Where God dwells

Our Mighty God fills the earth with His presence, not only the earth, but Psalm 139 ponders, "Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend to heaven, You are there; If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there. If I take the wings of the dawn, if I dwell in the remotest part of the sea, even there Your hand will lead me, and Your right hand will lay hold of me. . . "But there is another very personal place that God inhabits. "I dwell in the high and holy place, but with him also who is of a thoroughly penitent and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble and to revive the heart of the thoroughly penitent--bruised with sorrow for sin." Isaiah 57:15

This verse leaped out at me the other day. Immediately words came to mind like brokenness, contrition, lowly in spirit, and meekness. But the word bruised clutched my heartstrings and locked itself into my spirit and brain for several days. It's still lodged there.

I've been asking myself, "Am I bruised over my sins?" Sometimes. I find it very comforting to know that God is moved by those who are bruised with sorrow for sin. He chooses to dwell or pitch His tent with the lowly of heart, with the humble, with the broken, with the contrite. If He chooses to encamp with them, it must mean that He is totally at home with them. This idea amazes me.

On the other hand, God hates pride. It is one of the seven things listed as an abomination to the Lord in Proverbs 6. He despises that "proud look (the spirit that makes one overestimate himself and underestimate others). He distances Himself from the proud but gives grace to the humble. In fact, God the Father is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity. That's why the Son and Holy Spirit intercede and translate our prayers with groans that cannot even be uttered. Our Great High Priest, Jesus, during his earthly life "offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the One who could save Him from death, and He was heard because of his reverent submission. Although He was a son, He learned obedience from what he suffered and, once made perfect, He became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey Him and was designated by God to be high priest in the order of Melchizedek."

Are you struck as I am with his having to learn obedience? His humanity did. He passed, of course, with flying colors, but can you hear Him crying out in desperation for the cup to be passed and then relinquishing with all that was in Him to the Father His will for the Father's will, and then taking the cup back lovingly for your sake and mine? What was contained in the cup? The worst thing about the cup had to be the separation Jesus would suffer from His beloved Father. Another was the act of dying--the Perfect Darling of heaven, giver of life, allowing His own life to be poured out for you and me. How foreign it had to have been to Him! And what about becoming sin for us WHO KNEW NO SIN? What was it like to bear the evil encapsulated in that sin? How ugly? How dark? How downright wicked was the sin of the WORLD!? Can you even begin to imagine the bruising of His heart over the magnitude of that sin--the weight of the sin of the universe--every man, woman, and child ever born, having been born, and to be born--on his shoulders? I'm speechless. Without His willingness to bear the cup, Jesus would not have become our high priest. "For this reason He had to be made like His brothers in every way, in order that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God. . ."

Although the Godhead decided from before the foundation of the world that mankind would need a savior and made every provision for our salvation, the reality of the fact is, it cost the Saviour plenty of heart bruising, plenty of humility, plenty of contrition, and plenty of brokenness because He considered His deity something that He didn't need to grasp at. "Though He was in the form of God, He thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men; and being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross." "Yet it pleased the Father to bruise Him,"

Philippians also prompts us to "let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus." That is, the mindset that enables us to think more highly of other people than of ourselves. The mindset that decides to serve instead of exalting self. The mindset that doesn't freak out because someone else got the credit for something that originated with us. The mindset that allows for bruising.

Not bruising that results in my being paralyzed with guilt over my sin so that I become warped and am rendered powerless by remaining in the pit, but a bruising that causes me to see how sin hurts the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. A bruising that makes me turn from my sin to confession and cleansing. A bruising that leads me to the Rock that is higher than I and causes me to rejoice over the fact that Jesus is bigger than my sin. That even before I confess that sin, He is waiting with outstretched arms to hug me back into the fold, that I can climb into His lap washed by the blood, purer than a freshly bathed toddler, and that He sends me on my way accepted in the Beloved, resting in Him instead of wrestling in my sinful state, and sending me on my way once again to serve him energized by the realization that I have been cleansed by the blood of the Lamb and am whiter than the driven snow.

And beyond the bruising for our own sin, what if we were to allow ourselves to be bruised for the sin-sick nation we call America? The "In God we no longer trust" nation. The nation that kills multiplied thousands of innocent babies each year and calls it pro choice. The nation that has disavowed God by taking the right to take prayer out of its schools and has no room for the Bible in its classes or "teaching." That's what Proverbs 30 describes as futility--education without the Bible as its core or center of its curricula. It reads, "Surely I am too brutish and stupid to be called a man, and I have not the understanding of a man, for all my secular learning is as nothing. I have not learned skillful and godly Wisdom, that I should have the knowledge or burden of the Holy One." Again in Psalm 119:89,96-99 God's eternal word is esteemed above all. "Forever, O Lord, Your word is settled in heaven; it stands as firm as the heavens. I have seen that everything human has its limits and end no matter how extensive, noble, and excellent, but your commandment is exceedingly broad and extends without limits into eternity. . . You, through your commandments, make me wiser than my enemies, for your words are ever before me. I have better understanding and deeper insight than all my teachers because your testimonies are my meditation." Does Psalm 82:5 sound like a modern day commentary of American government? "The magistrates and judges know not, neither will they understand; they walk on in the darkness of complacent satisfaction; all the foundations. . . (the fundamental principles upon which rests the administration of justice) are shaking."

Daniel dared to stand alone and prayed three times a day . . . for the sake of uncompromising obedience to the God he loved. Was his influence enlarged and his position empowered or dwarfed by his stand? He forever has as the sought-after epitaph, "esteemed by God." Wow! Joseph's suffering, sterling character, and commitment to the great I AM resulted in the salvation of Egypt and surrounding countries through an intense famine and ultimately restoration with his dimwit brothers. God hemmed him in and then "brought him forth also into a large place."
Abraham believed God when promised his descendants would be more in number that the stars in heaven--though he would never see its reality--and his faith was counted for righteousness, all the while living in a tent.

Surely, we can ask God to bruise our hearts for this country so far fallen from its moorings of being founded on the Word of God, can't we? Is God lying when he says, "If my people--his people, not the unsaved--who are called by my name will humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, forgive their sin, and heal their land."? Of course not.

Could it be that there may be one more great revival before Jesus comes to get us? He can't revive a person who has never been alive. This can only come as we believers humble ourselves and become sin sick and repent. Unbelievers are dead to God. They're dead. We who are alive in Christ are the key to revival!

Wake us up Lord to prayer, to humility, to seeking your face, to turning from our sins, to requiring you to be our vital necessity, to being desperate for you. We plead for America, the greatest nation in the world. Please God be merciful to us for the sins we have committed corporately--for not honoring you as our true God, for spitting on your eternal Word, for mocking you through abortion, and for taking you out of our public schools, for laughing at your law, for losing our awe and fear of you, and for worshiping things that will pass away instead of worshiping you. We repent in sackcloth and ashes and beg your forgiveness.