THIRD HEAVEN RANCH

I read the article below today and thought it was an excellent , thought provoking word.  It is from the website/blog ‘She Reads Truth‘ and was written by Sharon Hodde Miller.  My favorite line:

The truth is, we all go through a rebellious phase. Some of us rebel against the rules and some of us rebel against the rescue, but the end result is the same: separation from God.

Rules or rescue?  I’ll ponder this for some time because I’ve rebelled against both….what about you?

Sin and Redemption

She Reads Truth

Text: Isaiah 58:1-14, Isaiah 59:1-21, Matthew 21:12-22

Text: Isaiah 58:1-14, Isaiah 59:1-21, Matthew 21:12-22

I never had a rebellious phase.

As far back as I can remember, I’ve been a “good girl,” running my life on the straight and narrow, delighted to follow the rules. I loved to please my parents, my teachers, and my coaches because I was devoted to maintaining my pristine reputation.

Due to my well-practiced, people-pleasing ways, Christianity came easily to me. Religion offered one more list of boxes to check, all affirming my goodness. The only problem with all this box-checking is that as much as I honored God’s law, I did not understand His grace. I understood it on a head level, but not on a personal one. Not in my heart. I couldn’t grasp the urgency of it, or my deep need to be rescued by a Savior. Because, if I was really being honest, I didn’t think I needed rescuing. I was doing Christianity pretty well on my own.

That’s the beautiful irony of my story. While I lived my good Christian life of following the rules and doing all the right things, I only proved the depth of my brokenness. The truth was, my rule following was my rebellion. It was my own attempt to justify myself. As Tim Keller once suggested in his book The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith, my rebellion wasn’t against God’s law but against God’s grace.

We witness this same kind of brokenness in Isaiah 58. Although the Israelites engage in the godly discipline of fasting, it only reveals their sin all the more, to which the prophet had this to say:

“Yet on the day of your fasting, you do as you please
and exploit all your workers.
Your fasting ends in quarreling and strife,
and in striking each other with wicked fists.
You cannot fast as you do today
and expect your voice to be heard on high” (vv. 3-4).

According to Old Testament scholar John Oswalt, the Israelites were fasting for the wrong reason. They were not doing it to “express gratitude and submission to God” but were instead doing it “for the very same reasons the pagans do, to manipulate God to act in their favor” (Oswalt 625). This manipulation is why the Israelites are confused at God’s silence: “Why have we fasted, and you have not seen it?” (Isaiah 58:3). They thought they had done everything right. They thought fasting was a guarantee of divine favor. Why wasn’t God holding up His end of the deal?

In response to their entitlement, God had this response:

“Surely the arm of the Lord is not too short to save,
nor his ear too dull to hear.
But your iniquities have separated you from your God;
your sins have hidden his face from you,
so that he will not hear” (Isaiah 59:1).

In short, God was not the one who broke His word. The Israelites’ “good deeds” point right back to their sin. They are unable to keep His commandments, try as they might. Thankfully, as Oswalt explains, “God will come and do for his people what neither they nor anyone else can do for them” (Oswalt 636).

The truth is, we all go through a rebellious phase. Some of us rebel against the rules and some of us rebel against the rescue, but the end result is the same: separation from God. Our only hope is to name and to confess our rebellion, in whatever form it takes. Because no matter how good and well-behaved we are, our arms are most definitely too short to save ourselves.

“The Redeemer will come to Zion,
to those in Jacob who repent of their sins,”
declares the Lord.
– Isaiah 59:20

Sharon Hodde Miller is a writer, speaker, pastor’s wife, and mom of two boys. She is a regular contributor to Christianity Today and recently completed her Ph.D, which focused on cultivating the gifts of women in the church.

I’ve been missing in action for about 2 1/2 years as you may have noticed.  However, lots has been going on during those years.

First of all, my mom died.  What an adjustment!  She was the last in that generation from my close family which turned me and my brothers and cousins into ‘that’ generation.  It feels strange to now be the ‘older generation’….especially since I still feel like a teenager in my mind and heart!  HA!

Then, I moved from the wonderful country home where I was living in Alabama to a wonderful mountain home in North Carolina.  I’ve wanted to live in the mountains ever since I saw The Sound of Music with my mom when I was 8 years old.  🙂 This has truly fulfilled a desire of my heart!

Since I live on the side of a mountain, I don’t have the farm animals I once did.  I have a few chickens, two dogs and a cat.  But there’s a horse across the road I enjoy seeing as I pass by.  And thanks to my #3 son who cleared a spot by digging up rocks for 3 days, I do have a small garden.

My new home is in a beautiful area of western North Carolina and there was NO DOUBT God orchestrated this move.  I may write more about that later, but today I have another focus….the Third Heaven Ranch.

I still have a dream, given by God over 25 years ago, for the Third Heaven Ranch.  The vision becomes clearer as days go by and I still believe it’s in my future.  In fact, I believe it is beginning on a small scale even now!

I read this today (an excerpt from a word by Ck Thompson posted on the Elijah List):

Second-Heaven is the atmosphere above us where spiritual warfare takes place. The Bible speaks of principalities, powers, rulers of the darkness of this age, wicked spirits in heavenly places [see Eph. 6]. When we pray and push through Second-Heaven activity, we can experience glorious encounters with the Lord in the Third-Heaven.

My prayer for the Third Heaven Ranch is that it would be a place where those who come would ‘experience glorious encounters with the Lord’.  What better place to do so than on the mountaintop!

A friend shared with me some quotes from John Wesley (founder of Methodism) that I found to be pretty amazing considering they were written in 1747.  Consider these:

1.  The emotions have a greater influence upon health than most people are aware.

2.  All violent and sudden emotion dispose to, or actually throw people into acute diseases.

3.  Slow and lasting emotion, such as grief and hopeless love, bring on chronic diseases.

4.  Until the emotion which caused the disease is calmed, medicine is applied in vain.

5.  The love of God is the sovereign remedy of all miseries, so in particular it effectively prevents all the bodily disorders the emotions introduce, but keeping the emotions themselves within bounds.  And by the unspeakable joy, and perfect calm, serenity, and tranquility it gives the mind, it becomes the most powerful of all means of health and long life.

This is what medicine is discovering today (or should I say re-discovering!).  My cousin, who is a doctor, once told me she knew a man who was in family practice and went back to school to be a psychiatrist or psychologist (I can’t remember which) because he had realized that a great percentage of the people who came into his office had an emotional root to their illness.

Much of my reading material of late speaks to this very issue…..I thought it was ‘new news’ only to discover it’s actually very ‘old news’.  Solomon was right, wasn’t he?

Ecc. 1:9 – …there is nothing new under the sun.

2013 has been an interesting year….a good year and a hard year and a busy year.  I have to say, I’m glad it’s behind me!

There is no telling how many miles I’ve put on my car this year….thousands for sure.  I’ve been in these states in 2013:  Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Texas, and Colorado.  The Lord kept saying I was a ‘circuit rider’ this year with a primary route from Alabama to Georgia to Alabama to Mississippi to Alabama….over and over again!

So what’s with all the travel?  Well, in the first half of the year, my brothers and I moved Mom from Texas into assisted living in Mississippi to be more centrally located for all of us.  Then, I had a new grandbaby in July and my only daughter’s wedding in August.  All of those events required what seemed to be constant trips to Mississippi.  Then I work 4 weeks a year in Georgia plus added another week for a conference.

While for the most part, I enjoy traveling, this year has worn me out!  And I’m determined 2014 is going to be different!  To that end, I plan to begin the year ‘in seclusion’.  That may sound funny in this day and age, but I want to ‘shut myself in’ with the Lord and I plan to do so for the entire month of January.

You see….all the activity of this past year has frustrated me because it ‘breaks the rhythm’.  About the time I really begin to see the Lord and me making some steady, daily progress in one area or the other, I’d have to stop and take another trip.  That would ‘break the flow’ and when I’d get back, it would take a day or two to get back in the rhythm.  And then another trip would be upon me.  So while there were some periods of good growth, I feel the travel hindered my relationship with Him.  Were these good things I was involved in?  Of course!  And yes…this is life.  I’ve ‘rolled with the flow’ for the year, but now I want to determine, to the best of my ability, to make 2014 a year of ‘pressing in’.

I want to know Him more, love Him more, and understand more of His plan and will for me in 2014.  I want Him to order my days….even when it doesn’t make those around me happy, because I want my first priority to be honoring and obeying Him!  These are not just words to me, but are the cry of my heart.

So why am I blogging about this?  Because I’ve noticed something this year that was probably revealed to me only by my busy schedule and frustration of not having the time with Jesus I wanted to have.

It seems to me holidays, or ‘holy days’ for the Christian church, break the rhythm.  They seem to break momentum or a ‘forward flow’.  I was sitting in church for a Christmas Eve service in north Mississippi (traveling again!) and it hit me like a ton of bricks.  We lose a good 6 weeks a year (Thanksgiving to Christmas) by stopping whatever is going on in our spiritual walk to focus on these holidays.  Then about the time the church gets back ‘in rhythm’ we stop again to focus on Easter.  Then we stop for summer.  Yes, you know you’ve seen it….churches go into ‘vacation mode’ for the summer.  And again, momentum is lost.

My dad was a pastor who used to tell me he quit having revivals at our church because it would break the momentum and halt forward progress.  Now revivals are good things, aren’t they?  But they stopped the current work in our church.  Now some churches, I admit, don’t have anything to stop and are in desperate need of a revival.  However, having one is not a ‘one size fits all’ formula.  When God is alive and moving in a church, that may not be the best alternative because everyone else is doing it (at least annual revivals used to be the norm back in the day he told me this.)

All of this is my roundabout way of saying, “Do you ever stop to think why we do the things we do?”  Christmas is ‘big business’ in the secular world, but it’s also ‘big business’ in the religious world.  Do we need to honor the birth of Jesus?  Absolutely.  But does it need to be a month of celebration?  Personally I don’t think so.  Why?  Because if there is a flow, it stops it.  And the fact is, we should be celebrating His birth every day, and His death, and His resurrection….as well as His power and majesty and glory and all the other attributes that make Him worthy of our praise!!!

I’m determined in 2014 I want to live my life more focused, more committed, and more aware of the ‘good things’ that come my way that are not the ‘best things’.  I want to think, and think hard, about ‘why we do the things we do’ and break out of anything that hinders my walk with Him.  I can’t wait to see what He has for me this year and in the years to come.  Because life with Jesus is a grand adventure…and the more of me He has, the more exciting it gets!

2014….here I come!!!

I am reading a new translation of the Bible that I am enjoying so much called The Passion Translation.

The translator is Brian Simmons who I ‘discovered’ quite by accident (which I believe was God’s leading) back around 2005.  I began listening to podcasts from the church where he was a pastor and was immediately blown away by his insights into the Scripture.  It took me hours to listen to each sermon because I kept having to stop and write down what he said so I could fully absorb the teaching.  I have tried to follow him ever since.  In his early ministry he was a missionary translator of the Scriptures into the Kuna language in the jungles of Panama.

He will eventually translate the whole Bible but so far has completed Psalms (Poetry on Fire), Proverbs (Wisdom from Above), Song of Solomon (Song of Songs), Letters of Paul (Letters from Heaven– Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1st & 2nd Timothy) and Luke (to the Lovers of God).  I believe John (Eternal Love) will come out soon after the first of the year.

So far I’ve read Song of Songs and am reading Luke now.  Dr. Simmons calls his translation a ‘dynamic equivalent’ translation.  To me, it seems he gives the spiritual meaning as opposed to just the literal translation.  He has extensive footnotes in each book that really help to better understand the meaning.

This is from the Passion Translation website which explains it better than I can:

By translating this most holy portion of the Word of God, the Song of Songs, I have attempted to translate not only from a scholarly or linguistic perspective alone, but from the passion of a heart on fire. Love will always find a language to express itself. Fiery love for Jesus pushes our thoughts out of hiding and puts them into anointed words of adoration. This articulation, out of the deepest places of our hearts, moves God and inspires each of us to a greater devotion.  Everyone deserves to hear and to feel the passion of our Bridegroom for His radiant and soon to be perfected Bride.

Reading a new translation always propels me into a new awareness and fresh understanding of God.  This translation is doing that for me more than ever before.  I have copies of all the books listed above and am slowly working my way through.  I began with the first one Dr. Simmons translated, Song of Songs, which he says is his favorite book of the Bible.

Of course, there are always critics of a new work (sigh!).  I followed some of them through a Google search.  For the most part, they are the same groups opposed to The Message Bible, another Bible that has really ministered to me.  Here’s my take on translations/paraphrases–none of them, including King James, has it perfectly right.  A translation of any kind into the English language is really impossible as to the complete and intended meaning coming through.  The translation of the word ‘love’ is a perfect example….one word, many meanings.  I’m not casting doubt on the inerrancy of Scripture in any way…..just the ‘translations’ of the Scripture.  I currently have 22 different translations in the Bible program I use daily.  Why do I have 22 different ones?  Well, for the most part, they all say it different!  I can gain insight by reading a particular verse in many different translations. The Passion Translation is one more reference added to the rest that, for me, brings additional insight to God’s Word.

As I read these words in this new translation, I knew they were the cry of my heart:

Song of Songs 4:16-5:1 TPT

[The Shulamite Bride]

Then may Your awakening breath

Blow upon my life until I am fully Yours.

Breathe upon me with Your Spirit-winds.

Stir up the sweet spice of Your life within me.

Spare nothing as You make me

Your fruit-filled garden,

Hold nothing back

Until I release Your fragrance.

Come walk with me as You walked

With Adam in Your paradise-garden.

Come taste the very fruits of Your life in me.

[The Bridegroom King]

I have come to you,

My bride, My darling

For you are My paradise-garden!

[The Shulamite Bride]

Come walk with me

Until I am fully Yours

Come taste the fruits

Of Your life in me.

Does this resonate with the cry of your heart?  If so, we are kindred spirits!!

I encourage you to order a copy of at least one book in this new translation and see if it doesn’t minister to your heart and change you forever!  Here is the website link:

http://passiontranslation.com/

I don’t make anything off of your purchase as an fyi.  Just good advice from my heart to yours!  🙂

Love and Blessings!