“Do not let your hearts be troubled…..Pt 2” A Slice of Daly bread from 2008

It is quite difficult for me to find a quiet space in my home. The boys love their music and noisy games and every room is playing something different. Then there are the visitors…with their own music or games…..Daly life seems very busy and noisy! Through all this cacophony I find I can’t hear myself think, so I have to take myself off for a walk into the countryside or along the beach, to find that sacred space where I can be still and hear the voice of God. Even here I find I have so much running around in my head, that it seems almost impossible task to, “Be still and know that I am God” (Ps:46.10)

When I was young we had to learn a Catechism (a small booklet which set out the basic tenets of the faith). The first question asked was, “Why did God make you?” The answer was, “To know Him, to love Him and to serve Him”.  I have often looked back and thought these were wise instructions. If we are to serve God..we must first love him and we cannot love him …until we know him.

How do we get to know him?

The great Jewish prayer known as the ‘Shema’ calls Israel to ‘hear’, to ‘listen’.

(Shema in Hebrew means Listen or Hear).  “Shema Israel:…”  “Hear O Israel:…” (Deut: 6.4)

Hearing is the first step in us having healthy hearts! But hearing / listening is not something passive and is quite difficult. In my previous work counseling victims of crime, listening became a doorway whereby the victim could share their deepest feelings and thoughts and I could properly receive. To truly hear  I had to put aside my personal thoughts and ideas (no matter how good and great they may have been).  I had to put aside those many important tasks and matters that cluttered my life and desk and give space to the other. I sometimes wanted to interrupt them, to interject with some philosophical, practical or wise thought…but I had to silence my own tongue and open my ears.

Jesus wants us to have healthy hearts and so he calls us to listen to him. If we have ears…let us hear! (Mt 4:23)  We must come to God, putting aside (casting off) our wants and desires (no matter how good and great they maybe). We must come firstly as those who will listen to His voice. The servant who loved his master and wanted to remain in his service as a bond servant forever was taken by his master and his ear was pierced. (Exodus 21: 5-6; Deut 15:16 – 17) We need our ear pierced if we are to know, love and serve the Lord. The priests when anointed for service in the book of Exodus chapter 29, first had the blood of the sacrifice put on their ear lobe, before their thumb and toe. Another sign that the Lord requires their hearing before anything else. The Holy Spirit who has been given to us as “another counselor” (Jn.4:16) can only counsel us if we are willing to listen, and hear what He says,  “Let him who has ears, let him hear what the Spirit is saying”. (Rev 2: 7//11//17//28.  + 3: 6//13//27)

Listening, contemplation and meditation are essential for healthy hearts…and so is diet!

Next time we shall see why the Word (Logos-Jesus) is central and essential for a healthy heart.

“For the Word (Jesus) of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow;  It (He) judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart”. (Heb 4:12)

Michael Daly. C. J.

2008/22

“Do not let your hearts be troubled…..” A Slice of Daly bread from 2008

Some time ago I Watched a program about some people who had received heart transplants. Many found that they started to like and do things that before the transplants were alien and even abhorrent to them. It seemed the heart from the donor held certain memories / feelings and these were transferred to the recipient. About ten percent of heart transplant patients speak of these additional memories/thoughts. Scientists know that the heart has thousands of neurons, similar to the brain and that the electro cardiac impulses from the heart are far stronger than electro encephalic impulses of the brain. Studies show that the heart is always the first to respond to different stimuli or stress. The heart first sends messages to the brain and then the brain responds and sends messages to the organs and rest of the body.

Whilst I watched this program I was reminded of how Jesus speaks of the heart far more than he does of the mind or brain.

The heart is spoken of as being “deceitful” (Jeremiah 17.9) which is odd, as we usually think of deceit in relation to our thoughts and schemes to mislead, “who can understand it?”(Jer.17.1b). There seems to be a depth to the heart that our mind (brain) does not have. God says He knows “the thoughts of man” (Psalm 94.11) but when it comes to our hearts they are often seen as being far away from God; they can be as hard as stone. David cries out to the Lord, “Search me O God and know my heart”, this type of knowing, cries out for intimacy. (Psalm 139.23)  God sent the Spirit of His son… into our minds”…WRONG!  “into our hearts.” (Galatians 4.6) and through Him we have an intimacy which allows us to cry out “Abba, Father.”

We worry as we get older that our ‘little grey cells’ are slowing down, and we fear the possibility of dementia. Will we remember our loved ones let alone the time of day? What can we do!

I believe that God speaks more to my heart than my mind. My heart is either receptive or closed. Hard(end) or malleable.  Scripture always speaks to the heart. If we attempt to understand the bible with our minds we will have an intellectual knowledge which puffs up. If we listen with our hearts to the scriptures through the prism of Jesus, we will (by the Spirit who dwells there) allow the Morning Star to arise and Love will build us up. (2 Peter.1.19) (1 Corinthians 8.1/2)  Christ may then dwell in our hearts, so that we with all the saints may grasp “how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ and to know this love that surpasses knowledge.” (Eph. 3. 17-19)

“Do not let your……hearts be troubled ….”(John 14.1), these words of Jesus call us to listen to Him, to trust in Him, as He speaks to our hearts.

The next slice (or two) of Daly bread will look at how and why listening and contemplation is essential to healthy hearts.

Michael Daly. C.J.

2008/22

A rainbow dancing unseen glorious God found on a clothes line..

Unseen God
Holy God
Sovereign God
Abba
Father

None can see you.
The Heavens declare you
But it is your Son whose eyes burn with your love
who reveals you..

Your Sun lights up the world
Your Son melts the frozen hearts
Your Sun raises the heads of flowers
Your Son makes a pathway through the waters…giving life

Unseen God
Holy God
Sovereign God
Abba
Father

You pour out your holy rain
upon a desolate dry land
And amidst this deluge
your Sun shines through
dancing with every droplet,
Laughing with every tear of heaven

And as we look up
to see the unknowable
we are greeted with the beauty of the rainbow
which invades us
And comes to abide in our hearts – transforming us

Such Glory!
Such beauty!
Such richness!
Such power!
Such might!

Unseen God
Holy God
Sovereign God
Abba
Father

The Sun makes visible the invisible.
The beauty of your cascading colours
penetrating,
ever renewing.
In your light we see light

Your Spirit pours down your tears of love and
we see such incomparable beauty
that we are undone!

And the Angels cry

Holy

Holy

Holy

is the Lord!.

Michael Daly. CJ. August 2008

 

The Picture Of A Prophet

My thanks to Brother David for bringing this article to my attention. I post it here for the benefit of all my readers.

Be blessed

In Jesus

Br. Michael Daly

May 2012

“When a prophet is accepted and deified, his message is lost. The prophet is
only useful so long as he is stoned as a public nuisance calling us to
repentance, disturbing our comfortable routines, breaking our respectable
idols, shattering our sacred conventions.”
A. G. Gardiner.

“The function of the Prophet has almost invariably been that of recovery.
That implies that his business is related to something lost. That something
being absolutely essential to God’s full satisfaction, the dominant note of
the Prophet was one of dissatisfaction. And, there being the additional
factor that, for obvious reasons, the people were not disposed to go the
costly way of God’s full purpose, the Prophet was usually an unpopular
person.”
T. Austin Sparks.

“Those whom God calls to such a ministry – and a call is essential – must be
prepared for a pathway of unpopularity and misunderstanding.
“You troubler of Israel” was the way Ahab addressed Elijah.”
Arthur Wallis.

The Picture Of A Prophet
By Leonard Ravenhill

The prophet in his day is fully accepted of God and totally rejected by men.

Years back, Dr. Gregory Mantle was right when he said, “No man can be fully accepted until he is totally rejected.” The prophet of the Lord is aware of both these experiences. They are his “brand name.”

The group, challenged by the prophet because they are smug and comfortably insulated from a perishing world in their warm but untested theology, is not likely to vote him “Man of the year” when he refers to them as habituates of the synagogue of Satan!

The prophet comes to set up that which is upset. His work is to call into line those who are out of line! He is unpopular because he opposes the popular in morality and spirituality.

In a day of faceless politicians and voiceless preachers, there is not a more urgent national need than that we cry to God for a prophet!

The function of the prophet, as Austin-Sparks once said, “has almost always been that of recovery.”

The prophet is God’s detective seeking for a lost treasure. The degree of his effectiveness is determined by his measure of unpopularity. Compromise is not known to him.

He (the genuine prophet of God) has no price tags.

He is totally “otherworldly.”

He is unquestionably controversial and unpardonably hostile.

He marches to another drummer!

He breathes the rarefied air of inspiration.

He is a “seer” who comes to lead the blind.

He lives in the heights of God and comes into the valley with a “thus saith the Lord.”

He shares some of the foreknowledge of God and so is aware of impending judgement.

He lives in “splendid isolation.”

He is forthright and outright, but he claims no birthright.

His message is “repent, be reconciled to God or else…!”

His prophecies are parried.

His truth brings torment, but his voice is never void.

He is the villain of today and the hero of tomorrow.

He is excommunicated while alive and exalted when dead!

He is dishonoured with epithets when breathing and honoured with epitaphs when dead.

He is a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ, but few “make the grade” in his class.

He is friendless while living and famous when dead.

He is against the establishment in ministry; then he is established as a saint by posterity.

He eats daily the bread of affliction while he ministers, but he feeds the Bread of Life to those who listen.

He walks before men for days but has walked before God for years.

He is a scourge to the nation before he is scourged by the nation.

He announces, pronounces, and denounces!

He has a heart like a volcano and his words are as fire.

He talks to men about God.

He carries the lamp of truth amongst heretics while he is lampooned by men.

He faces God before he faces men, but he is self-effacing.

He hides with God in the secret place, but he has nothing to hide in the marketplace.

He is naturally sensitive but supernaturally spiritual.

He has passion, purpose and pugnacity.

He is ordained of God but disdained by men.

Our national need at this hour is not that the dollar recover its strength, or that we save face over the Watergate affair, or that we find the answer to the ecology problem. We need a God-sent prophet!

I am bombarded with talk or letters about the coming shortages in our national life: bread, fuel, energy. I read between the lines from people not practiced in scaring folk. They feel that the “seven years of plenty” are over for us. The “seven years of famine” are ahead. But the greatest famine of all in this nation at this given moment is a FAMINE OF THE HEARING OF THE WORDS OF GOD (Amos 8:11).

Millions have been spent on evangelism in the last twenty-five years. Hundreds of gospel messages streak through the air over the nation every day. Crusades have been held; healing meetings have made a vital contribution. “Come-outers” have “come out” and settled, too, without a nation-shaking revival. Organizers we have. Skilled preachers abound. Multi-million dollar Christian organizations straddle the nation. BUT where, oh where, is the prophet? Where are the incandescent men fresh from the holy place? Where is the Moses to plead in fasting before the holiness of the Lord for our moldy morality, our political perfidy, and sour and sick spirituality?

GOD’S MEN ARE IN HIDING UNTIL THE DAY OF THEIR SHOWING FORTH. They will come. The prophet is violated during his ministry, but he is vindicated by history.

There is a terrible vacuum in evangelical Christianity today. The missing person in our ranks is the prophet. The man with a terrible earnestness. The man totally otherworldly. The man rejected by other men, even other good men, because they consider him too austere, too severely committed, too negative and unsociable.

Let him be as plain as John the Baptist.

Let him for a season be a voice crying in the wilderness of modern theology and stagnant “churchianity.”

Let him be as selfless as Paul the apostle.

Let him, too, say and live, “This ONE thing I do.”

Let him reject ecclesiastical favours.

Let him be self-abasing, nonself-seeking, nonself-projecting, nonself-righteous, nonself-glorying, nonself-promoting.

Let him say nothing that will draw men to himself but only that which will move men to God.

Let him come daily from the throne room of a holy God, the place where he has received the order of the day.

Let him, under God, unstop the ears of the millions who are deaf through the clatter of shekels milked from this hour of material mesmerism.

Let him cry with a voice this century has not heard because he has seen a vision no man in this century has seen.

God send us this Moses to lead us from the wilderness of crass materialism, where the rattlesnakes of lust bite us and where enlightened men, totally blind spiritually, lead us to an ever-nearing Armageddon.

God have mercy! Send us PROPHETS!

Copyright © 1994 by Leonard Ravenhill

Hand of Hope – Grace of God

I was recently sent a picture of a 21 week old unborn child’s hand reaching out from the womb as it was being operated on. This picture was taken back in 1999 and caused a lot of controversy then.  I am not concerned about the controversy or the debate that followed this remarkable event.  What strikes me is that this is the hand of a child, a living being, a person whom God has created and it is marvellous and wonderful to behold.    Samuel Armas – the child – is now 13 and although he has to wear leg braces and sometimes for long journeys has to use a wheel chair, he is said to be doing well and is very active.  Samuel’s mum said in an interview,

“What I felt the picture showed is that this is a child engaging in some form of interaction. I’m a labour and delivery nurse, so I understand that Samuel was anaesthetized to some degree.

“So if he reached out, I don’t know. If Dr. Bruner reached out, I don’t know. The fact of the matter is it’s a child with a hand, with a life, and that’s meaningful enough.”

Let’s give thanks to God for the wonder of His creation and for the skills He gives to men and women. Let us also pray for the thousands upon thousands of unborn children whose lives are literally torn away before they can cry out or reach out a hand to us.

Br. Michael Daly

April 2012