I knew there was a verse about ashes being replaced with a beautiful crown that I loved, so had a dig around my Bible and, with the help of google (oh modern Christian life), realised I was thinking of Isaiah 61:3,
"to all who are mourning in Israel, He will give beauty for ashes, joy instead of mourning, praise instead of despair. For the Lord has planted them like strong and graceful oaks for His own glory..."
I started to mull and scribble, and Bible verses were flying around my head like they do when I'm 'in the zone' with talk-writing (a rare but lovely and special occurrence). I love to sit and dig deep in that situation; to challenge myself intellectually while learning from and about God .
I wanted to know how, in a practical sense, we can receive these promised blessings...
1) "beauty for ashes"
it sounds obvious - but in order to get the beauty, we have to give God the ashes - we have to surrender our lives; our mess. It's one of the hardest things to do; it has to be a daily (or even multiple times daily) decision. We have to live out Romans 12:1 by becoming living sacrifices - and while we are in this world, that requires us to sacrifice ourselves, all of the time. Of course we fail, but His grace is sufficient - we just have to surrender all that we can. We have to pray the prayer of Psalm 31:5: 'I entrust my spirit into your hand. Rescue me, Lord, for You are a faithful God.' We have to trust that God won't reject our brokenness.
2 Corinthians 4:8 'we are pressed on every side by troubles, but we are not crushed and broken...'. There is always hope; we are never too broken to be useful. We need to recognise that we are worth saving - for God's purposes. We have a future. Ezekiel 37 talks about the valley of dry bones that God brings to life. Those are the ashes that we need to commit to Him, over and over again.
By nature, ashes are done. Finished. I know that we can feel like that too. But that doesn't mean we're too broken; it doesn't mean that we're beyond help or not worth saving. It just means that it really is time to surrender the ashes.
When we feel broken; prayer is hard. But the Holy Spirit is already constantly advocating for us (Romans 8:26); we just have to join in, in any we can, with what is already going on on our behalf. It helps to start small; a morning prayer of 'Lord I want to glorify You today. Help me to give You all that I can. Help me to be honest with You and let You work in me and through me in this day you've blessed me with. Amen.' Then just at little intervals, check in with God. 'Lord I'm struggling. Thank you that You are all-sufficient. Please could you help me now. Amen'. God knows our hearts; we don't need to explain all the details of the situations all the time: we just need to acknowledge that He is Lord and He loves us.
2) Similarly (this talk definitely didn't end up brief - it became a full-on sermon! - so I'll summarise the other two points on this blog), to receive "joy instead of mourning", we need to acknowledge the hurt and recognise that there is a season for everything (Ecclesiastes 3:4). We can't run away from any season so we need to be real with God about where we are and allow Him to help us in that.
3) for "praise instead of despair" we need to look up. When we truly open our eyes to who God is, we can't help but praise! Despair is being desperate. 2 Samuel 24:14 "this is a desperate situation...but let us fall into the hands of the Lord, for His mercy is great". When we take our eyes off of the despair in the situation we might be in, and fix our gaze on Him; when we replace 'I can't do this' with a recognition of who God is and that He is -by definition- able to do anything, we will be changed.
Today, I hope to live out some of what I've written; not all of it - and not perfectly. But today, I will do all that I can to surrender my own ashes...
No comments:
Post a Comment