First Advent Meditation: Jesus is Speaking

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government will be upon his shoulder, and his name will be called

“Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” Isaiah 9:6

He is Wonderful Counselor. Two observations: 

First, this is the only one of the four names that includes a verb.  The other three names consist of nouns and an adjective.  Counselor is actually a verbal participle. The emphasis is on the action. It is not - wonderful is the counselor (though that is also true) but more specifically - wonderful is the counseling.

And secondly, the word wonderful had a different connotation for Isaiah. For us today we can enjoy fresh baked cookies from the oven and declare, "They are wonderful!" - meaning that they are very much and very easily to our liking. But Isaiah uses the word peh'-leh which means something that is hard to understand yet is good. In other words, there is a kind of good complexity in Jesus' counsel that makes it wonderful but not always simple.

So why is this important to know?

1.Jesus is speaking - Are you listening?

Jesus' counsel continues to speak to our hearts. His sermon on the mount is as relevant for today as it was for His first disciples. His question, "Who do you say that I am?" continues to be asked and requires an answer from every person. His final declaration to be His witnesses in all the earth has not changed for 2,000 years. Jesus is speaking; He is giving counsel, and His words are good. But are you listening?

Many people spend most of their lives telling Jesus what they want rather than listening to what He wants for them. Jesus is not a counselor that sits back and passively listens to you, hoping you will feel better. He counsels us - able to pinpoint the heart of the matter immediately. For many that can be frightening. But for those who are courageous enough to listen and receive, it is life-giving.

I'm wondering today if you think Jesus has become silent in your life but actually the problem is that you have stopped listening to Him? 

2.Jesus is speaking - Are you confused?

Isaiah tells us that His counseling is hard to understand. It is Wonderful. It is good but requires faith to walk in it - trusting that He is unfolding purposes that are beyond our ability to comprehend. 

Jesus does not delight in keeping us confused. It's not a manipulative head game. Rather, He delights in holding us through the confusion until clarity emerges and peace, once again, floods our hearts. The wonder and mystery of Jesus is there to constantly remind us that the One who is above and over all things is fully sufficient but not always fully understood.

I'm wondering today if your confusion can become access to Jesus instead of a barrier to Jesus? If that which you have been interpreting as bad is actually a hard-to-understand-but-good path back into His loving and outstretched arms?

He is a Wonderful Counselor.

Ex nihilo,

R.J. Rhoden

Enough

Is Emmanuel (God with us) enough? The culture of outcomes, deliverables, ROI's, and consumerism is crushing our souls - invading our spaces of worship and sacred practices like a hostile take-over. No wonder we are spiritually malnourished and far from being whole.

God told us upfront that He would be with us always - a rare promise in Scripture for all for all time. Why is it not enough? It flows from our lips with responses of "Amen" from our listeners but then bounces off our hearts. Perhaps our obsession with tangible empirical results cloud our ability to truly enjoy His Presence?

It has for me. And I want to change. I want to know the joy of being with Him without immediately wondering how that might translate into "wins" for the Kingdom. He has already won.

Emmanuel is not an excuse to be lazy or guilty of poor stewardship. We have a Great Commission that is action oriented. But He proclaimed Emmanuel before He proclaimed the Great Commission. We tend to proclaim it in the opposite order. Rightly practiced, our steps should be birthed out of His Presence. But mostly practiced, our steps are great in number long before we consider His Presence.

I have a long way to go before I fully develop this spiritual practice. But it is essential that I do. Maybe for you too? 

May Enough be reclaimed in our hearts and in the hearts of our churches.

Ex nihilo,

R.J. Rhoden

   

 

An Ex-Expert on God

In the beginning I believed that my study of God would make me an expert on God. That my submission to His refining fire and discipline would get me access to the inner workings of His Rule and Authority. That I might even be summoned at times to give spiritual insight and explanation of the Lord's Ways. God, of course, needs another Daniel, right?

But it's now 35 years later.  And the outcomes I anticipated are different from His outcomes. In retrospect my original desired outcomes were purely self-serving.  They put me at the center of it all rather than the Lord. I was quietly, even somewhat unknowingly, hoping that I would increase and He would decrease - the very opposite of what is supposed to happen.

Apart from the gift of Salvation, one of the greatest expressions of grace and mercy from our Lord is His patience in allowing our secret motives to change. He steadfastly grants us space and time to fully and truly move Him to the center of our lives - even though we spend years proclaiming He is already there. In the spirit of confession, I even struggle as I write this, to wonder if I'm writing it for personal affirmation or to purely affirm His Lordship in my life.  Maybe you can relate to that tension?

So where does this leave me/you? First, my pursuit and desire to know God has not lessened in the least bit.  If anything, it is intensifying with time.  But my understanding of all this is coming more into alignment with His desires not mine. Specifically, His Process in me is becoming more important than an obsession with His Purposes for me. Process-First faith seems to always keep Jesus at the center while Purpose-First or Performance-First faith seems to always keep me/you at the center. Process, Purpose, and Performance are all important and good as long as Process leads to Purpose and Performance - not the reverse. Otherwise, we have hearts that will continually drift towards self-promotion.

Secondly, God is not asking us to become an expert on Him. He is telling us that He is an expert on us. That He created us; loves us; knows us; and receives us because He paid a Ransom for us.  He is telling us that we can enjoy spiritual intimacy with Him that will then give birth to all we need as well as keep us away from all that we do not need. Father, may that be enough. May we resist the temptation to blend temporal and worldly additives to the purity of Your Presence.

Thirdly, there is a kind of powerful clarity and comfort in the mystery of God. While most of the time mystery leads to confusion, it need not do so with the Lord. His mysterious ways are not for the purposes of cruelty, as are the powers of this world. Rather, they are due to His Greatness and Love for us which invite us to be enveloped by that which is magnificently bigger and better for us - even when it doesn't feel that way. Thank you, Father, for your Glorious Mystique.

And finally, God does not want another Daniel.  He wants another you - the one He created and designed while you were in the womb.  The one He loves and desires to walk with as He once did with Adam and Eve. The one who is not here by accident but by His Grace.  The one who will continually experience uprootedness apart from Him.  The one He is, right now, patiently in Process with for your benefit.

From one Ex-Expert on God to another.

Ex nihilo,

R.J. Rhoden