Deeper Still by phil mccallum | Archive

How Can I Know?

No Comments 29 November 2007

Scripture
So we keep on praying for you, asking our God to enable you to live a life worthy of his call. May he give you the power to accomplish all the good things your faith prompts you to do. 12 Then the name of our Lord Jesus will be honored because of the way you live, and you will be honored along with him. This is all made possible because of the grace of our God and Lord, Jesus Christ. 2 Thessalonians 1:11-12

Observation
How can we know what God wants us to do?

First comes God’s call. If ever there were a phrase in the Christian dictionary that buzzes with tweeter distortion it is “the call of God on my life.” What distorts the call is the notion that some people have it and others do not, and that those who have it are in a Brahman class that other Christians can only dream of entering. That’s nonsense. Everyone has the call of God because that is how we were first saved. God called us out of darkness and into light. The call is a simple as Jesus’ words, “Follow me.” As life progresses Jesus will nudge us left and right with other commands. How can I detect God’s call? The voice will sound very similar to the first set of instructions Jesus spoke to us. The other sign is that it will not go away.

Second comes rising faith that something can be done. God calls us and faith prompts us to take action. We know we have found the red arrow of God’s direction when a thought mushrooms in our minds and will not go away and motivation comes to do something about it.

Application
Every work I’ve ever done for Christ had at its beginning a call and the faith to do something about it. That is what I’m looking for now. It is not enough to think that I could do it or that it needs to be done. There must be a sense that it must be done and I am the one to do something about it.

Prayer
Lord, as you called me over and over again in years past I’m listening again for your call. Help me too that I may wake up others to the call you have for them. Amen.

Direction, Failure, Overcoming, Setbacks

Mountain Climbing in High Heels

No Comments 01 November 2007

Scripture
My help comes from the Lord…
He will not let you stumble
The Lord himself watches over you!
The Lord keeps you from all harm. Psalm 121 Selected

Observation
In the flat center of the red Australian continent rises not a mountain but a solitary rock. It’s known as Uluru or Ayers Rock and it’s the world’s largest monolith. Tourists like me were scrambling up the side, grasping the heavy chain hand rail to pull themselves up to the top. The sides are steep and the guide warned us about the tourists that tumbled to their death by letting go of the chain. While we were snaking our way up the rock, other tourists were coming down on the other side of the handrail. A lady descending had been scaling the rock face in stiletto high heels! Just when I was marveling at her naivetÃ©, she stumbled and tumbled in front of me. I and another tourist reached out and grabbed her by the hand and pulled her back to safety.

God does that with me as well. I’ve done things as mountain climbing in stilettos. I’ve taken wrong roads, brought too much stuff and left the right stuff at home and have been helplessly lost. But just when I stumble a hand reaches out to brace me.

I did some research into the phrase, “He will not let you stumble.” The words literally translate, “He will not let your foot wobble.” God is watching my footwork and knows just when to step in.

How?

Because he is watching over me and keeping me from all harm. There are times we can’t see where we are going but God knows right where we are.

Application
“You are being watched” is not normally a good thing, but this time it is. I’m under God’s surveillance and that is a great comfort. The question is, am I looking up to the Lord from whom my help comes from?

Prayer
Father, this psalm is written not to ask us to do anything but to remind us of what you are doing for us. You are watching me. There are times I feel that I’ve marched off of the map. I wonder if I’ve checked in often enough for directions. Have I digressed too far? Yet, in the end I find that I was being led by hands I could not see. Even when it feels sometimes that I’m making things up I discover that you are working things out. So I trust the hand I cannot see and follow the voice I cannot hear and know that you have everything under control. Amen.

Direction, God's Will

First Call

No Comments 26 October 2007

Scripture

Now get to your feet! For I have appeared to you to appoint you as my servant and witness. Acts 26:16

Observation

It has been said that Jesus came not to obliterate our will but to liberate it. For that reason, when Saul fell to his feet at the vision of Jesus, the Master first called him to stand up. Jesus did not appear to Paul to pulverize his potential, he came to give it a new direction.

There is no greater call than the one to follow Jesus. The first encounter cannot be forgotten but it can fade. Throughout his life Paul told and retold the story of his first moments with Jesus. Because he kept returning to his first directive Paul did not end his life by propping up his feet in a Mediterranean villa. Instead his last human act was to lay his head on the chopping block because he kept doing what Jesus told him first to do.

Application

We must constantly retell the first time Jesus communicated with us so that we never live beneath our life potential. How sad on the last day if Jesus were to show me a graph of what he asked me to do compared to what I had actually achieved.

The sun was setting on a Sunday evening. I was just four years old sitting on my mother’s lap in service. Her arms were around me holding the maroon Praise and Worship hymn book as the setting sun washed her face in gold. As she sang I would lower my ear to her chest and listen to the warm tones resonate. I lifted my head to listen to the lyrics but I found I liked hearing her sing best through her heart.The song she said was this,

Take my life and let it be
Consecrated, Lord, to Thee;
Take my hands and let them move
At the impulse of Thy love.

The song reached down into my own heart. I consciously remember thinking,Â “I want that in my life.”Â With the lilting melody she went on to sing these words,

Take my feet and let them be
Swift and beautiful for Thee;
Take my voice and let me sing,
Always, only for my King.

Take my lips and let them be
Filled with messages from Thee;
Take my silver and my gold,
Not a mite would I withhold.

Take my moments and my days,
Let them flow in endless praise;
Take my intellect and use
Every powâ€™r as Thou shalt choose.

Take my will and make it Thine,
It shall be no longer mine;
Take my heart, it is Thine own,
It shall be Thy royal throne.

Take my love, my Lord, I pour
At Thy feet its treasure store;
Take myself and I will be
Ever, only, all for Thee.

Those first words of Jesus to me have not changed. In those early encounters he told us what he wanted us to do for the rest of our lives. We are not to dilute those as youthful fantasies. Jesus was in them. Instead the older we become the more we must return to what Jesus said first to us. For in those first sentences are the instructions of how we are to live today.

Jesus has come to give us new direction. He has asked us to stand up and to follow him. Until he gives us new directions we should stay with what he last commanded us to do.

Prayer
Father, take me back to what Jesus first said to me and help me to find my life purpose in that. Amen.

Direction, God's Will, Leadership, Transitions

Finding God at Mimi’s Cafe

1 Comment 23 October 2007

Scripture

From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. Acts 17:26

Observation

Where I have been in life is not regrettable. Even my zig zag wanderings and scuff marks of rebellion were designed by God to find him.

Where I am is not an accident. God has placed me like a player on the game board and it is up to me to make the next move.

Where I will go tomorrow is not a happenstance. I am being guided by a Lord so sovereign that even my mistakes will contribute to me finding where he needs me to be.

God has planned the time and the pace where I should live in any given moment.

If there is any doubt of that I need only remember dinner at Mimi’s Cafe a a few weeks ago.

I had just arrived in Colorado Springs on a job hunt. Was this the place to be, I wondered. It was a dark and rainy night. As I drove past the quaint Cajun restaurant with gables and window curtains I felt that was the place for dinner. But the turn off was hard to see in the weather and Buffalo Wings was closer. But a voice kept saying, “You need to eat at Mimi’s Cafe.”

So I u-turned and took my seat. While I was waiting for my Gumbo I took time to read a Christian book. The waitress asked what I was reading. How could I creatively explain a book about clergy burnout to a non-Christian, I wondered. She broke into my reverie announcing that she knew the author. That solved that.

A ping pong conversation ensued. She had lived in my hometown, Bartlesville, Oklahoma. That’s a 12 hour drive away. She lived on Osage Avenue. So does my daughter’s boyfriend Chris. She lived in the house next door to Chris. She was friends with Chris’ mother Cindy. She knew all about the wrestling accident that had left Chris a quadriplegic. They had visited Chris in hospital.

In a strange city, on a rainy night, I felt the index finger of God scrolling through the roadmap pointing to a place. God knows where we are. He put us there. And God knows how to get us to where he needs us to be next.

Application

Some are frightened by the sovereignty of God because they forget the love of God. God is in control of everything, even our free will. But such direction is not coercing, it is compelling because we are being drawn by love. Today I can trust him to position me on the map of life exactly where I need to be.

Prayer

Father, you have permission to maneuver me to just where you need me to be. Amen.

Direction, Endurance, Timing, Waiting

Seeing Life in Slow Motion

No Comments 29 April 2007

Scripture
“David became greater and greater, for the LORD God of hosts was with him. Then Hiram king of Tyre sent messengers to David with cedar trees and carpenters and stonemasons; and they built a house for David. And David realized that the LORD had established him as king over Israel, and that He had exalted his kingdom for the sake of His people Israel” (2 Samuel 5:10-12

Observation
Reading the Bible is like watching a DVD on fast forward. As we flip the pages years pass by for the characters in each story. David’s life seems to zip along. He starts in the sheep pen, then off to Golaith, then into Saul’s castle, then off in the wilderness from cave, to Philistines, to Keilah, to Ziklag, then his first crown at Hebron, then again at Jerusalem. But as David watched the story of his life it played for him in real time. He could not read ahead as we can so easily. There was no fast forward through commercials.

In real time David missed what God was really doing. Becoming king over all of the nation happened so steadily that David missed God’s hand in it all. But the day that King David stood in his own home that he never paid for that David realized what God had been doing all along.

There are scenic resting places on the hiking trail of our lives where we can stop and see where the Lord has been up to. We may have lived through it but like David we missed it. Much of what happens from day to day is a meaningless plodding along with our eyes focused on the next step in front of us. But then we round the corner and look over the edge and see all that the Lord has been up to.

Application

We’re not sure exactly how many years there were from the sheep pen to the throne in Jerusalem, maybe 15 or 20 years. But the message is clear enough: not everything happens at once. God is at work in slow motion as well as at high speed. We need to learn to detect the increase of God’s blessing in our lives that may be as gradual as an expanding balloon.

Prayer

Father, help me to consider your work in my life today so that I don’t miss what you are doing.

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