laying down the nets

Matthew 4:18–20 “While walking by the Sea of Galilee, He saw two brothers, Simon (who is called Peter) and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. And He said to them, “Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.”Immediately they left their nets and followed Him.”
 

leave your nets

©hannah mclean 10-12-2024

 

will you leave your nets
and follow Me?
will you lay down old
the new to see?
will you trust your works
can leave your hands
and pick up where
Redeemer stands?
 

will you forfeit
all you’ve ever known
and follow Me
from house and home?

it matters not that
men say “no”
it matters not where
men say “go”
it matters only
if you choose
to follow Me
your nets to lose
 

a better word
i have for you
a better work
your hands to do
I look across
your narrow sea
and call you out
“will you follow Me?”

The feet of Jesus

Revelation 1:12–16 “Then I turned to see the voice that was speaking to me, and on turning I saw seven golden lampstands, and in the midst of the lampstands one like a son of man, clothed with a long robe and with a golden sash around His chest. The hairs of His head were white, like white wool, like snow. His eyes were like a flame of fire, His feet were like burnished bronze, refined in a furnace, and His voice was like the roar of many waters. In His right hand He held seven stars, from His mouth came a sharp two-edged sword, and His face was like the sun shining in full strength.”

I read this passage today, and looked down at my paper to answer the correlating questions. “What stands out to you in John’s description of what He saw and heard?” I could think of only one thing. It wasn’t the lampstands or the golden stars that danced across His palm, nor was it the two-edged sword or the flaming eyes. It was His feet. “Burnished bronze, refined in a furnace.” Something that is burnished has been polished until it shines, or in this case, refined by fire until it carried a sheen found through no other means. His feet, standing amid the splendor and majesty…His feet that knew not just the courts of heavens but the fires of earth.

To be honest, when I think of Jesus’ feet I don’t usually think of burnished bronze. I think of dirt and blood and sandal straps too holy to be unloosed by the best of human hands. I think of roads filled with travelers, journeys up mountainsides and maybe even the floors of fishing boats.

My mind travels through stories recorded for us in scripture of those holy, yet human feet; sick were laid at them, former-lepers fell in gratitude at them, redeemed women washed the dirt from them with their tears. People followed where their walked, sat at them to learn and even joined them atop the waters of the Sea of Galilee. They stood in a manger, in the homes of sinners, in His Father’s house and in the courts of earthly governments. They walked into gardens, up mountains, from city to city, even to the tomb of their friend. These feet that once were cradled by a mother, that were once pierced through by a soldier, that knew the feel of both womb and tomb; these feet that traveled the decent of heaven to earth and back again. These were the feet that stood out to me in John’s vision.

I know those feet. I’ve laid myself before them a thousand time, resting my head upon them in prayer. I’ve wrapped myself around them, rained my tears upon them, broken open my alabaster box at them to pour out my worship. I’ve followed them through the veil and to the throne, walked beside them into the broken caverns within me and known the healing that comes as they’ve led me out. They’ve joined me in my floods and in my fires, stood beside me in the valleys and in the heights, waited with me when I had no strength to move.

I found His feet before I found His face; for me it was the entrance point to relationship when I did not yet know how to receive love. These holy feet that humbled themselves to meet me in the dirt, pierced through so that my gaze could learn to look up in wonder at the One who drew near.

I know those feet. And when I look upon John’s vision, I can’t help but think that even if the rest of heaven is unimaginable in beauty and purity, shocking in width and wonder to we who wait on this side of eternity, the feet of our Lord will be familiar to us.

For those feet stood with us in the furnace. Those heavenly feet of burnished bronze.

Fault and chastisement

I have spent my entire adult life battling health issues. Literally less than 2 months after my 18th birthday I got a diagnosis that seemed to determine the course of everything that followed; and when a doctor associated it with Celiac’s Disease (an autoimmune disorder that I believe was triggered in me after the death of my little brother when I was very young), I took the blame for the catastrophe that was my body. At every bump and pit along my health journey, I have looked backwards continually at my 18-year-old self and said, “It's your own fault.”

When my body fell apart at the failure of my thyroid, it was my own fault. When I lost my ability to speak after complications with surgery, it was my own fault. When I had to work extra hard for the smallest step forward or when my body fell 10 steps back, it was my own fault. When my body couldn't recover after giving birth...when I miscarried my babies...couldn't regulate my blood pressure...my fault, my fault, my fault. For years and years, I have owned my body's weakness and failures as the consequence of my ignorant teenage choices to not stay off gluten. "It's your own fault," my internal drill sergeant reminds me, "suck it up and accept your consequences. You gave up your chance at health when you were young, so stop complaining. You didn't respect it while you had it, you don't deserve it back. Stand up and keep moving forward."

In some weird way, this acceptance of blame has sort of wrangled my emotions as I have rollercoastered through the ups and downs, reminding me to keep standing instead of rolling over and giving up. It has forced me to find my contentment outside of my circumstances.

And that’s not all bad.

But it’s also not good. Yesterday my drill sergeant’s voice started to bother me, some part of me that the last 24 years hasn't hardened, some part that hasn’t been snuffed out by my body's failures suddenly stood up and pushed back.

“I don’t think that's true,” this unusual spark of resistance called out over the familiar wrestle to quench my sadness. "I don't think it’s my fault."

I tried. I tried to get better. I did everything I knew how to for years and years. I have worked hard for my wellbeing (physically, mentally, spiritually, and relationally), and while I have laid hold of much holistic healing, my physical body still languishes in the dirt. I’ve learned how to rewire my brain toward it over the years; I’ve found moments I have actively felt compassion for it, I’ve intentionally reconnected to it (overriding a trauma response of disassociating) in spite of the emotional turmoil I endure by allowing myself to remain in it, I’ve actively painted it with dignity and value and reminded myself of its goodness by design. And every time I think I’ve got to be done, that the bottom of this gangrenous wound has to be uncovered, I keep finding more.

So today I have been processing my internal resistance. I’ve considered the little voice that stood in the face of the commander and said, “It’s not my fault.”

What is the truth?

The truth is that I have never looked at another sick or suffering person and thought, “It’s your own fault. Suck it up.” I’ve never bypassed compassion and commanded someone to get in line under their responsibility for their own weakness. Why would I judge myself with such harshness when I have never thought so harshly about another?

The truth is that there is much in my life that has affected my body that I have not chosen.

The truth is that association and causation are not the same thing. I don’t know why my thyroid failed me when I was 18-years-old.

The truth is that even if I had messed up everything in my life in regards to my health, I still deserve the basic human compassion that shelters the path of suffering.

“What is the truth?” I asked the Lord.

And He said to me, “Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But He was pierced for our transgressions; He was crushed for our iniquities; upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with His wounds we are healed.” [Isaiah 53:4–5]

The word “chastisement” set itself on me, its definition laying out the reality of this lie’s root. To chastise means to censure severely, inflicting punishment on (as by whipping). A censure is a judgment involving condemnation. For 24 years I have carried the condemnation of my broken body; the sentence of a life in the dust has whipped me into line every time I have bucked beneath it. It has pressed upon my shoulders with such weight that I’ve given it permission to remain because I have owned it as a righteous judgment against me.

But He said to me, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” [Romans 8:1]

Break every chain, Lord. No more lies.

He has borne my grief and sorrow, He has been pierced and crushed and chastised and wounded for my peace and for my healing.

“It’s not my fault,” I said over and over again today. Practicing the truth so that the next time the lie falls from my mouth I can crush it before it lands. May the whip that has fallen so many times be absorbed by the One who lent me His body so that I can walk free.

The eager rose bush

I went out to look in my flower bed this afternoon, and found myself standing in front of my rose bush. I bought it this Spring at ALDI, a bare twig maybe 10” tall for $7 figuring that even if it flopped, it was worth the $7 risk because…what if it didn’t? And there in my flower bed stood the former twig. While it still had only 2 branches, it was now 3 1/2’ tall, boasting three 4” roses and 2 more in lesser states of bloom. It stretched itself toward the sky, straight upright, confident that it was capable of great beauty, and it opened up its blossoms into sweet aromatic pedals of many shades of pink, unaware that a single branch was not suppose to stand so tall nor hold so many roses.

Its two overflowing branches made me laugh as I thought, “I want the confidence of this rose bush.”

This rose bush apparently had not been informed that it had fallen into my uninformed hands; it was unhindered by its time of pruning, its season of waiting to find its garden, its time of not yet being planted in the right soil. In spite of its dormancy and its apparent dying, it was eager to flourish without hinderance the moment it touched the earth.

It seemed to call out to me, “Why wouldn’t I go all out? This is what I was made for!”

It didn’t know I would stand and admire its blooms, but it knew its blooms would hold all the beauty embedded in them by its Maker. It seemed to have the glorious understanding that to bud and to blossom and to burst into full bloom in the light of the sun was what it was made for….and so it threw its branches out into the open air and simply lived to the fullness of its potential for its age and stage of growth.

I want to be like the rose bush.

I was talking to the Lord this morning about my desire to learn how to dream by faith. I've learned in my 43 years that while I am a dreamer by nature—one who dreams big for the people in my life—I am crippled in my ability to dream for myself. Maybe it’s the remnants of disappointments of the past, or the lingering effects of being pressed down…maybe it’s the leftover shades of fear not yet washed from my nature… wherever it comes from, I find myself wishing to confront my limp.

While it is true that I sometimes do big (for me), uncomfortable things; I mostly just do them in obedience, expectation doesn’t usually have a seat at the table. I invite people to a Bible study without the expectation that anyone would come. I publish a book without the expectation that anyone would buy it. I write a blog without the expectation that anyone would read it. I share a testimony without the expectation that anyone would believe it. I sing a song without the expectation anyone (but my dad) would want to listen to my voice. And maybe it's not so bad a thing to be surprised from time to time if someone shows up or stops to listen or finds themself blessed, but I do think it is a strange position to be in to repeatedly reach out my hand assuming I will probably find only empty air and to have genuine peace at having reached out anyway.

I look around me and watch people in my life planning and dreaming with joyful expectancy; they start businesses, prayer movements and ministries that utilize their gifting and turn the fire that burns in their heart into a productive blaze. They sit behind tables filled with their creative endeavors and believe that someone would want one for their own. They walk into rooms and open their mouths with the expectation that someone will consider what comes out of them and choose to take part. And I watch them…marveling at what, to me, seems like magnificent boldness. Dreams and expectancy of possibility combining to gift the human soul.

Are you one of those people? A person who takes leaps of faith and builds with wild expectation? How did you become like the rose bush? Teach me your ways.

Judgment like a flood

Last night I had a dream about a flood that was coming. When I woke up from it, I got up for a minute, and when I did, I noticed that the lights suddenly went on in the main flood of the house. I went downstairs to see who was awake and found my son curled up with a blanket on the couch in a fully-lit main floor because he had a scary dream.

“What was the dream about, Son?”

“It was about a flood.”

I was suddenly wide awake. So we sat on the couch and I listened to his dream. It was a simple dream; he’d been playing with his sisters when his dad got a weather report that a flood was coming. So everyone needed to go upstairs, and when the flood came, the water went up to the top stair, but it didn’t touch any of us.

We prayed and I tucked him into my bed next to his daddy while I returned to the couch to seek the Lord. I did not remember my dream as vividly as I usually do when I receive dreams from the Lord, but when the Lord confirms your dream through your son, you pay attention.

Here is what I remember from the dream followed by the warning the Lord brought to light in the face of it:

I was visiting a city where I did not live, I was with my husband and a close friend. While we were there, a warning went out that a flood was coming, and we were trying to get to a specific place in the city to be safe. The people we were with (who lived there) seemed to be our work colleagues and it was clear that they didn’t really like us much, but didn’t dislike us enough to want anything bad to happen to us. Most of the people around us seemed to know there was a flood coming and were a bit harrowed from the bad weather they’d encountered in the recent past. There were some who were just going about their business as usual.

We were trying to get across town from where we were, and the scene I remember at the end of the dream was a place of decision. We were in the apartment complex of the people we knew because we had helped them get home; it was a building with open halls connecting the rooms like you’d find in the south or a coastal town. They were trying to get to their rooms, and the halls were filled with long, orderly lines of people doing the same. They finally said to us with a hint of worry and reluctant kindness, “The flood is almost here, I don’t know if you will be able to get back, you can stay in our room.” When we said we couldn’t do that, they offered to at least watch our stuff for us so that we didn’t have to worry about carrying anything across town.

So we handed them our bags (and anything in our purses that might weigh us down). I specifically remember asking my husband and friend if I needed my lanyard with my wallet and keys and decided that I didn’t, and I hung it around the neck of the person who was offering me help. We turned to leave and they turned to go into their rooms. As I walked past the stone supporting wall of the apartment building on my way down the stairs—the opposite direction of the people going up higher—I reached out my hand and touched it saying, “I cover you in the blood of Jesus.”

As we were strategizing about how to get where we needed with nothing but the clothes on our backs, the air around us was abuzz with hurry and worry because of the impending flood, but even with the knowledge of what was coming, not all people were preparing for it.

That is what I remember from my dream.

As I prayed and asked the Lord to reveal to me what He wanted me to know through these two dreams, He made the following things clear to me:

First, judgment is coming to the USA. This dream was not pointing to the final judgments of the book of Revelation, but instead a much nearer judgment of a righteous God on a wicked nation. There is only one way to walk through this judgment, and it is as the Israelites stood secure in their homes in Goshen through the plagues on Egypt in Exodus 7–12, and that is to be under the blood of Jesus.

Second, there is purpose behind this judgment that is not merely punishment (although we absolutely deserve only that); this judgment is to bring about repentance because God’s heart for humanity is and has always been to save them and unite them in Himself (Ephesians 1:10).

As I wrote out this dream and talked to the Lord about it, I kept bumping into the word “harrow” and “harrowed,” so I looked up its meaning. A harrow is a tool used to cultivate, it breaks up and smooths out soil for planting. And to feel harrowed means to feel plundered and tormented.

The judgment that is coming will be as if the harrow of God sweeps across the nation and it will do one of two things to any heart not secure under the atoning blood of Jesus: It will either soften your heart so that it turns to His in repentance (this is His deepest desire), or it will leave you feeling plundered because what is good will be stripped away from you (God is the source of all that is good, in the rejection of Him, you will lose whatever is of His goodness that He has graciously allowed you to hold in your hands).

I do not know what stands before us, but there will be judgment like a flood (the flood in this dream stood for judgment); cover yourself in the Redeemer’s blood. He has already finished the work of salvation for us to take part in…there is no other way to endure what is coming without Him. Repent. Pray (for yourself, your family, everyone you know and love, your city, our nation). Receive mercy. Find refuge in the God who has loved you from the beginning.

A prayer of surrender

Some seasons for me are messier than others; lately I've been bringing all the pieces of my heart in all their complexity and just pouring them onto the altar...and this has been my accompanying prayer of surrender: "Burn up what You will, Lord. Purify whatever remains after Your holy fire falls. And plant whatever You wish to grow in me."

And so in this season where I cannot sort, I can still be sanctified because the Lord always receives the sacrifices we make in surrender, even if they aren't pretty. 

 

Psalm 5:3 TPT "At each and every sunrise You will hear my voice as I prepare my sacrifice of prayer to You. Every morning I lay out the pieces of my life on the altar and wait for Your fire to fall upon my heart."

The expanse of His bending

"He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap." Psalm 113:7

 

The Lord was ministering to me with Psalm 113:7 yesterday, and this morning as I sat down with Him, I looked into the rest of the Psalm and I am undone.

Psalm 113 speaks to the Lord being HIGH ABOVE ALL nations; China, Russia, the USA, Germany, Mexico, Brazil, Israel, Egypt, Monaco, Nigeria…every nation with every earthly leader and every ounce of earthly government, prestige and military might. It says that not only are these beneath Him, but they are FAR beneath Him. And while the glory of the earth and its nations may seem impressive (Olympians, natural wonders, scientific and technological advances, etc.), His glory—the sum of His being—dwarfs not only all the earth has to offer but also the heavens. And from this declaration of the immense wonder, worth and power of God, the Psalmist rightly declares His holiness, “Who is like the Lord our God…?” No one. He is set apart in every way; holy, holy, holy the right declaration as He is beheld.

Then the second half of the Psalm moves my heart is wondrous ways. Because then, this God who dwarfs the nations with His glory, presence, position and scope of vision reaches down through the distance of His exaltation and sets His hands into the dust to touch the ones with nothing to glory in; He puts those holy hands into the ashes of burned up lives and circumstance and picks up the ones who need; and with the humble of the world in His grasp, He covers them with honor. And then, He turns His eyes to the woman without, the lonely with the pain of unfulfilled longings, and He moves her to joy.

“Who is like the Lord our God…?” Our God who does not overlook the individual lives on whom death has left its mark. Our God who did not come to save nations—for nations are but a drop in a bucket to Him—but to save the people who fill those nations—marked with His image and the recipients of His affections. Who is like the Lord our God? Worthy of praise for all of time and yet concerned with the weak and lowly who have known only broken pieces and with the woman whose beating heart is cast down.

I don’t know if where you sit today is a place of authority at a table of honor or a pile of ashes from the life you’ve burned with your own sin. I don’t know if you hold in your hands everything you ever wanted or if your soul cries out from the bathroom floor in your longing for what you lack. But I do know this, the Lord our God is both mighty and meek. He is above the heights we could ever lift our eyes to and beneath the depths we could ever fall. He is worthy and yet willing, holy and yet love itself. Rest in His hands, it is there that joy will find you.

And do not miss the expanse of His bending, for the expanse is the door to understanding His praise.