Rock Backside: The Place The place God Meets You

The place to Discover God

When our lives crumble, and we actually need assistance, and we surprise if we are able to even hold going, the place can we discover God?

The Bible says that God dwells in two reverse locations directly—means up excessive in his holy place above, the place we are able to’t go, and means down low among the many lowly and contrite, the place we are able to go. However it may be arduous to search out God within the mushy center.

That world of privilege and benefit, the place cash has the facility to maintain hassle out and pleasure in, the place we will be “profitable” with out God—that false heaven is a snug lure. It trivializes Jesus as a life-style enhancement. He isn’t excessive and lifted up, not everlasting and holy. He simply doesn’t rely for that a lot.

Isaiah 57:15 adjustments how we understand him, which additionally adjustments the place we need to dwell.

For thus says the One who’s excessive and lifted up,
      who inhabits eternity, whose identify is Holy:
“I dwell within the excessive and holy place,
      and in addition with him who’s of a contrite and lowly spirit,
to revive the spirit of the lowly,
      and to revive the guts of the contrite.”

Wherever he’s—that’s the place we’ll discover all that we actually want. Our Lord should be straightforward to search out means up there in his heavenly glory. The angels are awestruck by him 24/7! Our Lord can also be straightforward to search out means down low at our all-time low. So many saints can attest to that! However that center house of worldly needs, with visitors jams of U-Hauls crowding in to maneuver there daily—you and I see it in another way now, don’t we?

Now that it’s God we wish, all-time low can begin wanting just like the backyard of Eden.

King David understood. He tells of when his very life was hanging by a thread:

I cried aloud to the Lord, and he answered me from his holy hill. (Ps. 3:4)

Let’s not miss the shocking geography—each literal and metaphorical—in that verse.

Psalm 3:4 photos God atop holy Mount Zion, 2,500 ft above sea degree. As he prays this psalm, David is within the Jordanian Rift, practically 2,500 ft beneath sea degree—actually the bottom level on earth. . . . The language is meant to attract consideration each to the depths of David’s plight and to the transcendent God who guidelines over all.¹

Apparently, our Savior loves these extremes—up excessive, down low. It should imply that he’s not too wonderful to hassle with us down right here; he’s too wonderful not to care about us.

Sadly, not each place that passes as “Christian” will assist us. Some would possibly break our hearts much more deeply. However placing all our hope in the actual Jesus, we take our stand right here. “In case your faith doesn’t enable you to, it’s no faith for you; you had higher be with out it.”² Subsequently, we gladly descend to God’s dwelling place, the place he brings actual assist for actual victims.

Isaiah 57:15 is sweet information, isn’t it? Once we’ve misplaced a lot that we concern we’re caught now with a Plan B existence—that state of affairs is the place God dwells. As we stumble into his therapeutic presence, he greets us with a mild query: “Would you want a hug?” Keep in mind that father whose longing coronary heart waited for his knucklehead prodigal son to return again dwelling? “His father noticed him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him” (Luke 15:20). Would you want that hug out of your Father?

Perhaps you’re nonetheless uneasy. Perhaps you watched that what God actually needs is to chew you out: “In the event you’d been paying consideration, you wouldn’t be down right here!” However the Bible says the alternative. What God needs is to “revive” the spirit of the crushed and the devastated. What he needs is to breathe contemporary life into you. And Isaiah 57:15 will not be exaggerating. Its hopeful message will not be even distinctive. This verse is classic Bible reality.

James Muilenburg, in his 1956 commentary on Isaiah, writes, “The entire New Testomony offers a operating commentary on these phrases.”³ And John Oswalt, in his 1998 commentary, calls Isaiah 57:15 “one of many best one-sentence summations of biblical theology within the Bible.”⁴

Earlier within the Outdated Testomony, Psalm 34 says,

The Lord is close to to the brokenhearted
     and saves the crushed in spirit. (Ps. 34:18)

And “the crushed in spirit” there interprets the identical wording as “contrite” does in Isaiah 57:15. God will not be aloof from devastated folks, however he’s very close to: “The Lord Jesus is aware of what it’s to be crushed in spirit.”⁵

However Psalm 34 additionally says, “The face of the Lord is in opposition to those that do evil” (Ps. 34:16). They “do evil” by selecting ease, management, and big-deal-ness quite than the Father’s embrace. The mushy center is the place they need to dwell, exactly as a result of God doesn’t dwell there. That want is evil. And it breeds extra evils, as we see daily on this world.

Once we’ve misplaced a lot that we concern we’re caught now with a Plan B existence—that state of affairs is the place God dwells.

C. S. Lewis explains the staggering alternative confronting each one in all us:

We’re warned that it could occur to any one in all us to look finally earlier than the face of God and listen to solely the appalling phrases, “I by no means knew you. Depart from me.” . . . We will be left totally and completely exterior—repelled, exiled, estranged, lastly and unspeakably ignored. Then again, we will be known as in, welcomed, obtained, acknowledged.⁶

Here’s what Jesus stated concerning the lowly and contrite who collapse within the Father’s arms: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the dominion of heaven” (Matt. 5:3). That phrase “blessed” will not be a pious cliché. That sturdy phrase is a joyous excessive 5. Jesus is congratulating the poor in spirit. He seems at them with beaming approval and says, “Solution to go!” Who’re these fortunate guys? Who’re those that find yourself not on the bench however out on the sphere with the staff, celebrating their come-from-behind championship victory, after which within the locker room are shaking up bottles of champagne and spraying one another for the sheer pleasure of all of it, after which are going out collectively to the postgame celebration and dancing the evening away? Who will get in on that pleasure? Not the swaggering huge pictures of this world. Jesus ignores them. However the true celebrants are the poor in spirit, who don’t have anything to supply him however their defeat. He congratulates them because the winners. He welcomes them into his kingdom. They’re the place the excessive and holy one dwells.

Having him close to is our solely “success”—if that’s even the fitting phrase for it. To everybody with sufficient regrets to know that his grace is their final hope, Jesus opens up the treasures of himself without end. And the smug insiders up of their self-exalting center house? All they’ve is themselves, and without end.

Right here’s another New Testomony verse, close to the very finish of the Bible: “Let the one who’s thirsty come; let the one who needs take the water of life with out value” (Rev. 22:17). All you want is want—like burning thirst, like unhappy want. The place Christ dwells, your lack is your wealth. Don’t want it away. Deliver it to him. Carry on bringing it to him. He invitations you to return, and he invitations you to take—with out value. He has already paid the value at his cross. As Spurgeon stated, “When Jesus is the host, no visitor goes empty from the desk.”⁷

What cracks our hearts open extra deeply to his love is our lack of every little thing besides his love. There, in our devastation, he welcomes us with happiness that’s actual and function that’s satisfying. It’s the actual life he needed for us from the beginning.

This text is tailored from Good Information at Rock Backside: Discovering God When the Ache Goes Deep and Hope Appears Misplaced by Ray Ortlund.

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