Three Houses

It’s the second long weekend in a row.  Today it’s the commemoration of the end of the second world war.  It was a beautiful sunny day & we went for a beautiful bike ride today along the river.  It’s really hard to stay inside in spring so we went to the square in the afternoon to sit for awhile at our second favorite spot & enjoy the sunshine some more.  How profoundly Europe & the world have simultaneously changed & remained the same…

I just can’t get away from this theme of worshipping God’s holiness, the perfect harmony of all of His virtues — particularly as expressed in the seeming contradiction of mercy/love & His terrible justice/judgment.  The last 5 years of my life have been about the rod of His chastening & discipline as the highest expression of His love in just judgment.  Though my sin is surely forgiven He has not allowed me to get away with not experiencing the outworkings & consequences of it.

Art Katz has written a piece called “The Holocaust: Where Was God?”, subtitling it “An Appeal For Jewish Consideration”.  This is what one reviewer wrote about it:

“In a daring hypothesis - turning to ancient Hebrew scriptures as a key of interpretation to the most modern of all events, the Holocaust, - the author brings a challenge both to the agnostic secularist as to the religiously-minded that compels a searching reappraisal of one’s deepest convictions.”

The appeal He presents in it for Jewish consideration (and of the nations) is this: that “the sufferings that we have experienced as Jews, in all of the calamities of our history and including the Holocaust, are the fulfillment of God’s judgments forewarned prophetically in the concluding chapters of the books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy”. 

Having tasted His chastening I do not find this unlikely but rather highly likely.  Furthermore, I see the direct correlation between this question & our witness.  How does this appeal for consideration strike you? 

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Excerpt: “I had the privilege once to meet Elie Wiesel, a Romanian Jew and winner of a Nobel prize for peace. He himself is a survivor of the Holocaust and is probably one of the greatest authorities on the subject of the Holocaust. He is the most beautifully eloquent man and if there was no God, then he is a picture of Jewish nobility and ethical and moral sensitivity that would be the admiration of anyone. If there is a God, however, that very thing that we would otherwise be impressed by becomes questionable in the light of God’s indictment on the condition of mankind.

“I asked him privately: ‘Mr. Wiesel, to what degree would you be willing to acknowledge that the sufferings that we have experienced as Jews, in all of the calamities of our history and including the Holocaust, are the fulfillment of God’s judgments forewarned prophetically in the concluding chapters of the books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy?’ He looked at me for a moment in that kind of stunned silence and then answered: ‘I refuse to consider that.’”

I’m still meditating a lot lately on godly fear of the Lord.  Psalm 99 calls the nations & the whole earth to tremble & shake before the Lord & to exalt Him because He is holy.  A quote by Charles Spurgeon in His excellent work on the psalms hit me like a ton of bricks:

“The terrible Avenger is to be praised, as well as the loving Redeemer. Against this the sympathy of man’s evil heart with sin rebels; it cries out for an effeminate God in whom pity has strangled justice.”

Somehow this seems to describe something very deep & of great consequence that has gotten off kilter from the perfect harmony of His love/grace & justice/truth/judgments in our corporate knowledge of Him.  I find myself pondering the practical implications of this in our midst a lot…  What do you think?  Has ‘judgment’ become one of the dirty no-no words in Christian vocabularly?  Is God the Just Judge ‘out’?

 

We left Thurdsay for a little family get-away to the mountains in the north of Czech that we hadn’t been to yet & got back this afternoon.  Thursday we were in Pec Pod Sněžkou & the next morning took the chairlift to the top of Sněžka, the highest mountain in Czech.  You can see the people hiking it below from the chairlift (the longest I’ve ever been on for sure) & hiking would have been my preference following spring run-off but wasn’t so enticing in the snow.  In the afternoon we took a drive through the same mountains on the other side of the border in Poland & ended up in another mountain town on the Czech side, Špindlerův Mlýn, where we stayed last night.  I still don’t tire of the beautiful countryside in this country!

When spring comes again after winter I get downright giddy seeing the first buds on the trees & watching them burst open a little more each day with resurrection life.  Many times I head out with Michelka for little jaunts just to see how much more the little buds have opened…the amazing picture of His eternal covenant promise of resurrection & life out of death.

 

Wow did the team that came ever get a huge amount of work done at the farm.  They were such hard workers!  There were 13 people on the YWAM team from Texas with Scot & Misty Bower who are with 24-7 with their 2 delightful children.  Last night we had a farewell dinner on the square before they carried on first thing this morning. 

 

I/we were so impressed by their willingness to do any jobs we had for them - picking up abestos tile, hauling huge beams & debris of all sizes from the barns, digging trench, cleaning house, cutting wood & the most entertaining: manoevering an old farm implement out of the barn over huge gaps in the floor:)  Misty wrote about how the best part for her was being able to show us the servant-heart of Jesus & that beautifully sums what these guys were to us this weekend.  Thank you!   

I haven’t written much here yet about the farm I’ve mentioned a couple times, called Novy Mlyn.  In the last year we’ve gotten to know Mike & Nicola Robinson, originally from Birmingham, England but now living in Tabor after they bought a farm about a 1/2 hour out of town.  The property has a big farm house & 2 big barns on it along with a few other outbuildings.  Within the first hour of being there for the first time after having moved to CZ they watched the second barn collapse before their eyes, the first barn having collapsed during the heavy snows a couple winters back. 

Last summer they offerred to give us the patch of land on which one of the barns is situated, to join them in life there & in reconstructing the barn & the rest of the property.  We’d already been looking at buying something in the country in tandem with others somehow for a few years prior.  We were both inclined to take up their offer so in the last year we’ve been making baby steps in all the logistics involved in this rather massive project.

We were out there for the afternoon on Sunday & yesterday afternoon we spent a good deal of time cleaning up the farmhouse in preparation for a team that’s coming tomorrow to help out with manual labour - mostly a whole lot of deconstruction & clean-up in preparation to be able to re-build where the dilapidated barns now stand.

There’s a big beautiful full moon glowing orange tonight.  Thank you God for the faithful witnesses in the sky to Your beautiful covenant!

The feast of Passover and of Unleavened Bread begins tonight & my heart wells up with anticipation to celebrate the Christ of these feasts.  “Easter” comes & goes & nothing in me registers.  I can’t bring myself to say “Happy Easter”.  The church in the first century knew nothing of this discrepancy between the supposed Christian Easter & the Jewish PAssover.  They knew only Passover & Unleavened Bread, particularly as the Lord celebrated it with His disciples & as the early church celebrated it (daily) in the Lord’s supper.  

Many have seen Easter as another form of the name of the Babylonian fertility goddess Astarte, known in Hebrew as Ashtoreth whose poles the Israelites were commanded to utterly destroy.  It is not for me to go into this further here but a quote I heard in a radio interview with Frank Viola about his book Pagan Christianity? expresses what’s in my heart about Easter: “Christianity didn’t destroy paganism, it adopted it.”  Like with Christmas, I’m aware of that many see redemptive aspects in these celebrations.  As He’s been bringing these things to light the last years I’ve sensed the depth of His jealousy though & I’m skeptical that He’s pleased with the mixture & adoption of counterfeits vs. their utter destruction. 

I see this confusion, adoption & mixture as having had the very detrimental outcome of having muddied both the gospel & our practise of the Lord’s supper.  In other words, critical aspects of the revelation of the Christ of the Passover & Unleaved Bread & consequently our life together in Him (as symbolized by His supper) have been lost to us.  I’m advocating rediscovery & celebration of the Christ of the feasts.  The implications of all this for our witness, particularly to the Jewish people, weighs heavily on my heart.  I don’t see them being able to recognize their Messiah in a people who are not living feasts of Passover & Unleavened Bread (& the rest of the Lord’s feasts).  More is at stake than we know.

It was such a huge joy to be able to spend yesterday morning & this morning with our friend Lenka. 

She lives in another city, Hradec Kralove, but from what we’ve been experiencing together I know that the union of the whole universe in & under Christ as the ultimate end of the gospel is not God’s impossible utopian dream but an actual reality to be entered into — our own opinions & thoughts crucified with Christ & enjoying His one heart & mind together!  It was so amazing to share & discover that He’d been revealing & speaking the exact same things to both of us during the same period of time. 

What He’s been been opening up is the revelation of the gospel of the kingdom as the gospel of His Son (as Paul puts it in Romans 1) as the invitation to enter the kingdom by receiving the sonship the Father has conferred on us before the foundation of the world.  It’s opening my eyes to what it means to be known by God & I’m seeing that the heart & point of life is to receive the Father’s love & the life of Christ as the expression of it so as to be able to love Him & others in turn. 

I’ve heard these words all my life but have been chronically religious - ever hearing & never understanding, ever seeing but never perceiving - & therefore not being known & knowing these realities in the Hebrew sense.  He’s been revealing my heart & I can’t agree more with Jeremiah that the heart is deceitful above all things & desperately wicked.  I have no illusions about the human heart.  Its’ defenses & rebellion against the love of God wear innumerable disguises, the most effective being religion.  Indeed, who can know it except that He gives us the revelation of His love in Christ with the accompanying grace to believe/receive it.  Thank you Abba, Father!

What does being ‘known by God’ mean???  I can’t bear that these be more mere empty religious words I think I understand but actually don’t at all because they haven’t become experiential knowledge.  The implications are too great.  I can’t bear the thought of hearing Him say “I don’t know you or where you come from” or “Get away from me.  I never knew you“ as Luke & Matthew have it.  It seems to have everything to do with His word gaining entry into our hearts & His life/Spirit into our spirits, daily & momently.  According to the Light that reveals where we actually are versus where we think we are mine’s been pretty full of unbelief, disallowing Him to know me.  It’s freeing to learn I can’t even believe of myself tho but have to draw on the faith of Christ!

“‘The man who thinks he knows something does not yet know as he ought to know. But the man who loves God is known by God.”  1 Corinthians 8:2-3

 

 

The other day I talked about the church undergoing a great transition from apostacy to apostolicity.  In the days since that wording for what’s taking place hasn’t sat right at all because scripture is clear that an apostate whore will always exist alongside the true apostolic church. 

To say that He is calling a great many believers to come out of Babylon in these days is much more accurate than what I wrote suggests.  The false religion of Babylon entails sitting on the beast & holding a golden cup filled with the filth of her adulteries - worship of the prince of this world/idolatry (& his rule) & fleshly works.  We are only brought out from apostacy into apostolicity through being crucified, buried & raised with Christ daily.  (I’m seeing the daily nature of our salvation more & more…resting on yesterday’s laurels seems to put us back on whore ground today.)

The call both to come out & to examine ourselves to see whether we are in the faith sounds in me loudly these days.  It’s unspeakably precious when He allows us to see the light of where we actually are in our faith journeys in His light versus where we thought ourselves to be.  I might post more on these lines in the future…

Today I got a bike with more than one gear & Mirka & Jirka lent us their seat for Michelka.  I couldn’t keep up with Keith very well on the Czech hills with my one gear so we haven’t biked together for a few years now.  Going on excursions with him & tooling around town is going to be a lot of fun! 

I was at the doctor today for a 13-week checkup & by all appearances Baby #2 is doing well.  Doktorka gave a due date of Oct.18 & announced that, although it’s still quite early to say for sure, it looks to her like it’s a ….. .  Take a guess

The last few Thursdays we’ve been going to the salt cave to play with a friend Martina, little Kubik & Terezka.  Martina’s husband Petr is the minister at the Brother’s Church in town.  I’m enjoying her & their kids so much, as well as seeing some of the fresh signs of life amongst this part of the body in Tabor.

At the very same time I cannot ignore the groanings of the Spirit that they might freshly hear what He is saying across the global body in these days concerning the biblical DNA/blueprints for His church & for His precious deconstructive & reconstructive work there.  And I’m asking Him to know what my part is & isn’t. 

We are very clearly living in an even more amazing time than the reformation of the 1500’s in which the church is transitioning from apostacy to apostolicity as the Lord Himself tears down & builds, individually & corporately.  Sarah’s excellent recent post about the crisis in the (American) church hits on the tension of this time of transition.  

I’m seeing the central role of the restoration of the gospel of the kingdom in this process & its’ power to effect that for which He is groaning & travailing.  It is also the answer to the dilemma of how I am to be in relation to these friends.  Christ, the gospel is everything:)  Today though I had to repent of careless frivolity, of not being attentive to the weight of eternal significance in every moment.  

Paul’s prayer for the Ephesians, that they may have power to grasp the dimensions of Christ’s love & that they may know it, has been on my heart a lot lately.  John 5:20 & 16:14 have come alive as such an amazing aspect of the active nature of how He expresses His love to us. 

“For the Father loves the Son & shows Him all He does.” 

“He [the Spirit] will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you.”

This really ‘grounds’ His love in such a concrete expression!  As I begin to grasp this dimension & aspect of His love, I anticipate experiential revelation of it in the Hebrew sense of the word ‘know’.  I realize more & more that there’s so much I’ve known in my head that I don’t actually know at all because it’s not yet been actualized in me by faith & that just doesn’t cut it.  His grace is sufficient

 

Today we went to the notary to inquire about what it would cost us for them to help us set up an s.r.o., the Czech equivalent of a limited liability company.  Non-EU foreigners can’t buy property here unless they have permanent residency, which is at least 5 years off for us unless the law changes (as it frequently does), but they can buy something through an s.r.o.  We found out that there’s a lot of running around to offices & shuffling of important papers involved with setting up s.r.o.’s…in other words, something we’re already very familiar with

This weekend Michelka took her first steps - that is, initiated entirely by her:)  We’ve walked with her lots by the hands & between furniture but this was the first time (that I’ve seen) that she’s set off on her own.  Crawling’s definitely still more comfortable but I so relished the look on her face as she set out - such a great mix of wonder & delight in what she was doing.  Same goes for slowing down when we’re outside to walk with & watch little birds for awhile.  This kind of wonder at in things I usually entirely take for granted is so refreshing.  Children are good for the soul in so many ways!

For a few weeks now I’ve been meditating on the fear of the Lord & of His name daily.  Today I was impressed by how often it says that great fear was upon the people or that they were filled with awe & wonder in the beginning of Acts.  There’s such a strong connection throughout scripture between it & a deep awareness of God as the holy Judge, as in the incident with Ananais & Sapphira. 

This was the essence of the eternal gospel the angel proclaimed in Rev. 14, “Fear God & give Him glory, because the hour of His judgment has come.  Worship Him…”.  In Athens Paul’s message was that God has commanded all people everywhere to repent, for He has set a day when He will judge the world with justice by the man He has appointed.  Scripture is clear that that day is Today (Heb.3/4) just as much as it is the final Day of Atonement that seems like a never-never land.   

This is definitely not a part of the gospel as it is predominantly preached these days.  I’m asking Him that holy fear of Him would fall upon me & upon His church so that those who don’t believe yet may also fear. 

It’s been a bit quieter around here lately since I’ve not felt inspired to write much.  But the last couple days I have begun to feel inspired to (try!) to write along different lines - to write smaller snippets daily (at least more frequenstly anyway:), as a kind of spiritual discipline in turning from Hellenist dualistic thinking in which life is divided into ’sacred’ & ’secular’ boxes to embrace the holistic nature of the Hebraic worldview.  (Sarah often writes about how much the Lord is dealing with her in this.)

I realize how much I still tend to poo-poo the ‘day of small things’ & separate the parts of my life into these boxes so writing something daily about my life as a disciple in the everyday seems like it could be a helpful discipline in acknowledging all of life as sacred…like going to the store now with Keith & Michelka for weekend groceries:)  We’ll see how this experiment goes!

A little over a week ago I got right fed up at being laid out on the couch like a sack of rotten potatoes in the afternoons with morning sickness & at how unfitting it seemed for a Christian to be moaning & going on ad nauseum about the ick. 

I finally got furious enough & determined that I was going to lay hold of the provision of Christ for this, saw Him having borne it on the cross & began to actively receive His grace & resurrection life.  What a marked difference He has made!  Some foods still turn me off but I’m enjoying the wonderful experience of being ‘above’ hints of nausea & the power of that form of death being rendered powerless over me. 

I’ve been relishing His challenges in this season to fully appropriate & apply Christ & His cross’s work in this way in the many very nitty gritty details of everyday life.

It’s been an exceptionally sweet week that’s just ending…

Tuesday our neighbours & good friends Jirka & Mirka celebrated the birth of their little girl, Debora Anna. 

Wednesday Michelka & I spent the afternoon with the minister’s family at the Brother’s Church in town.  Michelka was born 2 hours after their little Kubik so it’s fun to see them grow in tandem.

Thursday KEith went to Germany & picked up our visas on Friday morning

Friday my precious friend Lenka in Hradec Kralové & I got to spend hours together sharing while we played on the bed with Michelka & marveling at how we’re on such parallel journeys by the Spirit though we’re in different cities. 

Saturday the Mudřik family graced our house with their visit following Jan’s hockey tournament in town — sweet fellowship!  I’m increasingly blessed by Marek & how his gifting balances mine.

Thanks God for the gifts all these & other people are in our lives!

It’s been a bit quiet here lately… 

First is that I’m not inspired so much to write longer thoughtful kingdom & reformation posts lately.  Likely it’s in keeping with a kind of transitioning time & staying quieter seems like the right thing. 

The other reason is pregnancy & being plum tired & nauseated alot in these first weeks - 7 to be exact

This past THursday we packed the car full with our precious visa application documents & headed to Munich where we left them all with a very nice lady who will now send them back to Tabor so that the foreign police here can make a big book about us out of them.  When they finish that we’ll go back to Munich so that they can glue a sticker into our passports worth 115+ Euros that says “Visa”

From Munich we went to Augsburg & spent a night with our old college friends, the Balzers.  The following night we were in the German alps in Berchtesgaden, which is overlooked by The Eagle’s Nest.

This last weekend I was up in Prague Friday-Sunday for a Connect Europe core group retreat & it was definitely that for me, a very refreshing retreat.  Michelka stayed home with Keith & so outside of time with CE friends I also enjoyed some of my old favorite haunts in Prague, cafes where I’ve spent hours reading, meditating & receiving revelation.  She’s a really wonderfully laid-back little 1 year old but isn’t quite up for 2 hour stints at cafes yet!

It was really good to reconnect with these friends & to meet some new ones.  The two biggest themes that came out of the weekend seemed to be the transition the network is in (discerning the nature of it & navigating it) & the theme of covenant, having initially been brought to our attention through the Moravian vow. 

Deuteronomy 6:23 leapt out at me this morning as expressing the transition we’re in.  The two themes also converge in this verse because we enter & possess the land through the three covenants He has established for us (the Spirit, water & the blood).  There are depths of the water & the Spirit covenants that I have yet to plumb & appropriate in my daily walk.  It’s this that I commit myself to with these dear friends, the Band Of Brothers I’m presently walking most closely with to see God’s kingdom come in Europe as in heaven

“But he brought us out from there to bring us in and give us the land that he promised on oath to our forefathers.”