Hope in Waiting

Four Hundred Years from Salomon on Vimeo.

History records that for 400 years heaven was quiet

hearts lived in famine and no prophet walked the earth.

The heart of man was a barren wasteland holding fast to the hope

that one day the silent skies would break open.

But imagine the sound of desolation

the breathe that searches for life taking in the stale air

devoid of the life of its maker

But we hold out the utterances of heaven waiting in quiet hope

that this is the age when heaven roars with a voice so powerful

it thunders over the waters

a voice that breaks the mighty cedars of Lebanon

a voice that flashes forth with flames of fire

and in his power shakes the wilderness

a voice that bring forth life from desolation

and you are holding it in your hand

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I want to thank Salomon for this short film. It is both beautiful and captivating as well as engages me personally on a level that few things can right now. Through it I see clearer.

Thank you.

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I don't post movies often on my blog...I reserve such things for Facebook normally but this short film really stirred something in me.

Personally, many of you know I am playing a waiting game. Waiting in many ways for the economy to get better so I can get a job in an architecture firm and begin working toward licensure.

I hope one day to be in NYC doing this and believe that is where I would best be able to serve love and benefit the world with the good news of Jesus Christ with the gifts and talents He alone has given me.

AND Although my waiting game does not compare in any way or shape to the waiting game the jews and the world waited for in their Messiah and that 400 years. I find myself focusing on that time and that thought and gaining much from such a reflection.

They must have wondered? Just as I wonder each day.

Maybe it took them that 400 years to be ready for Jesus. Maybe it took 400 years for the Jews to get rid of certain sin. I am uncertain as to that exact history. But what I do know is that they probably wondered what was going on and why they weren't hearing from God.

But the thing was they were hearing from God BUT it was not in the ways they were looking for it was in different ways then what they knew of his voice through the prophets. And in that shaping they were on track towards seeing him in a completely new way. They had to take their bibles at least what was written of it at the time and see what was coming and see the beauty of God and the seriousness of sin in that reflection.

I can relate to that. And I really believe that is what God is doing within me. Reforming and shaping me into who I need to be for what He is about to do. It was no different with the jews and the world during those 400 years.

And the one thing I keep coming back to is that you can't lose hope. Especially that God is good and has plans that will set hearts more ablaze than it ever has before. And of course when its a lengthy endeavor of God changing you to be of use to His purposes, their will be questions. But those questions are pointless really.

I can't forget knowing that the Lord is for me not against me. I am honoring Him in the actions I am taking and my heart. And I don't understand all the implications or reasons why I am here. Why I am waiting but I am here and the Lord is for me and I can put my hope in that.

J.G. Grinstead

Faith

At my core I am a two year old in need of some refining; specifically in the area of wanting to get and have my way.

And I know this because I have had a nose dive into depression this week.

And in unraveling the complexities of the why, the really why, and the what’s really going on I have come to some conclusions.

1. I am hiding under the hollow shell of something that use to be but is long gone and refined.

Part of our challenge as christians is taking our identity in Christ seriously and really believing it. Because sin and how sinful we are is at the core of our new birth, it becomes very difficult to really take Christ serious when it comes to our identity in Him as his sons and daughters.

The truth is though He takes this issue very seriously He mandates in scripture that we believe we are who he says we are. It hinders Him and His glorious work when we don’t.

The beauty and oftentimes scapegoat of sanctification though is that God continually works despite us; he hollows out the things we cling to in our identity til the point we can begin to believe them where he finally is able to in essence ninja kick our version of identity, smash it and see it fall to pieces on the floor dealing it its final blow...and we move on to the next two year old tendency needing some reworking.

And when I look upon my life all the recent developments realizations and perspectives I am coming to terms with accepting that this life is this long term faith building exercise. That is real life and proper sanctification as God eagerly awaits the awakening of His sons and daughters.

2. New York City and my career/work and all things are very much tied into this. More intricately than I can articulate.

It’s taken me a long while to actually be able to articulate these complex thoughts. It took me about 4 days in the mountains of stilling life to a point of prayer journaling and reading alone to come to terms with the fact that NYC was my idea. And my idea was about to fail. I had to understand,I had to understand New York was my idea. And my idea died monday night.

I do not believe New york city died when I received that email on Monday letting me know that 3 big projects a firm was counting on for my hire didn’t come through. But my idea of how New York timing life etc. would all work out died.

I am walking in the reality of God’s providence in the in between. And I have to remember that every place is an opportunity to exercise faith and see what it brings.

God brought me to a breaking point a few days before that email where my two year old tendencies came out full force. It led me into what would normally have been a nose dive into depression if I really struggled with that still...I woke up joyful a day ago. I have simply been a two year old trying to be depressed and apathetic and unmoved to the point where God would magically do something my way.

God isn’t like that though.

I like J.I. Packer’s thought on the subject:

“What is a Christian? The question can be answered in many ways, but the richest answer I know is that a Christian is one who has God for his Father…Our understanding of Christianity cannot be better than our grasp of adoption…The truth of our adoption gives us the deepest insights the New Testament affords into the greatness of God’s love. Were I asked to focus the New Testament message in three words, my proposal would be – adoption through propitiation.”

“You sum up the whole of New Testament teaching in a single phrase, if you speak of it as a revelation of the Fatherhood of the holy Creator. In the same way, you sum up the whole of New Testament religion if you describe it as the knowledge of God as one’s holy Father. If you want to judge how well a person understands Christianity, find out how much he makes of the thought of being God’s child, and having God as his Father. If this is not the thought that prompts and controls his worship and prayers and his whole outlook on life, it means he does not understand Christianity very well at all. For everything that Christ taught, everything that makes the New Testament new, and better than the Old, everything that is distinctively Christian as opposed to merely Jewish, is summed up in the knowledge of the Fatherhood of God. ‘Father’ is the Christian name for God.”

I am a two year old. And God is a good father. But if I don’t believe Him to be that, then I simply will rot away the blessing of what Christ has for me in every moment.

And therefore I choose to believe.

JG