Month: October 2023 (Page 3 of 4)

“We are conscious these days of a deep-seated hunger, a secret need in our heart’s core, to be set free from sin, from the world, and from self-centeredness, and so to be reunited with our source.  We must only be earnest about it.  The power is close at hand.”  Wow!  The words written over 250 years ago seem to have a contemporary ring to the spiritual condition of our times.  

This is a quote from a short devotional book by Gerhard Tersteegen  (1697-1769), a spiritual writer and guide of the 18th century, entitled “The Quiet Way.” He was part of the renewal movement in Germany. “Germany, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, was war-ridden and ,morally and spiritually impoverished.  A thirty-years war had cost her twelve million lives, forth-fifths of her population, and had left behind it a land of ravaged farmsteads, destroyed stock, famine, disease, bestiality and even cannibalism” (The Quiet Way -Intro).

In this environment Tersteegen’s advice was simple: “You are the child of God,  God’s nature is in you.  It has only over-clouded.  Withdraw from outward things.  Pray, and you will make contact again with God, the source of your being.  Forget yourself.  Forget your selfish desires.  Look to God.  Die to your own will, live for God’s will and you will know true life”  (The Quiet Way – Into.)

Tersteegen’s spiritual counsel can be helpful for us as we tread the spiritual landscape scattered with “mine fields” of distortion and outright unbelief.   The author’s audience was,  “harassed by war-time conditions, uncongenial companions, religious doubts, bad tempers, church divisions, uncontrollable impulses, and the will to do good which seems so often to be overruled by the bent to do evil” (The Quiet Way – Into). 

I discovered this small devotional guide in the 80’s.  I have read it many times in  my desire to be formed into the image of Christ.  I am definitely still a work in  progress.  But praise God, I have found help for the journey.  Tersteegen is one of those hidden spiritual guides of the past helping me to get both my head and heart integrated on the spiritual journey.  I want to share just a few gems from the first chapter, “God, our True Life,”  I must confess, I am able to integrate his insights more comprehensibly then in the 80’s.

The first gem: “Just stay where you are and unite yourselves with God as with something there already, that you do not need to seek!  For God is certainly with you and in you, although hidden by darkness.”  Colossians 3:3, “For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.”  For me this means – Through Jesus, God the Father has sent the Holy Spirit, the presence of the triune God into my heart (deepest center).  I do not have to go searching for the presence.  God is with me, but hidden.  Why?  So I don’t mess up the relationship.

The second gem:  “So do not go out so much into reflections.  Do not seek merely by reasoned, external methods to find sure foundations, but close your eyes like a child and confide yourself to the hidden Being who is so near to you inwardly.”  John 14:14, “My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.”  For me this means – The triune God lives at the center.  Don’t try to figure it all out. Rest as a child in his bosom within

The Third gem:  “You don’t need to search for God; you have only to realize Him.” For me – It’s not doing or thinking more, but becoming aware.   

The name “Micah” means “Who is like Yahweh?” The theme of the biblical book of Micah alternates between God’s deliverance and destruction: there are always glimmers of hope breaking into the despair and destruction. “Micah spells out the disobedience of God’s people, particularly in the city of Jerusalem, and the certain judgment of the Lord which will be thorough but will leave a faithful remnant under the leadership of God’s chosen king” (Bible Speaks Today). The people of Judah had learned “to perfect the perennial heresy of compartmentalizing their religious beliefs and separating them from their daily lives” (BST).  They were learning to live comfortably without God.  

The people did not want to hear God’s word declared passionately by the prophet: “Don’t preach with such impassioned rhetoric.  These prophets should not preach of such things; we will not be overtaken by humiliation” (Micah 2:6 NET).  The NET provides this alternative meaning: “do not foam at the mouth.” “The sinful people tell the Lord’s prophets not to ‘foam at the mouth,’ which probably refers in a derogatory way to their impassioned style of delivery.”  But Micah was intensely moved by what God had shown him: “This is why I lament and mourn.  This is why I go around in rags and barefoot.  This is why I howl like a pack of coyotes, and moan like a mournful owl in the night” (Micah 1:8 – MSG).

In Micah 2:7-8 (NLT), God challenges the people through the prophet: “Should you talk that way, O family of Israel?  Will the Lord’s Spirit have patience with such behavior?  If you would do what is right, you would find my words comforting.  Yet to this very hour my people rise against me like an enemy!”  The Lord accuses them of defiling the land with their rebellious behavior.  He tells the apostate people, “Get up, go away! For this is not your resting place, because it is defiled, it is ruined beyond all remedy” (2:10).  The land could no longer be the resting place God had intended it to be.  The land was defiled and beyond cure.  

Then, in verses 12-13 we hear of God’s message of salvation for his faithful remnant.  False prophets said God’s judgment would not come. “But Micah promised salvation beyond the judgment for a righteous remnant” (CSB). This can be received as both good news and bad news. It assures the salvation of a remnant, while at the same time affirming the destruction of Judah as a whole. “I will surely gather all of you, Jacob; I will surely bring together the remnant of Israel.  I will bring them together like sheep in a sheepfold, like a flock in its pasture” (v. 12). 

How will this happen?  As we read this passage we can shout, “King Jesus has come!”  “Micah’s prophecy telescopes two great events – Judah’s return from captivity in Babylon, and the great gathering of all believers when the Messiah returns” (Application Bible).  “Your leader will break out and lead you out of exile, out through the gates of the enemy cities, back to your own land.  Your King will lead you; the Lord himself will guide you” (Micah 2:13 NLT).  

As faithful followers who take our marching orders from King Jesus, we seem to be more and more in exile.  In the midst of the post-Christian destruction of our institutions and our former way of life, God is preserving a remnant.  As the faithful remnant, we see more clearly than ever that this is not our resting place, “It is defiled, and ruined beyond all remedy.”  My counsel: find fellow believers who have the same vision and follow King Jesus into the new land.