Begin Again Read online

  It’s not up to you to pray your prayers. None of us pray as much as we should, but all of us pray more than we think because the Holy Spirit turns our sighs into petitions and tears into entreaties. He speaks for you and protects you. He makes sure you are heard. He makes sure you get home.

  Now suppose a person never hears this, never learns about the sealing and intercession of the Spirit. This individual thinks that salvation security resides in self, not God, that prayer power depends on the person, not the Spirit. What kind of life will this person lead?

  A parched and prayerless one. Fighting to stay spiritually afloat drains him. Thinking he stands alone before God discourages him. So he lives parched and prayerless.

  But what about the one who believes in the work of the Spirit? Really believes. Suppose a person drinks from this fountain? Better still, suppose you do. Suppose you let the Spirit saturate you with assurance. After all, “we can’t round up enough containers to hold everything God generously pours into our lives through the Holy Spirit!” (Rom. 5:5 THE MESSAGE).

  Will you be different as a result? You bet your sweet Sunday you will. Your shoulders will lift as you release the buckling weight of self-salvation. Your knees will bend as you discover the buoyant power of the praying Spirit. New beginnings. Higher walk. Deeper prayers. And, most of all, a quiet confidence that comes from knowing it’s not up to you. And you, like my young friend Hannah, can tell the pests of the world, “Do whatever you need to do. But just know this: God is on my side.”

  chapter eight

  Shelter in His Protection

  If you make the MOST HIGH your shelter, no evil will conquer you.

  —PSALM 91:9–10 NLT

  Did I just see what I think I saw? I drove around the block for a second glance. The announcement, taped to a Stop-sign pole, had a home computer look to it: yellow paper and thick letters. Our neighbors, like yours, print and post all types of flyers. The presence of the announcement didn’t surprise me, but the words did.

  FOUND: POTBELLIED PIG

  Two phone numbers followed: one to call during the day and another to call at night. I’d never seen such an announcement. Similar ones, sure.

  FOUND: BLACK RETRIEVER

  FOUND: PSYCHEDELIC SKATEBOARD

  FOUND: GOLD BROOCH

  But “Found: Potbellied Pig”? Who loses a pig? Who owns a pig? I know many pet owners, but pet-pig owners? Can you imagine providing daily care for a pig? Do pig owners invite dinner guests to pet the pig? Do they hang a sign on the outside gate: “Potbelly on Patrol”? Pig owners must be a special breed.

  Even more so those who rescue them. The sign presupposes a curious moment. Someone spotted the pig lumbering down the sidewalk. “Poor thing. Climb in little piggy, piggy, piggy. The street is no place for a lonely sow. I’ll take you home.”

  Suppose one appeared on your porch. Upon hearing a snort at your front door, would you open it? Not me. Golden retriever? You bet. German shepherd? Will do. Saint Bernard? Count on me for a few nights and a few neighborhood signs. But a potbellied pig? Sorry. I’d leave him on Jericho Road.

  I wouldn’t claim one. But God would. God did. God did when he claimed us.

  We assume God cares for the purebreds of the world. The clean-nosed, tidy-living, convent-created souls of society. When God sees French poodles and Great Danes wandering the streets, he swings his door open. But what about the rest of us? We’re prone to wander too. We find ourselves far from home. Do we warrant his oversight?

  Psalm 91 offers a rousing yes! If you need to know the nature and size of God’s lordship, nestle under the broad branches of David’s poetry.

  Those who live in the shelter of the Most High

  will find rest in the shadow of the Almighty.

  This I declare about the LORD:

  He alone is my refuge, my place of safety;

  he is my God, and I trust him.

  For he will rescue you from every trap

  and protect you from deadly disease.

  He will cover you with his feathers.

  He will shelter you with his wings.

  His faithful promises are your armor and protection.

  Do not be afraid of the terrors of the night,

  nor the arrow that flies in the day.

  Do not dread the disease that stalks in darkness,

  nor the disaster that strikes at midday.

  (Ps. 91:1–6 NLT)

  God offers more than the possibility of protection or the likelihood of protection on your journey. He guarantees he will guard you. Your serenity matters to heaven. God’s presence encapsulates your life. Separating you from evil is God, your guardian.

  During the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal special prosecutor Kenneth Starr spoke at our church. Because of the combustible days, a couple of tougher-than-two-dollar-steak US marshals monitored his every move. One walked ahead, the other behind. Between services they silently sized up all well-wishers. While Judge Starr sat in the break room, they stood at the door, the American version of Great Britain’s Foot Guards. When I asked if he minded their presence, Judge Starr shrugged. “You know, their protection comforts.”

  So much more does God’s. He sizes up every person who comes your way. As you walk, he leads. As you sleep, he patrols. “He will cover you with his feathers. He will shelter you with his wings” (v. 4 NLT).

  The image of living beneath Shaddai’s shadow reminds me of a rained-out picnic. My college friends and I barely escaped a West Texas storm before it pummeled the park where we were spending a Saturday afternoon. As we were leaving, my buddy brought the car to a sudden stop and gestured to a tender sight on the ground. A mother bird sat exposed to the rain, her wing extended over her baby who had fallen out of the nest. The fierce storm prohibited her from returning to the tree, so she covered her child until the wind passed.

  From how many winds is God protecting you? His wing, at this moment, shields you. A slanderous critic heading toward your desk is interrupted by a phone call. A burglar en route to your house has a flat tire. A drunk driver runs out of gas before your car passes his. God, your guardian, protects you from

  “every trap” (v. 3)

  “deadly disease” (v. 3)

  “the disease that stalks in darkness” (v. 6)

  “the terrors of the night . . . the arrow that flies in the day” (v. 5)

  One translation boldly promises: “Nothing bad will happen to you” (v. 10 NCV).

  “Then why does it?” someone erupts. “Explain the pandemic. Or the death of our child.” Here is where potbellied-pig thoughts surface. God protects Alaskan Malamutes and English Setters, but little runts like me? Perhaps your Rubik’s Cube has a square that won’t turn. If God is our guardian, why do bad things happen to us?

  Have they? Have bad things really happened to you? You and God may have different definitions for the word bad. Parents and children do. Look up the word bad in a student dictionary, and you’ll read definitions such as “pimple on nose,” “Friday night all alone,” or “pop quiz in geometry.” “Dad, this is really bad!” the youngster says. Dad, having been around the block a time or two, thinks differently. Pimples pass. And it won’t be long before you’ll treasure a quiet evening at home. Inconvenience? Yes. Misfortune? Sure. But bad? Save that adjective for emergency rooms and cemeteries.

  What’s bad to a child isn’t always bad to a dad. When a five-year-old drops her ice cream cone, it is a catastrophe to her. Her father has a different perspective.

  What you and I might rate as an absolute disaster, God may rate as a pimple-level problem that will pass. He views your life the way you view a movie after you’ve read the book. When something bad happens, you feel the air sucked out of the theater. Everyone else gasps at the crisis on the screen. Not you. Why? You’ve read the book. You know how the good guy gets out of the tight spot. God views your life with the same confidence. He’s not only read your story . . . he wrote it. His perspective is different, and his purpose is clear.
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  God uses struggles to toughen our spiritual skin.

  Consider it a sheer gift, friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all sides. You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colors. So don’t try to get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its work so you become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way. (James 1:2–4 THE MESSAGE)

  One of God’s cures for weak faith? A good, healthy struggle. Several years ago our family visited Colonial Williamsburg, a re-creation of eighteenth-century America in Williamsburg, Virginia. If you ever visit there, pay special attention to the work of the silversmith. The craftsman places an ingot of silver on an anvil and pounds it with a sledgehammer. Once the metal is flat enough for shaping, into the furnace it goes. The worker alternately heats and pounds the metal until it takes the shape of a tool he can use.

  Heating, pounding.

  Heating, pounding.

  Deadlines, traffic.

  Arguments, disrespect.

  Loud sirens, silent phones.

  Heating, pounding.

  Heating, pounding.

  Did you know that the smith in silversmith comes from the old English word smite? Silversmiths are accomplished smiters. So is God. Once the worker is satisfied with the form of his tool, he begins to planish and pumice it. Using smaller hammers and abrasive pads, he taps, rubs, and decorates. And no one stops him. No one yanks the hammer out of his hand and says, “Go easy on that silver. You’ve pounded enough!” No, the craftsman buffets the metal until he is finished with it. Some silversmiths, I’m told, keep polishing until they can see their face in the tool. When will God stop with you? When he sees his reflection in you. “The LORD will perfect that which concerns me” (Ps. 138:8 NKJV, emphasis mine). Jesus said, “My Father is always working” (John 5:17 NLT).

  God guards those who turn to him. The pounding you feel does not suggest his distance but proves his nearness. Trust his sovereignty. Hasn’t he earned your trust?

  Has he ever spoken a word that proved to be false? Given a promise that proved to be a lie? Decades of following God led Joshua to conclude: “Not a word failed of any good thing which the LORD had spoken” (Josh. 21:45 NKJV). Look up reliability in heaven’s dictionary and read its one-word definition: God. “If we are faithless he always remains faithful. He cannot deny his own nature” (2 Tim. 2:13 PHILLIPS).

  Make a list of his mistakes. Pretty short, eh? Now make a list of the times he has forgiven you for yours. Who on earth has such a record? “The One who called you is completely dependable. If he said it, he’ll do it!” (1 Thess. 5:24 THE MESSAGE).

  You can depend on him. He is “the same yesterday and today and forever” (Heb. 13:8 ESV). And because he is the Lord, “He will be the stability of your times” (Isa. 33:6 NASB).

  Trust him. “But when I am afraid, I will put my trust in you” (Ps. 56:3 NLT). Join with Isaiah, who resolved, “I will trust in him and not be afraid” (Isa. 12:2 NLT).

  God is directing your steps and delighting in every detail of your life (Ps. 37:23–24 NLT). Doesn’t matter who you are. Potbellied pig or prized purebred? God sees no difference. But he does see you. In fact, that’s his car pulling over to the side of the road. That’s God opening the door. And that’s you climbing into the passenger seat to begin to see how he will write the next chapter in your story.

  chapter nine

  Settle Down Deep in His Love

  May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully.

  —EPHESIANS 3:19 NLT

  Pipín Ferreras wants to go deep, deeper than any person has ever gone. You and I are content with 10 or 20 feet of water. Certain risktakers descend 40, maybe 50. Not Pipín. This legendary Cuban diver has descended into 531 feet of ocean water, armed with nothing but flippers, a wet suit, deep resolve, and one breath of air.

  His round trip lasted three minutes and twelve seconds. To prepare for such a dive, he loads his lungs with 8.2 liters of air—nearly twice the capacity of a normal human being—inhaling and exhaling for several minutes, his windpipe sounding like a bicycle pump. He then wraps his knees around the crossbar of an aluminum sled that lowers him to the sea bottom.1

  No free diver has gone farther. Still, he wants more. Though he’s acquainted with water pressure that tested World War II submarines, it’s not enough. The mystery of the deep calls him. He wants to go deeper.

  Could I interest you in a similar ear-popping descent? Not into the waters of the ocean, but into the limitless love of God.

  May your roots go down deep into the soil of God’s marvelous love; and may you be able to feel and understand, as all God’s children should, how long, how wide, how deep, and how high his love really is; and to experience this love for yourselves, though it is so great that you will never see the end of it or fully know or understand it. And so at last you will be filled up with God himself. (Eph. 3:17–19 TLB)

  When Paul wants to describe the love of God, he can’t avoid the word deep. Dig “deep into the soil of God’s marvelous love” (v. 17). Discover “how deep . . . his love really is” (v. 18).

  Envision Ferreras deep beneath the ocean surface. Having plunged the equivalent of five stories, where can he turn and not see water? To the right, to the left, beneath him, above him—the common consistency of his world is water. Water defines his dives, dictates his direction, liberates him, limits him. His world is water.

  Can a person go equally deep into God’s love? Sink so deep that he or she sees nothing but? David Brainerd, the eighteenth-century missionary to American Indians, would say so. He journaled:

  I withdrew to my usual place of retirement, in great tranquility. I knew only to breathe out my desire for a perfect conformity to Him in all things. God was so precious that the world with all its enjoyments seemed infinitely vile. I had no more desire for the favor of men than for pebbles.

  At noon I had the most ardent longings after God which I ever felt in my life.

  In my secret retirement, I could do nothing but tell my dear Lord in a sweet calmness that He knew I desired nothing but Him, nothing but holiness, that He had given me these desires and He only could give the thing desired.

  I never seemed to be so unhinged from myself, and to be so wholly devoted to God.

  My heart was swallowed up in God most of the day.2

  You will need a descent into such love on your new-beginning journey. Scripture offers an anchor. Grab hold of this verse and let it lower you down: “God is love” (1 John 4:16 NLT).

  One word into the passage reveals the supreme surprise of God’s love—it has nothing to do with you. Others love you because of you, because your dimples dip when you smile or your rhetoric charms when you flirt. Some people love you because of you. Not God. He loves you because he is he. He loves you because he decides to. Self-generated, uncaused, and spontaneous, his constant-level love depends on his choice to give it. “The LORD did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. But it was because the LORD loved you” (Deut. 7:7–8).

  You don’t influence God’s love. You can’t impact the treeness of a tree, the skyness of the sky, or the rockness of a rock. Nor can you affect the love of God. If you could, John would have used more ink: “God is occasional love” or “sporadic love” or “fair-weather love.” If your actions altered his devotion, then God would not be love; indeed, he would be human, for this is human love.

  And you’ve had enough of human love. Haven’t you? Enough guys wooing you with Elvis-impersonator sincerity. Enough tabloids telling you that true love is just a diet away. Enough helium-filled expectations of bosses and parents and pastors. Enough mornings smelling like the mistakes you made while searching for love the night before.

  Don’t you need a fountain of love that won’t run dry? You’ll find one on a stone-cropped hill outside Jerusalem’s walls where Jesus hangs, cross nailed and
thorn crowned. When you feel unloved, ascend this mount. Meditate long and hard on heaven’s love for you. Both eyes beaten shut, shoulders as raw as ground beef, lips bloody and split. Fists of hair yanked from his beard. Gasps of air escaping his lungs. As you peer into the crimsoned face of heaven’s only Son, remember this: “God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners” (Rom. 5:8 NLT).

  Don’t trust other yardsticks. We often do. The sight of the healthy or successful prompts us to conclude, God must really love him. He’s so blessed with health, money, good looks, and skill.

  Or we gravitate to the other extreme. Lonely and frail in the hospital bed, we deduce, God does not love me. How could he? Look at me.

  Rebuff such thoughts! Success signals God’s love no more than struggles indicate the lack of it. The definitive, God-sanctioned gauge is not a good day or a bad break but the dying hours of his Son. Consider them often. Let the gap between trips to the cross diminish daily. Discover what Brainerd meant when he said, “My heart was swallowed up in God most of the day.” Accept this invitation of Jesus: “Abide in My love” (John 15:9 NASB).

  When you abide somewhere, you live there. You grow familiar with the surroundings. You don’t pull in the driveway and ask, “Where is the garage?” You don’t consult the blueprint to find the kitchen. To abide is to be at home.

  To abide in Christ’s love is to make his love your home. Not a roadside park or hotel room you occasionally visit, but your preferred dwelling. You rest in him. Eat in him. When thunder claps, you step beneath his roof. His walls secure you from the winds. His fireplace warms you from the winters of life. As John urged, “We take up permanent residence in a life of love” (1 John 4:17 THE MESSAGE). You abandon the old house of false love and move into his home of real love.