Imago Dei Christian Community

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The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it. Mat. 13:45

“Lack of spiritual desire should grieve us, and lead us to mourn its absence.” So wrote the Civil War pastor, E.M. Bounds, a man well acquainted with the ebbs and flows of spiritual life. Is this something that we do as Christians? Do we ever mourn the absence of our desire for God? It would certainly be a first step towards recovering that spirit if we did. Simply confessing that we have lost our desire, we could then look to God for its restoration, promising to treat it as more precious than we did. Bounds writes of this recourse,

It is not in our power to create fervency of spirit at will, but we can ask God to implant it. Then it is ours to nourish and cherish, to guard against extinction, to prevent its reduction in amount or decline in quality. It is never out of place to ask God to create within us and keep alive the spirit of fervent prayer.

More important, however, than recovering our desire for prayer is knowing how to not lose it in the first place. Prayer implies an ongoing relationship of nurture that preserves within us the spiritual life that we cherish as a precious pearl. We exalt this relationship by fanning the flames of our desire for God. That is why a vocabulary of love is more appropriate than that of discipline. Bounds describes the spiritual direction that this implies when he writes,

Prayer must be habitual, but much more than a habit. It is duty, yet one that rises far above and goes beyond the ordinary meaning of the word. It is the yearning for divine communion. It is the outward and upward flow of the inward life towards its original fountain.

Our ultimate destiny is best expressed in prayer. We place on its altar nothing less than all we are, have, have been and will be. In so doing we discover, as Jesus taught, that those who lose their lives in Him are most poised to find them again. Prayer is a consuming fire that purposes to present us wholly to God. Bounds recognizes it as the crucible in which this offering is made. He writes,

A life of prayer naturally leads to full consecration. It is satisfied with nothing less than an entire dedication of one’s self to God. Never are we fully content until we are fully and entirely the Lord’s. Praying naturally leads to this act of full consent.

Prayer not only leads to the altar of self-sacrifice, it also helps us to remain at that altar. Without prayer we inevitably wander from our first love. E.M. Bounds cautions that we not underestimate the difficulty of trying to live a spiritual life without the hub of prayer.

It takes prayer to bring a person to a consecrated life of holiness to the Lord, and it takes prayer to maintain such a life. Without much prayer, such a life of holiness will break down. Prayer helps consecrated Christians to maintain their attitude of consecration. It keeps them alive to God and aids them in doing the work to which they are called and to which they have given themselves.

Acknowledging our lack of desire for prayer is the first step towards its recovery. Having experienced its absence, we cherish all the more its return. It is then up to the consecrated life to teach us how to maintain the posture of self-offering on the altar of prayer so that we no longer exchange this precious pearl for anything else in life.

By faith we eagerly await, through the Spirit, the righteousness for which we hope.

Gal. 5:5

The character of righteousness is something that is latent in every person born.  Within each of our lives, there are “rumours of glory” that suggest to us what God recognizes as our righteous potential.  As though eager to see His own reflection, the Lord asks each one of us,  “What does righteousness look like in you?”

Though righteousness is often spoken of in the Bible, it is a word that Scripture rarely defines for us.  It seems to go without saying that we already know what this word should mean for us, and that our instincts about how we fall short of it are also a God-given hunch.  The righteous person, according to the book of Proverbs, is simply one who leads a blameless life (Pr. 20:7).  He/she walks a path that is “level” (Isa. 26:7) and that ultimately leads to holiness (Rom 6:19).

In the Bible, “the righteous” are a subset of humanity who share a distinct status with God along with all the privileges that come with that status.  We read, for instance, that the righteous enjoy special access to God ( Pr. 15.29) making their prayers particularly effective (James 5:16).  Righteousness is both an indicator as well as a determinant of God’s blessing in our lives.  The book of Samuel, for instance, tells us that it is according to righteousness that the Lord rewards every person (1Sa. 26:23).

Though we appropriate this gift by faith alone (Rom. 4:12), the Holy Spirit helps each of us find our own path of righteousness according to the value we place on, and the way we put into practice, the virtues we cherish.  The Psalmists therefore models the desire for such guidance when he asks God to “open for me the gates of righteousness” (Ps. 118:19).  Our participation is also a factor in cultivating this gift.  That is why the prophet Hosea encourages us to sow seeds of righteousness in our lives (Hos. 10:12).  Paul, as well, exhorts Timothy to “train” himself in righteousness (2Tim. 3:16).

Righteousness is exalted in heaven for the simple reason that it reflects the very character of God.  In righteousness we become more like God and are thus more able to perceive God in our lives.  God’s purity is recognized only to the degree that we are congruent with that purity (Mt. 5:8).  The prophet Malachi anticipates this when he says “in righteousness I will see your face” (Mal. 3:18).

Our ultimate destiny then is to more fully reflect God’s righteous character.  As Paul quite plainly tells the Ephesians, we were “created to be like God in true righteousness” (Eph. 4:24).  As we anticipate this destiny, may we hunger and thirst for such righteousness—the fruit of Jesus’ increasing influence in our lives.

Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him,
for we shall see him as he is.

1John 3:2

Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out. Rom. 11:33

Etch-ing (ech’ing) n. 1. A process of engraving in which grooves are made onto a metal plate, either scratched with a needle or by the corrosive action of acid. The grooves are then filled with ink and pressed onto paper.

Years ago I took a course in etching and learned an important lesson about my relationship with God. It had to do with the deepening initiative of God’s love in my life and my feeble efforts to resist it. As I was working with a particular method of etching I recognized something very similar to the dynamics of my spiritual life.

In this form of etching, a metal plate is covered with beeswax. Once the wax has hardened, a fine needle is used to draw an image by scratching through the dried wax and exposing the bare metal. The resulting line is as thin as one could ever hope to draw. Once the drawing is finished the plate is then dropped into an acid bath. The acid etches the exposed parts of the metal, whereas the waxed parts are protected from the acid. The deeper the acid etches into the metal, the more ink the groove will hold, making a darker line on the final paper print.

As the metal is exposed to the acid an interesting phenomenon of oxidization takes place. The metal reacts to the acid and bubbles begin to form all along the lines of the drawing. This represents a minor problem for the artist as these bubbles create a protective layer over the line, preventing the acid from etching any deeper into the metal. If the artist wants the lines in the drawing to etch deeper, the bubbles must be removed with a feather, passing it gently over the plate. Once the bubbles are removed, the metal is once again exposed to the acid, allowing it to continue its deepening work.

As I observed the slow process of the acid etching into the metal I recognized how similar this was to the action of God in my life. As I watched the protective bubbles form over the lines I could see a similarity to my own ways of creating protective layers in my relationship with God—layers that shield me from the deepening action of love. And as the feather gently removed the bubbles from the line, exposing the metal once again to the acid, I also recognized the similar action of God’s hand gently removing the bubbles I use as a shield against His intimacy. Though God’s action exposes me to the very thing I am resisting, I know that the Lord does so in order that love might be etched more deeply in my life.