"Will the New Earth have fewer resources for human enjoyment than Eden did or than the world under the Curse offers? If you're tempted to say, 'But in Heaven our minds will be on spiritual things, not coffee,' your Christoplatonism detector should go off. It's fine if you don't like coffee, but to suggest that coffee is inherently unspiritual is...well, heresy."
-Randy Alcorn, Heaven
This made me smile. I'm loving Randy's book; sometimes he just tells the truth in spite of the hair-raised yowl it generates in our religiosity-loving souls.
No yowl this evening. I have often said that in Heaven the promises of smell will finally be fully manifest in taste. Coffee, specifically, has always been my example. Can you imagine if it were to actually taste as delightful as it smells? I've always somehow been sure that it will, without having ever definitively said to myself, "we will drink coffee in Heaven."
But Randy lays it out on the table, giving a whole little 2-page section to the question: "Will We Drink Coffee In Heaven?" He's addressing a much wider question, of course, but what me made me smile so was its appropriateness to my evening.
Yesterday I ran out of coffee and, happy with my new Costco card, gleefully bought a huge bag of replacement stuff. Dunkin Donuts. One problem - I discovered this morning. The kind I used to drink at Sally's house and loved was a different blend, a dark roast. The brew I made this morning, to my horror, I hated.
Enter Jesus. Yes, carrying coffee.
Anniebugs, who has been dilligently saving her pennies to buy the food for a bbq she was throwing her worship team tonight at my house, and who thus has NOT been buying any coffees or lunches or extras... showed up this morning to pick me up for a trip to the market WITH AN ICED COFFEE for me in hand. I guess it was celebration day :)
"So, a morning coffee from Jesus, eh?" you say, still slightly skeptical.
"Yes," I reply, "and another month's supply, too, this evening!"
Ryan and Betty, whom I'd never met until this evening, arrived for the bbq with supplies in hand for the making of iced coffee. Supplies they intended to leave, as Ryan has completely renounced coffee & caffeine (as of 5 days ago). An extra-big, unopened bag of Starbucks beans now sits on the shelf above the coffee-maker, along with a collection of intriguing individual serving packages of a Korean speciality coffee you just mix with water - milk and sugar already included. He and Tim both said it's great stuff.
Hmm... Jesus? Why do You sometimes just come out of the blue and treat something so inconsequential with such care? I know it's not about coffee itself, although it is certainly fun to have Your stamp of approval on enjoying a particular taste. (I guess if You distinguish between poor and good wines, and between regular meats and "the best of meats" Is 25:6, its outlandish for me to think You don't discern the taste difference between mediocre and excellent coffees.) But in the middle of the coffee-fun you're saying several important things:
1. Your love is not generic, but of specificity toward me, including all the ways a lover would be aware of the loved -- of her tastes, of her likes, and of how to care for her.
2. Nor is Your love passive. You don't sit back, point out to Your Father how we serve and love You, but never respond directly to us. You are such a responder -- vigorously, sincerely, joyfully -- to every little move of our heart. And sometimes You decide to make it impossible for us to miss that fact!
3. Our religous ideas get in the way of reality - Your reality. Yes, we'll have resurrection bodies. Yes, everything You made is good. Yes, the delights You designed for us are not sinful. Thus Randy accuses almost the entire Protestant population of heresy -- lightheartedly and accurately! It's the old difference between sacrifice (deciding to give You what sounds super-holy and self-sacrificing of us) and obedience (believing You enough to actually act on what YOU SAY, not on what we imagine You must want).
Oh boy...Heaven does not fall into the "sacrifice" category, but the "obedience" one -- happy souls, us, who are destined to obey the truths that emerge when the most powerful and loving Being ever, has focused His heart on loving us well!
Some unimaginable things await -- a New Earth, new waterfalls, new shorelines, [insert here, when one has a few extra eons, several 700-page volumes of all that He's designed], imperishable bodies to enjoy them with, and the real Man Jesus at whose side to explore them all. It's excessively more than I could ask or think.
(Oh, and along with it, every few days, a coffee date with God. Only the best beans, please, and some raw cream to smooth the taste!)
Jul 25, 2009
Jul 16, 2009
Tactic: The Slow Wean
I sat down in my morning room yesterday, Bible in lap, and discovered something I'd forgotten. When I am sick (head throbbingly sick), the usual resistances my soul seems to develop to the presence of God just sort of melt away. A.) I don't know WHY my soul would build invisible little walls against Him whom I love so much, and B.) It's odd that sickness would dismantle them, but there it is. What He had to say, simple little verses, seemed to go straight in. I love the feeling of just being able to quickly, easily, and transformingly believe the words of His mouth. Love it!
This is in stark contrast to what the enemy has been doing around here lately, though I've only just realized it today, while sitting in the same morning room chair, with the same Bible atop the ottoman in front of me. One of my dearlings has been recently telling me about her battle with a constant sense of sin. As we dismantled the feelings and actions involved, I concluded she was under a sense of condemnation, not conviction. That conversation reoccured to me when I plopped into my chair this morning and opened the Word with a feeling that I should apologize to God.
Apologize??
"Apologize" is a very different thing than "repent". To repent is a relieving and cleansing activity; and at the end all sense of guilt is gone, replaced with a floaty, clear, almost memory-less sort of attraction to the lap of the Father. But to apologize...
Apologies can be vague, general approaches to smoothing over some rough spot in relationship, or an ongoing personality issue that causes friction. They often come and go with no actual release from guilt. What, I asked myself, do I have this impulse to apologize over?
It's that always-sense of not having done quite enough, of not being as devoted or systematic in prayer as one should be, of disappointing Him in multiple little things, and of having "missed the mark." I've never liked that summer-camp description of sin: "missing the mark". In one fell swoop enter elements of perfectionism and human striving, now deeply mixed in adolescent psyches with the concepts of actual sin and rebellion. No, "not being good enough" is not a sin to repent of; "not hitting the bull's eye perfectly" is not rebellion. (I know; I just tried a game of darts and failed utterly at it.)
Now, not everyone deals with huge amounts of condemnation, but I think it is more common than we normally observe. Particularly here at IHOP, where devotion and holiness are so sought after, the spirit of condmenation is one of Satan's giants, sent regularly against this camp and "entrenched" to a certain degree. I'm not soft on sin by any means, and I'm quick - sometimes disturbingly quick - to call for repentance. Undealtwith, habitual sin is a gangrene, keeping one from holiness and joy, and spreading destruction to other parts of the body. It must be mercilessly uprooted with the same right determination as a sheep farmer who shoots the wild dogs killing the lambs.
But that is for sin! This general feeling of not being full-force enough, not aromatic enough for God, is condemnation, not sin, and is designed to slowly wean us from the presence of God. The dearling I mentioned before could not rest in God through an entire two hours in the prayer room because she was constantly wondering if she was walking in some sort of rebellion and if that would then keep God from meeting with her there or honoring her seeking of Him...
Let our ruthless war against sin also be a war against condemnation; and may the Lord Jesus win both!
(Disclaimer...I'm not sure of the policy on using photos from the internet. The one above is linked from its original spot, and I think that's legal. If not...apologies - and compliments - to the photographer! It reminds me of how it feels to talk with God after a real bout of repentance. It's a very different feeling than lingering condemnation. If you don't feel like this photo after you've repented of a sin, it's time to go to war against condemnation! :)
This is in stark contrast to what the enemy has been doing around here lately, though I've only just realized it today, while sitting in the same morning room chair, with the same Bible atop the ottoman in front of me. One of my dearlings has been recently telling me about her battle with a constant sense of sin. As we dismantled the feelings and actions involved, I concluded she was under a sense of condemnation, not conviction. That conversation reoccured to me when I plopped into my chair this morning and opened the Word with a feeling that I should apologize to God.
Apologize??
"Apologize" is a very different thing than "repent". To repent is a relieving and cleansing activity; and at the end all sense of guilt is gone, replaced with a floaty, clear, almost memory-less sort of attraction to the lap of the Father. But to apologize...
Apologies can be vague, general approaches to smoothing over some rough spot in relationship, or an ongoing personality issue that causes friction. They often come and go with no actual release from guilt. What, I asked myself, do I have this impulse to apologize over?
- I stayed up later than I should have for the health of my body last night.
- I don't feel I accomplished as much as I needed to @ work yesterday.
- I'm still in my pajamas at 9 am, since I'm home sick today.
It's that always-sense of not having done quite enough, of not being as devoted or systematic in prayer as one should be, of disappointing Him in multiple little things, and of having "missed the mark." I've never liked that summer-camp description of sin: "missing the mark". In one fell swoop enter elements of perfectionism and human striving, now deeply mixed in adolescent psyches with the concepts of actual sin and rebellion. No, "not being good enough" is not a sin to repent of; "not hitting the bull's eye perfectly" is not rebellion. (I know; I just tried a game of darts and failed utterly at it.)
Now, not everyone deals with huge amounts of condemnation, but I think it is more common than we normally observe. Particularly here at IHOP, where devotion and holiness are so sought after, the spirit of condmenation is one of Satan's giants, sent regularly against this camp and "entrenched" to a certain degree. I'm not soft on sin by any means, and I'm quick - sometimes disturbingly quick - to call for repentance. Undealtwith, habitual sin is a gangrene, keeping one from holiness and joy, and spreading destruction to other parts of the body. It must be mercilessly uprooted with the same right determination as a sheep farmer who shoots the wild dogs killing the lambs.
But that is for sin! This general feeling of not being full-force enough, not aromatic enough for God, is condemnation, not sin, and is designed to slowly wean us from the presence of God. The dearling I mentioned before could not rest in God through an entire two hours in the prayer room because she was constantly wondering if she was walking in some sort of rebellion and if that would then keep God from meeting with her there or honoring her seeking of Him...
Let our ruthless war against sin also be a war against condemnation; and may the Lord Jesus win both!
(Disclaimer...I'm not sure of the policy on using photos from the internet. The one above is linked from its original spot, and I think that's legal. If not...apologies - and compliments - to the photographer! It reminds me of how it feels to talk with God after a real bout of repentance. It's a very different feeling than lingering condemnation. If you don't feel like this photo after you've repented of a sin, it's time to go to war against condemnation! :)
Jun 25, 2009
Rendering
At Jim and Anna's yesterday before lunch I blatantly admitted my plan to my hostess as I walked toward her back door. "I'm going to indulge in some garden jealousy." Problem was, when I got outside and actually beheld the garden, my joke turned into reality. Perfect, weedless rows. Plants that would tower over mine... I bent down to pick the needed cilantro and began singing my favorite song, just the chorus, which goes like this: "I repent. Open the eyes of my heart. I repent..."
I have a little bit of blog envy going on too. (I repent.) Annie-bug's blog constantly stays nicely updated. It seems one has the most to say when the most is happening, but that is when the least time is available to say it in. And so, during the last few weeks, my blog has been utterly silent exactly because I have so much to say. Counter-intuitive, eh?
Here's one of the things I have to say: I'm going to let $75 settle down into the dust, and I refuse to pursue its resurrection. Today was another lesson in dividing the heart from the things of this world. And at the end of it all, I decided to do what, for me, is opposite my natural instincts.
I spent $3.30 on an iced coffee to celebrate a $500 blow to my bank account. Wait--I can explain!
It's car-registration time in Missouri, which also happens to be the land of "personal property tax", a yearly tax assessed on depreciable items like cars. Crazy to begin with. I braced for the ordeal in the morning, then headed out to get my car inspected (who knows what hundreds of dollars the mechanics might find in "needed" repairs) and a property tax paper stating I didn't owe any tax, before going to actually get the new plates.
I prayed for favor, followed Lance's advice to "dress nice", and discovered the only things wrong with my car were a bad brake light bulb and a wiggly wiperblade. All told, the "repairs" only cost me $11.00 in parts, since the mechanic smiled, held a "shh" finger to his lips, and charged me nothing for the labor. First hurdle jumped (although I did wonder what he expected from me...and began to pray that the Lord would let me someday see a man be super-kind to an ugly woman--now that would be beautiful. does anyone know? what do men expect when they do something nice like that? they know they're never going to see the girl again, don't they?).
Anyway, on to the personal property tax people, where I was stridently informed that because I had never registered my car in another state, even when I moved away from Missouri, I owed taxes as if I had been living in state. On top of that, though a tax bill had never been sent to me, I owed penalties and interest for being late! I have no problem with paying the taxes...if that's the law, that's the law (as I said to lady behind the counter, "render unto Caesar..." I don't think she recognized the reference). But to pay late penalties on a bill they admit they never issued me, now that seems a bit outrageous.
Outrageous or not, by the time I got home I was $490 dollars poorer. And so I celebrated. Again -- I can explain. There is a caveat to this story:
Several months ago the Federal government had sent me a letter saying "we think we owe you more money on your tax return...please fill out this form." Shocked and fully believing they were 100% misguided, I filled it out and sent it back in. Then several weeks ago, I got a check in the mail for $450. It wasn't until a day later (and multiple conversations with Wendy in which I declared that I'd already been given my tax return and that I had to call the IRS because this money obviously belonged to a different Amy Peterson) that I remembered that little form I had filled out. Wow. At about the same time, the car-registration notice arrived in the mail and a little feeling began to form in my gut...
God had given me money ahead of time to pay the taxes I would probably owe.
Wendy insisted it was for me to buy a digital camera (at least one of my blog-readers has noticed the dearth of photos herein), but something told me otherwise...a "something" which was proved right today.
Remember how, along with telling people to "render until Caesar that which is Caesar and unto God that which is God's," Jesus also sent Peter off to find a particular little fish that was swimming about with gold-coin-provision in its mouth? He did that for me today! I guess the money was Caesar's, but God provided it for me (and from another Caesar, to boot)! Hooray! ... Well, at least some of it was Caesar's. I could really take issue with that $75 worth of penalties, and I have the address where I'm supposed to go to plead the case with the higher-ups. But being tired in general, I'm tired of such things. I'm tired of fighting my own fights. Let God fight them. I'm tired of wanting my own way. Let God choose circumstances. I'm tired of thinking I know the best way for it all to come together. Let God make His plans. And even (gasp) when it comes to injustices, I have lost the need for them to be righted here on the unredeemed earth. They will all be righted, and righted in a much better way than I could currently bring about in this world. I'm ok with waiting a bit for that "righting". So, go down to the dust, seventy-five dollars! I don't want you! I want a heart that longs for Jesus Himself instead of for my own rights, and for His heart to beat inside of me instead of for my own self to stay alive. Money-shmoney, as my sister would say.
So, I did what is foreign to me (the spending of any money at all is generally foreign to me, as my family and friends will attest), and celebrated God's ahead-of-time-goodness by splurging on an iced coffee at Higher Grounds today with Annie and Glorie (MissBe got strawberry milk, of course). Because I've noticed something else -- God's celebrations in the scriptures always seem to involve feasting. And what better way for me to feast than by pounding the final nail into the coffin containing the idolization of money?
I'm sorry there are still no photos in this blog, but I trust you'll agree with me, the gold was for Caesar. (Now if I can only remember to actually screw the new plates on the car before the old ones expire... :)
I have a little bit of blog envy going on too. (I repent.) Annie-bug's blog constantly stays nicely updated. It seems one has the most to say when the most is happening, but that is when the least time is available to say it in. And so, during the last few weeks, my blog has been utterly silent exactly because I have so much to say. Counter-intuitive, eh?
Here's one of the things I have to say: I'm going to let $75 settle down into the dust, and I refuse to pursue its resurrection. Today was another lesson in dividing the heart from the things of this world. And at the end of it all, I decided to do what, for me, is opposite my natural instincts.
I spent $3.30 on an iced coffee to celebrate a $500 blow to my bank account. Wait--I can explain!
It's car-registration time in Missouri, which also happens to be the land of "personal property tax", a yearly tax assessed on depreciable items like cars. Crazy to begin with. I braced for the ordeal in the morning, then headed out to get my car inspected (who knows what hundreds of dollars the mechanics might find in "needed" repairs) and a property tax paper stating I didn't owe any tax, before going to actually get the new plates.
I prayed for favor, followed Lance's advice to "dress nice", and discovered the only things wrong with my car were a bad brake light bulb and a wiggly wiperblade. All told, the "repairs" only cost me $11.00 in parts, since the mechanic smiled, held a "shh" finger to his lips, and charged me nothing for the labor. First hurdle jumped (although I did wonder what he expected from me...and began to pray that the Lord would let me someday see a man be super-kind to an ugly woman--now that would be beautiful. does anyone know? what do men expect when they do something nice like that? they know they're never going to see the girl again, don't they?).
Anyway, on to the personal property tax people, where I was stridently informed that because I had never registered my car in another state, even when I moved away from Missouri, I owed taxes as if I had been living in state. On top of that, though a tax bill had never been sent to me, I owed penalties and interest for being late! I have no problem with paying the taxes...if that's the law, that's the law (as I said to lady behind the counter, "render unto Caesar..." I don't think she recognized the reference). But to pay late penalties on a bill they admit they never issued me, now that seems a bit outrageous.
Outrageous or not, by the time I got home I was $490 dollars poorer. And so I celebrated. Again -- I can explain. There is a caveat to this story:
Several months ago the Federal government had sent me a letter saying "we think we owe you more money on your tax return...please fill out this form." Shocked and fully believing they were 100% misguided, I filled it out and sent it back in. Then several weeks ago, I got a check in the mail for $450. It wasn't until a day later (and multiple conversations with Wendy in which I declared that I'd already been given my tax return and that I had to call the IRS because this money obviously belonged to a different Amy Peterson) that I remembered that little form I had filled out. Wow. At about the same time, the car-registration notice arrived in the mail and a little feeling began to form in my gut...
God had given me money ahead of time to pay the taxes I would probably owe.
Wendy insisted it was for me to buy a digital camera (at least one of my blog-readers has noticed the dearth of photos herein), but something told me otherwise...a "something" which was proved right today.
Remember how, along with telling people to "render until Caesar that which is Caesar and unto God that which is God's," Jesus also sent Peter off to find a particular little fish that was swimming about with gold-coin-provision in its mouth? He did that for me today! I guess the money was Caesar's, but God provided it for me (and from another Caesar, to boot)! Hooray! ... Well, at least some of it was Caesar's. I could really take issue with that $75 worth of penalties, and I have the address where I'm supposed to go to plead the case with the higher-ups. But being tired in general, I'm tired of such things. I'm tired of fighting my own fights. Let God fight them. I'm tired of wanting my own way. Let God choose circumstances. I'm tired of thinking I know the best way for it all to come together. Let God make His plans. And even (gasp) when it comes to injustices, I have lost the need for them to be righted here on the unredeemed earth. They will all be righted, and righted in a much better way than I could currently bring about in this world. I'm ok with waiting a bit for that "righting". So, go down to the dust, seventy-five dollars! I don't want you! I want a heart that longs for Jesus Himself instead of for my own rights, and for His heart to beat inside of me instead of for my own self to stay alive. Money-shmoney, as my sister would say.
So, I did what is foreign to me (the spending of any money at all is generally foreign to me, as my family and friends will attest), and celebrated God's ahead-of-time-goodness by splurging on an iced coffee at Higher Grounds today with Annie and Glorie (MissBe got strawberry milk, of course). Because I've noticed something else -- God's celebrations in the scriptures always seem to involve feasting. And what better way for me to feast than by pounding the final nail into the coffin containing the idolization of money?
I'm sorry there are still no photos in this blog, but I trust you'll agree with me, the gold was for Caesar. (Now if I can only remember to actually screw the new plates on the car before the old ones expire... :)
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