| MORNING MUSING December 28, 2011 THE WELL-NOURISHED SOUL |
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| Written by Bernard Hull | |||
| Saturday, 31 December 2011 18:51 | |||
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It is only a few days till years end. Shortly we enter another year and it does no harm to take a look at what has transpired in our hearts and the churches of which we are a part. What has taken place during these past twelve months? Are we well nourished or under nourished, what is our honest assessment? Have we been engaged in helping to feed and strengthen (one of the Bible words is ‘edify’) the community of Christians to which we are connected or is the opposite more the truth? For some of us it may be that there has been a diminishing of our spiritual appetites, a dangerous sign indeed. I well remember that when we left Australia to help look after my mother in the UK, for the first two and a half years she had a hearty appetite, enjoying her food very much, then, quite suddenly things changed as far as her eating was concerned, it was a brief period of three weeks or so, we did not register it as we should have done, the sign of diminished appetite was a presage of her passing away, in a few days she was gone. We all need to be watchful concerning our spiritual hunger and thirst and not slide into the kind of complacency the Lord rebuked in the church in Laodicea. He could not feed upon their superficial Christianity, there was no substance to their profession of faith, it really was ‘lite’ and He warned them that He would vomit them out. “As many as I love I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore and repent. Behold, I stand at the door and knock, if any man hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me (Revelation 3:14-22). Should we be surprised that the theme of eating and drinking, of suppertime with Him, figure in these words? But how can we stir our living man from its sleep? If we are born of God, we can legitimately call ourselves a living person, no longer dead in trespasses and sins (Ephesians 2:1), yet if we go to sleep the appetites go into slumber too. How many of us wake in the morning and immediately head to assuage the physical hunger and thirst we feel after a good nights sleep. I am not surprised to find mention of fruit and drunkenness in the context of Christian believers falling asleep (Ephesians 5:8-18). A sure fire way to lose our spiritual appetites for God and His things is that we slide into a surfeit of the dubious foods this world offers. Our materialistic world provides a deadly plateful and those who do not eat in moderation and with great care are sure to become disinterested in the holy things of God and His kingdom, their desires diminish, satiated as they are with the temporary boost that comes of the offerings of the god of this world. As an antidote to this I would recommend a good dose of an author such as A.W.Tozer. He was a twentieth century prophet and if we do fall asleep spiritually we need the clarion call of the truly prophetic voice. We are not speaking of the lightweight Christianized fortune-tellers that seem to parade their wares in some charismatic circles but the true prophet of God who brings eternal things into glaring contrast with the superficial, transient changing fashions of this world. Good teaching alone is not enough to wake the slumbering soul, the prophetic voice from heaven, full of warning and promise, rebuke and encouragement, and that exposes and dresses us is what we need. Tozer was such a voice. And this brings back memories of my Bible College days. When I began my course I had a vague understanding of what is known as ‘Calvinism’ and ‘Arminianism,’ but I was not prepared for the discussions that some of my fellow students constantly entered into on these matters. Once or twice I became engaged in some of these and I could not help noticing that they often degenerated into arguments and man damaged his friend rather than sharpening and thereby helping him (Proverbs 27:17). After a while I realized there were elements to these discussions that simply could not be resolved by us puny human beings and also, I found my appetites for God were abating, and I knew that I should withdraw to the quiet place and fuel those in the pursuit of God Himself whilst at the same time not neglecting pondering these doctrinal matters. He alone could bring the balance of mind and heart that could rightly handle such profound subject as His own sovereignty and man’s responsibility. Perhaps in this, we can learn a little of one the more subtle ways in which our spiritual appetites can be lost and our souls become undernourished. Is it by chance that A.W. Tozer’s most published book is called “The Pursuit of God?” I also remember that he advised one of his young men who discussed a similar scenario occurring in his Bible Seminary something to this effect, “walk away from their arguments and go into your closet and seek the Lord Himself and when you leave the college they will still be back there in their discussions and you will be streaks ahead in the knowledge of God.” Yes, Tozer could be acerbic in the way he spoke, but he is surely getting to the nub of the matter in that counsel and we should heed it. A sure sign that we are still healthy is that we have not lost our appetite! Spiritually this is so as well as in the physical realm and we must examine ourselves in the light of this thought. Notice the juxtaposition of the various things Peter mentions when he writes “as new born babies long for the pure milk of the word, so that by it you may grow in respect to salvation” (1 Peter 2:2). He implies that in this matter at least we should always retain the characteristics of the newborn; crying for sustenance from mother and father! “I am hungry for more,” and without the ‘please’ of good manners! Apparently we will not lose our appetites if we love each other with pure hearts fervently (1 Peter 1:22). However, they will surely diminish if we do not lay aside “all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander” (1 Peter 2:1). Five things certain to squelch the spiritual appetites for God, and we must not be surprised that, if hurts are nursed, gossip be indulged, jealousies remain unchecked and unforgiving attitudes be justified our souls will shrivel and be near to death. It is in the face of the temptations to nourish ourselves in these wrong attitudes that the spiritual sacrifices are to be offered to God (1 Peter 2:5). We are God’s priests and the sacrifices are God’s food (Leviticus 21:6) and ours too. Remember that the Old Testament priests ate of the sacrifices (Leviticus 6:16), not all of them, it is true, but of many they had a portion. Feasting each day with God, sitting at His table and sharing His bread, the atmosphere suffused with the savory odor of lives laid down (typified by the sacrifices offered), this is the way of life for New Testament priests too. One of the ways our diminished appetites will awake is if we stay around those who are living sacrifices; we will smell the fragrance coming from souls on fire for God (2 Corinthians 2:14-16). We have all experienced this in the physical realm. We just did not feel hungry at all and then we passed by a burger restaurant and suddenly our appetites were awakened and we want to eat! God grant that in our churches there will always be souls on fire inflaming the spiritual desires of those who have fallen into soul sickness. Reflecting on the undernourished states of some Christian believers (they are so emaciated as far as the far as their spiritual physique is concerned) I cannot help but think of the fare offered in their churches. It is a pretty mean table spread before them and they must often learn to feed themselves. If we are right to think that part of the food we both give and receive comes from sacrificial lives laid down each for the other we should make certain that we are, “broken bread and poured out wine” as Jesus became at Calvary. Retaining our intactness and unwillingness to be broken for others in our Christian community and the world at large is sure to make for weakness in the spiritual body of which we are a part. Consider the wonder of God in the manger in the Person of the child Jesus. Sometimes the word manger is translated ‘stall;’ a place where the animals were fed. Jesus came to be bread for mankind fallen in the sin that had led to life states less than human. Jesus did not shrink from being food for the multitudes and neither should we. If it is true that the first and central symbol of the Christian faith is the cross, so simple and stark, perhaps following in a very close second, would be the communion table spread with bread and wine. It too is simple, speaking volumes. I wonder if even in this we allow our souls to become undernourished in that we do not sufficiently look at symbol and learn thereby. We are impoverished by the prosaic and our imaginations do not soar. Next time you are participating in the celebration of the Lord’s table, let the symbol really speak to you, remember, not only that it speaks of Him, but of our own laid down and poured out lives too. We are members of His body in which He continues to be bread for the hungering souls of mankind and wine to cheer their hearts both now and forever. Bernard of Clairvaux was a monk whose love for God never diminished. Here is a verse from one of his hymns beginning with the words “Jesus, Thou joy of loving hearts,” written seven hundred or so years ago, it lives still, and speaks mightily, We taste Thee, O Thou living bread,
And long to feast upon Thee still; We drink of Thee, the fountainhead, And thirst our souls from Thee to fill. Let us take heed to our spiritual appetites! Do the lines of this verse properly express our soul? Perhaps, in this year ahead, those who may have allowed other things to quench their hearts will find themselves in wilderness times like that young son we read of in Luke chapter fifteen. His hunger helped bring him to his senses and led to a return to his father’s house and the table so liberally set before him. There are times when Jesus draws us as He drew the multitude into the desert place to stir their appetites and reveal Himself to them in the broken loaves (John 6:5). How lavish is His table, how savory His love to our taste! And to finish the last musing for 2011 a little from George Herbert. Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin. But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack From my first entrance in, Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning If I lack’d anything. “A guest,” I answer’d, “worthy to be here?” Love said, “You shall be he.” “I, the unkind, the ungrateful? Ah, my Dear, I cannot look on Thee.” Love took my hand and smiling did reply, “Who made the eyes but I?” “Truth, Lord, but I have marr’d them; let my shame Go where it doth deserve.” “And know your not,” says Love, “Who bore the blame?” “My dear, then I will serve.” “You must sit down,” says Love, “and taste my meat.” So I did sit and eat.
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