You Need To Tear Back

 

It was the first thought I had this morning, before I'd opened my eyes.

"You need to tear back that sock."

My heart sank.

The sock is one I've had on the needles for months and months.

There is nothing wrong with the sock.

It was beautifully knitted, and I was nearly to the toe.

It is a second sock, which means the first one has been finished 

and waiting for its mate for some time.

 

The problem is this: I knitted the first with a good plan. 

These socks would have reinforced heels and toes.

These socks are for me.

The yarn is wonderful: I love it.

The first one was finished easily, and it is perfect.

 

I was eager to begin the second sock, so I could wear them.

I knitted away busily during piano lessons, 

which is a wonderful way to make efficient (and pleasurable) use of my time. 

I knitted so busily I neglected to put the reinforcement yarn into the heel, 

and I didn't notice until I was well on my way to the toe.

I held the two socks in my hands, and felt the heels, and thought, "NO!"

 

The heels were different.

One is nice and cushy (and far more durable), and the other is nice and thin.

I laid the sock aside.

 

Periodically I pulled it out and looked at it sadly.

I considered attempting duplicate stitch darning on it 

to simulate the same effect, 

but I knew in my heart it wasn't going to be a solution for me. 

So I ignored it.

"I'm not changing ANYTHING!" my heart said, stiffening its neck.

And we just didn't talk about it or think about it anymore.

Sometimes I missed knitting on it, 

and the hope of owning the socks I had been working on with such anticipation.

But why should I lose all that work? 

The work was flawless.

It was the other sock that had a problem with it.

 

And it was this sock I sensed the Lord telling me to rip back this morning, 

before I was even awake to defend it,

and weeks after I had even thought about it.

I opened my eyes knowing I had a task to accomplish today.

A painful task, but a necessary one. 

Something I didn't want to do.

I had actually wondered to myself if I had enough of this yarn on hand 

to knit two more, just to avoid doing what I knew I needed to do.

But I had an order.

 

So, while I sat in my daughter's piano lesson, 

I frogged my perfect knitting in order to conform it to its mate.

It took me the full half hour to do it, 

and to get it put neatly back on the needles, 

carefully checking each stitch for twists, and correcting them.

Hours of knitting lost as I pulled back each row of two thirds of my sock.

 

And my mind has been working on it all day:

On the necessity of our conformity to Christ, our True Mate.

On the pruning back of what does not fit Him.

There are many things in each one of us 

that do not conform to His heart, His attitude, or His actions, 

and He will not leave them alone in us.

He's not going to settle for a slapdash fix.

He will undo us to set us right.

And all those hours of perfecting ourselves 

will have to be undone in order to make us truly His handiwork.

Give Him free reign to do it.

The sooner you stop fighting Him, 

the sooner you'll be fit for His use again.

"For whom He foreknew, 

He also predestined 

to be conformed to the image of His Son, 

that He might be the firstborn among many brethren."

(Romans 8:29)

"For our citizenship is in heaven, 

from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, 

the Lord Jesus Christ, 

who will transform our lowly body 

that it may be conformed to His glorious body, 

according to the working by which 

He is able even to subdue all things to Himself."

(Philippians 3:20,21) 

 

"Beloved, now we are children of God;

and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be,

but we know that when He is revealed,

we shall be like Him,

for we shall see Him as He is.

And everyone who has this hope in Him

purifies himself, just as He is pure."

(1 John 3:2,3) 

 

And so I ask you: 

is there anything He is asking you to rip back 

that it might be made to conform to His purpose?

Tearing Back

That We Might Hear It Later

Flipping through a book on my shelf this morning,
I found notes from something I wrote down about five years ago
on the back of an overdue notice from the library:
"Simon was so convinced of himself, that he couldn't hear the Lord."

I am thankful that the Lord speaks anyway:
that although our self-confidence shuts our ears to truth spoken to us,
He speaks it that we might 'hear' it later,
once we've failed in our estimation of ourselves;
denied Him, and cursed to emphasize our lie;
and run away just as weak and fearful
as all the weaklings we set ourselves up as stronger than;
and wept bitterly at our own inconstancy;
and our failed love and diminished strength.
That His love holds on to us through our failure to hold on to Him.

"But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith will not fail.
And when you turn back to Me, you must strengthen your brothers."
'When you are converted,' some versions say.
When you've done a 180.
When you've come around.
When you repent,
you'll be in a position to not just be strong for you,
but to make others stronger.
Real strength does that.
It makes others stronger.
It doesn't just rejoice in its own authority,
its own ability to conquer.
But it pulls strength out of grace, having failed,
and makes other people's hands stronger.
It stands beside the tired-armed, and helps them hold their arms up.
It doesn't just yell at others to Stop Limping!
It digs out the splinters as painlessly as possible,
so weak little feet can walk again.

He sees weakness and future failure,
and prays faith and strength into it.
And that very failure becomes the strengthener of the weak.
He is the Lifter of our heads, and the only good we have to boast of.

And turn your eyes and look at Him:
knowledge of coming failure in His friends
is met with hope, prayer, mercy, love, and forgiveness.
Though He is leaving them,
He does not fret that they are not what they ought to be.
I fret about those I consider it my duty to perfect.
But our Jesus isn't fretting.
He trusts the work of the Holy Spirit in Peter.
He prays for him, and speaks to him what he needs to hear,
and although He knows perfectly well Peter can't hear Him,
trusts His words will hit their mark
and do their work even after He's gone. 

Come Together Again

Every successful marriage
has had thousands of choices to come together again.
To be joined.
To come home to her every night,
and to say yes to his advances.
To try again, even if she gave you the cold shoulder.

It isn't the vows that bring the intimacy --
those only begin the marriage.
We speak words of love to one another,
but they must be said again.
And we must choose to yield ourselves to one another.

We long to commune, to lessen our loneliness, to be joined in community.
Paul advised that each man should have his own wife,
and each woman her own husband,
because of sexual immorality.
"Let the husband render to his wife the affection due her, 
and likewise also the wife to her husband."
This is apostolic marriage counseling.
That we would have a spouse, and give ourselves to them.

"Do not deprive one another 
except with consent for a time, 
that you may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; 
and come together again 
so that Satan does not tempt you because of your lack of self-control." 
So much about this passage is so practical.
Have sexual intercourse with your spouse.
This is one very specific way we can serve their spiritual needs.

The intercourse of marriage--
sexual, emotional, financial, spiritual--
is a mysterious display of Christ and the church.
That abiding in the vine that Jesus spoke of is a plant life display.
They are both about connection, unity, exchange--
intercourse resulting in fruit.
In human intercourse, it is a choice that presents itself again and again.
We Christians are presented again and again
with the option to interact with Him intimately, or to shut Him out.
If we want to bear His fruit,
if we want our union with Him to be successful,
we must yield.

Perhaps you have said 'no', and it has become a habit to say 'no'.
I'm too tired.
I have a headache.
We've grown too far apart.
I've washed my feet; how can I defile them again?
Seek Him again, because His heart is still for you.

Or perhaps it is worse than just not opening up when He came to you.
Maybe you called Him 'master', and lived in His house,
but never saw Him as your husband.
Maybe you have never been close,
and all your children have been someone else's.
And He is broken-hearted over your infidelity,
but you are hard-hearted.
Make a choice to be His for real.
He'll buy you back from the auction block of your whoring shame,
and call you His own,
and let you bear His children.

I will heal their backsliding, and love them freely,
 for My anger has turned away... 
I will be like the dew to Israel; 
He shall grow like the lily, and lengthen his roots like Lebanon...
Those who dwell under His shadow shall return; 
they shall be revived like grain, and grow like a vine. 
Their scent shall be like the wine of Lebanon.

And you will find yourself saying,
"What have I to do anymore with idols? 
I have heard and observed him. 
I am like a green cypress. 
Your fruit is found in me."

In Short-Sleeved Words

I speak normally to my children.
I don't change my words to baby talk,
and I didn't do too much baby talk even when they were babies.
Because of this, they often make me laugh
with the old-fashioned vocabulary they use.
A child used the word 'omit' properly in speaking with me the other day.
My daughter told me
that what she wanted in her new shorts was 'spacious pockets'.

Silas interrupts me to ask what things mean
when I have said something too advanced for him.
"What is a dinghy?"
"A little boat."
And the next day, hearing it again in his read aloud,
he repeated the question.
And again, I said, "A little boat."
Learning new things takes repetition.
My daughter Elisa, many years ago,
dubbed high-brow vocabulary 'long-sleeved words'.

Sometimes, I realize that what I have been reading in the Scripture
has been beyond my comprehension my whole life.
That's why I appreciate reading different translations on occasion.
This morning I came across this short-sleeved version:

"It was also written," Jesus said, 
"that this message should be proclaimed 
in the authority of His name to all the nations, 
beginning in Jerusalem:
'There is forgiveness of sins for all who repent.'" 

Its simplicity moves me.

It Will Change Your Life

"If you will change this one thing about how you operate,
it will change your life:
throw garbage in the garbage can."

That is what I said as I sorted and sifted more miniscule bits of tin foil,
broken plastic toys,
used-up glow sticks,
old band-aids,
ripped paper,
bent needles,
pencil sharpenings,
and other debris from the things he actually loves,
and the dirty clothes stuffed in containers.

"Do you see how much work it would have saved
to simply throw trash away once you knew it was trash?"
And it strikes me: this is a good plan for my life.

Secret Worship

The Sermon on the Mount.
What is it?
I think for many years, I saw it as a list of impossible standards.
A mish-mash of unrelated things I am doing wrong.
Somehow it never seemed connected
to the other things Jesus said and did in the gospels.
I have sometimes avoided reading it,
because it seemed so hard for me to understand.
But a week ago, as I read through it,
themes grew clear I had not seen before.

In chapter 6:
Show mercy secretly.
God sees you.
Pray secretly.
God sees you.
Fast secretly.
God sees you.

Store up treasure in heaven.
Our Father, who art in heaven.
"Your Father who is in the secret place; 
and Your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly."

He continually warns us not to be pretenders.
You might wonder where He said that.
He used a word we immediately distance from ourselves.
Hypocrites.
My Bible had 'pretenders' in the margin notes.
You know -- public worshipers. 

About that treasure.
You know: those gold coins you invest in
and then hide somewhere where no one can find them but you.
The sure thing that can withstand the economic crash when it comes.
The secret hoard.
The private resource.
The place your heart worships,
because it's where your heart stays always.
So have a secret trust.
Have a secret worship.
Let it be in Him. 

I flipped back into chapter 5.
He spoke about murder, the public display of the secret hatred.
Adultery, the public display of secret lust. 
Going to present your (public) gift to God
while your brother has something (secret) against you.
Drop the gift: go be reconciled.
Let your gift be given from a secret worship.

About honest words which need no oath.
Loving and praying for an enemy.
This is how our Father is: honest; pure in heart; secretly loving.
Forgiving from the heart.

Worship of the Father is not a display.
It's a secret adoration that calls forth love.
That compels me to forgive when I am wronged.
To have a true heart toward my husband.
To reconcile with my brother.
To withhold judgment and let it rest with Him.
To love those who definitively do not love me.

And I found myself mentally standing in the place of the Samaritan woman.
"The woman said to Him, 'Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet.
Our fathers worshiped in this mountain,
and you say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.'
Jesus said to her, 'Woman, believe Me, the hour is coming
when you shall neither worship the Father in this mountain
nor yet at Jerusalem. ...The hour is coming, and now is,
when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and truth,
for the Father seeks such to worship Him.
God is a spirit, and they who worship Him
must worship in spirit and in truth.'"

In spirit and in truth.
In secret in my heart.
Not from a prominent place for the observation of men,
but from a secret devotion for the eyes of the Lord.

Is it possible that when He says in chapter 7,
"Do not give what is holy to the dogs;
nor cast your pearls before swine,"
He is referring to all these things
which the love of God ought to inspire in us
being done as a display for the praise of men?
It's a prostitution of worship --
a leaving of our first love.

The Wind Blows

My husband mentioned to the children tonight that if they are ever confused or upset, and they need to talk, that they can talk to us, and ask us questions, and although we won’t always know the answers to their questions, we would be happy to pray with them. He told them he didn’t want them to feel like they couldn’t talk about things. “And if it’s something private, you can ask, and we will talk to you privately.”

Without warning, a child sobbed out, “Sometimes I feel like I hate them (indicating the other children), and I don’t want to!” I held the child in my arms and heard the cries of torment over this hateful heart. It wasn’t self-pity. It was the horror of what was inside.

“This is why we need God to give us a new heart, a clean heart, because that same wicked hatred is in everyone’s heart.” I told the child that when I was a little girl, I knew that I was like Cain, with murder in my heart. I assured this child that although that is a very wicked sin, God’s word promises us that when we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to wash us clean of all that sin. I said we needed to pray and ask God for a new heart, that the Lord would change that.

“I have been praying about it,” the child said. I prayed, too. We prayed 1 John 1:9, and we asked that the Holy Spirit would fill the child's heart with His love, and wash that sin away.

I said it was because the Holy Spirit was working in the child's life that the hateful heart disturbed the child -- there could be no peace with it. I talked about the Holy Spirit’s work -- that He is there to convict us both of sin, and of righteousness. That He points to our rotten hearts, and says, “This is sin -- it needs to go.” And that He points to good things, and says, “This is good.” And I prayed the child would be able to hear when the Holy Spirit is speaking. And I mentioned how I have seen this child choose to be kind and to do what is right even when I knew it was not easy. The child left my arms smiling and free. Two siblings were lined up for hugs.

“The wind blows wherever it wishes; you hear the sound it makes,
but you do not know where it comes from or where it is going.
It is like that with everyone who is born of the Spirit."
(John 3:8)

It is a beautiful thing to see the effect of the Holy Spirit interacting with someone right before your eyes -- though you cannot see Him.