Break IN

Today we are going to break into God's heart by "listening" for God. Last week we were "looking" for him in an effort to focus our senses to be fully aware of the God that loves us and wants us to experience him fully.   SO today, go outside and listen to the wind blow through trees, listen to kids laugh and giggle, listen to worship music, say the word mom and let it echo in your soul.  Or just sit in your room, outside, or anywhere you can have quiet and let God speak to you.  Push out everything else in your mind.  Focus on him and ask him a question and just wait for the response.  My favorite is to ask how much he loves us.   That usually sends me over the top :)  If God is alive in us and around us how better to listen to him that in us and around us.

The Lord of Hosts

I was reading the prophet Jeremiah a few weeks ago when I ran across a passage that referred to God as “the Lord Almighty.” To be honest, it didn’t resonate. There’s something too religious about the phrase; it sounds churchy, sanctimonious. The Lawd Almiiiighty. It sounds like something your grandmother would say when you came into her kitchen covered in mud. I found myself curious about what the actual phrase means in Hebrew. Might we have lost something in the translation? So I turned to the front of the version I was using for an explanation. Here is what the editors said: 

Because for most readers today the phrases “the Lord of hosts” and “God of hosts” have little meaning, this version renders them “the Lord Almighty” and “God Almighty.” These renderings convey the sense of the Hebrew, namely, “he who is sovereign over all the ‘hosts’ (powers) in heaven and on earth, especially over the ‘hosts’ (armies) of Israel.”

No, they don’t. They don’t even come close. The Hebrew means “the God of angel armies,” “the God of the armies who fight for his people.” The God who is at war. Does “Lord Almighty” convey “the God who is at war”? Not to me, it doesn’t. Not to anyone I’ve asked. It sounds like “the God who is up there but still in charge.” Powerful, in control. The God of angel armies sounds like the one who would roll up his sleeves, take up sword and shield to break down gates of bronze, and cut through bars of iron to rescue me. 

(Waking the Dead , 160) 

Warfare

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Remember, when Jesus boiled his whole mission down to healing the brokenhearted and setting prisoners free from darkness, he was referring to all of us. Our modern, scientific, Enlightenment worldview has simply removed spiritual warfare as a practical category, and so it shouldn’t surprise us that we can’t see spiritual strongholds after we say they don’t really exist. 

If you deny the battle raging against your heart, well, then, the thief just gets to steal and kill and destroy. Some friends of mine started a Christian school together a few years ago. It had been their shared dream for nearly all their adult lives. After years of praying and talking and dreaming, it finally happened. Then the assault came . . . but they would not see it as such. It was “hassles” and “misunderstanding” at first. As it grew worse, it became a rift between them. A mutual friend warned them of the warfare, urged them to fight it as such. “No,” they insisted, “this is about us. We just don’t see eye-to-eye.” I’m sorry to say their school shut its doors a few months ago, and the two aren’t speaking to each other. Because they refused to fight it for the warfare it was, they got taken out. I could tell you many, many stories like that. 

There is no war is the subtle—but pervasive—lie sown by an Enemy so familiar to us we don’t even see him. For too long he has infiltrated the ranks of the church, and we haven’t even recognized him. 

(Waking the Dead , 159–60)