Episode Transcript
CONSECRATE
Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.
Jesus, I belong to you.
I lift up my heart to you.
I set my mind on you.
I fix my eyes on you.
I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice.
Jesus, we belong to you.
Praying in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.
HEAR
Habakkuk 3:17–19 NIV
Though the fig tree does not bud
and there are no grapes on the vines,
though the olive crop fails
and the fields produce no food,
though there are no sheep in the pen
and no cattle in the stalls,
yet I will rejoice in the LORD,
I will be joyful in God my Savior.
The Sovereign LORD is my strength;
he makes my feet like the feet of a deer,
he enables me to tread on the heights.
CONSIDER
Yet . . .
Are you still doing it? You know, “yetting.” Are you still “yetting”?
There’s something I wanted to point out about our text from Valley #18.
. . . yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will be joyful in God my Savior.
It is the verbs. They are future tense, which is fine until we realize it is never the future. It is always the present. So the time for rejoicing is always right now and the place for rejoicing is always right here.
I have noticed through my season in Valley #18 that to say “I will rejoice in the LORD” is not the same thing as actually rejoicing in the Lord. In the same way, I find it easier to say I will exercise and eat healthy every day than to actually follow through on it. “I will” is a good statement of intention, but intention will not get it done. What is it they say the pavement is made of on the road to hell? Oh yeah, right, good intentions.
So how does intention become action? Intention awakens our will, as in “I will.” If intention is to become meaningful action, it must first rise to the level of attention.
Intention. Attention. Action.
Intention so often misses the mark of action because it misses the movement of attention. So is the attention on the action of rejoicing? I have tried so many times to go from the intention (will) to rejoice to the action of rejoicing only to find it rote, unsatisfying, and ultimately unhelpful. No, our attention must be lifted and set upon the subject, verb, and direct object of all joy: Jesus Messiah.
Our attention tends to become deeply attuned to our circumstances: no figs, no grapes, no olives, no grain, no chickens, no ducks, and so on. This is why we get discouraged and give in to despair and become depressed. It’s why “yetting” is so important. The yet shifts us from the no of our circumstances to the yes of Jesus. Our attention must be lifted into the awareness of God. It makes sense, doesn’t it? We are, after all, rejoicing in the Lord. Attention shifts our souls from mere thoughts about God to dwelling in the presence of God.
I apologize if I am making this more complex than it may need to be, but we are trying to understand something super deep here. The journey from simplistic to simple usually runs through some complexity.
Intention. Attention. Rejoicing.
“Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus” (1 Thess. 5:16–18).
PRAY
Father, thank you for the way you reveal things to us we could never figure out. Thank you for your Word and Spirit by which you are always working to reveal your will and your ways. Thank you for Jesus, who so faithfully teaches, trains, interprets, and instructs us. We want to offer you the faculty of our attention today. It is battered and broken. Our attention muscles have atrophied from distraction and anxiety. We didn’t intend it. Life has broken us. We need healing Jesus, the kind only you can bring. Holy Spirit, would you begin to heal our attention? Our souls magnify the Lord, and our spirits rejoice in God our Savior. We want this to be true for us always and all the time. For your name’s sake, Jesus, amen.
