There Is Power

"When You speak, the fiercest of oceans is still"

How much more, then, should I be still when You speak.

This is SPARTAAAAA

I've been going through Deuteronomy (which I think is my favorite OT book now!) and it just strikes me how so much of it sounds exactly like the NT and our lives. It really shows how consistent God's character is. Take for example, the chapter I was reading last night, Deut 20. Its a chapter that talks about Israel going to war against its enemies. Now I don't really have any true physical enemies, and if I did, I probably wouldn't go to war against them, but I do have very real spiritual enemies. They are all the lies and temptations that keep me from seeking God with all I am. In the past, I've been fairly ignorant towards them, buying into their claims and enticements. I would get some (metaphorical) shards and arrows stuck in me and I've been fairly lucky that God has given me enough sense to pull them out every once in a while and keep going. But even with the power of God's unrelenting goodness and mercy, its a slow grind, and takes a toll after a while. I'm not sure how intact my spiritual life would be if this just continued indefinitely. I can't imagine it would be anything good and it's scary to think about.

Thankfully though, that's not what God has in mind for us. Over the past few months, God has moved in a way in both myself and our church that has basically been, the best I can describe, a war with those spiritual enemies. It's a war that I had avoided, perhaps for the precise reason Israel was thinking.
--
^{Deut 20
1} When you go to war against your enemies and see horses and chariots and an army greater than yours, do not be afraid of them, because the LORD your God, who brought you up out of Egypt, will be with you.
--
I didn't want to commit myself to this war, because 1) it's hard and 2) I was scared of losing (and what would that mean about God if I lost?). So I didn't commit. I didn't give it (and God) everything that I had; I wasn't willing to offer up every part of my life to achieve victory. I would rely on my own devices and a prayer for God to change my heart. At the time, I really thought that was everything I could do, but it was far from it.

This is what God says about fighting:
--
⁵ The officers shall say to the army: “Has anyone built a new house and not yet begun to live in it? Let him go home, or he may die in battle and someone else may begin to live in it. ⁶ Has anyone planted a vineyard and not begun to enjoy it? Let him go home, or he may die in battle and someone else enjoy it. ⁷ Has anyone become pledged to a woman and not married her? Let him go home, or he may die in battle and someone else marry her.” ⁸ Then the officers shall add, “Is anyone afraid or fainthearted? Let him go home so that his fellow soldiers will not become disheartened too.”
--
(doesn't that sound like a quote straight from 300?)

God says that if there's something left of value -- a vineyard, a woman, academics, worldly pleasures, pride -- and you still want it, then just go home. You are not fit to fight, and you could lose it, so just go home and enjoy it. If you're afraid or fainthearted, go home. But if you want to stay and fight, do this:
--
¹² If they refuse to make peace and they engage you in battle, lay siege to that city. ¹³ When the LORD your God delivers it into your hand, put to the sword all the men in it.
--
Lay siege to the city. It's not going to be a short fight. It will take persistence, vigilance, and constant bombardment. But what's more, the enemy is trapped. We are laying siege to them, not the other way around, because God is already victorious. And when God delivers the enemy into our hands, not if, we are to put the sword to all the men in it, not leaving a chance for the enemy.

It's all a matter of if we commit and fight.

What I Want

I met two pretty amazing men today. One of them was Irwin Jacobs, the founder and former CEO of Qualcomm, the telecommunications company that supplies all of the cellular phone protocols that we use today. A few members of my master’s program got to have a Q&A session with him. Without this person we would not have the 2G and 3G networks that we use today – we’d still be using the cell phone technology we had 10 years ago, if even. He’s an impressive guy – undergrad at Cornell, PhD at MIT, professor at MIT and UCSD, started Qualcomm, and is now among the 1000 richest men in the world. After the meeting with Jacobs, I got a better insight of what my future could look like – including the line between science and business and the road to success. If he did all of that with a PhD, maybe that’s what I want. But I’m not sure.

Strangely, I was much more impressed by the other person I “met” (in the loose sense of the word) and I was more sure that I wanted what he had. He is none other than your favorite short Korean pastor – PR.

In the first of two meetings with him today, we talked about fasting – when, why, and how. I have always hated fasting. I’ve known that God has called us to do it, but the very concept of it was just nonsensical and unnecessary to me. Just the suggestion of it brings up distastefulness. And yet, by the time PR was done describing it, I was almost ready to start fasting then and there. Why? It was PR’s assurance that we would experience God. That by not doing it, I am missing out on something - and he made me believe it. The testimony of a man that loves food as much as he does is pretty powerful. His testimony reminded me how much of God I had yet to experience. I thought I had been doing well this past week, but I’ve barely scratched the surface of what God can do. In terms of achievements, if you can call it such, if there were an objective bar for them, his seemed much greater than Jacobs.

What happened next in the xtreme dship meeting, my head is still trying to process. Suffice it to say that it involved a combination of angels, invisible daggers and nets, and healings. The point is that what PR sees is not what most of us sees. The angel that was so invisible to us is as obvious as the blue sky on a cloudless day is to him.

And yet, we could see. If we wanted to. PR isn’t some mystical man with some special anointment (I think). In fact, the Bible has spelled out exactly what it takes to experience God in such a powerful way. It’s simple – to love God above everything else, like the woman who just wanted to touch Jesus’ cloak. Her desperate faith healed her. Sure, this kind of everything is the kind of everything after you think you’ve given everything. But still, that’s all.

What’s the point of being able to experience God in this way? I don’t know, but what’s the point of being Irwin Jacobs? It might just be because I’m a sucker for mystery and the unknown, but I think it would be way cooler to experience God like that than to be among the 1000 richest men in the world. At the very least, it’s more permanent. Hearing the life of a man like Irwin Jacobs is nice, but it doesn’t make me feel like I’m missing out on something. Hearing about the life of a man that has met God in all the ways that PR has makes me feel like I’m missing out on so much.

Scary part is -- it might be easier to achieve wealth and all those other things than it is to achieve that level of closeness to God, even if that is what I want more than all of those other things.