| Tuesday, October 19, 2004 |
| The Holy Wild |
I recommend everybody to read The Holy Wild by Mark Buchanan. Like with Generation Esther, I'd been eyeing it for a while, but the price on this one was a little steep for me. Then one day I walked in and the last copy was there. I had to take it. As with The Dream Giver.
Anyway, the book. It's probably the most powerful Christian book I've read. (Not that I have read a lot - yet.) Buchanan is a pastor, and he cuts no corners, gives you the truth frankly, no BS (that's "bullshit" for you if you didn't know xP). Many times he uses himself and his weaknesses as examples, and that sort of humility is powerful. Here is a man who knows himself and the One who made him. The subtitle is "Trusting in the Character of God" and in the book he talks about the various aspects of God's character and what each means to us, and how we can rest in them. Even in God's wrath we can rest, when we understand what His wrath means. Great wrath PLUS the ability to withhold it is what makes God God.
(I wrote everything below on a burst of energy. Most of it my own words incorporated with things learnt from the book which I'm still reading.)
Yes, here is the God who burns down entire towns in His holy anger. You ask why. Haven't you ever felt angry at someone who did you wrong? Who, despite all that you have done for them, rebelled, hurt and betrayed you? There is a difference between the filthy unreasonable anger that knocks around like a black bull in the china shop of your heart that I think we're all familiar with. The kind of anger that only makes us feel dirty and do things that are wrong. And there is holy anger, and God is full of it.
Yet here is also the same God who, instead of wiping out the entire people of the earth for the second time, comes down to us to heal our wounds, to bring us light, to be bullied and mocked and humiliated and broken and torn and crucified by us in return. Some gratitude!
This is the God who loves in His wrath, who holds nothing against us, simply because He loves us. This is the God who cuts a covenant of peace and prosperity with us, and yet never bounds us to it. And when WE break HIS covenant, makes Himself the sacrificial lamb. Let me elaborate further. In ancient times they cut covenants by cutting animals into two and placing the halves opposite each other, with a path in between. The two parties would then walk through the path together, signifying a willingness not to cross the boundaries of their promise, and also that if they should break the covenant, they would end up like the animals. When God cut that covenant with Abraham, He alone walked that bloody pathway. [Genesis 15:17]
This the God who allows pain and suffering in this world. You know what, much of this pain and suffering is the work of man, not God. Why does He allow it then? If you ask this, then maybe you don't understand what Faith is. Faith is believing and trusting even when the object of your faith seems to be doing nothing but throwing adversity in your face. Ask Job.
Yet, you have to understand that God is here beside you in your trials. He is with the starving children in Africa. He is with the oppressed woman in Iraq. He is with the beggar on the street. He is with the soldiers in Iraq, as well as those grieving families who have had sons, fathers, husbands, brothers, uncles, boyfriends, friends, lost to an unglorious war.
He is the God who, despite our repeated backstabbing and mocking and persecuting, loves us. The One whose faith does not depend on ours, or on what we think or do or say to Him, about Him. The One who loves us through it all. He is the God who cannot bear to watch from afar as you suffer, who walks into the fire with you, who covers you with Himself to protect you, rather letting Himself be burned. Who lets you hit Him again and again and again, yet who offers that bruised shoulder for your tears.
God hates. God hurts. God loves. God is faithful.
As Alvin's MSN nick once read, "Have you ever loved and lost?" Have you ever been rejected by the object of your affections, the apple of your eye? God tells you that you are the apple of His eye! Is it even possible to count how many times you have doubted, rebelled, rejected Him?
How long will this generation continue to be unmoved and impassive and rebellious?
I cannot for the life of me imagine how anyone can reject God, but that's me. I remember vaguely that a lifetime ago I rejected Him too. I was mad at Him that my life sucked, that the world was in such a mess. And yet as I look back, I realise I've never had to go without food or shelter or water or clothes for a single day. I may have had holey shoes at one point, but I had shoes. There was so much in my life to give thanks for, and yet I could not see it because I had taken them for granted. I wanted what I did not have.
When I found God, however, I got all this. I wanted love, I got love. Uncompromising, unwavering, totally self-sacrficing love. I wanted acceptance and approval, I got that. I wanted siblings, I got them. I wanted friends, I got them. I wanted to feel worthy and beautiful, I got it. I got even good and wonderful things I did not ask for, did not deserve. For I know my true nature - left on my own, I'd indulge in jealousy, envy, lust, even petty theft. My true self, if you really want to know, is ugly beyond belief. I am the sort of person who would tell the people who've provided for me all my life to go away and get lost and leave me alone. I am selfish and greedy and pathetically needy. That is my true self.
Maybe you think I'm exaggerating, but trust me, I think I know myself better than you do. But here's the thing: God loves me, just the way I am. If I was still my old, true self, He would still love me. If I were to turn my back on Him now, I would break His heart, and each piece of His broken heart would love me just as fiercely, tenderly, loyally. That is His love. Do you understand?
His love is not like that which so many of us are chasing after, temporal and ephemeral, flimsy as the clothes some wear nowadays. Selfish and motivated by need and lust. His love is true, deep, solid. You cannot possibly imagine how much He loves you. He is the One who waits patiently by the door of your heart, waiting for you to open it within. He can wait; He who existed even before time came to be. He has infinite patience. But He is longing for you, don't you realise? He wants you to love Him as much as you want that boy/girl to love you. No, EVEN MORE. INFINITELY MORE. Look, He loves you enough to give it all up for you, and I can say without doubt that He would die again for you, without hesitation, a million times if it took all that to make you realise how much He loves you.
And I could write a million words, but if you choose to keep the doors of your heart closed.
You don't have forever. How long are you going to keep Him waiting? Will you step into the holy wild?
Taste and see. He is good. |
posted by esther @ 5:33 PM  |
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| 3 Comments: |
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