Michael Koh - Verge - A Blog
AN ENLARGED PRESENT:
One aspect of the verge in which God causes us to learn His ways is by calling us to get out of "the boat" (Matthew 14:22-33). His way, scripture says, is in the waters and the deep. This involves coming out of the known. In doing so, we are exposed to that which is beyond our knowledge and experience. exposed to the unknown. Often the failure of our knowledge of God lies in the fact that we do not wait to be addressed by God with that which cannot be known apart from God"s speaking and revealing. We merely rearrange the known, or fit what we're hearing into a system of known things. But God is continually bringing us to the edge of the boat, so that as we step out of the known, we learn for ourselves that He is more wondrous than what we have known.Nov 15, 2010
There is another, perhaps even more important piece to this: When Jesus said to Peter, "Come," He was not expecting Peter to force an action or to merely move his body to some specified place. He was bidding Peter to enter more fully into the presence of God in a way that did not split his heart from his body.
We have been accustomed to thinking of waiting on God and acting in obedience as opposites. We think that an action has not been done until we make a physical movement in its direction. This causes us to often move physically but leave our souls behind. We can end up at the desired physical destination, doing even the right thing, but the soul has not been filled. This happened with Elisha's servant who ran on ahead of Elisha and the dead boy's mother (2 Kings 4). He arrived at the destination ahead of Elisha and the mother. He even had the staff with him. But he did not have the empowerment with him. His spirit had not moved with his physical legs. Elisha, on the other hand, was moving in God's time and carried with him the power of God. This may have meant waiting on God while he was moving! Whatever the case may be, Elisha moved in present time with God, understanding that in every moment of time, before he reached the destination, he was living in an enlarged present.
Meditation:
Rather than focus on waiting for something that has not happened yet, consider what God has in hand for you to engage in at the present time.
THE RIVER AND THE WATER:
Dynamics of Keeping Pace with God
In Scripture, the Holy Spirit is likened to a river (Psalm 46, Ezekiel 47, Revelation 22). The dynamic nature of God and His works is portrayed in this image of the river that is constantly in motion,and is more than a matter of water. Instead of merely following a static set of principles or values that we use to guide our movements, we, like Ezekiel, are invited to enter into the River of God, ankle-deep, knee-deep, loins-deep, until it becomes "a river that could not be crossed". Our ability to determine our own application of these values and principles is undone! In the river, all our self-determination is brought to nothing. But this is the necessary starting point.October 2010
The misunderstanding that has saddled many Christians has been the idea that we can live out the Christian life by merely being guided by biblical values. Together with this is the presumption that the Truth can be got at or even understood by an intellectual reading of the Bible. But an abstraction of the truth is not the thing itself the Truth. It is a statement about the Truth, but it is not the substance or reality itself. The Hebrew understanding of 'EMET has more to do with FAITHFULNESS rather than just propositional verbal or conceptual propositions. So we may have theological education, or Bible knowledge, or principles of Christian ministry, but that is not the same as saying that we are moving in truth.
The only way to live the Christian life is to keep pace, in sync with God, who is not stationary or impassive. He is like a river that flows through the desert. He is not some Unmoved First Mover trapped in His exalted infinity. He is moving even in His Eternity and His movement does not in any way diminish His endless majesty.
There is a misunderstanding at the root of our inability to keep pace with God. It lies in abstracting from the Bible, concepts and statements about the Christian life, divorcing them from the actual living presence of God. Thus by remaining our own persons, we try to do Christian things in our own strength.But when we separate the presence of God in all His dynamic movement, from our theology and we relate statically to Christian principles rather than to the living, present, personal God, we figuratively separate the water from the River, and end up with a deadness rather than real-time Presence. We may splash the water from the river all over ourselves, but that is not the same as being IN the river with it's dynamic force, flow and dynamism.
To keep pace with the Spirit, we will need to be immersed in the River, surrendered to it, and given over to it. In Healing Your Internal Clock, I discuss this more practically.
We will not be able to move in sync with God by extracting the water from the River and pouring it over ourselves or even drinking it. The water may have come from the River, but it isn't the River! In the same way, Truth cannot be abstracted from God and be called Truth in the true sense. If we desire to move in the dynamism and power of God's presence, we have to surrender and die! Only then will we be able to distinguish between the work of God and that of our own flesh.
Scripture is clear that it is only in His light that we see light (Psalm 36:9).That is, it is impossible to see in a manner in keeping with His movement, revelation and intention, unless we are IN His light. Yet John of the Cross saw that as this light impinged upon our human sight, it would throw our sight into what seemed to be a darkness. In that light, we have to think repentantly, giving up our tendencies to impose upon God our own ideas of truth. And we have to enter into the kingdom like little children. It is then that we begin to enter the River of God.
I Will Awake the Dawn
Awake, my soul!Awake, O harp and lyre!
I will awake the dawn.
The idea of "dawn" has always been a hopeful one that denotes the first perceptible evidence of night turning to day, darkness giving way to new positive beginnings. Yet for many, the dawn brings only a continuation of the previous day"s pain, anguish and anxiety. For these many, "dawn" is decidedly more literal: merely the extension of hours beyond nighttime, around 5-6am, the early hours before the day after yesterday. For these ones, dawn has none of the hopeful poetics associated with things getting better.
Of course dawn in the bald sense of chronological hours and minutes does not necessarily bring good tidings. It can in fact signal the demise of a whole world order as did one dawn in 1453 in Constantinople, soon to be renamed Istanbul. In the strictly chronological sense, the dawn could signify nothing except one hour moving into the next. For many, the dawn only brings more of what has been occuring so far, carried into the next day or period of time.Read in this way, dawn does not signify any sense of change for the better.
One way of looking at the present moment we are in is to recognize that we are always on the verge of the next moment or period of our lives, whether that next moment is momentous or not. For some, they are on the verge of disaster. For others, the verge precedes a momentous new dimension of existence. For yet others, the verge signifies more of the same lousy existence- they are on theverge of nothing different. We all know the heightened sense of expectation, the sensory alertness that comes when we are in a moment of anticipation, at the verge of change, especially when hope breathes through the anticipation. That feels different from when no anticipated change for the better is envisioned. Whatever the case , everypresent moment is a "verge moment" because God is always at work in bringing history, including our individual ones, toward a purposeful end.
The Psalmist then gives us a surprising thought:
I will awake the dawn.
The dawn can be awakened! If the dawn is merely the extension of time in hours and minutes beyond the night, this would not make sense. But it is clear that the Psalmist means that the dawn signifies the breaking forth of hope. To the psalmist, the dawn is a dynamic movement in time in which God"s is arising; the tide is turning on some darkness of circumstance and soul. And the psalmist tells us that he going to awake the dawn! Can this be done?
Of course if you think of the dawn, and other units of time as flat, empty seconds, hours and days, there is nothing we can do to act upon this time. But if time can be thickened and enriched by the faithful attending, responding and obeying of the Holy Spirit who is present at every single moment, then we begin to find the seeds of our dawning contained in the hours, minutes, days and dawns that we go through.Opportunitues await us in the dawn in all their divine potentiality. God, who always has more for us than we give the time of day for.
It is we who have to be awakened to the presnce of God and the seeds of the Spirit"s workings. Most of the time, we are too asleep to the miracles, destiny items, decisions and leadings that make every day a verge moment, a dawn that moves us forward; not backward. And this is where, with Calvin, we see predestination as not some static decision made at some arcane moment before the dawn of Time, but a present, intentional active work of a very personal God who is moving and forming us and our circumstances unto a desirable end-in every moment in the present. This is happening not as an afterthought, but as something that has its roots in a predestined overflow of God"s loving intention. He always has wanted the best for us. Thus, we are in the river of God"s intentions and workings. There are no lapses in His intentionality. Therefore, He does not leave us at times to stagnations and purposelessness on His part. In spite of demonic and human ill-intentioned setbacks, GOD is still moving time in a dawning, forward-moving way.
An Enlarged Present
Courtesy of Jeld-Wen Windows
The River and the Water
courtesy of Mighty River
www.stuff.co.nz
Awake the Dawn
courtesy of Cloudy Nights Telescope Reviewswww.cloudynights.com
