Deeper Still by phil mccallum

Press the arrow to listen to Jesus Culture sing “You Won’t Relent.” Let the lyrics cultivate your heart before reading today’s entry.

Scripture
We no longer see your miraculous signs.
All the prophets are gone,
and no one can tell us when it will end. Psalm 74:9

Ask me and I will tell you remarkable secrets you do not know about things to come. Jeremiah 33:3

Observation
There are odd times when much is happening but God seems silent. Life can seem to move at the speed of air hockey, and your life is the puck. God’s people experienced the same feeling when King Nebuchadnezzar was surrounding their city. Siege ramps brought soldiers to the top of Jerusalem’s walls. Battering rams made splinters of the city gates. Sharp axes chopped through the carved paneling of the Temple to extract gold inlay. In the roar of battle it was tough to have devotions and to hear God speak.

Two sentences were written during those days that define their experience. Psalm 74:9 sums up how it felt from a human point of view. Their world was in the shredder and God wasn’t talking. Jeremiah 33:3, however, shows the same days from God’s point of view. Before God could bring things together, first he had to take things apart. The world they knew would be dismantled and reassembled into a better place.

Application
During times of violent change we should not expect God to say the same thing he said before. We should tune our ears to hear something new. Perhaps I cannot hear God in those times because I expect the same message I heard before. That is why I am instructed to ask God rather than to make sense of it myself. Radical alterations cannot be anticipated by what has been. God is a God of new things. He has secrets to share if I will ask him.

Prayer
Father, when the wrecking ball is swinging, help me not to imagine how you will rebuild the old and instead ask what new things you are making. Help me not to chain myself to the old thing to stop the demolition crews. Instead, I let you do what you need to do and I anticipate fresh things where the old once stood. Amen.

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Press the arrow to listen to Mercy Me sing “You Reign” as you read today’s devotion.

Scripture
‘The Lord said to my Lord,
Sit in the place of honor at my right hand
until I humble your enemies,
making them a footstool under your feet.’ Luke 20:42-43

For he raised us from the dead along with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ Jesus. Ephesians 2:6

Observation
Two million people are expected to attend today’s inauguration today. The other 300 million will look from a far distance. But at the actual moment only three people will matter.  The new President, the new first lady and the Chief Justice. No one else will be closer to the centre of things. From today forward, many will swim up stream to fight for a few moments time in the Oval Office. Most of us will never get there.

But I am guaranteed a seat of honour next to Jesus. There is something so inclusive about Christ’s love that there is a chair next to him available for everyone who believes.

The throne we sit beside is not one fought for on a campaign trail. There is no contention connected to it. Instead, it is a chair of peace. Jesus simply sat on it and waited for his Father to take care of things.

There is a peace sitting close to Jesus. Just as his position was granted without striving, so too our security will come not because of haranguing but by trust.

Application
I wouldn’t have a clue of how to get five minutes with President Obama, but I can spend this entire day with Christ. Sitting beside him stills all of my desires. He didn’t strain to exalt himself there, so neither should I. Jesus got all that he has by letting go. I surrender to him.

Prayer
Father, today bless the President coming into authority. Grant him wisdom to lead well. Be the unseen presence who stands beside him in every hour. And let me live with an awareness of where I am and whose I am. Amen.

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Press the arrow to listen to Delirious sing History Maker as you read today’s devotion about priorities.

Scripture
…I remind you to kindle afresh the gift of God which is in you through the laying on of my hands. 2 Timothy 1:6

Observation
Fire tends to go out. The crackling light in the dark chills into lumps of soot. There is a fire in me and it tends to burn out. God started it, but I must be reminded to tend it. The very work I do for him is what extinguishes it.

The problem of fire is that while the flames moves the fuel does not. The dry wood in the airflow soon burns out. Other parts could burn but the fire cannot move them. There is a tendency in any ministry to start with grand plans and then suffocate the fire in the details. The devil distracts us not by taking us away from our work but by burying us alive under it. The great danger in ministry is being busy doing the wrong things. There may be smoke, but that is no promise of fire.

Fires needed to be tended. Flipping, poking and feeding make the fire burn brightly. If I chew through a job description I will soon burn out. Each day and even each hour I need to adjust my fire again.

Application
Each morning I awaken to a cold stove. The laughing fire of the night before is now just sad ashes. Fires must be built again with fresh kindling and the coals snoozing under the ashes. I need to ask again and again, What did God last ask me to do? What am I gifted to be? What will take the kingdom of God forward today? What can I do this day of significance? What relationship will spark new life?

Prayer
Father, it would be an embarrassment for a torch runner to arrive at a packed stadium with a flame snuffed out. All my running can put my flame out. Keep my flame alive. What I fear will extinguish me is the fuel around me. There is enough of it to suffocate the fire. So today, give me skill to arrange my fire well. Set me on fire and gather the cold in to feel me burn. Amen.

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Scripture
But Peter took him aside and began to reprimand him for saying such things. “Heaven forbid, Lord,” he said. “This will never happen to you!” Jesus turned to Peter and said, “Get away from me, Satan! You are a dangerous trap to me. You are seeing things merely from a human point of view, not from God’s.” Matthew 15:22-23

Observation
How could Peter plummet from hero to zero so quickly? In one paragraph Peter was an honor roll student while in the next he is a dunce. How did he get it wrong? How can I get it right?

Here’s the secret: look at all of life from God’s point of view.

Peter was commended by Jesus not just for seeing that he is Messiah, but that “my Father in heaven has revealed this to you.” (16:17) What mattered most to Jesus was not that Peter had the right answer but how he had come to the right conclusion. Peter had taken time to ask the Father. That mattered most. Peter had been able to push past the denseness of the disciples and the criticism of the Pharisees and had seen the world just as God sees it. That meant that his heart was open, teachable, and looking beyond circumstances to God. Peter was asking and listening.

Peter was reprimanded because he was “seeing things merely from a human point of view not from God’s.” He saw the cross without the Father and could not imagine any good thing coming from that. But had he given God space to interpret it to him, Peter might have grasped the plan of salvation in advance. Abraham saw Jesus’ day and rejoiced from 2000 years before. Why not Peter just months away?

Application
I need in every life setback, to ask the question: Father, how does this look from your perspective? Tomorrow I’m going to a funeral that is very sad. A cousin of Leslie my wife died at just 31 years of age. She was newly married and had not yet had a family. It’s impossible to ignore the tragedy of a virus that destroyed her internal organs in just a few days. But there are things God can see if we will dare to look at the future through his eyes.

Prayer
Father, there is plenty of roadkill on my journey with you that I do not understand, but I ask that you would help me to see things from your point of view. I give you space and time to show me how the cross leads to the resurrection even in the events I walk through today. Amen.

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Getting ready for a drive with my Dad. He’s drawing diagrams (as normal!)

Scripture
He controls my destiny. Job 23:14

Observation
It’s Thanksgiving day, or perhaps Christmas eve. On one end of the map is your toasty home with a strong roof and a thick comforter on your bed. On the other end of the road is your parents’ house with frosted windows, golden light pouring through the panes welcoming you into aromas, meals and love.

But between your house and your parent’s home stretches a windswept interstate with chilling winds, snow drifts and gas stations with dirty bathrooms. The road is not homey. Changing a flat tire in the blustering winds you might begin to wonder if there is any love in the world. On the windswept road the memories of home are snow blasted from your mind. The realities of the highway surround you: hitchhikers alone, roadkill ignored, billboards faded and headwinds.

Kids can’t handle this. “Are we there yet?” is the first full sentence any child first learns to speak in any language. But adults can handle the lonely motorway because they know that there is a home on either end of the lonely road. Love awaits them any direction they move, so they bundle up and move ahead.

There are windswept moments of life where we are left alone with a sovereign God. Job felt God’s presence and zipped up his jacket to shield himself from the cold wind. In chapter 1 of Job’s life were warm memories of family dinners. In chapter 42 of his life there would again be new families pictures. In between was a windswept road that only Job could travel. His friends leave the service road. HIs wife wouldn’t budge, so Job walked alone.

How was it that Job made it? Was it his great faith? Probably not, because more than faith is needed to counteract the fear of being alone with the will of God. What helps us on the lonely road is love. It is not our love for God but his love for us that casts out all fear.

Job put it this way,

But he knows where I am going.
And when he tests me, I will come out as pure as gold. Job 23:10

Application
What keeps me driving long distances on black asphalt, under gray skies, through driving rain is the knowledge that there is love on the end of the highway. We need to reinterpret the sovereignty of God in these windswept moments. His will is not something uttered from an ice palace of a frozen heart of indifference. God’s will pours through his love. He is leading us home and the inclement roadway is his only way. Yes God is sovereign and because he is love sovereignty is a comforting thought.

Prayer
Father, keep me driving home. Amen.

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Kaylee and Kyler, my neice and nephew, out for a walk at Grandpa’s house at our family reunion.

What the Scripture Says

As they talked and discussed these things, Jesus himself suddenly came and began walking with them. But God kept them from recognizing him.

As they sat down to eat, he took the bread and blessed it. Then he broke it and gave it to them. Suddenly, their eyes were opened, and they recognized him. And at that moment he disappeared! They said to each other, “Didn’t our hearts burn within us as he talked with us on the road and explained the Scriptures to us?” Luke 24:15, 16, 30-32

What My Mind Thinks

Have you ever searched for your sunglasses only to find them resting on your head? Afterward all that fumbling through sticky pennies and gum wrappers under the car seat seems silly, doesn’t it? Desperation can blind us to the nearness of the answer that we seek to our problems.

Cleopas and his buddy were a gloomy pair that day. A gray rain cloud of hopelessness tracked over their heads like a speech bubble of despair. Jesus was right beside them presenting a private, leisurely 7 mile counseling session. But they were so intent to look at their feet and study the ruts in the road that they never noticed who the stranger was.

It would be easy to brush aside their blindness as the product of their own gloom. But the Bible says “God kept them from recognizing [Jesus].” God himself had blindfolded their eyes in a game of Hide and Seek!

Why would God do such a thing? Why does God hide himself from us when we are earnestly searching for the sunglasses on our heads? Why doesn’t God pop out and cry, “I’m here!” Why does he deliberately play this blindfold game with us?

The answer is found in the transcript of the conversation that day. Cleopas and friend essentially said, “God is not here” while Jesus said over and over from the Bible, “Look God is near.” Because the two bumbling disciples looked for answers rather than for Jesus they never saw that he was walking right beside them all along. Finding God may be as simple the trite motto implies: “God is nowhwere. God is now here.”

Of course God doesn’t play the game forever. He did come out of hiding as if to say, “Tag, you’re it” and then poof! disappeared from their sight. The Lord won’t play the game forever with us either. Jesus has a habit of revealing himself to those who keep walking with him.

But the point of this story is to remind us not to miss the journey with Jesus. Jesus spent several hours telling them in detail how Old Testament prophecy was fulfilled in him. It was probably one of the most remarkable talks of Jesus next to the Sermon on the Mount. Yet not one word of it is recorded because the two disciples were so busy looking for answers that they missed listening to Jesus. Sure their hearts burned, but we have no record of the words he spoke that day. There is so much of the Lord to enjoy on bewildering roadways but we can miss it if we are preoccupied looking for the answer who is walking right beside us.

How My Heart Responds

We who walk today along familiar roads with confusing questions need to remember the lesson of this story. We must not be so focused on finding answers as in discovering the presence of the Lord Jesus. He is walking beside us. The choice to become aware of Jesus presence changes everything. Could it be that the Lord hides himself because he is waiting for us to stop asking for him to restore what we’ve lost and instead to enjoy what we’ve found? Jesus says, “Stop looking for answers, start looking at me!”� Instead of saying, “Lord, where are you” we should call out, “Lord, you are here!”

What my Spirit Prays

Father, what would have happened that day if Cleopas had stopped studying his toenails and looked for a few minutes into the face of the stranger beside him? Would he have seen you in the eyes of the Lord? You hid yourself that day not in the torture of the crucified Jesus, but in the face of wholeness and health that only the resurrection could bring. Those men could not see you in the face of Jesus because they had made no room for miracles in their thinking. Help me not to miss Jesus today. Help me to expect him not just with hardship and trial but also with the face of a victor. Jesus, I know you are walking beside me right now. I am aware of it. I’m listening closely because what you have to say is more important than all the answers I could ever find. Instead of showing me the road, show me yourself. Amen.

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This round barn was a labor saving Shaker design. The haywagon could circle up to the hayloft for easy off loading. The circular design allowed for easy care of animals.

What the Bible Says

Lord, my heart is not proud;
my eyes are not haughty.
I don’t concern myself with matters too great
or too awesome for me to grasp.
Instead, I have calmed and quieted myself,
like a weaned child who no longer cries for its mother’s milk.
Yes, like a weaned child is my soul within me.
O Israel, put your hope in the Lord—
now and always. Psalm 131

What My Mind Thinks

I grew up in a church in Niskayuna, New York. Just down the road from our Wesleyan Church was the birthplace of one of America’s odd religious groups. They were called the “Shakers” and are famous for their minimalistic furniture, labor saving designs and simple view of life. They gave us the circular saw, the flatbroom and the washingmachine, so they weren’t all that bad.

Their church theme song sums up the Shaker outlook:

‘Tis the gift to be simple,
’tis the gift to be free,
’tis the gift to come down where you ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
It will be in the valley of love and delight.

When true simplicity is gained,
To bow and to bend we shan’t be ashamed.
To turn, turn will be our delight,
‘Til by turning, turning we come round right

There is a simplicity of life that comes when we pare away the externals and come to the simple basics. God knows, we do not and it is enough just to be near to him. The Shakers took this simple view of life right into the workshop where they designed their famous furniture. My father has a Shaker rocker in his livingroom. Like all Shaker furniture it is simply beautiful. The extraneous is removed, and what remains is both useful and beautiful. There is something comforting about rocking that chair because life comes down to it’s basics.

Yes we would like to get ahead, find out the future and to know all sorts of things that are smarter than we are. But the Lord invites us to the place of simplicity where we do not have yet what we want but we have him and that is enough.

Listen again to those words:

When true simplicity is gained,
To bow and to bend we shan’t be ashamed.
To turn, turn will be our delight,
‘Til by turning, turning we come round right

There are many turns in life and much bending and bowing. But we won’t be ashamed if we just live simply. Jesus is enough for me today.

What My Spirit Prays

I can’t say I’m harmonizing yet totally with Psalm 131. There is still some kicking in screaming in me. I’d like my bottle. But the Lord calls me to leave difficult questions with him and to just content myself to be with him. So I’ll look for that place of simplicity today.

What My Heart Says

Father my restless soul seeks rest in you today.

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