Miscellaneous Monday: Psalm of Mercy - Ron

Our family is journeying through a rough season. My grandpa has had worsening dementia and within the last year he has had to be moved to a nursing home. This move has been impossibly hard for my grandma and just this weekend we moved her into the home of my parents. Being in the nursing home doesn’t make dementia go away, obviously, and my grandpa has had quite a few problems since being moved there. Sometimes he tries to leave because he thinks he needs to be at work. Mostly he doesn’t like to eat, which has led to weight loss and ultimately a few serious falls. 

This journey of ours is not unique in the story of humanity, but it is brand new for us. Ours is by no means the most heart-wrenching story, but it has threatened to overwhelm my grandmother, who had not spent a night alone in decades.

My parents are also being stretched again. Last year, my dad’s dad was killed in a head on collision. He had lived with my parents for about 10 years, so we were all very close. My parents have opened their home now for over a decade. They have done so willingly, and God has shown them grace, but it takes a toll.

It is because difficulty is not unique that I write this post. I personally know others who are dealing with unimaginable griefs. You probably know some, too. I am talking about the kind of things that make me think, “I could never make it through something like that.” And yet, people do.

Our pastor preached from 1 Thessalonians 5:16-28 on Sunday morning. Verse sixteen jumped off the page at me. “Rejoice evermore.” That’s it. And that seems really hard. But our pastor also mentioned that worship is about bowing before the Lord and giving Him the honor and awe that He is due. With that in mind, I opened a commentary to read about 1 Thessalonians 5:16.

John Gill wrote that we rejoice “in the Lord Jesus Christ, in the greatness, fitness, fullness, and glory of his person, in his blood, righteousness, and sacrifice, in what he is in himself, and is made unto his people, and in what he has done, and is still doing for them, and particularly in the salvation he has wrought out.”

He then went on to write, “there is always reason, and ever a firm ground and foundation for rejoicing with believers, let their circumstances or their frames be what they will; since God, their covenant God, is unchangeable, and his love to them is from everlasting to everlasting invariably the same; the covenant of grace, which is ordered in all things, and sure, is firm and immovable; and Jesus, the Mediator of it, is the same today, yesterday, and for ever.”

This is the shift in focus that is required time and again if we are to rejoice evermore.

A few years ago, I did a writing activity to help me focus on God and His goodness. From time to time, when my perspective needs to be realigned, I get it out and read it again. The activity was pretty simple, and I’d encourage anyone and everyone to try it for yourself.

I looked at Psalm 136, and read it several times through. There are twenty-six verses, and each one ends with: “for his mercy endureth for ever.” After reading the psalm a few times, I wrote my own psalm of mercy, if you will. Although it was an intensely personal experience, I will include the finished product below. My experience was that it is super hard to be in my feels and down on life when one is actively trying to write of ways that God has shown him incredible grace and mercy.

If you are hurting today, or just generally find it impossible to rejoice right now, could you take a few minutes to ponder Psalm 136? Would you endeavor to write your own psalm of mercy? Even if writing is hard for you, I promise that if you make the effort to think of ways God has been good, faithful, and merciful to you, you will be overwhelmed by His grace. And you will rejoice.

Listen to my song of hope, because He is good: for His mercy endures forever.
Though I rebelled and strayed from Him,
He gathered me lovingly to Himself
And no remembrance of my wrongs has He: for His mercy endures forever.

He alone is my God; my King: for His mercy endures forever.
He pours out blessings to add to his grace
Overcoming my sin and annulling my shame: for His mercy endures forever.

He planned in His wisdom to give me a wife: for His mercy endures forever.
He formed her and guarded her;
He blessed her with parents who feared Him;
Who were guided by Him while teaching her right: for His mercy endures forever.

In an act of infinite and unfathomable blessing,
He joined her to me for protecting and keeping: for His mercy endures forever.
As He promised, her worth is beyond imagining: for His mercy endures forever.
She is the fairest jewel in my crown
That I neither fashioned, nor earned, nor purchased: for His mercy endures forever.

Praise be to God for His goodness and love: for His mercy endures forever.
Praise Him for His steadfast pursuit of me: for His mercy endures forever.
Praise Him for His infinite wisdom: for His mercy endures forever.
Praise Him for His righteousness I wear: for His mercy endures forever.

He destroys the power of sin: for His mercy endures forever.
He encourages the hopeless and lifts the downtrodden: for His mercy endures forever.
He lifts up my head and counts my tears;
He conquers my enemies, my self, and my fears;
He provides for my needs in ways I cannot see;
He has counted me faithful to minister: for His mercy endures forever.

When I was not seeking His will, he ruled and overruled.
In my unworthiness, He brought me into fatherhood: for His mercy endures forever.
He has lavished upon me with His love
He has given me the desires of my heart: for His mercy endures forever.
He has filled our home with singing and laughter.
Health and security have been His provisions: for His mercy endures forever.
My children are made in His image: for His mercy endures forever.

For my wife and my children my heart overflows,
To know where I have been and what He has given,
I can only express broken thankfulness for His mercy that endures forever.

Redefining Rest – Ben

I assume you’ve read both Ron and Stephen’s post. Weren’t they great? Yes. Yes they were. But there's a problem. When my comrades do such a thorough job of covering a topic, anyone unlucky enough to follow is left with an impossible task. What am I supposed to write about now? I have to write something, or Stephen will lecture me about how Mark Twain's Pudd’nhead Wilson encapsulates the sociopolitical climate of late 1800’s Americana and why it’s my patriotic duty to finally finish it even though it’s an absolute bore to read. I perish at the thought of Sapp droning on until, with my will broken to pieces, I submit.

So, rather than wax philosophical, and rather than earn a talkin’-to, I’m going to be painfully basic. Simply put, turn off the phone or tv. Get alone and do nothing. Like, at all. Do absolutely nothing for at least 10 minutes, but preferably 30. 

Now, in a world of binging sitcoms on Netflix and social media at our fingertips, rest—the activity of inactivity—can feel like a crime. We have all the entertainment we could ever want; why would we ever purposely do nothing? Because EVERYONE needs a reset. In the history of our species, no one has been as inundated with some form of mental stimulus as we are. In fact, we’ve purposely strapped a device to our hands that can manipulate our emotions at will! Wanna be happy? Google babies laughing. Wanna be sad? Go on Instagram to see how your friends are always, all the time, constantly having a better time than you. Wanna be angry? Turn on the news. Endless tailor-made entertainment is a click away, but it comes with a price: our rest.  In less than a second, we can find four hundred and twenty-one blogs about how to lose weight, yet rest alludes us. Even before we go to bed, how many of us browse the feeds, ensuring our sleep is fitful and restless?

Turn off, dear reader. Turn off the tv. Turn off the phone. Turn off. Close the laptop. Don’t read a book. Don’t talk with anyone. Don’t exercise. Just…be…still. Give yourself enough time to get bored.

When Elijah was overcome with the world, God spoke to him, not in a boisterous wind, a cracking earthquake, or a raging fire but in a gentle whisper (1 Ki. 19:1-13).  God is still trying to speak to us today, but we’re too distracted by the dumpster fire on social media. He’s still trying to give us counsel, but we’re too enamored with some earth-shattering news. He’s still trying to give us rest from our worries, sorrows, and despair, but we’re far too easily swept up in the hustle and bustle of our 200MPH lives. In trying to fill our lives with endless activity, we’ve forgotten how to rest. 

So, stop. Listen. God is most clearly heard when we’ve put our lives on silent. 

Redefining Rest - Stephen

  

What’s your favorite Bible verse? Or, as us Christians like to ask it, what is your “life verse?” The answer more than likely varies depending on your stage in life. As a kid growing up in Sunday school my favorite verse was Judges 3:31. No need to look it up because, as you will see, my favorite as a good ol’ American boy was filled with violence and had all the elements of a good superhero story:

“And after him was Shamgar the son of Anath, which slew of the Philistines six hundred 

men with an ox goad: and he also delivered Israel.” 

 

I mean, come on. Forget “it’s a bird, it’s a plane.” It’s a stinkin’ cattle prod!

 

But as we get older our superhero-loving minds begin to be less imaginary and more, how do I say it, mundane. Weighed down by the cares and responsibilities of this life our sleep becomes less about dreaming and more about a pause from reality. Our life becomes less about adventures and more about survival. Our gaze becomes less about future horizons and more about present obstacles. 

 

This change within us reveals itself in our idea of rest as well. As a kid our idea of rest was a day at an amusement park filled with the sights and sounds of costumed characters, roller coasters, and the smell of cotton candy. Now as a “grown-up”, that same day at the very same place comes with the sights and sounds of screaming children, heat exhaustion, and the auctioning of a kidney to pay for it all. 

 

That brings me back to our favorite verse. As we grow older we like to think our life verse matures as well. Our selections now contain the lofty values of the Golden Rule, Psalm 23, or the Philippians 4:13 flavor. But do you know a life verse I never hear from anyone… including us adults?

 

It’s not a verse of the try-harder, work-smarter sort. It’s not even one of great wisdom taken at face value. It’s more of a slap-you-in-the-face-while-both-cheeks-are-fully-exposed type. It’s probably the hardest verse of the entire Bible for us more-mature folk and it goes like this:

“Be still, and know that I am God.” 

Psalm 46:10a

 

Ironically enough this is a verse that deals with rest and that’s probably why none of us choose it as our favorite. Because let’s admit something—we struggle with rest, don’t we? 

 

You see when it comes to rest,we typically have two misconstrued ideas of where to find it. First, a vacation to a favorite place—a beach, a cabin in the mountains, or a trip to Grandma’s. Second, something that’s done sparingly and sometimes only to recover from something—a sickness, a surgery, the aforementioned vacation to the amusement park. 

 

These ideas of rest are misconstrued because they both almost always fall short of providing the rest that we desire and probably need. Putting aside the amusement park example for a moment, every other place we seek for our idea of a restful vacation can be anything but that in a single moment. Why? Because our world is broken due to the presence of sin and that includes our search for rest. 

 

A vacation to the beach can be filled with stressful worries of sunburn, jelly fish, sharks, and the dreaded drowning of someone we love. A vacation to a cabin in the mountains is filled with a constant lookout for bears and mosquitoes, and, in my case, fighting constant allergy attacks to the Great Outdoors. Even if we bring back our example of the amusement park and we splurge on “The Most Magical Place on Earth” (aka Disney World) we’re still constantly praying that kidney of ours sells for more on eBay than the tickets you just bought for your family of five. 

 

So that leaves us with our second idea of rest to recover from a sickness or surgery. How many times have you woken up feeling sick and wanting nothing more than rest? Then it dawns on you that the over-the-counter medication is not enough to cure what ails you so a trip to the doctor is in store. After a wait in the waiting room, filling out an entire tree’s worth of paperwork, and being probed and prodded, you then get to go wait in another line at a pharmacy. It is then and only then that you get to rest. Just kidding. A side effect of your prescription is: insomnia. Great!!! You can’t wait to get to feeling better so you can go to work and finally rest at least in some normalcy. 

 

I struggle with this too. Even now as I am writing this I’m having a problem with this verse and this redefining of rest to include doing nothing and allowing God to do everything. My wife is currently in surgery while I wait in a parking lot until the surgery and recovery is complete. I can do nothing to help her. 

 

That truth kicks me in the seat of the pants, drops my ego a couple of notches, and loudly screams that I am NOT in control of as much as I sometimes think. All I can really do in these moments is live out a paraphrase of this verse, “Rest, and know that He is God, not me.” 

 

Yet when I truly do this and live this verse out something amazing happens. I actually find the rest I was hopelessly searching for in vacations and recovery. It’s as if when it comes to defining this word, God knew all along where true rest could be found. 

 

Someday we will get to heaven and find out that God made sleep inevitable for us so that we might rest in the One who never slumbers. We will find that He allows circumstances in our lives that are clearly out of our control so that we might rest in the One who is all-powerful. And when we accept and embrace this fact that He is in control, we will find the rest we have all been searching for. And the good news is this God of rest was honest about that too. 

“Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.  And the peace of God (aka rest), which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.”

Philippians 4:6-7

 

Rest.

In.

That. 

I’m certainly going to try. 

 

 

P.S. The surgery was successful. And I didn’t do a thing. 

Redefining Rest - Ron

    On Friday, May 28, we recorded a video with licensed counsellor, executive coach, mental health guru, and overwhelmingly likable guy Jim Urban. If you have not watched the video, and you have to choose between watching it and finishing reading this, I would advise you to click here. It is a better use of your time.

    “There’s no rest for the weary,” someone once said. I do not know who said it first and neither does Google, apparently. I was surprised to find the first several search results claiming that the saying was taken from the phrase: “There is no peace for the wicked.” In fact, dictionary.com put it this way: “The biblical passage made its way into secular metaphorical contexts by the early 1700s, taking on a humorous tone by the 1800s and conveying that work and responsibilities never cease, originally with a tongue-in-cheek implication that it’s due to their sinful (lazy) ways” (Definition of no rest for the weary, 2020).

    The biblical context is Isaiah 57:21, where God is recorded as saying, “There is no peace...to the wicked” (KJV). As hard as it may be to admit, some of us struggle to find rest or feel ‘rested’ because we are living out Isaiah 57:21. There is no peace, and where there is no peace, there can be no rest. No amount of physical rest can keep pace with spiritual exhaustion. I hope that sentence isn’t passed over too quickly, because I think it reaches the heart of the issue. 

    At the moment of salvation, Scripture tells us that our spirit is brought to life. The Holy Spirit takes up residence and we are new creations. We receive the Spirit of adoption and are engrafted into the family of God. There is the new man to put on and the old man to put off. Sin, the old taskmaster, is stripped of its power and we are empowered to choose whom we will serve. Thus begins the lifelong journey of being conformed to the image of Christ. (Read Ephesians 1 and 2 for an amazing picture of the work done for and in us at salvation.)

    This is exciting and new and there are Christians who tuck the proverbial ‘ball’ and run straight on to glory with it. Others, including myself, have fumbled this ball more times than we would care to admit. And maybe, like me, you have attempted to punt the ball away entirely. Unlike most, my foray into rebellion, drugs, and the like, occurred long after my salvation. Sin had no power; I chose to serve it anyway. I was “high and surrendering to gravity and the unknown” (Howerdel, B., Keenan, M., Lenchantin, P., & Van Leeuwen, T., 2003). This created enormous cognitive dissonance in my heart and mind. 

    In Romans 7, we see Paul lamenting the internal strife that can exist in the life of a Christian. I normally use the King James Version, but I like the way that the EasyEnglish Bible puts verse 15, “I do not understand what I do. I do not do the things that I want to do. Instead, I do the things that I hate” (2019). Paul’s experience here is understood by nearly every Christian. But this struggle is not the same as if Paul had said, “I do not care what I do. I want to do the things I should hate. I don’t care about what I should be doing.” That is where I found myself, though. I reached the point where I wanted nothing to do with God.

    Because of this, my internal struggle moved past a battle with self and into a full on war against the Holy Spirit living inside of me. I chased happiness and pleasure wherever it could be found. I chased relaxation. I self-medicated and was willing to sink to great depths if it would “give me one more medicated peaceful moment” (Howerdel, B. & Keenan, M., 2000). But even medicated, there was no peace. Apparently, no drug-induced high can keep pace with spiritual exhaustion, either. God did not let me go, and in the end, I am thankful that I could not fight the war I had made (Armstrong, A., & Graves, R., 2020). 

    What I discovered is that a messy private life brings disharmony. If you are a Christian, and rest is alluding you, perhaps your relationship with Christ is in need of upkeep. Maybe an honest assessment of your life will uncover the truth that you are harboring sinful habits. In a quiet moment of reflection, you may find yourself at war with the Creator Himself. And if we war against the One Who said, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28, KJV), we cannot be surprised when our rest is lacking.

References:

Armstrong, A., & Graves, R. (2020). The War We Made [Recorded by Red]. On Declaration. Red Entertainment.

Definition of no rest for the weary. (2020). Dictionary.Com. https://www.dictionary.com/browse/no-rest-for-the-weary

EasyEnglish Bible. (2019). MissionAssist - Charitable Incorporated Organisation 1162807. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Howerdel, B. & Keenan, M. (2000). Orestes [Recorded by A Perfect Circle]. On Mer de Noms. Virgin Records.

Howerdel, B., Keenan, M., Lenchantin, P., & Van Leeuwen, T. (2003). Gravity [Recorded by A Perfect Circle]. On The Thirteenth Step. Virgin Records.