Rock Bottom: The Place Where God Meets You

The place to Discover God

When our lives crumble, and we actually need assistance, and we surprise if we will even hold going, the place can we discover God?

The Bible says that God dwells in two reverse locations without delay—method up excessive in his holy place above, the place we will’t go, and method down low among the many lowly and contrite, the place we will go. However it may be laborious to search out God within the mushy center.

That world of privilege and benefit, the place cash has the facility to maintain bother out and pleasure in, the place we might be “profitable” with out God—that false heaven is a snug entice. It trivializes Jesus as a life-style enhancement. He isn’t excessive and lifted up, not everlasting and holy. He simply doesn’t rely for that a lot.

Isaiah 57:15 modifications how we understand him, which additionally modifications the place we need to reside.

For thus says the One who’s excessive and lifted up,
      who inhabits eternity, whose title is Holy:
“I dwell within the excessive and holy place,
      and likewise with him who’s of a contrite and lowly spirit,
to revive the spirit of the lowly,
      and to revive the guts of the contrite.”

Wherever he’s—that’s the place we’ll discover all that we actually want. Our Lord should be straightforward to search out method up there in his heavenly glory. The angels are awestruck by him 24/7! Our Lord can be straightforward to search out method down low at our all-time low. So many saints can attest to that! However that center area of worldly wishes, with site visitors jams of U-Hauls crowding in to maneuver there on daily basis—you and I see it in another way now, don’t we?

Now that it’s God we would like, all-time low can begin wanting just like the backyard of Eden.

King David understood. He tells of when his very life was hanging by a thread:

I cried aloud to the Lord, and he answered me from his holy hill. (Ps. 3:4)

Let’s not miss the stunning geography—each literal and metaphorical—in that verse.

Psalm 3:4 photos God atop holy Mount Zion, 2,500 toes above sea stage. As he prays this psalm, David is within the Jordanian Rift, practically 2,500 toes beneath sea stage—actually the bottom level on earth. . . . The language is meant to attract consideration each to the depths of David’s plight and to the transcendent God who guidelines over all.¹

Apparently, our Savior loves these extremes—up excessive, down low. It should imply that he’s not too wonderful to hassle with us down right here; he’s too wonderful not to care about us.

Sadly, not each place that passes as “Christian” will assist us. Some would possibly break our hearts much more deeply. However placing all our hope in the actual Jesus, we take our stand right here. “In case your faith doesn’t aid you, it’s no faith for you; you had higher be with out it.”² Subsequently, we gladly descend to God’s dwelling place, the place he brings actual assist for actual victims.

Isaiah 57:15 is nice information, isn’t it? Once we’ve misplaced a lot that we worry we’re caught now with a Plan B existence—that situation is the place God dwells. As we stumble into his therapeutic presence, he greets us with a delicate query: “Would you want a hug?” Do not forget that father whose longing coronary heart waited for his knucklehead prodigal son to come back again residence? “His father noticed him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him” (Luke 15:20). Would you want that hug out of your Father?

Perhaps you’re nonetheless uneasy. Perhaps you watched that what God actually desires is to chew you out: “If you happen to’d been paying consideration, you wouldn’t be down right here!” However the Bible says the alternative. What God desires is to “revive” the spirit of the crushed and the devastated. What he desires is to breathe recent life into you. And Isaiah 57:15 shouldn’t be exaggerating. Its hopeful message shouldn’t be even distinctive. This verse is classic Bible reality.

James Muilenburg, in his 1956 commentary on Isaiah, writes, “The entire New Testomony offers a operating commentary on these phrases.”³ And John Oswalt, in his 1998 commentary, calls Isaiah 57:15 “one of many most interesting one-sentence summations of biblical theology within the Bible.”⁴

Earlier within the Previous Testomony, Psalm 34 says,

The Lord is close to to the brokenhearted
     and saves the crushed in spirit. (Ps. 34:18)

And “the crushed in spirit” there interprets the identical wording as “contrite” does in Isaiah 57:15. God shouldn’t be aloof from devastated individuals, however he’s very close to: “The Lord Jesus is aware of what it’s to be crushed in spirit.”⁵

However Psalm 34 additionally says, “The face of the Lord is in opposition to those that do evil” (Ps. 34:16). They “do evil” by selecting ease, management, and big-deal-ness relatively than the Father’s embrace. The mushy center is the place they need to dwell, exactly as a result of God doesn’t dwell there. That want is evil. And it breeds extra evils, as we see on daily basis on this world.

Once we’ve misplaced a lot that we worry we’re caught now with a Plan B existence—that situation is the place God dwells.

C. S. Lewis explains the staggering selection confronting each one in every of us:

We’re warned that it might occur to any one in every of us to look eventually earlier than the face of God and listen to solely the appalling phrases, “I by no means knew you. Depart from me.” . . . We might be left completely and completely outdoors—repelled, exiled, estranged, lastly and unspeakably ignored. Then again, we might be referred to as in, welcomed, acquired, acknowledged.⁶

Here’s what Jesus mentioned concerning the lowly and contrite who collapse within the Father’s arms: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the dominion of heaven” (Matt. 5:3). That phrase “blessed” shouldn’t be a pious cliché. That sturdy phrase is a joyous excessive 5. Jesus is congratulating the poor in spirit. He seems to be at them with beaming approval and says, “Solution to go!” Who’re these fortunate guys? Who’re those that find yourself not on the bench however out on the sphere with the group, celebrating their come-from-behind championship victory, after which within the locker room are shaking up bottles of champagne and spraying one another for the sheer pleasure of all of it, after which are going out collectively to the postgame celebration and dancing the night time away? Who will get in on that pleasure? Not the swaggering large photographs of this world. Jesus ignores them. However the true celebrants are the poor in spirit, who don’t have anything to supply him however their defeat. He congratulates them because the winners. He welcomes them into his kingdom. They’re the place the excessive and holy one dwells.

Having him close to is our solely “success”—if that’s even the precise phrase for it. To everybody with sufficient regrets to know that his grace is their final hope, Jesus opens up the treasures of himself perpetually. And the smug insiders up of their self-exalting center area? All they’ve is themselves, and perpetually.

Right here’s another New Testomony verse, close to the very finish of the Bible: “Let the one who’s thirsty come; let the one who wishes take the water of life with out value” (Rev. 22:17). All you want is want—like burning thirst, like unhappy want. The place Christ dwells, your lack is your wealth. Don’t want it away. Convey it to him. Carry on bringing it to him. He invitations you to come back, and he invitations you to take—with out value. He has already paid the worth at his cross. As Spurgeon mentioned, “When Jesus is the host, no visitor goes empty from the desk.”⁷

What cracks our hearts open extra deeply to his love is our lack of every thing besides his love. There, in our devastation, he welcomes us with happiness that’s actual and objective that’s satisfying. It’s the actual life he needed for us from the beginning.

This text is tailored from Good News at Rock Bottom: Finding God When the Pain Goes Deep and Hope Seems Lost by Ray Ortlund.

Associated Articles