s feet and feeling the flaming of that indwelling Spirit surging with passion and willingness to move any marionette willing to hand over the strings. But. Mentoring? I love the deep swim in their lives, motivations, and impediments that have too long hindered them from a full awareness of what and who they were made to be. But.

The thrill that ignites so much of what I come back to again and again? Watching the light in someone’s eyes spark with an awareness that God is bigger than they ever realized before. That mind blown, box shattered, head exploding, imagination expanding, heart enlarging, socks blown half across the globe, world altering moment when the fetters fall and God escapes the genie bottle of our limited and limiting faith. Ahh, nothing better than to watch that explosion happen and the shackles that held true faith captive come crashing into a whole new belief system.

That moment when a woman with little knowledge of the world outside of her limited purview comes face to face with the reality that the God she often doubts lives outside her local church walls (maybe not even as far out as even the parking lot) is the same God showing up in a tent church with a beach ball hung like a chandelier in the center to a poverty stricken people who have no indoor plumbing. And He seems to be showing up to them a bit more powerfully than He ever has to her.

That instant when the guy gets smacked in the face with an awareness that God really is able to deliver the undeliverable. That money comes from nowhere he’s ever known existed. That word was spoken so aptly by someone he will never see again. That message reaches his ears from the lips of a preacher on the other side of the world or a walmart shopper he doesn’t know but who lives in the same town. Or maybe he just hears an imperceptible whisper he knows didn’t come from his own mind. God has been listening? God went to the trouble? God knows? God delivers? God is able?

The silent sound of sobbing from the corner as a woman so far lost and hopeless realizes the God she’s been running from loved her enough to bring a new friend from the other side of the world to make sure she knew she was still loved, wanted, known, and valuable.

Yep. And the socks blow off.

I’ve had the amazing privilege of seeing that look many times. There’s a shock then a sort of brokenness and then a sheer surrender and delight. There are often tears and just when you think your heart will break open the laughter starts to roll inside your very soul. Like Manoah. Samson’s dad thought surely no one could see God and live to tell of the day–that fearsome brokenness when you know that you know He’s been there all along. Followed by the realization that though He’s been watching it all, He’s still there loving on you. That’s the smile, the laugh, the impossibility of it all. And then the excitement. If He is there, if He can do this, if He’s all the way over here, if He …. Then He may be bigger than I realized.

And I may too.

Too few know this look. Too few have had it. We don’t go to the uncomfortable unknown. We don’t talk to the stranger. We don’t commit to the unachievable. We don’t dream. We don’t attempt those things which we couldn’t alone complete if and when He fails on the follow-through. We don’t let Him out of the box. We keep our tidy God in His little church sized box and–for our own selfish, sinful sakes–hem Him in to that which is known, safe, controlled, and familiar. Socks? Firmly on.

He will blow you away with His abilities and delights, blessings and provisions, appearings and sweetness. Day after day the gifts sit under the tree of true union. Day after day He waits for the child in us all to run, fall to our knees, and expectantly reach for gifts–lives!–that will leave us coming back for more, blown away by the wonder of being the King’s kids.

In Every Season

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Many years ago now the Lord rearranged my life. After coming home to work on my own time and schedule, God took that opportunity to switch up not just my job but every aspect of my life. He quite literally nixed my whole calendar. He had me cut nearly every single thing that I had spent my life doing–job, board memberships, service work, friendships, hobbies, everything. Once He had it pared down to about nothing, I became settled with looking … vacant. I eventually stopped trying to hide the fact that my calendar wasn’t full. I stopped wondering if neighbors thought me lazy or assumed I was napping in those moments when I wasn’t but was praying instead. I finally conceded to His perplexing will.

Once I gave up the fight, He started putting pieces back together. Where He had made cuts, He now filled gaps. Where He had cleared my schedule, He now filled it.

And I came to realize that only those things that He wanted on the calendar needed to be there at all.

In the years since that core deep cut, He has taken me through seasons of great fullness and minimal workload. He’s added some things for a while and some for the long haul. And I’ve attempted to let Him be the One to order my days.

So here I find myself again. I wonder what doors will open and how many closed ones I’ll never see the other side of. How many hours I’ll spend wondering how I should spend that hour and how many I’ll wonder how I’ll get it all done in. What will this season hold?

I’ve seen Him do it before – take me out of an old to shape me for a new. But letting go is hard enough. Trusting in the greatness of what’s to come is another story entirely. Empty classrooms and dying loves. Quiet rooms and lidded boxes. Great replacements and unneeded availabilities. Where is my place now?

May we all enjoy the restful Sabbaths the Lord walks us into and through. May we all, likewise, enjoy the frantic Monday’s of kingdom usefulness. May we all attend valiantly to the voice of our Maker telling us which one we’re stepping into next.

Dumb Denial of the Deliverer

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Stephen’s speech in Acts chapter 7. It’s long winded and ends abruptly. He seems to ramble then stops short, screams harsh accusations, beckons their hatred, and secures his own martyrdom.

What exactly was his point? For last words – and a fair amount of them – I’m not sure I’ve ever quite understood what he was trying to say.

After setting the stage for his argument, Stephen begins presenting evidence to the teachers of religious law. He begins with Joseph – technicolor coat guy – and presents three cases in the building of his accusation. From Joseph to Moses and from Moses to the tabernacle.

Joseph’s brothers took two trips to Egypt to buy food before they became aware that the guy supplying it was their brother. I know Egyptian garb likely made him hard to make out and he used a translator so they didn’t know he even spoke their language, but he was their brother, they spent a good bit of time with him on their first visit, and they did sell him to a group that was headed to Egypt to sell him off. Then there’s the whole dream hint. But none of this rung bells for the brothers. They didn’t recognize who he was.

Then there’s Moses. After having been raised in Egyptian affluence, he decides to check on his own people. Believing himself to be their rescuer (so says Stephen), he attacks an Egyptian to save a Jew. Israel, however, fails to see him as a deliverer and 40 years wandering in a sheep brigade follows. They didn’t recognize who he was.

On the second trip to Egypt Joseph’s brothers finally see their brother and deliverer. On his second attempt at delivery, Israel finally sees Moses as theirs.

Then there’s the tabernacle. There was a second one of those too. Two habitations of the God of Israel and we see a repeat of what the prior two stories displayed.

Joseph told his brothers not to quarrel on their way to go get their dad. Israel asked Aaron to find a new leader to take them back to slavery in Egypt. Even after two attempts to create a home among them for the God who would be their Deliverer, Israel insisted on man made rules to hold them in bondage.

Stephen was presenting the case against the religious leaders that Israel had a long history of failing to recognize their redeemers when they saw them. Specifically, they seemed to require a second sighting before even noticing. Then when they did, they tended to want to deny his deliverance and return to their chained and shackled ways every time.

Stephen’s point: you always seem to take too long to see what’s before you and, even then, you fail to fully embrace it.

Now Jesus is the fourth such case. He’s stood before you as Deliverer of your souls and you, again, recklessly refuse to recognize your Rescuer.

The beauty of Stephen’s message lies as much in how he makes it as in what it is. The obvious application: don’t miss Him. Don’t miss the encounters and continually and foolishly deny the Deliverer before you. We don’t just need rescue once. Every day is a battle between the wretched men that we are and the righteous ones He’s renamed us to be. Don’t be dumb, your Deliverer is near.

But there’s more than the obvious here. Stephen presented a case against a sect of people two thousand years ago that could be made against me today. And the evidence he used to win the day was a story ancient in even his own time and so inconceivably detailed and obscure that Broadway put it in technicolor.

Every word of Scripture is God-breathed. It is useful, beautiful, applicable, and worthy of our most ardent attention. For every story, interaction, detail, measurement, and genealogical listing, there is an apt word, an impassioned plea, an eternal truth. Joseph wasn’t just a dreamer in a bright jacket. Moses wasn’t just Charlton Heston’s inspiration. The tabernacle isn’t just a word padded cushion for our left hands while we read the Gospels. It’s all one glorious story. He will knock your socks off if you’ll sit and let Him tell it to you. Don’t be dumb, your Deliverer is near.

All That Press

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Why is it that the tabernacle gets so much scriptural real estate and yet I almost never turn to it in search of a life-giving, applicable, impassioning, and pertinent word for my day?

If every word is useful, alive, and God-breathed, there sure are a ton of words dedicated to an ancient mobile building that has long since ceased to exist. I, however, have never had the sense that if I just knew how many pillars were on the northern side of the tabernacle I would have a fire lit in my soul by the knowing. (It’s 20, by the way.)

I believe it’s because too often I’m looking at the tabernacle as a story not my own; as a word from somewhere else, for someone else. And a word that’s hard to break into at that. You have to work a little. You may have to think. For goodness sakes, Americans don’t even like European things because they come measured in metric units! Talk about hard to relate to – the metrics of Old Testament schematics long predate the metric system. If I were looking to make the intellectual investment and put the work in to understand what’s there, I fear I may find it isn’t really there for me anyway. All that press dedicated to the tabernacle was geared for some other time, place, and people.

I believe I’d be wrong on all accounts.

God inhabited the tabernacle after Moses set it all in place. God inhabited the temple after Solomon dedicated it. When Christ’s redeeming work tore the veil into the Most Holy Place, God issued an invitation to all who would come to be inhabited as well.

Much of the world long awaits the building of the third temple. For the Church, we aren’t looking for the construction of the third temple, we are on site for the construction of the second tabernacle.

The mobile tabernacle became the static temple and, at Christ’s death, the temple went back to being a tabernacle. On that first Day of Pentecost, tongues of fire lit on the Church and men and women took on a new identity as the new mobile housings of the Great God of All Creation. What had been singular buildings became numerous moving habitations.

On your own personal Day of Pentecost, you became indwelled by the Holy Spirit. You became the exact picture of that structure in the wilderness. God put His Name there. God declared His home to be where you were and are. He set His glory upon you.

The tabernacle is far more than someone else’s story. It is exceedingly more than a rendering of pillars, posts, linens, and lamps. It is a story of the place where God set His Name, dispensed His glory, displayed His power, and declared His Presence.

That place is you.

Out and In

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And He brought us out from there, that He might bring us in… Deuteronomy 6:23

The story of the tabernacle is one of a long and multifaceted process of the Lord taking Israel out and in that, through their own journey, we all might learn the concept.

He took them out of Egypt and the slavery that held them there.  He took them out of the yoke of that bondage.  He took them out of a culture of rampant paganism.  He took them out of the darkness of lives devoid of His presence. 

And He brought them into something altogether new. 

He brought them into freedom, into relationship, into the Light of a union with the One True God. 

Right off the bat, don’t you see why all those Torah verses matter so much?

From the beginnings of their story to the consecration of the temple that followed the journey and into the Holy of Holies made available by the torn veil at Christ’s death, there rings the constant chime of out and in.

In a walk through the tabernacle we see the Gospel truth of the lives God calls us out of and the hope He ushers us into.  At the bronze altar we lay down the old broken life of burden and shame and are welcomed by His perfect offering into new lives that arise from the ashes of a surrendered soul.  We have the opportunity and responsibility at the bronze laver to come out of a mentality of self-aggrandizing conceit and a belief in our own “goodness” and into an understanding and awareness of the depth of our depravity and our eternally profound need for a Savior and Guide.  From the lampstand we are called out of habits that seek enlightenment, wisdom, and answers from the limited span of human intellectual capacity and into a true knowledge of all that is good and true and right under the tutelage of an indwelling, all-knowing Spirit.  Upon the table we find we can walk out of lives of need and emptiness, of constant searching for fullness from the delicacies of this life among the temporal illusions of satisfaction the world has to offer and into an overwhelming overflow of wholeness provided by the filling of the Bread of Life Himself.  Upon the golden altar we find the personal, intimate, and inconceivable offering to leave behind lives of distant longing, intermediaries, go-betweens, and veiled, cloaked, and confusing translations and into a personal and ongoing conversation with the God who always listens. 

Then the mercy seat.  In this beautiful picture of the old creation we are called out of and the new and infinite hope we are called into the primary design and desire is to find ourselves here at His feet.  Out of longing for a seemingly eternally distant and unreachable union and into an intimate and life-giving relationship with an ever-present Father and Friend. 

In the story revealed through others lives long ago and far removed from our own we find a story so intimately near we can feel its heartbeat. 

We have been called out of darkness and into His glorious light.

Glory Glow

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As housings of the great God of the universe, we get the inconceivable distinction of radiating His renown to all who might encounter us. We get to trade in our tainted name and sullied stories for His almighty name and His eternally grand story. We get to move from objects of shame to objects of His desire. We get to enjoy a transformation from dirt, dust, ashes, and grime to beauty, splendor, riches, and perfection. We get to trade in our filthy rags for the bridal attire of the truly holy. We get to watch the cleansing miracle of stained black sin turning righteous pure white. God comes to dwell and brings all His glorious splendor with Him.

And unlike Moses with his veil of sadness–not attempting to hide the glow of his face but the sad reality that the glow didn’t last (2 Corinthians 3:13)–we get to see God light a flame with His tongue of fire and set this holy housing ablaze forever. And unlike Moses we aren’t meant to hide it anyway. We are His calling card. We are the ambassadors through whom God calls all man unto Himself. We have a Maker, we have a Saviour, we have an Owner, Master, and King and He has written His name on my forehead to claim me as His own. As His child I bear that name as a reflection of the One who wrote it upon my life.

The glow of His great glory–like an inferno sized tea light within the clear glass candle that is this fleshly abode–radiates through my life, love, and demeanor. I hold both the privilege and the responsibility of stoking that fire, of putting it on a stand amid the rooms that make up my days, of lighting the world in which I wander. It is His greatness I bear. It is His name I represent. It is His esteem, reputation, and honor my life is called to uphold and magnify.

His glory glow on my face. His renown on my lips. His praise on my tongue. His grandeur on the pages of my rewritten story.