© 2019 Lindenville. All Rights Reserved.
In one of my favorite devotionals, Oswald Chambers teaches that our life is like a bow and arrow in God's hands. He's aiming at something we can't see, and He stretches us until we feel we might break. He pays no heed, but keeps right on stretching until His purpose is in sight—and then He lets fly.
When I was six years old, I was excited to turn seven. It wasn't because I expected to be more beautiful or healthy, rather, I expected to understand more things as I grew older, and I greatly looked forward to that. I feel the same way now in my 50's. There is always something to learn and to understand.
Although I'm not getting any younger, neither is anybody else. Aging is a collective problem, not an isolated one. Birthdays, on the other hand, are personal, and, if viewed rightly, have nothing to do with aging. Every one of us knows someone who's lived plenty of years without exhibiting any real maturity or wisdom, and, hopefully, we also know someone who exhibits grace and wisdom as a reward of their years. Aging tests what is yet undeveloped in us. Birthdays celebrate the progress we've made.
As we get older, we often become more and more distracted with our physical bodies, both their appearance and health. But we should think of our physical body as a car we are gifted. Not one of us had a choice in the make or the model, only whether or not we take care of what we've been given. When an event or the passage of time brings the use of the car to a halt, it's important to understand we are the driver, not the car.
Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
A journey that involves heartache, disappointment, illness, and death is no barrier to progress; He makes a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. It's up to us not only to leave the past behind in His sea of mercy, grace, and forgiveness, but to fully accept and embrace every new iteration of ourselves that He makes a way for us to realize while we are still here. A birthday, for me, celebrates what God has brought me through, and what He has yet to show me and teach me; what stores of His grace I have yet to discover. Outwardly we degrade physically, there's no debate on that – but the potential of inward renewal is exhilarating. It contains many doors of discovery into the future, all the way into eternity.
…If our knowledge or our belief in God doesn't extend beyond our own feelings and experiences, we have nothing but ourselves. This is poor religion and poor science; both science and faith tell us that there is more than we can see and experience in one lifetime. The nurture of wonder is crucial to a growing life, spiritually and naturally.
…Snow, as a matrix of ice grains and air, dramatically alters the ground environment, and is an extremely complex material that evolves continually. When the Lord says that our sins, which are as scarlet, will be white as snow (Is. 1:18), it isn't a simple process. Everything in our lives, our spiritual, mental, and physiological course will change, and change continually, if we will allow it.
…To continually inspire one person holds value where infrequently inspiring many does not; faithfulness yields results, popularity fades out.
…Pretending we have strengths and capabilities we don't have is killer. Better to be God's own unique child.
…We're not always better than we were the day before. God is the only One Who is always good, and admiration belongs with Him.
…Humans mistake their good intentions as goodness. God IS good; He doesn't merely intend to be.
…Sins aren't mistakes, and mistakes aren't sins. Mistakes work themselves out. The blood of Jesus, alone, takes our Sin out.
…Regrets are understandable, not useful.
…Human beings are always living life as if there's some choice that doesn't exist.
… "Why is Jesus the only way to God?" and, "If God is real, and a God of love, how can He permit suffering in the world?" These are simple questions, and common. But there are earnest questions; questions so deep they can't even be uttered aloud. These are the real questions; the ones the Maker can satisfy.
…The truth about learning is, after we've learned a good number of things, we have the responsibility to unlearn things that aren't essential to right relationships; it's the path to greater understanding, to humility.
…Sometimes all we need to concentrate on is staying on course.
…Life will not be summed up by vitality and youth. This is an important test for those who find themselves left with nothing of value in this world. God looks for value in the hidden motives of the heart.
…Nothing of real worth is past for children of God, it is now and always.
…Just as the mist is a promise of a new day, hope is the assurance of His love, which will one day make all things clear.
…Paul said he had become all things to all men so that some might be saved. It starts with our families and our neighbors; if we can't be the Lord's with them, we can only be hypocrites.
…The human spirit can be broken under abject cruelty, and completely ruined beneath undiscerning generosity. The sad truth is, we are more likely to rise above affliction than we are to exhibit a grateful heart.
…If God didn't spare the dirty details of His chosen ones' lives in the canonized Scriptures, why do we try to hide what the Holy Spirit must expose to bring us to repentance?
…The social-networking generation is a lonely generation; everything for the senses, nothing for the soul.
…The only way you can be liked by everyone is to not be yourself.
…We don't do ourselves any favors by considering ourselves "good." We aren't wired to be good apart from deliberately choosing what is good.
…Hell is not what most people think it is because some are already experiencing it.
…When you want a fire to die out, you don't throw another log on it.
…Pure and faithful discipline is love disguised to the rebel, and it's always calling him or her back.
…We each need the love of God to start all over again.
…If there were something of real value we could offer God to help Him love us, His love would equal ours, and it would fail. His love never fails.
…A disciple doesn't have a plan of his or her own.
…It's humbling to be a disciple of Jesus, it makes us strange among people considered normal in this world.
…It's easy to get caught up in the moment and not see the long run. Wisdom will show whether or not we are to take risks or to put reins on relationships that come and go, or come and stay, in our lives. The "long run" will either have us smiling or sorrowing, depending on whether or not we listened to wisdom in the moment of choosing.
…Temptation can build strength for our spirits in the same way that bodybuilding builds strength for muscles: by resistance.
…Being "made in His image" has to do with our eternal souls. God made us to think and to reason, to love and to create.
…Without the peace of Christ for our minds, we will be robbed of joy even as our prayers are answered.
…All we need for a successful Christian life is the Holy Spirit; one of the fruits of the Spirit is self-control. There is no lasting self-control apart from the enabling power of the Holy Spirit. We can get sick of ourselves and work to break our bad habits, and may succeed for a while, but it will either end in failure when the going gets tough, or, it will take on the form of a different addiction.
…Leave your life at the cross. Be dead to yourself, and let Christ live His life through you. Be so passionate about being totally His that nothing else appeals to you in comparison.
…Christianity begins in a singular heart learning of Christ and following Him, but will end—or worse, stalemate—within a "set of principles".
…Focusing on religion, rather on Christ Himself, alienates people from their spiritual gifts. God alone knows why and what He's gifted us for, and the value is subject to Him.
…A child is born impoverished, while elsewhere, a man grows rich. While neither one deserved their lot more than the other, both face Eternity.
…The name of Jesus offends people because it puts a face and a name to the plan of salvation. Even so, one may cry out to the living God not knowing His Name, and if sought in truth, He will hear and answer.
…Like the wind, no one can predict where God's Spirit will come in.
…Faith is a gift of God. When we try to interpret for ourselves what we have yet to experience, it usually loses something important in the translation.
…Faith glorifies God while it waits.
…God's character defines itself. Period.
…When God speaks something to us, it isn't so we can say, "God told me," it's to learn more of His character—and this is something often inexplicable, both to ourselves and to others.
…There is no doubt that life is full of magic, and only those who keep their eyes open for it ever see it. After all, God created the world by the magic of "Let there be…" and there WAS.
…Humdrum exists where everyday miracles are taken for granted.
…If we are good students—submissive, teachable and humble—the Lord will fill us with His own Spirit of wisdom for making important decisions, both big and small.
…If you judge your spiritual life by how often you read the Bible or do devotions, you will slip into an emotional pattern. We don't serve God by our emotions. God gave us His word to confirm His nature, and we can know Him by the circumstances and people He brings into our lives to test us and to shape us. Never boast to yourself or to others how much you read your Bible, just live by it.
…Sometimes we need to remind ourselves that God cares about people more than we ever can, as we trust in His Spirit to bring forth fruits of righteousness at the proper time.
…It is a blessing to do menial tasks that require little concentration, because in them, our minds are free to perform the awesome and powerful ministry of intercession.
…The Lord never sleeps nor slumbers, and sometimes we are "asleep" to something He's been working on for a long time. When we "wake up" is a matter of His knowing love.
…We can't find love; love finds us. If we go looking for it, we will always find the wrong thing.
…It's too easy to fall into a pattern of thinking that has already been defined by others who tell us we should be like them. We are to be like the Lord. The Pharisees criticized Jesus for eating with "publicans and sinners." Jesus could walk and sit and sup with immoral people because he was internally detached from Sin. In this, He set the example for how we should be.
…Love is like a torch in a dark place, taking us where we would never venture without its light.
…No matter how black the night, morning comes.
…The very best thing we can do for a child is to show them what is best by living an upright example, and when we fail, to admit we've been wrong. Children learn little from what we say; they learn from what we show them.
…Training a child in the way he should go is just that: training him or her in the way he or she should go, not necessarily in the way we think he or she should go. The wisdom of man is foolishness to God.
…After your children are fully grown, you'll realize that nothing else ever mattered to you more than their opinion of you does now.
…Young children don't judge others from preconceived ideas. Their disapproval is based on truly hurtful words and behavior, not on what that is simply unusual or unexpected.
…Without a doubt, our children will be courted by the world to worship creation, not the Creator. We need to take our imaginations and feelings back from worldly thinking, and guide our children never to hand them over. We can do this by feeding in them what is from God: the predisposition to believe in more than they can see.
…At any given time, children are the most important people in the world.
…Laying down the things most precious to us so we can know how precious we are to God equips us with His nature.
…There is no other effective plan for living. "Kindle" means, "to start or to ignite." When we give our dreams, our plans, our hopes and our sorrows to God, His touch kindles meaning in them.
©Cami Tapley. All rights reserved.
Don't confuse the move that inspired a decade of Jesus Music, 1969 to 1979, with the hippie Haight-Ashbury experience of the '60's. The Jesus Movement resulted afterward when a generation of seekers didn't find the peace they were looking for in "free love," protests, and drugs.
Living in California at the time, we became teens toward the end of the Jesus Movement, and it had a profound affect on us. Actually, it was an equal mixture of the teachings of Oswald Chambers and "Jesus Music" that shaped our personal, Christian ideology. By Chambers we realized that death to self was imperative in order to become disciples of Christ, and in the Jesus Music we were fed pure strains of the only thing that can motivate a soul to this end: what it means to love Jesus devotedly.
Although we lived a couple of hours north of Orange County at the time, we did get to pay a visit or two to Chuck Smith's Calvary Chapel, but it was well after the hippies had put on their shoes and moved from the floor to pews. Maranatha Music was an extremely successful upstart, and worship music had a new contemporary twist. It was a great time to be a Christian teen. Keith Green played and gave altar calls at Disneyland, and being a "Jesus Freak" was cool.
This page has been constructed with the hope of rekindling the message for those who remember it, and to recap it for those who may have missed out.
Keith Green's message, "So You Wanna Be a Rock Star?" is a good place to start; it clearly tells the heart of this movement—a message we continue, as a generation, to be in need of hearing and living! Click here.
"Actually, at the time of the hippie movement, these long-haired, bearded, dirty kids going around the streets repulsed me. They stood for everything I stood against. We were miles apart in our thinking, philosophies, everything.
As their numbers began to grow, God began to lay a burden upon my wife's heart to reach these kids for Jesus…So, In May of 1968 we rented a little two-bedroom house…By the end of the first week, 21 young fellows had accepted Jesus Christ and moved into the house. By the end of the second week, 35 had accepted the Lord and moved into the house. We had built bunks out into the garage, and they were sleeping wall to wall through the house. One kid was even sleeping in the bathtub.
To learn more about any of these men and their written works, visit the links provided, and look for their books at your favorite bookseller.
THE FIRST OF ALL TRUTHS, which a lifetime of church-going and Bible-reading will fail to disclose, is that for life to be a good thing and worth living, a man must be the child of a perfect Father and know Him. —G.M.
IT TAKES GOD ALMIGHTY INCARNATE in us to do the meanest duty to the glory of God. It takes God's Spirit in us to make us so absolutely humanly His that we are utterly unnoticeable. The test of the life of a saint is not success, but faithfulness in human life as it actually is. We will set up success in Christian work as the aim; the aim is to manifest the glory of God in human life, to live the life hid with Christ in God in human conditions. —O.C.
THE SWEETEST THING IN ALL MY LIFE has been the longing…to find the place where all the beauty came from.
A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is…A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness. They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in.
When a man is getting worse, he understands his own badness less and less. A moderately bad man knows he is not very good: a thoroughly bad man thinks he is all right.
Critics who treat "adult" as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves.
Mortal lovers must not try to remain at the first step; for lasting passion is the dream of a harlot and from it we wake in despair.
Without the aid of trained emotions the intellect is powerless against the animal organism.
God is not proud…He will have us even though we have shown that we prefer everything else to Him.
If you are really a product of a materialistic universe, how is it that you don't feel at home there?
The more often a man feels without acting, the less he'll be able to act. And in the long run, the less he'll be able to feel.
A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word, "darkness" on the walls of his cell.
You cannot go on "explaining away" for ever: you will find that you have explained explanation itself away. You cannot go on "seeing through" things for ever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it.
Consciousness is either inexplicable illusion, or else revelation.
Faith is the art of holding on to things your reason once accepted, despite your changing moods.
Reasoning is never, like poetry, judged from the outside at all.
For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men.
When you are arguing against Him you are arguing against the very power that makes you able to argue at all.
Christ died for men precisely because men are not worth dying for; to make them worth it.
Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.
Surely what a man does when he is caught off his guard is the best evidence as to what sort of man he is.
Be sure that the ins and outs of your individuality are no mystery to Him; and one day they will no longer be a mystery to you.
The absent are easily refuted.
A great many of those who "debunk" traditional…values have in the background values of their own which they believe to be immune from the debunking process.
You find out more about God from the Moral Law than from the universe in general just as you find out more about a man by listening to his conversation than by looking at a house he has built.
Many things—such as loving, going to sleep, or behaving unaffectedly—are done worst when we try hardest to do them.
Our passions are not too strong, they are too weak. We are far too easily pleased.
Morality, like numinous awe, is a jump; in it, man goes beyond anything that can be "given" in the facts of experience.
A young man who wishes to remain a sound Atheist cannot be too careful of his reading. There are traps everywhere—"Bibles laid open, millions of surprises," as Herbert says, "fine nets and stratagems." God is, if I may say it, very unscrupulous.
What seem our worst prayers may really be, in God's eyes, our best. Those, I mean, which are least supported by devotional feeling. For these may come from a deeper level than feeling. God sometimes seems to speak to us most intimately when He catches us, as it were, off our guard.
Love, while always forgiving of imperfections and mistakes, can never cease to will their removal.
Heaven offers nothing that a mercenary soul can desire.
Now is our chance to choose the right side. God is holding back to give us that chance. It won`t last forever. We must take it or leave it.
Telling us to obey instinct is like telling us to obey "people." People say different things: so do instincts. Our instincts are at war. Each instinct, if you listen to it, will claim to be gratified at the expense of the rest.
Unless Christianity is wholly false, the perception of ourselves which we have in moments of shame must be the only true one.
The original Lindenville was a cabin in the mountains of northern California, named for Gary & Caren Linden, at a retreat called The Lord's Land. We had the privilege of staying in Lindenville twice—the second time in 1997, leaving our former home, California, for our new home, the "thumb" of Michigan. Our times at The Lord's Land confirmed the way less traveled call on our lives, and it's what Lindenville continues to signify for us.
© 2019 Lindenville 2. All Rights Reserved.