A Prophetic Word from Gen. 22:6

Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. 

As young "Isaac's" we have been redeemed with the fire and the knife of God's mercy. So why are we still on the Altar?

Some stay because it's familiar. We've grown accustomed to it's hard, stony surface. Others are afraid to get off the thing. Still others aren't quite convinced they have really been set free by the knife and purified in the fire. And God waits.

Here's what came to me in church yesterday:

"I have cut your cords with my knife. I have cleansed you with my fire. You are free to rise from the altar. But you do not. Why have you not risen in the Grace where in you can stand? You sin is behind you. Your shame is consumed in my Provision, the scapegoat of the Sacrificial Lamb, crowned in a thorny thicket. 

"Arise, my child, get off the altar of your past and I will lift you into your future. There is nothing holding you back from my end. My plans will formulate as you get off the altar.  Arise from the shame of your youth. It is over. Finished. Dance on its ashes in the power of my Provision."

Gideon's Trumpet
The Discipline of Surrender by Douglas Webster: Chapter 5


I love Webster's opening remark: God's strategy for success is different from ours. Ain't that the truth.

Who would have thought that the whittling down of the army would be a strategy for success? I mean, I was always taught that the one with the most toys wins, the country with the biggest guns won, the pastor with the biggest pasture got the biggest crown, the most expensive thing on the menu was the best tasting thing in the restaurant. Who knew? I guess God's strategy of the Cross runs "cross cultural", so to speak. 

God's strategy for success flies in the face of the "bigger is better" mentality. Why is that?

And with regard to surrender... 

Two things have emerged in my thinking when reading about Gideon. The first is that merely having the attitude, awareness, or even capability of surrender doesn't cut it. For surrender to be truly surrender it must be co-linked sacrificially with the DNA of surrendered Christ. I may be wonderful at surrendering to wrongful things. I may even be wonderful to surrendering to good things. But we are called to surrender to Godly things in Christ Jesus our Lord. Big difference. It is that type of surrender - a whole-hearted surrender to the plans and purposes of God - that link us directly with the heart of Jesus. When we are in that mode we have something so common with the Life of Christ - something so core to his very Life - that one could say that we have become One with him, synced completely with his sacrificial, surrendered Nature. For our God is a Man of surrender.

Another thing that strikes me is this: Surrender as a lifestyle. Surrender is not merely something we do after God places a mark on our life, a wonderful victory, or incarnational intrusion on our otherwise mundane existence. If Gideon had only surrendered at the Lord's victory in the trumpet blast that would have been a no brainer. Who could not help but to give into God at such a obvious God sighting! No, the beauty of Gideon's surrender is that it began long before his victory over the Midianites. His "surrender button" was working long before the chaotic blast of the trumpet. He surrendered to God's call in the fleece. He surrendered to God's logic in the whittling down of the troops. He surrendered here. He surrendered there. Perhaps, at the end of his life - as might be our boast as well - he may have reflected, what part of his life WASN'T laced with surrender to the strategy of the cross? 

Surrender is the name of the Game. This type of surrender goes far beyond the "grin-and-bare-it" resignation of particular events to God, where one might look up to the sky and flippantly say, "OK God, you win." The problem is, these things add up. And after a while it turns into an endurance test. This time I surrender, another time I surrender, and ANOTHER time? REALLY?!  Another time?!! Alright. I surrender here, too. That type of surrender has neither purpose or spiritual formation in its release. That type of surrender will only breed anger and bitterness, as it continually increases - event after event - through the years. Like the perpetual nagging of a spouse, or the slow-dripping drops of water torture, it will eventually make you crack. At the end of the day, God always wins. And you? You'll only turn into a sore looser.

My experience is that God's call to us is to be co-yoked with him in a LIFESTYLE of surrender. Up and against the surrender that runs from event to event, this is one continuous surrender which is more akin to a constant flow, a blurring of events - streaming over the particulars much like a crystal river flows gracefully around rocks and turns in the stream - where the particular events demanding particular surrenders become unidentifiable, without beginning or end, enmeshed and without definition underneath the grace-filled rapids of the Holy Spirit. It is when thewhole of our life becomes a single event called "surrender' that we can say we are co-yoked with Christ and walking in the Spirit of humility. How does that happen? How do we get to that point, if indeed it is a place we need to be at?  You tell me. 

Manna In the Wilderness
The Discipline of Surrender by Douglas Webster: Chapter 4


It strikes me that God will create a hunger in our souls - make us fully aware of it - and then, just as we become desperate to fulfill the need on our own, he satisfies that same need with his miraculous provision.

This creation of the soulish hunger comes through something we hate: humiliation. Why is it that God has to go to such extremes to cause us to look fully into his Son Christ Jesus? Webster at P.37: "The only way out of humiliation is to have humility before God."  Humility of course is something that doesn't come naturally. Humility would suggest that we are dependent on God for daily provision, that we succumb to the holy currents of Sabbath Taking regardless of the 40% Off sale at Macy's, or that we humble ourselves afresh each Sunday morning and Wednesday night when we gather to understand we have no life whatsoever outside the Life of Christ, graced to us in the Eucharist.

Yet it's not until we experience the futile fast food experience of materialism (and are left devastated by its empty promises - even to the point of being humiliated because we have hung our very existence on its crumbling foundation) that we can begin to see through its facade and into the Deeper Reality. Our two-dimensional realities shatter to the floor and then - there, just out there in the lingering fog, beyond all we knew, is the face of God. Smiling. Compassioned. Most likely relieved to see that we finally "caught it". He rushes to us, swoops us away from our dying world and tells us how he was there all the time, yet crippled behind our stubborn insistence to feed ourselves from the delicacies of Egypt. 

Why is it that we tend to look for life in things that make us die?

Now onto the Book:

Firstly, any comments about the paragraphs above? 

Secondly, What part of Chapter 4 strikes you? Being daily dependent upon his provision? The discipline of taking a Sabbath? Being nurtured by the Bread of Life in the Eucharist? And why IS it that humiliation see,s to be the doorway into spiritual growth? 

The Shepherd's Staff
The Discipline of Surrender by Douglas Webster: Chapter 3


I am struck with how God uses the mundane, or other-wise "ho-hum" 
things in our life to infuse with the fulfillment of his calling in 
our life. Moses staff, for example. Something he knew, something that 
was just an ordinary part of his life. Yet it was that which God chose 
to affirm the Call. Isn't God wonderful? He knows our life and chooses 
to work through our "staff's" to do his will. Nothing fancy. But the 
results are hugely fancy. 

"The staff remained a staff, even as it served as a symbol of God's 
presence and power. When the Lord asked, 'Moses, what is in your 
hand?' he underscored an important principle. God can take the 
mundane, ordinary stuff that makes up our lives and use it for his 
glory. The very things that are close at hand are often what God 
intends to use (1 Thess 4"11). We remain ordinary, but God 
accomplishes his extraordinary will through us." p.33 

So what are the articles of your mundane life? How had the Lord used 
them to further his Life in the world around you?

The UnAdorned Altar

The Discipline of Surrender by Douglas Webster: Chapter 2

We are altar people. Each week we arise from the pews and approach the 
blessed bread and wine at the altar. In that sense, each week we have 
an altar call - a time to surrender - to willfully humble ourselves 
again at the memory of Christ's death and resurrection and take him 
into our hearts afresh. 

In this reading I was struck with the simplicity of "the altar". A 
pile of rocks. Uncut. No bling-bling. Just raw, virgin soil - the 
stuff that incarnation is made of. What is it with us that we want to 
take the simple things of the Lord and adorn them with such 
magnificent externals that its simplistic beauty vanishes and gets 
stealthy under the bigger and better garnishes of our own pride and 
selfishness? Webster, by illustration, reminds us of the Tower of 
Babel and the Golden Calf, reminding us that when we take the tools of 
the Mason into our own hands - when we add to the things of heaven in 
our hearts - the outcome can only be idolatry. 
You may have heard the old saying, "God made us in his image, and we 
have returned the favor?" Exactly. 

So what do we do? "Repentance is a sacrifice laid on an altar of 
unadorned stones". (p.25) We get before God JUST AS WE ARE - no 
pretense, no justifications, no putting lipstick on the pig (after 
all, a pig wearing lipstick is still, after all, a pig) - and become 
willfully passive to the Mason's touch in our hearts. 

Ok, enough with the theo-babel. Here are the things that strike me in 
the reading - things I humbly drop into the Community for your 
comments: 

Most of us have gone far beyond the natural altars in our hearts and 
have adorned them with all sorts of religious relishes. I know I have. 
So my prayer is for the Lord to take the tools of Mason and be  hewned 
BACK to the simple altar he built in me some time ago. My rocks have 
become idolized. I think there's even some mold on a few of them. He 
needs to scrape some of that excess off. In my case, he doesn't need 
to build up the altar. The altar is already there - half-submerged 
under old vines and other stuff I've tossed on it. In my case I think 
he needs to build it DOWN. You know, sort of like a "Get back to where 
you once belonged" sort of deal. Thanks John and Paul. 

Secondly, I throw out a question that Webster asks there on page 25. 
"Are we willing for our hearts of stone to be cut by the only one who 
has the power to make us and shape us into his image?"  What are the 
things that keep us shying away from the Mason? And, if we are indeed 
willing to allow his workmanship in our hearts, what would you think 
the TOOLS OF HIS HANDIWORK would be? 

Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. (Gen. 22:6)

As "Isaac's" we have been redeemed with the fire and the knife of God's mercy. So why are we still on the Altar?

Some stay because it's familiar. We've grown accustomed to it's hard, stony surface. Others are afraid to get off the thing. Still others aren't quite convinced they have really been set free by the knife and purified in the fire. And God waits.

Here's what came to me in church yesterday:

"I have cut your cords with my knife. I have cleansed you with my fire. You are free to rise from the altar. But you do not. Why have you not risen in the Grace where in you can stand? You sin is behind you. Your shame is consumed in my Provision, the scapegoat of the Sacrificial Lamb, crowned in a thorny thicket. Arise, my child, get off the altar of your past and I will lift you into your future. There is nothing holding you back from my end of things. My plans will formulate as you begin your journey. Arise from the shame of your youth. It is over. Finished. Dance on its ashes in the power of my Provision."

An old video of a wonderful trip to Uganda. Enjoy!