STEPPING INTO THE STORM

It was a frigid wintery morning, with  a northern Alberta wind buffeting the region with an intense frosty chill. The night before, a fierce bitter arctic blizzard had rolled relentlessly across the prairies. It moaned and howled like something that had crawled out of an unholy abyss. It stalked the farm, rattling storm windows and buffeted the house continuously through the long night. 

The snow covered panorama of the surrounding fields was bleakly windswept with mounds of drifting snow that were not there the day before. It was still snowing hard this morning, and  it was possible that some of the outbuildings housing the farming equipment had been damaged, so I dressed warmly to survey the impact of the storm. 

Stepping into the Storm

As I closed the front door, I heard a truck coming slowly down the debris strewn driveway. It pulled to a stop, and I recognized my neighbor Ken who stopped by to see if I needed any help after the blizzard. Farmers are a family.

He stepped out of the truck, and was followed by his big old white dog named Frost. The faithful companion loved to be out chasing down wandering cattle, lost sheep or any other living thing that he could get a bead on. We set off toward the barn, and as always, Frost ran on ahead, and true to his nature the hunt was on, only this morning, the chase was not like anything I had ever seen him do before.

Chasing after the Wind...

Frost  would leap and bark, spinning in circles, snapping at unsuspecting prey that he appeared to be hunting. I looked at Ken and he just shook his head with a sorrowful grim look upon his face.“He’s not been himself for a couple of months now. The vet thinks he is about at the end of his days…..”

Nothing else needed to be said. Frost had been Ken’s second hand on his cattle farm for a number of years. However, the old hunter's  world at present was intensely focused upon one futile objective…chasing after the wind. It was heartbreaking to see this fearless hunter, skilled cattle herder, and loyal companion, now totally disoriented, and frustrated, as he frantically barked and bit at the cold prairie wind on this wintry morning.

The Futility of a Life without God

It was Late one evening, some weeks later, and I was sitting at my desk, trying to work through several complicated life impacting issues that lay inert on the horizon of my future. I looked out the slightly frosted window, and gazed at the snow covered fields that were luminescent in bright moonlight.

Suddenly a gust of wind swirled the snow covered scene outside my window and the image of an old faithful dog, leaped before my eyes, turning this way and that, and I was struck with an intriguing thought:

Maybe the real issue for me this night was that I was spending all of my time trying to find My strategy to sort out my frustrating real life problems. In reality, like the old dog Frost, I was just chasing the wind. I had spent very little time of late in The Quiet Place. Decision making in the Will of God can only take place when His will becomes the focus of our lives.

   

Drifting from The Quiet Place

Spiritual drifting leads naturally to Chasing after the Wind. We are created to worship God in the Quiet Place where His will, not ours, becomes our strategic mind-set in sorting through life's challenging problems.

  
The drifting creates futile patterns in our life and germinates the seed of Apathy which  becomes the critical issue in Spiritual Drifting.

The Apathetic mindset grows slowly, rooting the following attitudes where we become:

Driven in All of our Activities...

“I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind.” Ecclesiastes 1:14. 

Principle: Only God gives Purpose to my life.

Exhausted with everything we do...

“Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind “ Ecclesiastes 2:11.  

Principle: Only work that I do for God’s Glory has Purpose.

Consumed by the pursuit of wealth and overwhelmed by loss of financial security...

“To the person who pleases Him, God gives wisdom, knowledge and happiness, but to the sinner He gives the task of gathering and storing up wealth to hand it over to the one who pleases God. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.” Ecclesiastes 2:26

Principle: Only God can give me a Biblical Perspective on Wealth. 

Apathetic about what used to be meaningful...

“Toil Is Meaningless, so I hated life, because the work that is done under the sun was grievous to me. All of it is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.” Ecclesiastes 2:17.

Principle: Only God can give my Work a sense of Value 

Progressively pessimistic with a sarcastic perspective...

“Then I applied myself to the understanding of wisdom, and also of madness and folly, but I learned that this, too, is a chasing after the wind.” Ecclesiastes 1:17.

Principle: Only God’s Wisdom has any Meaning

Envious for what other people have that we have lost...

“And I saw that all toil and all achievement spring from one person’s envy of another. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.” Ecclesiastes 4:4

Principle: Only God frees my Achievements from Envious Competitiveness


Decision Making in The Will of God

Always remember that God's Word is the only compass that never changes, the only Book that will always tell you the Truth, and the only life Road Map to help you navigate through whatever critical time you are experiencing right this moment. 

Decision making in the Will of God becomes a mindset when our primary goal is to please Him. Storms can dim our view of what is best to do in a given situation because often changing our circumstances becomes more important than changing our attitude in the midst of adversity.

Often we miss the beauty and majesty of the winter storms of life, because we only see the storm, and not the creative display of our God's artistic handiwork (Psalm 19). When trials come our way, they can become strategic trails to a deeper walk with God.

There is strength and courage that we receive when we immerse ourselves in God's Word. He wants each of us to discover the vital importance of spending meaningful time meeting with Him in.... The Quiet Place. 

It is only there that we discover that decision making in the Will of God flows out of our heart desire to please Him, and enjoy unhindered communion. That is where our thinking must be centered, otherwise we are more often just going through the motions in our spiritual walk and finding ourselves...Chasing the Wind.

Please take a moment to listen to this inspiring song that gives insight in how to overcome seasons of Apathy, and the challenge to resist Spiritual Drifting in our lives.

The Motions   By Michael West

Healing Lonliness in The Quiet Place

Throughout time, there has always been a deep loneliness and an empty void in the heart of man that is painful, and it cries out to be met. It expresses itself as a deep yearning that is palpable. So profound is the loneliness that it is often felt as an intense desperation to find someone or something to take the emptiness away. 



In reality, that aching inner yearning is the heart cry of the human soul that is searching for God. It awakens in a child like a tender flower, but sadly, through time, it is quelled, suppressed within and often silenced throughout the growing up years. 

The Progressive Silencing of Inner Loneliness

The stress and strain of life often anesthetizes this yearning and most people find a myriad of things to sooth and numb the emptiness within. If we were truly honest with ourselves, we all need significant times in our lives where we can experience the peacefulness of complete and total silence…. blessed solitude. Those precious Quiet moments are where we can make a heartfelt exploration of our deepest questions and pose them before the Almighty God of the universe. 

The Gentle Whisper of a Loving God

God is timeless, yet He pauses, draws near to our hearts, and listens to what we are truly saying when no one else is really listening. 

With the tragic falling away from God that took place with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, man turned away from God and lost his pure and unhindered communion with his Creator. Mankind has since been left with a spiritual vacuum and a profound painful emptiness.

The Lonely Place of the Human Heart

The Quiet Place within the heart of man, where he walked in the cool of the garden with God, became instead, a lonely place. Every person who has ever lived has experienced the awareness of a profound inner thirst, deep within the heart. 

We discover in life that no amount of money, fame, possessions or power can satisfy the longing within or fill the emptiness. History has proven that whatever man attempts to use to fill that void never brings permanent fulfillment or genuine inner peace. Instead, there is an acute dissatisfaction with what was thought to be the solution to fill the emptiness within. Life is lived in a lonely Shadowland, unseen by others, but seen and understood by God. 

Only God can Heal the Lonely Heart

  

There is an unquenchable thirst that only God can satisfy, for it is the expression of the homesickness of the human heart for intimate communion with God. Sometimes you can be missing one person, yet it feels that your whole world is a lonely place. Why is that? It is because unrequited love has awakened the deepest need within, and that is a longing to find the Edenic innocence, and complete serenity of The Quiet Place, where God walks with you in unhindered communion.

David described this yearning as a deep thirst:

“Just like a deer that craves streams of water, my whole being craves you, God. My whole being thirsts for God, for the living God.” Psalm 42:1-2

God Alone Understands our Loneliness

Loneliness is the unquenchable thirst that nothing on earth can satisfy.  In spite of all of the sentimental poetry, romantic novels, tender musical ballads, or passionate love stories depicted in movies, there is no earthly relational experience that can truly satisfy the innermost loneliness of the human heart. 

We all need love and the companionship of intimate others, but the deep loneliness that abides within can consume us, and is a result of our soul being homesick for an intimate relationship with God.

The Human Heart is Thirsty for God's Love

Jesus identified the deepest need within mankind as an awareness of an inner thirst that cries out to be satisfied, conveying that every person knows that they are insatiably thirsty, and void of a lasting  true happiness.

 

“Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.”John 7:37-38

God Reaches out to Each of Us

When God awakens our thirst for Him, He does so on an individual basis. When we  become conscious that He is drawing us to Himself, we are awakened to our inestimable separation from Him, and discover that it is on the basis of His grace and mercy, saturated by His love, that we are given access to His heart.

"By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins." I John 4:8-10 


God Opened the Door to His Heart

God has sought us through His Love, and bought us through His Grace, for we had a debt that we could not pay so He paid a debt that He did not owe.


"But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." Romans 5:8

God Invites us to be Near His Heart

When God brings us home to Himself, and He then lets us sit by the fire, and then He fills us with His comforting and all encompassing love.

 

"Come near to God and He will come near to you..." James 4:8 

The Only Way to Heal the Lonely Heart

Our deepest need is to bask intimately in the fullness of God’s love. There is nothing apart from God that can truly fill the inner void, because it was created by God, for God, and only He can dwell there. For Adam and Eve, the Quiet place was experienced in the external beauty of the Garden of Eden, and in their continual communion with God.

Jesus Christ has provided, through the sacrifice of Himself, access to the very heart of God. The Quiet Place has now become an internal reality where we, through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, provide a holy place to commune with God alone. 

"That He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the believer's what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God." Ephesians 3:16-19

The Blessedness of The Quiet Place

The Quiet Place....a blessed time where you set aside a time of uninterrupted solitude to meet with God. Precious moments where you share with Him your love and draw strength from Him to do His will. Nothing on earth can replace what God has available for you, as you meet intimately in The Quiet Place.  

 Please take a moment to listen to this inspirational rendition of, "There is A Quiet Place" Just close your eyes and go there...

                                                               

When you have no more Strength

It is never easy to go through the trials of life. This is especially so when you feel like your strength to endure them, is not equal to the storm front that is growing on the horizon and it is coming straight at you. 

Health issues, foreclosure and financial ruin, relationship conflicts, the loss of a loved one, the catastrophic impact of earthquakes, tsunamis, war and political unrest are becoming common experiences for people in every country of the world. Life Storms...

There are times in each of our lives when the reserve strength that is so readily available when we have faced other storms, is just not accessible today...right now…for this hour. Where does spiritual endurance come from, and how do we access it?

Endurance is Developed Over Time

 

In long distance running, endurance is a state of being able to sustain expenditures of energy, over a long period of time, and yet have a reserve 'kick' for the final push to the finish line. Having a good 'kick' is the result of a rigorous daily training discipline. 

The runner knows he has to disperse his energy a little at a time, so that he runs against his best time, and not the pace of the runners beside him.

The Importance of Endurance

Endurance in track and field is measured by how much overall strength and stamina is needed to win the race, and when to tap into that 'kick' to be in it to win it.

Coach Dean Hebert writes prolifically on the subject of track and field, and he is known throughout the running world. He states emphatically:

“A well planned training program is essential, and no single workout will make you a better runner or kicker. Kicking is a result of your neuro-muscular training. The fastest kick does not necessarily go to the one with the best VO2max, the one with the best lungs or biggest heart. At the end of Olympic distance triathlons, marathons, and the Boston marathon the runner with the best kick has won time and time again. The ability to kick is a function of your training. If you do not train for a kick, you will not have a strong one.”

(http://coachdeanhebert.wordpress.com/2007/07/22/the-runners-kick/makes )

The Storms of Life

In life however, running the race is not so scientifically orchestrated, mathematically calculated, or measured by a stop watch to assure the best potential strategy for winning the race. 

We Need The Quiet Place because Life is Unpredictable 

On the pathways of our lives, there is not always a warning as to when you will face a Life Storm. We just know that we are to be ready to meet it whenever it comes.

The Quiet Place Enables us to Prepare for Life Storms

Isaiah the prophet lived at a time when God’s people were struggling to survive between bondage and enslavement to the Assyrian Empire under King Sennacherib, and a subsequent domination and captivity by the Babylonian Empire during the reign of King Nebuchadnezzar II.  

Isaiah was God’s mouthpiece (Hebrew: navi ) to a divided nation which was politically unstable, fraught with violence and war, and snarled in the throes of economic chaos.

They Believed that God did not Care
  
The people of Isaiah's day felt abandoned by God, and that He had forgotten about them.

^”Why do you complain, Jacob? Why do you say, Israel, “My way is hidden from the LORD;  my cause is disregarded by my God" Isa. 40:27

They Forgot that God Never Changes

“Do you not know? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom..."Isa. 40:28

“I the LORD do not change. So you, the descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed. Ever since the time of your ancestors you have turned away from my decrees and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you,” says the LORD Almighty.” Malachi 3:5-7

  
In The Quiet Place: 

We are Refreshed by God

^"He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall;" Isa. 40:29-30

None of us will make it through this life without a list of regrets, wrong choices and times of failure, especially when we remember our youth. Thank you Lord for forgiveness and mercy.

We Receive the Strength of God

^" but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength, They will soar on wings like eagles" Isaiah 40:31a

 

Pausing to worship God in The Quiet Place in the midst of a stressful, chaotic day is like taking that first sip of refreshing cold water after a long dry run. He is right there... He is ever present.

We have Renewed Hope From God

" they will run and not grow weary (yaga) they will walk and not be faint (ya`aph).” Isaiah 40-31b

A strong ‘Spiritual Kick’ is developed by drawing daily strength from God alone. He does not grow weary (yaga) …He does not faint (ya`aph) or collapse under great duress. (Isa. 40:28). It enables us to pass on through Life Storms and not collapse in the midst of them.

The Apostle Paul emphasized:

“Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training?"  1 Cor. 9:23-24

For the spiritual runner, it isn't merely a 26 mile marathon that is before him. It is a lifetime run through dark valleys, traversing across rugged high mountain trails,  experiencing physical suffering, loneliness, loss and always the struggle with the world, the flesh and the devil.

 

A Daily Walk with God in The Quiet Place

Every moment that we spend in The Quiet Place, sometimes not even speaking, but allowing God's Word, thorough His Spirit, to cleanse our wounded hearts, we add sustainability to the 'kick' that we need when the storm is at it's peak and we are tempted to give up. 

^“Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”  Philippians 3:13-15

“Fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before  him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”  Hebrews 12:2

"I run in the path of your commands, for you have broadened my understanding.” Psalm 119:32
  
Take a few moments to watch this video presentation of, "Even if" by Kutless