Deeper Still by phil mccallum

Press the arrow to listen to “Rescue” by Jared Anderson.

Scripture
The second angel poured out his bowl on the sea, and it turned into blood like that of a dead man, and every living thing in the sea died.

Then I heard the angel in charge of the waters say:
“You are just in these judgments,
you who are and who were, the Holy One,
because you have so judged;
for they have shed the blood of your saints and prophets,
and you have given them blood to drink as they deserve.” Revelation 16:3, 5, 6

Observation
Can I praise God as much when he uses wrath as much as when he uses love?

Think of it this way. We have watched movies like Band of Brothers. In it, the bad guys are really bad. The good guys well…they are us. It’s easy to choose which side to be on and to yearn that the characters in the movie will be successful in their destruction.

Life surrounds us with a plot more moving than a movie. A battle swirls around us and the battle lines are not clear. It isn’t one nation against another or even a terrorist organization against peaceful society. There is a system that runs through our world that is pitted against anything and everything God desires. We sit next to it in airplanes, push our shopping cart through it and pass it on the freeway. It is woven into the life we live in. Yet it is strategically opposing every purpose of heaven. Good people die because of it. It tramples everything we value and mocks everything we believe.

One day God will have had enough and he will act. We must face it. God makes the bad things in Revelation happen. The disasters in Revelation are not natural ones or man made ones. How can a loving God make such terrible things happen? Because justice demands that something eventually be done. He wouldn’t be a God of love if he did not eventually stop evil. Wrath is really an expression of his intense love. The end result is that the city that opposes God is destroyed and heaven comes down to earth.

Application
The wrath of God is a heavy thought for 6:20am as I write this. But this story in Revelation tests which side I’m really on. My existence is so woven into the system that opposes God that it is easy for me to take the wrong side. Reading this story on a regular basis holds me at gunpoint and forces me to decide whose side I’m on. It is only as I can applaud the wrath of God, even when it comes against the world that I sometimes love too much, that I come to know true love for the Lord.

I read this sentence yesterday,

This is the highest wisdom: to see the world as it truly is, fallen and fleeting; to love the world not for it’s own sake, but for God’s… (Thomas a Kempis, The Imitation of Christ)

It is only as I choose sides with God that I can love the enemy I live with as recklessly as I am called to do.

Prayer
Father, help me to see clearly which side to be on. While I’m being comforted by the enemy, help me to recognize the claws under the fur. I chose your side and to rejoice with your purposes, even when they are difficult. Amen.

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Press the arrow to listen to a heart-warming song about adoption just released by Desperation Band.

Scripture
See how very much our Father loves us, for he calls us his children, and that is what we are! 1 John 3:1

Observation
There are many children who pass by me in public places. I have no urge to talk to them, to drive them to school, to buy them clothes or to take them out for ice cream, because they are not my kids. I feel no responsibility for them because they belong to someone else.

I have had the experience of adoption. Of feeling the heart expand to take responsibility for children that do not belong to me. It was a strange feeling when it came. It was as if my heart stretched an extra size longer, and there was another human being inside of my heart. I love being a father and a foster-father!

How much better it feels to the orphan to be picked out of the line for adoption. It is especially heart-warming for a gangly, pimple-faced teenager who feels too old to be picked. The person in that line-up is me or you. The word adopted means “wanted”. God, who of all human titles has chosen the name “Father”, has chosen to focus all of that loving attention on us.

Application
My adoption is not a fiction; it is a reality. I am loved, cared for, watched over, corrected and supplied because I am a son. Accepting the fact “that is what we are” is one of the most important things we can do as a Christ follower. We must lift it out of dry theology books and make a family portrait with our own picture front and centre.

Prayer
Father, let those words roll over my spirit today: “that is what we are!” I want that to take over my thinking and living today. I am a son with all of the trimmings. It does feel good! Amen.

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Press the arrow to listen to Hillsong Church sing “All for Love” as you read about secure in God’s love.

Scripture
“I will always trust in the unfailing love if the Lord.” Psalm 52:8

Observation
Who is the most confident man in the world? The person who is loved. Money doesn’t make a man confident, only anxious. Power does not make a man secure, only fearful. What gives a person courage in the face of the insurmountable is God’s love. Someone who is loved will be defended, rescued, sought after, and looked after because God has focused a loving eye in his direction.

Application
When we feel vulnerable, our thoughts should move immediately to God’s love for us. We should remember how he has shown his love by rescuing us in times past. We should put our minds at rest with the mantra, “I am so loved.” We should look at difficult days with some expectation of how the Lord will prove his love toward us again.

Prayer
Father, use the day if trouble to renew and deepen my understanding of how loved I am. Amen

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Press the arrow to listen to Israel Houghton lead “Friend of God” while reading today’s devotion on God’s intimate friendship with you.

Scripture
“All the offerings of the holy gifts, which the sons of Israel offer to the Lord, I have given to you and your sons and your daughters with you, as a perpetual allotment It is an everlasting covenant of salt before the Lord to you and your descendants with you.” Numbers 18:19

Observation
I’m curious, so the phrase “covenant of salt” grabbed my attention and dragged me through the internet to find out what it means. The words conjured up pictures of holy rituals in sacred cloisters with a salt shaker. I wanted to know more.

I learned that salt is a preservative that makes things last forever. If in doubt, ask a mummy. The Egyptians preserved bodies in natron, a salt compound scraped from dry desert lakes. Salt is to be a symbol of an eternal relationship with God to last forever. Of course this is not us first to him, but him first to us.

It gets better. Salt, apparently, was a key ingredient among friends. Even among the Arabs, close friends say, “There is salt between us.” Salt became a symbol of enduring friendships. At at special meals, friends would make covenants with each other over their meal and sprinkle salt liberally to underscore their covenant.

And it gets even better yet. God gave to the priests of Aaron all of the meat brought to the temple as offerings. He said that this meat was theirs to eat along with salt. Here’s the cool part: it would be for them as if they were sitting at a table with God as their best friend, and the Almighty himself would enter into a covenant of close friendship with them forever.

Application
The thought of God salting some grilled steaks and sharing them with me in intimate friendship is a disarmingly kind thought. That he would stoop to honour me with a salt covenant is more than I deserve. But it is everything that I want from him. And yes, it gets way better yet, because through this meal I become the salt of the earth. I keep my saltiness by keeping my intimate connection with the Father. His friendship savouring me, is what flavours every human relationship that I enjoy. I am the salt of the earth because I’ve received the seasoned meal of friendship with God Almighty. God in Christ has offered himself to me as my very best friend.

Prayer
Father, I hunger for a salt meal with you. I want this friendship with you that you describe here for the priests of old. Peter says I’m in the priesthood now, so surely Aaron’s sons would not have enjoyed more than I can today. So I take every gift from you as a salt covenant, a symbol of your enduring friendship with me. Help me to be something of the friend back to you for all of the unreserved and undeserved friendship that you’ve given to me. Amen.

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Press the arrow to listen to Hillsong Church sing “This is Our God” while reading today’s devotion about God’s love for you.

Scripture
This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. 1 John 1:5-7

Observation
There is in the centre of heaven an inferno that blazes with more intensity of heat and light than the core of a nuclear reactor. At the hub of that brilliant light are two figures. On one side is a papa, God the Father. On the other side is a son, Jesus Christ. They outdo one another in showing love to each other and preference to one another.

It would be easy to look at their consuming relationship and to feel left out. But the truth is that God the Father loves us as much as he loves his son Jesus Christ. Let that thought sink in. The Father loves me as much as he loves Jesus. It feels too good to be true, but it is. The Father calls me to live in his light as much as Jesus is living in his light. This means that he loves me just as he loves Jesus.

“No one knows the Son except the Father; nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him.” (Matthew 11:27) Jesus invites the Father’s children to live in the centre between the Father and the Son to be enveloped in their love.

In church culture we talk about “asking Jesus into your heart.” The Bible picture is the opposite. Jesus invites us to live inside of his heart. We are as Christ followers to live sandwiched in love.  For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. (Colossians 3:3)

Application
The most valuable real estate in the universe is the space between the Father and the Son. It’s location, location, location! I am privileged to live there. This is better than a penthouse overlooking Manhattan. I am loved more than I deserve. This love is what enables everything I do. I have done much to make me unloveable, and yet the Father loves me. The goal of my life is to live every moment in that gap between Papa and his son Jesus.

Prayer
Father, I am speechless when I think of what you’ve given to me in Jesus Christ. I do not want to live beneath my privileges. I want to shine with a love outside of myself. So I plant myself at the table with you and Jesus knowing that I am welcome. Amen.

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Press the arrow to listen to Jared Anderson sing “Amazed” while reading today’s devotion on the Lord’s singing over us.

Scripture
Cheer up, Zion! Don’t be afraid!
For the Lord your God is living among you.
He is a mighty savior.
He will take delight in you with gladness.
With his love, he will calm all your fears.
He will rejoice over you with joyful songs. Zepheniah 3:16-17

Observation
When a mother sings her lullaby, her baby cries and as he hears his own screams he cries all the more. But between heaving gasps, he can hear the soothing notes of his mother’s voice. Before long, he stills long enough to listen. If all goes well, he will settle down and sleep.

God is signing over us. There is music all around us, but are we listening? Our fears can deafen us to the soothing sounds of the Father. We must still to hear his voice.

The songs of the Lord over us are more than lullabies, they are songs about us. His song is a melody of encouragement. The lyrics are of our strengths, potential and future. He sings a life-song over me and as I listen my life gets put into order.

There are so many other jingles sung about my life. There are lies about myself that the enemy wants me to believe, so he puts them to the music of fear and shrieks them over me. I must accept the song of the Lord and harmonize with it.

Application
For the past year, I’ve been putting myself to sleep at night with the thought that I am greatly loved by the Lord. Somehow it brings my life into order. I need to listen in my waking hours for the hum of the Father’s voice over my life as well.

Prayer
Father, you sing over me, give me ears to listen. Amen.

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Press the arrow to listen to Third Day as they tell the story behind their song “Call My Name” just before performing the song.

Scripture
I have cared for you since you were born.
Yes, I carried you before you were born.
I will be your God throughout your lifetime—
until your hair is white with age.
I made you, and I will care for you.
I will carry you along and save you. Isaiah 46:3-4

Observation
Back in 1986 in Sindelfingen, Germany a Mercedes-Benz was born. A factory worker adjusted the hood ornament, and a white gloved driver maneuvered a 300E onto a waiting transport ship bound for the USA. Twenty-two years have passed. The old Merc has a few nicks and scrapes. The antenna doesn’t work. The odometer got stuck at 139K. But the two-decade-old classic is mine, bought and paid for. In the glove box there is a number for Mercedes roadside service. I was stuck somewhere in eastern Colorado and gave them a ring. Not only did they solve my problem, but they chatted about the history of my car and sent me a birthday card for its anniversary. Somehow as I drive my old classic I feel that white-coated Mercedes technicians are in the backseat with me.

God gives to us more than a lifetime guarantee. He who has been with us in the womb, walked with us to school, and was there when we lost our job, is the same God who will walk with us when we shuffle behind our walker and close our eyes to see him at last. There is a secure feeling of being packed in bubble wrap at the thought of his consistent and persistent attentiveness to our condition. God is there and that is more than enough.

Application
The Father does more than care for me, he will carry me. He will do more than just send kind thoughts. He will become personally involved. I’m watching this at the moment as my parents have moved into a retirement community. They threw their hearts into the kingdom in their 63 years of marriage, always putting Jesus first. Never have they lacked for a home, even now. In fact, just a week after we moved them from their home into the unit, their house sold. God is faithful to bring us through until the end.

Prayer
Today, Father, help me to walk like one who is loved. Amen.

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