2014 Acts 29 New Jersey Regional | Founded on the Word, Driven by the Spirit

2014 Acts 29 New Jersey Regional Conference – Founded on the Word, Driven by the Spirit – with Josh Kouri in North Brunswick, New Jersey, Monday, April 28, 2014

If you've been the Emmaus City site as of late, you know I'm still working on getting up my notes for the 2014 Thriving Frequency conference and the 2014 Acts 29 North America conference. But before 2014 comes to a close, I also wanted to get up my notes for the Acts 29 New Jersey Regional conference | Founded on the Word, Driven by the Spirit that I went to back in the spring.

Before I went to this conference hosted by Jacob's Well, I had never heard of Pastor Josh Kouri or Frontline Church. In 2005, he planted Frontline Church in downtown Oklahoma City and now there are four congregations composed of multiple communities meeting across central Oklahoma. More importantly, Josh loves Jesus and has a joyful filling of the Holy Spirit that is a pleasure to listen to and behold. Here are two of the sessions from this regional:

• Founded on the Word with Pastor Josh Kouri (35:22 minutes)
• Driven by the Holy Spirit with Pastor Josh Kouri (29:27 minutes)

For my notes, I've titled the two sections a little bit differently, but I think my notes honor Josh's intentions and they continue to deeply shape me. Let me know if they help shape, inspire, empower your view for how God has, is, and will continue to work through His Word and His Spirit among His sons and daughters.

1) Jesus – the Word of God made flesh – was driven by the Holy Spirit

When Jesus came, He constantly needed the power and presence of the Holy Spirit, from the beginning to the end.  

In Jesus' Incarnation, the Holy Spirit Is Immediately Involved | "And the angel answered her, 'The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God'" (Luke 1:35). 

As the Appointed One, the Holy Spirit Reveals Jesus to Those Who Seek Him | "Now there was a man in Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon, and this man was righteous and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him. And it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord's Christ. And he came in the Spirit into the temple, and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him according to the custom of the Law, he took Him up in his arms and blessed God and said, 'Lord, now You are letting your servant depart in peace, according to Your Word; for my eyes have seen Your salvation that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentile, and for glory to Your people Israel.' And his father and his mother marveled at what was said about him. And Simeon blessed them and said to Mary His mother, 'Behold, this child is appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is opposed (and a sword will pierce through your own soul also), so that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed'” (Luke 2:25-35).

As the Promised One, the Holy Spirit Fills Jesus with Wisdom and Understanding | "There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit. And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. ... And the child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom. And the favor of God was upon him" (Isaiah 11:1-2; Luke 2:40). 

As the Holy One Who Resists Temptation and Sin, the Holy Spirit Fills Jesus with Power to Speak and Teach with Authority | "And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness ... And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee, and a report about Him went out through all the surrounding country. And He taught in their synagogues, being glorified by all" (Luke 4:1, 14-15).

In Serving Us and Dying for Us, Only through the Holy Spirit Could Jesus Offer Himself | "How much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God" (Hebrews 9:14).

As the Holy Spirit was necessary for Jesus' Gospel Proclamation + Kingdom Demonstration through His Incarnation, Revelation, Holiness, Teaching, and Atonement, so Jesus gave His Holy Spirit for us, His Church, to continue His ministry with His power where He has sent us | "'And behold, I am sending the promise of My Father upon you. But stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.' ... And while staying with them He ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which, He said, 'you heard from Me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now. ... But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be My witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” (Luke 24:49; Acts 1:4-5, 8).

Only by the power of the Holy Spirit will we see our teaching of the gospel come with power, will we see sickness healed, will we see the powers of darkness pushed back, and will we see people willing to give all of their lives for the glory of Jesus.

2) Jesus' Church can only make the Word become flesh in every area of our lives through the power of the Holy Spirit

We want to be a people that are all in on the Word of God and all in on the Spirit of God. It will require the Holy Spirit for our ideas and dreams of a lesser life to die in us so that God can plant His ideas and dreams of an abundant life in Christ in us.

" ... I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send Him to you. And when He comes, He will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment: concerning sin, because they do not believe in Me; concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father, and you will see Me no longer; concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged. 'I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all the truth, for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak, and He will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify Me, for He will take what is Mine and declare it to you" (John 16:7-14).

Somehow Jesus says that the Spirit in His ministry in the Church is going to be better than Jesus' earthly ministry in the flesh. Do you pray like this is true? Do you live like this is true?

1) The Spirit (i.e. Helper) is going to flip our persecution into conviction and confidence in what Jesus is going to do in us and through us.

Sin: He helps us see how we rejected Jesus, the only One who can save us, when we sin
Righteousness: He helps us see that only Jesus can be our righteousness
Judgment: He helps us see that only Jesus can conquer sin, Satan, and Death

With the above all in mind, we can safely and securely declare: "Guilty as charged, give me the mercy of Jesus." And we can receive the mercy of the Father through faith in the Son by the power of the Spirit.

2) The Spirit is going to guide us into Jesus' Truth.

Because He is not going to contradict the Word of God He inspired others to write, we know the Holy Spirit will grow a greater desire to repent of our sins like we find Him doing with others in the Word (ex. Psalm 51) as He provide us with a greater love for the Word (ex. Psalm 119).

3) The Spirit is going to glorify Jesus in us and through us.

The Spirit takes what is Jesus and gives it to us so that He makes us more holy (i.e. sanctifies) as Jesus prayed for us in John 17:12-18 and 20:21-22: "'While I was with them, I kept them in Your name, which You have given Me. I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled. But now I am coming to you, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. I have given them Your Word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. I do not ask that You take them out of the world, but that You keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth; Your Word is truth. As You sent Me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.' ... 'As the Father has sent Me, even so I am sending you.' And when He had said this, He breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 

The Father delights in His children through the work of His Son and the work of His Holy Spirit. He manifests His love in us so that we can cry out, "Abba, Father" and love Him and love others for the glory of Jesus.

– Sully
 
Curios? Go ahead and connect. For other updates, like and follow Emmaus City on Facebook.

CN | One Thousand Gifts: What in the World is Grace?

City Notes: Books in 25 minutes or less

City Notes (CN) are more than a book review. They are meant to provide you with direct quotes from some books I've read in the last year, so you can get a taste of the overall theme of the book and then begin to chew on what your life might look like if you applied what you read. Here is the link to the previous post: One Thousand Gifts: Live Fully Right Where You Are.

Chapter 5 | what in the world, in all this world, is grace?

"One act of thanksgiving, when things go wrong with us, is worth a thousand thanks when things are agreeable to our inclinations." – Saint John of Avila – pg. 79

" ... this daily practice of the discipline of gratitude is the way to daily practice the delight of God. ... " – pg. 82

"Joy and pain, they are but two arteries of the one heart that pumps through all those who don't numb themselves to really living." – pg. 84

"Every dark woods has words. And every moment is a message from The Word-God who can't stop writing His heart. But who can read His messages? ... What do all the words written in the world really spell out? I had read it in Job, what makes reading God's message in every moment a form of art, fullest life: God speaks to us not in one language but two: 'For God does speak – now one way, now another' (33:14 NIV). One way, His finger writing words in stars (Psalm 19:1-3), His eternal power written naked in all creation (Romans 1:20); and now another way, the sharp Holy Writ on the page that makes a careful incision into a life, blade words that kindly cut the tissue back to where soul and spirit join, tenderly laying bare the intents of the heart (Hebrews 4:12). ... To read His message in moments, I'll need to read His passion on the page; wear the lens of the Word, to read His writing in the world, because the Word has nail-scarred hands that cup our face close, wipe away the tears running down, has eyes to look deep into our brimming ache, and whisper, 'I know. I know.'  The passion on the page is a Person, and the lens I wear of the Word is not abstract idea by the eyes of the God-Man who came and knows the pain. How does the Word read the world?" – pgs. 86-87

" ... Isaiah 14:24, 'Surely, just as I have intended so it has happened, and just as I have planned so it will stand' (NASB). As God plans .... so it stands. I read the faded ink below, and I remember what I felt the day I copied those words, 'Does disaster come to a city unless the LORD has planned it?' (Amos 3:6). And I feel it again today and I breathe: A good God plans everything. Everything. So a good God can only ... make plans for good? He only gives good gifts? A thing of evil cannot be created by a good God? From the bedroom window, I watch a shadow move across the lawn, move out long across our wheat fields. That is what a shadow is, an empty space, a hole in the light. Evil is that – a hole in the goodness of God. Evil is all that lacks the goodness of God, a willful choice to turn away from the full goodness of God to that empty of His goodness. I watch the gray shadows slink away over the hill, the sun driving them east. All God makes is good. Can it be that, that which seems to oppose the will of God actually is used of Him to accomplish the will of God? That which seems evil only seems so because of perspective, the way the eyes see the shadows." – pg. 88

" ... words of Julian of Norwich ... 'See that I am God. See that I am everything. See that I do everything. See that I have never stopped ordering my works, nor ever shall, eternally. See that I lead everything on to the conclusion I ordained for it before time began, by the same power, wisdom and love with which I made it. How can anything be amiss?' Perspective – how we see. And how should anything be amiss? I can see her name on that stone, five letters of my little sister named 'loved one,' and I won't shield God from my anguish by claiming He's not involved in the ache of this world and Satan prowls but he's a lion on a leash and the God who governs all can be shouted at when I bruise, and I can cry and I can howl and He embraces the David-hearts who pound hard on His heart with their grief and I can moan deep that He did this – and He did. I feel Him hold me – a flailing child tired in Father's arms. And I can hear Him soothe soft, 'Are your ways My ways, child? Can you eat My manna, sustain on My mystery? Can you believe that I tenderly, tirelessly work all for the best good of the whole world – because My flame of love for you can never, ever be quenched?' I only close my eyes ... Enter the dark too. Sometimes we need time to answer the hard eucharisteo. ... 'See now that I, I am He, and there is no god besides Me; It is I who put to death and give life. I have wounded and it is I who heal' (Deuteronomy 32:39 NASB). I nod. I know. I know. And these truth words reconfigure the battlefield under my feet. I grip the card and I know all our days are struggle and warfare (Job 14:14) and that the spirit-to-spirit combat I endlessly wage with Satan is this ferocious thrash for joy. He sneers at all things that seem to have gone hideously mad in this sin-drunk world, and I gasp to say God is good. The liar defiantly scrawls his graffiti across God's glory, and I heave to enjoy God ... and Satan strangles, and I whiten knuckles to grasp real Truth and fix that beast to the floor." – pgs. 89-90

"It's just that the eyes are bad – my perspective. 'Your eye is a lamp that provides light for your body,' Jesus said. 'When your eye is bad, your whole body is filled with darkness. And if the light you think you have is actually darkness, how deep that darkness is!' (Matthew 6:22-23). If Satan can keep my eyes from the Word, my eyesight is too poor to read light – to fill with light. Bad eyes fill with darkness so heavy the soul aches because empty is never truly empty; empty is only a full, deepening darkness. So this is what it is to be. Eve in the Garden, Satan's hiss tickling the ear, 'Did God actually say ... ?' (Genesis 3:1 ESV). No Scripture glasses to read what God is trying to write through a prodigal child? Scrawl my own quick editing on the half-finished story: failure. Satan's tongue darts. Not wearing a biblical lens to decipher the meaning of a doctor's ominous diagnosis? Just read Satan's slippery interpretation: cheated. Not using anything to bend the light of this world so I can read my own messy days? Spray on another layer of graffiti: worthless. So I have been ambushed. Without God's Word as a lens, the world warps." – pg. 91

"When I realize that it is not God who is in my debt but I who am in His great debt, then doesn't all become gift? ... ' ... that I'd day after day after day greedily take what looks like it's good from Your hand – a child gloating over sweet candy ... ' My voice catches hard. I've been a thief, trying to hoard away all the good. ' ...  but that I'd thrash wild to escape when what You give from Your hand feels bad – live gravel in the mouth. Oh, Father, forgive ... Should I accept good from you, and not trouble?' (Job 2:10)." – pgs. 94-95

" ... Jesus told (Satan), 'No! The Scriptures say, 'People do not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God'' (Matthew 4:4). I listen and I live fully on what comes straight from His mouth. That Serpent, he's slithered with the lie that God doesn't give good but gives rocks in the mouth, leaves us to starve empty in wilderness and we'll just have to take lessons from Satan on how to take the stones of the careless God and make them into bread to feed our own hungry souls. And I hear it straight out of the speakers on a July morning breaking, the Son of God saying there is only one way to live full and it is 'by every word that comes from the mouth of God.' It is all that Jesus used to survive in the desert, in His wrangle with silver-tongued Lucifer, only this: 'It is written.' And it's the Word of God that turns the rocks in the mouth to loaves on the tongue. That fills our emptiness with the true and real good, that makes the eyes see, the body full of light. ... I awaken to the strange truth that all new life comes out of the dark places, and hasn't it always been? Out of darkness, God spoke forth the teeming life. ... Out of the darkness of the cross, the world transfigures into new life. And there is no other way. Then ... yes. It is dark suffering's umbilical cord that alone can untether new life. It is suffering that has the realest possibility to bear down and deliver grace. And grace that chooses to bear the cross of suffering overcomes that suffering." – pgs. 95-97

" ... I can't keep myself from saying it to God, this raw sob echoing St. Teresa of Avila's: 'If this is how You treat Your friends, no wonder You have so few!' Can I be that honest? I am David lamenting, 'O LORD, why ... ?' (Psalm 10:1). Why this broken world punched through with losses? 'O LORD, how long? (Psalm 13:1). How long until every baby thrives and all children sleep down the hall from a mom and dad wrapped in love, and each womb swells with vigorous life, and every singly cancer clinic sits empty and we all grow old together? How long? ... You may suffer loss but in Me is anything ever lost, really? Isn't everything that belongs to Christ also yours? Loved ones lost still belong to Him – then aren't they still yours? Do I not own the cattle on a thousand hills; everything? Aren't then all provisions, in Christ also yours? If you haven't lost Christ, child, nothing is ever lost. Remember, 'through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God' (Acts 14:22 NASB), and in 'sharing in (my Son's) sufferings, becoming like him in his death' you come 'to know Christ and the power of his resurrection' (Philippians 3:10 NIV)." – pg. 98

"I'll need my own transfiguration to enter a kingdom where the Prince is born into a manure-smeared feed trough, where Holy God touches leper sores, breaks bread with cheats, where God wounds Himself through with nails on a cross and we wear the symbol as beauty. Is the Son of God nauseated by the stench of twelve years of soaked menstrual cloths when He speaks tenderly to the bleeding woman? Is He repelled by the crazed eyes, the foul talk, or bad breath of the demon-possessed man? Staggeringly, doesn't even Beauty Himself become the ugly-beautiful? 'There was nothing beautiful ... about his appearance' (Isaiah 53:2). He became ugly that we might become beauty. The God of the Mount of Transfiguration cannot cease His work of transfiguring moments – making all that is dark, eveil, empty into that which is all light, grace, full. I take to heart the words of Thomas Aquinas, who defined beauty as id quod visum placet – beauty as that which being seen, pleases. And if all the work of transfiguring the ugly into the beautiful pleases God, it is a work of beauty." – pg. 99

"I have hacked up my life into grace moments and curse moments. The chopping that has cut myself off from the embracing love of a God who 'does not enjoy hurting people or causing them sorrow' (Lamentations 3:33), but labors to birth grief into greater grace. Isn't this the crux of the gospel? The good news that all those living in the land of shadow of death have been birthed into new life, that the transfiguration of a suffering world has already begun. That suffering nourishes grace, and pain and joy are arteries of the same heart – and mourning and dancing are but movements in His unfinished symphony of beauty. Can I believe the gospel, that God is patiently transfiguring all the notes of my life into the song of His Son? What in the world, in all this world, is grace? I can say it certain now: All is grace. I see through the woods of the world: God is always good and I am always loved. God is always good and I am always loved. Everything is eucharisteo. Because eucharisteo is how Jesus, at the Last Supper, showed us to transfigure all things – take the pain that is given, give thanks for it, and transform it into a joy that fulfills all emptiness. I have glimpsed it: This, the hard eucharisteo. The hard discipline to lean into the ugly and whisper thanks to transfigure into beauty. The hard discipline to give thanks for all things at all times because He is all good. The hard discipline to number the griefs as grace because as the surgeon would cut open my son's finger to heal him, so God chooses to cut into my ungrateful heart to make me whole." – pgs. 100-101

Chapter 6 | what in the world, in all this world, is grace?

"Every time you feel in God's creatures something pleasing and attractive, do not let your attention be arrested by them alone, but, passing them by, transfer your thought to God and say, 'O my God, if Thy creations are so full of beauty, delight and joy, how infinitely more full of beauty, delight, and joy art Thou Thyself, Creator of all!" – Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain – pg. 102

"I know eucharisteo and the miracle. But I am not a woman who ever lives the full knowing. I am a wandering Israelite who sees the flame in the sky above, the pillar, the smoke from the mountain, the earth open up and give way, and still I forget. I am beset by chronic soul amnesia. I empty of truth and need the refilling. I need come again every day – bend, clutch, and remember – for who can gather the manna but once, hoarding, and store away sustenance in the mind for all of the living?" – pg. 106

"I had written it down after I had read it, that I might hope to remember it: the Hebrew word used throughout Scripture to describe God's glory, kabod, is derived from the root word meaning 'heaviness.' Dusk and all the arching dome and the field and the great-bellied moon, it all heaves, heavy with the glory. I heave to breathe: The whole earth is full of His glory. Sky, land, and sea, heavy and saturated with God – why do I always forget? Yeah, I'm no different than Jacob, Jacob waking from sleep before full moon rising. 'Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, 'Surely the Lord is in this place, and I wasn't even aware of it!' But he was also afraid and said, 'What an awesome place this is! It is none other than the house of God, the very gateway to heaven!'' (Genesis 28:16-17). This moment, this place, is none other than a gate into heaven. God's glory rains down, weighs down earth's tented heights, and grace tears through, ripping sky canvas and me clear open. Everywhere windows and gates, and I did not know it. No. I have known it and I have forgotten it and I remember it again. The weight of God's glory, not illusory or ephemeral, but daily and everywhere, punctures earth's lid and heaven fall through the holes. ... Bowed at the edge of the world, Jesus asks me spun in circles, me coming to, only to lapse and to forget again, He asks soft of me who is yet again lost what He asked of the man born blind: 'What do you want me to do for you?' (Luke 18:41)." – pgs. 106-107

"The only place we have to come before we die is the place of seeing God. This is what I'm famished for: more of the God-glory. I whisper with the blind beggar, 'Lord, I want to see' (Luke 18:41). ... I must be Sehnsucht for beauty, that word C.S. Lewis used from the German – to long for (sehnen) like a mania (sucht). ... Like an addiction, a compulsion that can't stop its seeking, do I always want to see more beauty – more of the glory of God? Because that is what I am made for – to give Him more glory. ... I have to seek God beauty. Because isn't my internal circuitry wired to seek out something worthy of worship? Every moment I live, I live bowed to something. And if I don't see God, I'll bow down before something else. ... 'The life of true holiness is rooted in the soil of awed adoration. It does not grow elsewhere,' writes J.I. Packer. ... True, authentic Beauty requires of us, lays claim to us, and it is this, the knees bent, the body offered in obedience. A pantheist's god is a passive god, but omnipresent God is Beauty who demands worship, passion, and the sacrifice of a life, for He owns it." – pgs. 108-112

"Seeing is the spiritual life. ' ... they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and return and be healed' (Isaiah 6:9-10 NASB). 'Looking comes first,' wrote Lewis in The Great Divorce. First, the eyes. Always first, the inner eyes. ... That leper who had returned with thanks – his faith that gave thanks was counted by Jesus as saving faith. And now this – that faith is not a once-in-the-past action, but faith is always a way of seeing, a seeking for God in everything. ... The truly saved have eyes of faith and lips of thanks. Faith is in the gaze of a soul. ... (I want) To be Moses, who 'kept on going because he kept his eyes on the one who is invisible' (Hebrews 11:27). That is what makes us persevere through a life: to see Him who is invisible! ... I must, to believe, and so said Jesus, but I too remember ''But you may not look directly at my face, for no one may see me and live.'' (Exodus 33:20). And yet there are days where I know it in the shadows: 'Truly you are a God who hides himself' (Isaiah 45:15 NIV). (Or is it me who hides?) Other times, Jacob times, I know it is the only way to be delivered from the blackness: 'So Jacob called the name of the place Peniel, saying, 'For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life has been delivered'' (Genesis 32:30 ESV). And yet at all times, I wonder: Can anyone with the oily stains of a pride-splotched heart see God?" – pgs. 114-115

"'God blesses those whose hearts are pure, for they will see God' (Matthew 5:8). What am I doing out here? I am filthy rags. Is sight possible? I've only got one pure thing to wear and it's got Made by Jesus on the tag and the purity of Jesus lies over a heart and His transparency burns the cataracts off the soul. The only way to see God manifested in the world around is with the eyes of Jesus within. God within is the One seeing God without. God is both the object of my seeing and the subject who does the act of all real seeing, the Word lens the inner eye wears. To sit in the theater of God and see His glory crack the dark, to open the eyes of my heart to see the fountain of His grace – thousands of gifts – I have to split heart open to more and more of Jesus. Who can split open the eyelids but Jesus? He tears the veil to the Holy of Holies, gives me the only seeing I have. I have been lost and now I am found and I sing it softly, before the flying of the flocks south: 'Be thou my vision, O Lord of my heart' ... Is that why joy hurts – God stretching us open to receive more of Himself? ... It's true! What that ancient man Irenaeus, very disciple of the apostle John, wrote: 'The glory of God is the human being fully alive and the life of the human consists in beholding God' (emphasis added)." – pgs. 116-118

"To beat on the door of the universe, pound the chest of God with the psalmist: 'One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek ...  all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD, and to seek him in his temple' (Psalm 27:4 NIV). Faith is the gaze of the soul and I want to see in. So I can enter in. Enter into God. I would read it long after ... words of C.S. Lewis, and I would startle at my unknowing echo of his cry: 'What more, you may ask, do we want? Ah, but we want so much more – something the books on aesthetics take little notice of. But the poets and the mythologies know all about it. We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words – to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it. ... How do you open the eyes to see how to take the daily, domestic, workday vortex and invert it into the dome of an everyday cathedral? Could I go back to my life and pray with eyes wide open? Praying with eyes wide open is the only way to pray without ceasing." – pgs. 119-120

Chapter 7 | seeing through the glass

"I'm Peter on the mountaintop, stirring to see The Glory in all its God-radiance, stammering out that it's good to be here; let's build shelters and never depart (Luke 9:28-36). But there's always the descent from the mount. The meeting of the crowd, the complaining, the cursing. Obvious and immediate transfigurations exhilarate the faith, but the faithful can forget transfigurations, faces that once changed appearances. We betray Who we know. Didn't Peter? ... How do I fix this? Them? Me? In the messy, Jesus whispers, 'What do you want?' and in the ugly, I cry, 'I want to see – see You in these faces.' He speaks soft, 'Seek My face.' I want to answer with David, 'My heart says to you, 'Your face, LORD, do I seek'' (Psalm 27:8 ESV) but I'm desperate to grab someone, anyone, and shake hard, 'How do I have the holy vision in this mess? How do I see grace, give thanks, find joy in this sin-stinking place?' ... Can I be so audacious? To expect to see God in these faces when I am the blasphemer who complains, who doesn't acknowledge this moment for Who it is?" – pgs. 124-126

" ... the words of Caussade ... 'You would be very ashamed if you knew what the experiences you call setbacks, upheavals, pointless disturbances, and tedious annoyances really are. You would realize that your complaints about them are nothing more nor less than blasphemies – though that never occurs to you. Nothing happens to you except by the will of God, and yet (God's) beloved children curse it because they do not know it for what it is.'" – pg. 125

"Do I really smother my own joy because I believe that anger achieves more than love? That Satan's way is more powerful, more practical, more fulfilling in my my daily life than Jesus' way? Why else get angry? Isn't it because I think complaining, exasperation, resentment will pound me up into the full life I really want? When I choose – and it is a choice – to crush joy with bitterness, am I not purposefully choosing to take the way of the Prince of Darkness? Choosing the angry way of Lucifer because I think it is more effective – more expedient – than giving thanks?" – pg. 126

"All of this globe is but glass to God. And eucharisteo washes the glass. Eucharisteo, wholesale worship, its redemptive work wiping away the soot of days cindered. ... Why am I a habitual reductionist? Why do I reduce God in this moment to mere annoying frustration? Why do I reduce The Greatest to the lesser instead of seeing the lesser, this mess, as reflecting The Greatest? I have to learn how to see, to look through to the Largeness behind all the smallness. Isn't He here? ... " – pg. 128

"That's the mystery map to the deep seeing! 'We saw His glory ... because ... we have all received one grace after another' (John 1:14, 16 AMP, emphasis added). We have all received one grace after another, but we only recognize the glory of God in this moment when we wake to the one grace after another." – pg. 129

"I am Hagar lost with boy ... 'Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water' (Genesis 21:19 NIV). Hagar and her boy were dying of thirst with a well less than bowshot away. What insanity compels me to shrivel up when there's joy's water to be had here? In this wilderness, I keep circling back to this: I'm blind to joy's well every time I really don't want it. The well is always there. And I choose not to see it. Don't I really want joy? Don't I really want the fullest life? For all my yearning for joy, longing for joy, begging for joy – is the bald truth that I prefer the empty dark? Prefer drama? Why do I lunge for control instead of joy? Is it somehow more perversely satisfying to flex control's muscle? Ah – power – like Satan. Do I think Jesus-grace too impotent to give me the full life? Isn't that the only reason I don't always swill the joy? If the startling truth is that I don't really want joy, there's a far worse truth. If I am rejecting the joy that is hidden somewhere deep in this moment – am I not ultimately rejecting God? Whenever I am blind to joy's well, isn't it because I don't believe in God's care? That God cares enough about me to always offer me joy's water, wherever I am, regardless of circumstance. But if I don't believe God cares, if I don't want or seek the joy He definitely offers somewhere in this moment – I don't want God. ... In His presence is fullness of joy. He is in this moment. The well is always here. God is always here – precisely because He does care. God faithfully provides water for His people everywhere. But how do you make yourself want joy? ... When you know you're Hagar and you finally come to the end of yourself and all the water in your own canteen is gone and you know that you and your son are going to die if you don't get some joy to the lips and down the parched throat – and now; when you can no longer stand to see those you love die all around you from your emptiness; when the emptiness is so dark you are driven to struggle again for joy, to cry for joy to the Joy God there and you beg, sob – remember: You have to want to see the well before you can drink from it. You have to want to see joy, God in the moment." – pgs. 130-131

"G.K. Chesterton observes, how 'our perennial spiritual and psychological task is to look at things familiar until they become unfamiliar again.' The unfamiliar becomes the real and the real is only seen by the lovers and I count him as grace, I embrace now as love, and I know how lovers alone see the true. Love is not blind; love is the holy vision. For a glancing moment, I am Hagar healed, Hagar who had spoken once before in a desert exile: 'Thereafter, Hagar used another name to refer to the LORD, who had spoken to her. She said, 'You are the God who sees me.' She also said, 'Have I truly seen the One who sees me?' So that well was named Beer-lahai-roi (which means 'well of the Living One who sees me') (Genesis 16:13-14). Hagar had known God sees for she had met Him before, needy in the sands, yet when sent away the second time, Hagar had forgotten. She had laid her son down to die and couldn't see any well. In the domestic cloud of dust and family, I too can forget the One who sees me, but in eucharisteo, I remember. I cup hands and all the world is water. The well, it is still there. There is always a well – All is well." – pg. 132

"Jacob wrestled with God and called the place Peniel, meaning 'God's face.' The daily joy struggles, above all, it is a Jacob-wrestle to see God in the faces we face. ... 'I'm learning to express gratitude before stress gets a chance to creep up in a lot of situations' ... 'Learning slowly to not be so reactionary while inserting verbal gratitude into stressful situations is almost like being healed of mental blindness. I have begun to 'see' again. ... 'The only way to fight a feeling is with a feeling.' ... 'Feel thanks and it's absolutely impossible to feel angry. We can only experience one emotion at a time. And we get to choose – which emotion do we want to feel?'" – pgs. 132-133, 136

"'What is the exact significance of God's touching Jacob upon the sinew of his thigh?' 'And the doctor told him, 'The sinew of the thigh is the strongest in the human body. A horse couldn't even tear it apart.'' These are the words I have never forgotten, what preacher McConkey said: 'Ah, I see. The Lord has to break us down at the strongest part of our self-life before He can have His own way of blessing with us.' Like this morning, breaking us down at the tough parts ... Then we see. See the blessing. ... 'And when Jacob went out the next morning to meet that brother he dreaded? After the dark of the wrestle, and being torn right apart in his strongest part, by a man he didn't even know was God – do you know what he said? He looked into the face of his brother, that brother who had wanted to kill him, and he said, 'To see your face is like seeing the face of God' (Genesis 33:10 NIV).' ... 'Wrestle with God, beg to see the blessings ... We've shaken and the blood has rushed and we have felt the heat of the rage, the fire of the enemy, the flame of True God's holiness, and we have done war. We've dug in our nails and we haven't let go until the blessings; we have practiced, we have extended, we have clung and we've been rung out. We have panted it and we've cupped palm to the heavens, 'Bless me, Bless me. I won't let go.' Like Jacob, we ask, breathless and heaving, where He is, who He is, for His name here, the only real blessing. 'Please tell me your name.' We have named the graces and there found His name, Glory, and in the face of man we have seen the face of God. Then Him, the blessing, God, joy-water in the desert. But wells don't come without first begging to see the wells; wells don't come without first splitting open hard earth, cracking back the lids. There's no seeing God face-to-face without first the ripping. Tear the thigh to open the eye. Wrench the socket of the hip, the tough grizzle of the heart, and heal the socket of the eye. It takes practice, wrenching practice, to break open the lids. But the secret to joy is to keep seeking God where we doubt He is." – pgs. 138-139

Next post: CN | One Thousand Gifts Part 3

– Sully

Curiosity piqued? Go ahead and connect. For other updates, like and follow Emmaus City on Facebook.