Over the last several months I have been moving my office of 18 years from the church building back home.
In the seemingly endless endeavor, I uncovered a plethora of items totally deleted from my memory. Most specifically books that had been shelved for years in favor of electronic study tools now became suddenly relevant.
Why? No longer was it mandatory to have weekly messages, Bible studies, newsletters, blogs, and videos where expediting time was a pastoral necessity. Rather, in handling each book, flipping through the pages, and seeing the yellow highlights with corresponding margin notes, I was reminded how each helped play a part in shaping me as I learned to walkout the Scriptures.
Now I have the luxury of sitting in my home study before going to work, surrounded by these weights for my spiritual exercise, picking and choosing a title at my leisure to do my daily reps.
Grabbing F. E. Marsh’s Discipler’s Manual for a morning read I came across this:
Power with God and man is the result of purity of heart, and persistence in prayer. Separation to God, is a consequence of salvation from the power and love of self and following this comes meetness for the Master’s use. We had this illustrated in the case of Isaiah (Isaiah 6). As he viewed the holiness of God, and saw him in the light of his presence, the vision caused him to cry out, “Woe is me! For I am undone” (or, as the Englishman’s Bible has it, “I am dumb,” which may mean “I have no words to utter on my own behalf,” “I have been guilty of silence”), (page 39).
“I have been guilty of silence.”
“I….”
“I have been….”
“I have been guilty….”
“I have been guilty of silence.”
“I have been guilty of silence.”
Those words repeatedly caromed off the walls deep in my being like only the Spirit’s words can. Nothing left to read, nothing left to say, nothing left to do but to humbly embrace what the Eternal was speaking. For the last 18 months—18 months—following full-time ministry since mid-1984 (some 444 months) there had been no public proclamation, no heralding of the Good News, no exhortation to the church and the Lord was calling me into account.
It was a mic-drop moment.
No excuses, no rationales, no justifications, just an embracing of the Lord’s wisdom and a thankfulness for His mercy. Honestly, as I embrace the moment and the words, I don’t know where it will all lead.
All I do know is that it is time; all I do know is that,
obedience is better than sacrifice…
…as I pick up the mic to be pardoned for my silence,
for here is where my pardon begins.
