VOX Domini {Scattered Servants} - Psalm 23

The sheep have scattered.

We are scattered servants.

Dear broken church- Wherever you go from here, know that safety comes from inside you. Carry it like a sacred treasure in your soul. Enter the world with awareness of the gifts you have inside. These gifts are the Voice of God to a broken world.

We sojourn in safe places, but we do not live there.

Vox Domini oves suas in novalibus pasturis.

The voice of God calls His sheep into new pastures.

We are all now scattered servants.

Pain is a teacher, a broken heart is a latent gift, and revival is a blessing that rises up from ashes.

Who will lead us from here?

Psalm 23.

The Lord is my shepherd;

I have followed broken men and women, which led me to my own self-destruction. My vice propensity is to follow these people still, or ones just like them. But the Lord continually invites me to follow only Him, here in this world of broken hearts and counterfeits.

I have all that I need.

I look all about me for safety, love and belonging. I am beginning to discover the great secret- these things come from within. When I enter a room, do I seek to extract all I can from the people therein, or do I come to overflow with the gifts that are inside of me? When I enter a room, do I look for what I can grasp from these people, or do I consider how I can begin to overflow as I learn from them here in this place?

He lets me rest in green meadows;

There have been places of refuge, and He allows me this rest for a season. But they are always temporary, sometimes even fantasy. No matter how much I would like to stay, these safe places have come and gone. They serve a purpose for a needed time, and then God lovingly removes them from my story in order that I can carry on with the mission. It is time to get up from our prolonged rest in safe places and walk into the world into which we carry our sacred and untouchable gifts. Go out to your calling. Do not tarry any longer.

He leads me beside peaceful streams.

I have come to know that as I walk, I can come alongside others who are also headed where I want to go. I should not follow these people, but I can walk in step beside them. My judgement can mature- I can learn to identify those whom I want to journey with. Though the safe place is preferable, the moving waters bring change and renewal in ways that safety never could. To walk beside these people who have Living Water inside them is to surrender the past and open to the future. Water under the bridge is a gift for the thirsty traveler.

He renews my strength.

I could never get up and go on to new things without Divine intervention. Though I am not asked to go this journey on my own, I am asked to travel with nothing other than open hands and a soft heart. All else He will provide because He loves me. He is full of persuasive abundance.

He guides me along right paths, bringing honor to His name.

I am bent on my own chaotic destruction. In this I fully believe. I have known my own depravity. Which is why I need Christ to take the lead. As I decrease, so He increases, and my story becomes His glory. No step towards victory can be taken without His intervention.

Even when I walk through the darkest valley,

I will not be afraid,

for You are close beside me.

There have been low points. Places and people who were my refuge and my identity have been taken away. Safety has been denied to me by people who I wanted to be safe for me. I have known a stark kind of relational bigotry. But as the fear washed over me, so did Grace. And as always, His first words are “don’t be afraid, child.” Fear can be leveraged as fuel for love if we recognize it for what it is- a sign that you are stepping into reality and out of fantasy. A sign that breakthrough is coming in haste, if only we press on.

Your rod and your staff protect and comfort me.

There has been discipline. My mistakes are legion. One cannot experience spiritual formation without seeing the brokenness of the self. I have come to recognize my false motives, my insecurities, my relational failures, my ongoing autonomy and my massive shortcomings. With the staff Jesus has smacked me into reality and with his rod he Has pulled me away from fantasy. The pain is great, but the reward is greater still. His discipline brings safety, which brings comfort, like a parent correcting the child for the sake of love.

You prepare a feast for me in the presence of my enemies.

Because my King loves me, He vanquishes the works of my enemies.

Because He loves me, their authority has now come to an end. They will no longer abuse or neglect the sacred call to shepherd the flock.

My loving Father has called to account those who have blunderingly cut me with the mishandling of power in His name.

Yes, justice comes in due time, on His schedule and not mine. But Justice will not be leveraged as a weapon, where it then becomes fact but no longer Truth. The act of justice is reserved only for the Just King, never meant to be handled by those who follow Him. Thus I am often forced to obediently wait, against my will, for His justice to fall on the works of the unrighteous. But because He loves me, I am vindicated. And because He loves me, I am asked to dine with my enemies at the table of love and forgiveness. Thus communion is a surrender of pride and a leveling of motives. We all come ashamed and we all leave restored. My enemies are the beloved of Christ.

You honor me by anointing my head with oil.

There are experiences with Christ that cannot be captured with words. Thus I have learned to spend more time creating pieces of art in my journal and less time writing. When I am honored by the King is when I am open to seeing His beauty. If I can receive His love, He will immediately respond. But often this transaction happens without a single word. Creativity, beauty, art- the creation of honor is the pouring out of holy oil upon the open eyes and into the receptive mind.

My cup overflows with blessings.

Yes, His blessing falls on both the righteous and the unrighteous. But it can only overflow in abundance if it is multiplied by His Spirit. What are my gifts? I am learning. What are my blessings? They are the million different ways God has guided my steps on this journey. I am a sheep exposed out in open pasture, but the true Shepherd is ever beside me, pouring out His favor upon me and filling me with abundance in ways I often fail to appreciate at the time. I am learning to tune my ears to His voice so that I may hear Him call for me to drink deeply of His joy.

Drink deep of His love, scattered flock. You will need it for the journey ahead.

Surely your goodness and unfailing love

will pursue me all the days of my life,

To be pursued. This is a basic need of humanity. We ourselves do not purse love as we should. Instead we pursue temporal pleasures. We use each other, we coerce and manipulate in order to get our needs met.

We are desperate to reproduce safety around us because we don't know it comes from the Love within.

What if we lived as if love was pursuing us every day? What if we believed that goodness was chasing us down regardless of our location on the journey? Then we would not be afraid of what might be outside the four walls of our fears. Our frightened huddles would become a horizon of open courage and strength. The possibilities would be endless, if we believe goodness and love were in pursuit of our soul. We could go anywhere and be safe. We could belong in any place without changing the source of our identity.

We could scatter and serve the world.

And I will live in the house of the Lord forever.

The house of the Lord is sacred ground- both pain and blessing flow out from this place.

His house is everywhere, especially the unsafe places.

But to live there is to embrace the wholeness of this journey. I have learned that we burn brighter together. Here the Voice of God has special clarity.

On this part of the journey I have discovered a Vineyard.

A few of you have already found it too!

It came upon me quite suddenly, but with miraculous clarity. Unexpected but precisely timed. Where do I worship now? With people who are rising up from the ashes of a community that had a near-death experience, seeking to bless their city with the gifts inside them that remain untouched by the decay of the past. As they rise, I will learn from them. I sing with them as we rise up from loss- this is how I will continue to learn and grow in community. A struggling soul, like a struggling church, is ripe for the Spirit to respond, if only we would get on our knees, own our pride and enter into honest prayer.

The Lord is my shepherd and safety comes from within. So I can emerge out into the world to dine with my enemies in the presence of the King. These enemies are my beloved brothers and sisters. We dine together because I surrendered the justice to God, and He adopted us all in an act of radical love.

 No denomination, name, building or label will ever diminish that reality.

Dear broken church. The sheep have scattered. But wherever you go from here, know that safety comes from inside you. Carry it like a sacred treasure in your soul.

Vox Domini oves suas in novalibus pasturis.

The voice of God calls His sheep into new pastures.

Do not be afraid. The Shepherd is calling you. Bring your hurts and your doubts- those are gifts, too. Watch them become the tools for breakthrough.

Your identity remains unchanged, and your soul is eternally safe. Go into the world brave and free, because pain has been your teacher and Jesus is your Savior.

Run now like the wind, wild and free, and the Spirit will pursue you with the Voice of love.

Revival is coming, dear flock. 

But safety is already here, carried along inside of each one of you. It is the Voice of God.

We sojourn in safe places, but we do not live there.

You are safe from within, so venture out with your gifts.
Go as scattered servants into the world.

~Rebecca 

Go To Your Calling

It is upon the stormy seas that we cling most deeply to our Savior. This is why the pain is a blessing. Cherish it with me now, this storm which surrounds us all. It is here in our fear that we can experience the deepest center of grace, the core of abiding peace. Bless the eternal hurts that bind you eternally to the Father. Bless them.

Jesus, walk me home, across the waters to the place You have prepared for me. There You will teach me everything, because there I will abide most deeply in You. How have I experienced Your church body? Violently, with both the highest joys and the lowest tears. I see myself in her as through a mirror darkly- broken and beautiful, full of promise and pain. Why do You use her to wound me, Father? She is beauty and suffering, and what is hers is mine. Together we are wrapped up in a story of unfolding transformation- Your story of the prodigal soul, the spiritual vagabond, the violence of a sinner’s love. Here in Your church I have been taught to love and I have learned to hate. I have been broken by betrayal and bought back with kindness. She is the wilderness, the suffering of 40 days.

How have I been received by her? With best intentions and violent betrayal. She told me I was safe, welcomed me into a community that invited me to share my heart. Then, when I began to reveal my truest self, she sent me away, in her shock and fear unable to receive me in truth, unequipped to respond to my multitude of needs. She stood passively and silently by as I suffered the consequence of our broken relationship. It was perhaps her silence that cut me the deepest. I saw myself as she saw me- broken and in need of profound healing. I went away from her for a long, sad time. I grieved deeply as I never had before.

Then her gentler sister took me in and told me “You are loved”. She won me back again and restored to me all that had been lost. Jesus healed me there. Yet my soul was waiting, quietly waiting, for the call to go back home. And now I hear a whisper in the wind, a change of seasons in the air. “Go to them, daughter, for they will teach you everything.” So now when I consider opening wide to the church, what comes up for me? Fear. Doubt. Anger. Hope. Joy. Desire. Longing. The suffering Your church has caused me has lifted my faith to heights I have never known. She is the garden, the rest on the seventh day.

I accept the pain when I take communion with her now, because it reminds me of how much You love and cherish the parts of myself that no human can see. With You I am fully known- with You, Jesus, as with no other person. Now I can return to Your church with boundaries that keep me hedged in from premature claims of safety, with tools to love in a way that is healthy, and from an abundance of forgiveness for myself and others. To whom are You calling me in this season? You are calling me home. To the ones whom I cherish, the ones I fear, the ones my heart calls (imperfect and messy) family. What other kind of family is there? You are calling me to the refinement of humility at the communion table, where I will not hear “I am sorry” but perhaps with time I will hear “you are loved” as we share the bread and the cup together.

Jesus, I can never love Your church as I once did. That love belongs only to You now. But I have a gift I can bring to Your altar- my prodigal soul, wrapped in grace. “Go to them, daughter, for they will teach you everything.” Yes, Jesus. I will put down all the treasures that hold me back. I will say goodbye to the blessings that I no longer need. I will come to them empty-handed except for myself. No agenda. No expectations. No story. No words. No needs. No acts of service. I will come as I am, the good motives mixed with the bad, free from performance or pretending. I don’t need to be seen, to be heard, or to be understood. I just need to go to my calling, for there You will teach me everything. I will worship You in their midst, in power and in truth, for in the presence of Your people my heart is abandoned and my arms open wide to Your love.

They are looking at me, Father,

but I no longer need to be seen.

I am hidden in You, so I am already safe.

Jesus, walk me home across the waters, to the place You have prepared for me. There You will teach me everything, because there I will abide most deeply in You.

This journey belongs only to the One who has redeemed it. To Him alone goes all the glory. While abiding in Him I am safe to belong with His people. Amen.

~Rebecca