Just this sweet reminder from the pen of Amy Carmichael– over a century old, but so very comforting to us at the beginning of a new year:

“Thou knewest me before I was;
I am all open unto Thee;
And yet Thou lovest me, because–
Thou, my Lord, lovest me.

I may not fear, for to the end
Thou lovest. Who save only Thee,
The sinner’s Saviour and his Friend,
Would set his love on me?

And on Thee now my heart is set;
Thy name is music unto me.
O help me never to forget
That I am loved by Thee.”

Amen and let us walk boldly on, into whatever may come.

Faith is an intangible tricky business– hard to measure and to muster. If faith is the currency of the spiritual realms, then we consumers want enough to live comfortably.  But there is no clear formula on how to make it all work, and sometimes it feels like a mysterious puzzle to solve. Apparently, faith the size of a mustard seed is sufficient, which is good news, but how do we go about using it to move mountains?

And the size of the seed isn’t even really the point of Jesus’ metaphor. When He told His followers that their unbelief was hindering them from casting out demons, the word means “want of confidence in Christ’s power.” All they needed was a sliver of reliance on Him, a tender shoot of hope, a reaching up in anticipation for what He might do. Because here’s the thing: when we reach out to Him with the little we have, in trust that He can do enough for the situation, amazing things tend to happen.  Thousands have a picnic on the grass from one little boy’s lunch. When a woman offers God’s prophet the very last of what she has, her little jar of oil has enough to make daily bread for two years. And Jesus said that “Nothing would be impossible” (Matthew 17:20) in our lives if we offer up our small faith for Him to use as He sees fit. It’s our humble dependence on His sufficiency, and the active willing obedience in the little seed that Jesus is pointing at.

Jesus talked about a mustard seed in another setting as well, and again, we would not want to stop at the observation of the seed’s size. He says, “How can I describe the Kingdom of God? What story should I use to illustrate it? It is like a mustard seed planted in the ground. It is the smallest of all seeds, but it becomes the largest of all garden plants; it grows long branches, and birds can make nests in its shade.” (Mark 4:30-32) Jesus’ kingdom may have started in one believing heart, but it has grown to every corner of the earth and will continue to increase until His return, because “…at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue declare that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (Philippians 2:10-11) When God’s overarching plans are at work, our small bit of faith is just one cog in the wheel– our vote of confidence that says count me in.

And that kind of faith is what works, though not at all the way we expected when we first started hunting for answers. It has little to do with getting the things we desire. More accurately, it is desiring God and His glory more than anything else– so that what we get is sufficient, if He is there. It’s trust in Who God is: that He is good, that He loves me, that He is enough for me. It’s trust that can hand over whatever we have, and know He will bless it and make good use of it to benefit others. It’s trust that steps out in obedience to whatever God is asking of me today. And no thing is too small and ordinary, or too big and difficult for this kind of faith, though all it be is the size of a mustard seed.

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“Dear friends….Work hard to show the results of your salvation, obeying God with deep reverence and fear. For God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases Him.” (Philippians 2:12-13)

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“For it is not true that a slight and feeble faith does suffice….Only a faith which is a living and a growing power, like the mustard seed in the soil, will triumph over the difficulties to be met and mastered….It will uproot great evil in God’s Name and strength….It will upraise noble structures of good, when inspired at the same source.” (W. Clarkson)

Wrestling with faith these past couple weeks, looking at our slippery trend toward Self-reliance and feeling hard all the ways mistrust gets in the way of knowing God is Enough. When God starts pointing at the same truths different places in the Scriptures, and small groups begin to intersect, discussing the same issues in many different contexts, I can’t think it is pure coincidence. It is almost like a spiritual spotlight: pay attention, there is something to learn here.

Someone pointed out last week that when God meets the tangible need we feel most strongly, it is easy to land there, and maybe miss the deeper point He wants to make. Like in the narrative from ancient Zarephath, a village by the sea growing desperate for water, when daily bread seemed a big-enough miracle of life for a starving widow and her son. How could she predict that God wanted to raise that boy from the dead in her own home, to prove Himself Lord over Life and Death? When she accepted the prophet Elijah into her home for the sake of a bottomless flour bin, did she ever think that someday she would be saying, “Now I know that you are a man of God, and that the word of the Lord in your mouth is truth”? (1 Kings 17:24) I wonder how often my answered prayer is only the beginning; while I am ready to close the doors, check this lesson off the list and start celebrating, His Spirit is merely laying the groundwork of faith, preparing to shake the house down around my ears and stretch me in ways I never dreamed. It makes me think that the problem is not so much with my faith as it is with my image of God.

Maybe when I limit God to what I can understand or accept, I am also limiting the size of the faith I can have. A self-crippling act of short-sighted Self-sufficiency, defining God in terms of what I see and know. But if I have cut my view of God down to manageable human proportions, then what else is left but human-sized strength to face the complex unpredictablitiy of the world we live in? No wonder Self gets so wrung-out, trying to be enough to handle everything that concerns me. I see how the opposite works itself out, too– that the more I learn of His greatness and power, the sturdier my faith becomes. The more I practice putting the weight of everyday experience on the leg of what I believe, the larger my expectations grow. Elijah’s response to the widow’s unexpected tragedy was to carry the problem bodily before God and implore Him to intervene, never mind that no one had ever raised the dead before, or even thought of it, as far as we can tell. After shutting up the rain and being fed by scavenger birds and desperate widows for months, maybe redefining the impossible was becoming rather second-nature to the prophet who lived in the presence of the Lord.

(Interesting how the bigger and more accurate my view of God, the more my view of Self adjusts to more realistic proportions, as well. Dependency on the Creator is the only right and sensible response of the created, after all.)

It’s definitely not a straight line of progress in my own life, though…more like round and round in well-worn tracks through the underbrush, like a beagle hunting up a rabbit. But He promises, “You will seek Me and find Me, when you seek Me with all your heart.” (Jeremiah 29:13) So I will keep practicing this dependent faith, and holding onto His promises, and let Him shake down the walls I have built, watch His light pour in more and more.

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“You open Your hand; You satisfy the desire of every living thing. The Lord is righteous in all His ways and kind in all His works. The Lord is near to all who call on Him, to all who call on Him in truth.” (Psalm 145:16-18)

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“I have made You too small in my eyes–
Oh Lord, forgive me.
And I have believed in a lie
That You are unable to help me.
But now, Oh Lord, I see my wrong;
Heal my heart and show Yourself strong,
And in my eyes and with my song,
Oh Lord, be magnified.”
(Be Magnified, Fred Hammond)

Talking this week about something Oswald Chambers pointed out, how the sin nature is not so much about our doing wicked things, as it is about Self-sufficiency. He said that allowing Self to control and shape my world can either drive me to chaos and sin or it can drive me to a standard of doing good.  Two very different outcomes from the same root. And regardless of which way it falls– how it looks on the outside and whether others approve or not– it’s what is underneath that matters in the end. The Wise King Solomon warned us about that very thing: “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.” (Psalm 127:1)

See, we get quite distracted by what we can observe and evaluate on the outside, and it is too easy to substitute what we can do, for what we need God to do. That’s how good people can be seduced by their own capabilities and never realize just how hollow it all is. We can soak in the songs and the sermons, and enjoy the people of God, and then go live the days in our planners. Maybe ask for a prayer or two when we hit a rough patch. Or kick it up a notch and get involved in ministry, even– it is the right thing to do, after all, and we feel good about helping others. This approach works a good bit of the time from a practical standpoint. In the meantime only God can tell that we are living on our own strength. He can see how we need it to work out, because our own self-image is at stake; and how the further it goes, the more afraid we are of losing what we are building.

Till the storm crashes in and what we can do is no longer enough…or circumstances take us somewhere we never intended to be…any time God bumps up against our preconceived ideas of what He is like and what He intends to do. The older brother in Jesus’ parable never dreamed that it was his own attitude that would bear examining, when the prodigal returned home seeking forgiveness. Mind you, God will do everything He needs, to shake you to the core and bring you face-to-face with the darkness lurking there; Chambers calls it “the discipline of dismay.” There is a built-in rejection of the Lover of our Souls in all of us– in some it is an outright defiance, and in some, it is a quiet desire to “do it myself.” Either way, it is the root problem that needs to be dealt with.

When God refuses to be neatly boxed and tagged, what is our response? Do we sulk and storm and feel like He has let us down? Or can we work through the disappointment and doubt on our knees, in order to find out what He is doing and what He wants of us here? Like Erwin Lutzer says: “It does little good for us to object to what He chooses to do. When He said to Moses, ‘I AM that I AM’ He in effect said ‘I am who I am and not Who you would prefer Me to be’. “

And when Self finally gives up trying to control this corner of the world, maybe I will see that it was never mine to rule…and discover that God is far more than I could ever want or need. He is the only everlasting foundation to build a life on, and only the things rooted in Him will be balanced and whole. The Church-Planter gets downright cranky about the thought of us living any other way: “How foolish can you be? After starting your new lives in the Spirit, why are you now trying to become perfect by your own human effort? Have you experienced so much for nothing?” (Galatians 3:3-4)

Guess it’s the kind of lesson we need to learn over and over. And maybe this too is God’s severe mercy, that will never let us be satisfied with less than Himself.

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“Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.” Job 13:15

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“Cause all I know is
Everything I have means nothing
Jesus if You’re not my one thing
Everything I need right now
All I need is You right now
Just one thing I ask and this
I will seek If only to know You
To be where You are and go where You lead
My God I will follow.”
(One Thing, Hillsong)

The familiar words of Psalm 23 continue to wind through my heart this week, but with a glimmer of something that I am just beginning to understand. It’s as if the comforting phrases are overlaid with the question “But do you really live that way?” I see that if I claim “The Lord is my Shepherd,” then it should probably change the way I face the circumstances of this day. I have a feeling that this Psalm will probably be more than a familiar recitation from now on. If I say “I lack nothing” and believe He is all-sufficient for me, maybe I should accept that what He gives me in the moment is enough, without worrying or complaining. Can I see in the ups and downs of my days that “He makes me lie down in green pastures, He leads me beside quiet waters, He refreshes my soul”? Do I truly believe this, as God’s Word to me?– or am I just appreciating the picturesque poetry and approving of its content?

It’s fairly obvious that the best way to show my faith is to live it– to place the full weight of my hopes and actions on the Truth of God’s Word and Who He Is– otherwise it’s just hollow words. But so often there is this disconnect between what I believe and what I experience. I guess many of us are good at talking about what we believe, and many of us believe good things….but if we do not put enough stock in our beliefs to live them out, they are not really ours at all, are they? Un-tried beliefs are certainly not in a position to prove themselves to us (or to others) as trustworthy. It’s like Big Brother James says, “Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.” (James 1:23-24) See a facial crisis and just walk away and forget about it?…Ha! Sheer craziness from a woman’s perspective. Yet here I am, able to recite Psalm 23 with barely a thought to what I am declaring about my relationship with the Good Shepherd.

The only way to prove what I really believe is to act on it, and where those laudable declarations and good principles enter the dust and noise of everyday life they take on shape, substance that can make a difference in this world– the Truth becoming flesh once again. But of course, this is where things get difficult, because it is unexpectedly painful to submit emotions to faith, to fix my eyes on Jesus’ plans instead of on circumstances, to bend my will and perspectives to His ways. It is not an accident that Paul’s words evoke the taming of wild horses when he says “…we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” (2 Corinthians 10:5) Obedience is the hardest thing I will ever do in this world. (Paul says it is warfare that will be the death of Me, so why would it be easy?) The good news is that the smallest step forward is worth celebrating, and every step counts toward the final goal. And every time the Holy Spirit brings words of Scripture to light– spotlights it so you can’t miss it and burrows it into your heart so you can’t forget it– the really sensible thing to do is pay attention and obey, start putting it into practice, one small step at a time.

Looking at the Shepherd’s Psalm with an eye to obedience makes me see how much God values my complete and peaceful trust. The sheep does not fear or stress about anything in its world, large or small, because he rests in the Shepherd’s provision of all things. It reminds me of the words Amy Carmichael wrote: “…we trust all that the love of God does– all He gives and all He does not give, all He says and all He does not say. To it all we say, by His loving enabling, ‘I trust.’ Let us be content with our Lord’s will, and tell Him so, and not disappoint Him by wishing for anything He does not give. The more we understand His love, the more we trust.” Now this is a sheep who knows and trusts her Shepherd.

 Amy’s life is inspiring– she is one of those women whose faith shines just ahead in the Race and beckons other women to follow. As a single young woman, she left her home in Ireland to be trained by China Inland Mission for missions work; despite her frail health, which often left her weak and in pain for weeks on end, she eventually came to India where she spent the rest of her life showing God’s love in the most tangible forms to the helpless and cast-aside. Many of her later years were spent bed-ridden, but from her room she continued to write down what she was learning from the Good Shepherd, as a way to encourage the staff at her Dohnavur mission and orphanage, which cared for the children and women they rescued from temple prostitution and slavery. Hers were lessons learned in countless small ways, again and again, in the course of ordinary days and extraordinary difficulties, loneliness, and illness, till we can look back at her life and call it remarkable. At one point, she wrote, “Sometimes when we read the words of those who have been more than conquerors, we feel almost despondent. ‘I shall never be like that,’ we feel. But they won through, step by step– by little acts of will, little denials of self, little inward victories; by faithfulness in very little things, they became what they are. No one sees these little hidden steps; they only see the accomplishment; but even so, those small steps were taken. There is no sudden triumph, no spiritual maturity that is the work of a moment. So let us take courage….”

Take courage indeed, beloved sheep, and do not hesitate to act on what Jesus tells us, because we can trust in our Shepherd’s care. Step into the Spirit’s light, and prove it.

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“My hope is built on nothing less
Than Jesus blood and righteousness.
I dare not trust the sweetest frame,
But wholly trust in Jesus name.
Christ alone, Cornerstone–
Weak made strong in the Saviour’s love;
Through the storm, He is Lord…
Lord of all.”
(Cornerstone, Hillsong)

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“He guides me along the right paths for His name’s sake. Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for You are with me; Your rod and your staff, they comfort me.” (Psalm 23:3-4)

A 19th-century Quaker who grew up in Philadelphia and taught alongside her husband throughout England during the great Holiness Movement, wrote that “The last and greatest lesson that the soul has to learn is the fact that God and God alone, is enough for all its needs.  This is the lesson that all His dealings with us are meant to teach; and this is the crowning discovery of our whole Christian life.” (Hannah Whitall Smith) We talked about this quote in our new small group on Wednesday, how it is a lifelong lesson that we learn only by tasting and seeing for ourselves how the things in this world fail to satisfy– still leave us hungry.

It is the same journey of exploration that the Wise King wrote about in Ecclesiastes, where he chronicles his own search for something that would fill up his longings and make his life worthwhile. King Solomon’s conclusion (after experiencing life to the extent that only the most wealthy and powerful can), was succinct: “That’s the whole story. Here now is my final conclusion: Fear God and obey his commands, for this is everyone’s duty.” (Ecclesiastes 12:13) In every generation wise men have come to the same conclusion. St Augustine in the fourth century said in childlike surrender at age 33, “…Thou madest us for Thyself, and our heart is restless, until it repose in Thee.”  Blaise Pascal, the brilliant scientist-philosopher of 17th century France, penned the now-famous line that “There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled with any created thing, but only by God the Creator….” And around the same time, in England, an august assembly of theologians was developing the catechism for the Church of England which begins: “Man’s chief and highest end is to glorify God, and fully to enjoy him forever.”

This week as we introduced our topic for the next three months and set out on this study for Becoming Women Whose God Is Enough, I found myself wondering… if this is the last and greatest lesson we learn as followers of Christ, what is the first and least lesson? Immediately the words of the little song came to mind– the very first song about Jesus that I learned as a toddler. “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” It made me smile to realize we are still teaching children that same starting-place. We are given the first fundamental truth that He loves us and the crowning lesson that He is enough for us, and a lifetime in between to discover that there are no limits to either.

We who follow Christ are being led along the same path toward satisfying our soul-thirst, and Jesus’ words to the Samaritan woman linger in our hearts: “…but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” (John 4:14)

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 “He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him graciously give us all things?” (Romans 8:32)

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“I stand before You now–
The greatness of your renown;
I have heard of the majesty and wonder of You.
King of Heaven, in humility, I bow.
As Your love, in wave after wave
Crashes over me, crashes over me.
For You are for us–
You are not against us.
Champion of Heaven,
You made a way for all to enter in.
I have heard You calling my name;
I have heard the song of love that You sing.
So I will let You draw me out beyond the shore
Into Your grace….”
(You Make Me Brave, Amanda Cook)