“By the blessing of the upright the city is exalted, but it is overthrown by the mouth of the wicked”.(Proverbs 11:11) Traditionally we interpret this word so that the blessing means we bless the city with our lips in prayer from a high place – thus we exalt the city. But if we penetrate deeper, we can approach this verse with more breadth.
By the blessing of the upright, that is when the righteous ones are blessed. Not when they declare blessing with their lips, but when they are blessed themselves. Imagine that the group of people that we have here is blessed by God. What does this mean? It means that this is salt in the city, and it is exalted because of these blessed people.
The Lord said once, “if I find ten righteous ones in the city, I will have mercy on it”, but they were not found. But imagine if they were – then there would be mercy. A different question is what blessing is. It is not only wealth, children, family, property – this is sort of primitive, Old Testament idea of blessing. What was considered a blessing for Abraham’s children? – Long life, health, strong seed on earth, when there’s an inheritance, sons at your table like arrows in quiver; when there’s food, house, abundant riches – all these refer to blessing. But today in the New Testament the idea of blessing doesn’t replace the former with the spiritual thing, but it expands. There’s no opposition, it doesn’t mean that in the New Testament there’s no need for long life, health and other good on earth. There are multiple promises that speak of the blessing of the seed on earth. The commandment to honor father and mother gives an access to the promise on earth.
But moreover the Lord expand blessing even unto death on Calvary. There’s the Savior, the Messiah hanging on the cross nailed – He is blessed. Outwardly He is cursed, He became the curse for us, it is written. But it is written that the Lord had chosen Him and blessed and favored Him so much that He received death for us all. That is, He was blessed by the Father that He received death for all.
This is true even with the people of the world, in martial matters a hero is the one who sacrificed himself for other people, giving them life, a hero forever…
Today it is very important – to be blessed, and by the blessing of the righteous the city is exalted. And a few of such people are enough for the whole city to be exalted. Imagine this light shines on you – the light shines on the righteous one. It is written, “God is in the generation of the righteous”. And whatever you do, go or stay, sleep or awake – this beam of blessing is directed at you. You are a blessed person before God.
One of the parallel things that can be joined here is that you have obtained grace, not only you receive grace, but you obtain it. How? – There’s a story behind it. It is written of Noah that he obtained grace. It doesn’t mean we chase blessing for the sake of profit, moved by greed, but in general, by our nature we are blessed people. “Blessed are you in your going out and coming in”, wherever you are, you are blessed.
Can we say that we are blessed? Yes, we can. If you have the Holy Spirit – what can be greater than to receive God’s Spirit? To be in the upright House of God, where there’s no division or gossip, and you aren’t afflicted when you go to bed. Therefore, I encourage us today to obtain grace, because by the blessing of the upright the city is exalted. And not only the city – this is an incredible grace, when we can be blessed.
Expand your understanding of the Scriptures, expand the limits of how you understand things. When we have determined that this is how we understand the verse – for instance the five maids with the lack of oil, and they say it’s the Holy Spirit, and those who have the oil speak in tongs, those who have not don’t speak. This is very narrow. When we approach the Scripture this way, it’s is if we were looking through a closed window – we see some things, but there’s no direct connection, we see vaguely. Push aside the limits of understanding, regard from different angles, not by your curious mind, but through heeding, listening into the depth and peering into the distance of the Word, searching carefully and giving you close attention. This what contemplation is besides all other.
One is able to hold his mind on meditation of God’s Word, he penetrates, say, into how the Lord was parting the see, as he is on his bed, his head is at rest, but he has trained his mind not to simply lie relaxed and let his mind wander around ending up getting anxious about whether you had unplugged your iron. But when you direct your thoughts and passions towards God – it is as if you harness your horse, you control you spirit, your thoughts and eventually yourself, you can be trusted to use your horse. This all comes with practice.
But these are not any techniques without love to God – it is implied that you love Him. We can’t simply take a technique with no essence, no filling – it is implied that you seek Him with all your heart, it is implied that you adore God, you exalt Him.
I recently had a fresh look on my conversion and saw that what I sought most was sense, I needed sense. And I found that where I can give all my love. The matter is that we love in portion, no one likes to love more than you are loved. You love your beloved and see that he/she loves less – this is suffering and disappointment, because you adore, but you are loved less, and even less with the time. You can’t escape suffering here. But God is where you can give all of your strength, all your love endlessly. You can give all of yours and still not empty that resource. And I was able to give all of myself, all of my life to Him. This is what shook me in Christ, in God. And I believed and stayed with Him, whom I could entrust with all of mine and who would never betray me, abandon me and not a single drop of it would be in vain. You can give yourself totally and love with all your strength and might endlessly.
I also believe there’s this love among people, you can count me strange, but I want to believe and I do believe, I won’t speak bad of humanity. But to God you can give yourself completely, and this shook me.
And we must grow in this love, we can’t be put out. Contemplate this, find your love inside your own heart. This is also one of the ways of contemplation. Find it, not faith, one can have faith in an object not clearly known – and why do you need faith, it is written that faith will cease, because you won’t have to have faith, you will see Him. You believe in what you don’t see, when you see you see.
I don’t believe in God anymore, I am absolutely confident, I know that He is. There may be problems with obedience-disobedience, but not with faith that He is. All of your nature has been formed in seeking and knowing God. Therefore, find love. Faith must transit into love. Love shall never cease.
Man learns to love through his whole life. It is the most important thing, the essence of human life – to learn to love. This is incredible poetry, such an elevated life goal, so radiant – to live for the sake of love. And we come in the place of God.
Therefore, let us find love. The whole commandment is to love God and neighbor. It is a treasure to find this sense of life. This is what caused me to stay with God – that I could trust with no limit. I admired… Brothers and sisters, achieve admiration in your prayers! When it’s not there, prayer is obscure, like in a foggy weather there’s sun, but you don’t know where it is; but the sun is bright and blinds you – this is when you live in admiration. Reach this climax in your prayer when you adore and admire God. This is called the living heart, when your heart is alive and is like an open flower, it gives fragrance.
These are very precious things we are speaking here. When we lose them we lose the taste of life – you can’t what berry is in your mouth, tastes sort of sweet and sort of sour, and you can’t define it. When the taste of life leaves we cease admiring.
You seek the Lord not for the sake of “feeling His powerful presence”. But you need to seek higher and deeper, open your eyes and look closely. Look around, how wonderful life with God is.
If you have assurance in salvation, you have a ground to be a blessed person. If you don’t have it, find it and do everything possible to receive assurance of salvation because here Christian happiness has it foundation. Some people live and don’t have it, they have hope that He will have mercy on them – this is completely different life quality.
This life so wonderful in theory can really become ours, when we can see God with our hearts. It is impossible to see Him with our eyes, but with our hearts we can look right in His face. The heart won’t burn, face and eyes will, not heart. And this wide open heart, wide open spirit is the condition when we are worshippers. And the spirit longs for this namely, this is the highest manifestation of its sense on earth – to know God, do comprehend and value Him.
In this way I can take any book in the Bible, even scariest in regard to judgments, and we will still drink the nectar, because we enter a portal of the revealed Word. This is very important, that we have such relationship with God’s Word – then it won’t scare and push us back with boredom and yawning.
“I went down to the foundations of the mountains” (Jonah 2:6) Where are those foundations? On the bottom of the ocean, because the land, the rock begins there. You know, it means to look differently at the creation at people around, at your brother – why did God choose him? I don’t like him, why? Because I don’t know him – this is why I don’t like him. If I knew him, I would get to love him. God chose him, He begat him, and the one who loves Him who begat, loves him who’s begotten of him. In a good family brothers and sisters are in love to one another. We don’t love one another because we do not know each other, because we keep the distance away from him. If we knew we would see why God chose him.
I remember I once was in Israel and saw a Jewish girl, black hair, black eyes and it was like enlightenment – I suddenly realized why God had chosen the people of Israel. It is hard to shape it in words, but I penetrated into why God had loved this people. Some change happened with me, I had a feeling that now I know Israel. This is an incredible feeling, which you don’t get from the books or buy.
Such moments of enlightenment, of a different point of view both at the life, spirit, Word are essential to us. These are moments of revelation, when the Lord enlightens our way. He shines His light on us, the light of revelation – this is why revelation enlightens. And I think we should reach this height, in our prayers and prayer meetings, breaking through the layers and obstacles, practically into the infinity, into the eternity, and have the matter with the eternity – do you understand? Eternity breathes, it gases upon us, all of eternity, and we are connected with it. And how sad it is when Christianity gets down to the mercantile condition and starts moving in the material stuff, have arguments, human thing… Well, you understand this is natural for community life, because there’s church and there’s community. Church is Ecclesia, they are called forth into heaven from the earth. Community is life in the bodies, and we do have relationships here, but we can’t get stuck in that, but look through this.
And here we are with you before the gates of the eternity. Eternity is here, God’s Kingdom is here – Christ said so when He came.
“I went down to the foundations of the mountains;
The earth with its bars closed behind me forever; – Jonah is praying from the womb of the whale, he feels the growing pressure, how he is submerging down to the foundations –
Yet You have brought up my life from the pit,
O Lord, my God.
“When my soul fainted within me,
I remembered the Lord;
And my prayer went up to You,
Into Your holy temple.
“Those who regard worthless idols
Forsake their own Mercy.
But I will sacrifice to You
With the voice of thanksgiving;
I will pay what I have vowed.
Salvation is of the Lord.”
It is impossible to embrace God’s revelation without the Holy Spirit, only He can unseal it, because those are all portals. There was something in the heart of Jonah, as he was saying these weird words, but the Lord listened to his heart, and he pleased the Lord with this prayer, and the Lord told the whale, and he vomited him. What was it? We often look at the words, even quote them insistently, but don’t realize that the whole point isn’t in the words, but what stands behind it. This is what we are talking about today – contemplating the invisible, faith in the invisible, sensing things that others don’t see. The invisible realm, which is actually the firmament – “and God called the firmament Heaven”.
You may admire the beauty of the human body, but it is dust. He took dust and breathed the breath of life into it, and there came Adam. It is all dust that returns to the dust and dissolves so that no flesh remains, because it is dust. But Heaven is the firmament. Unto there direct the gaze of your hearts, and remember the heart burns not, it can look in God’s eyes. So find this Face in your heart.
What touches me about Jonah is the fulfilled dream. Deep inside he had wanted something greater than Nineveh or some peaceful life. And we call him a prophet. Perhaps he was disobedient, and the Lord wanted to cleanse it and unfold who he really was through this journey. But as I read his prayer I feel this deepest dream, what he was destined for. And around it is chaff that makes obstacles, and God is knocking there, seeking. And Jonah gives Him that, the Lord makes His purpose, and the whale vomits him.
What I also saw here is that Jonah took the time from God. “But I will sacrifice to You with the voice of thanksgiving; I will pay what I have vowed”. He speaks about the future. What was it that he vowed? It’s not about Nineveh, he promised God something.
This is what has been unspoken in our spirit. What would you promise to God today if He came and gave you love – what would you respond with to Him? This is probably the series – your response to God. Jonah had this deepest dream – “I will pay what I have vowed”.
This is where I want to dive today like that deep-see diver, in a diving suit with a mask or simply naked, deep to your very self. How about you? Did you vow to God? What did you vow to God?
Jonah is thinking inside the womb of the whale, remembers things and vows again. He takes time from God – it’s not time to die yet, because this was death, and a terrible death. He takes time from God to fulfill, to achieve this higher purpose. And God gives him time. Can you imagine? This is what prayer is. This is what true contemplation is. Take this and keep this higher desire of your spirit. Do not put out this pure sounding of your pure spirit with the noises of routine. Don’t become cheap, because an elevated life is life at the highest climax.
And one more Scripture place on Hosea 10. “According to My desire I will discipline them – that is He will do it the way He wants; and the people shall be gathered against them” – which is what they feared most, be people’s slaves. They were free now, but they knew what slavery was. – “and they shall be tied for their two crimes. Ephraim is well-taught cow – it loves to tread the grain. I will harness his fair neck. They will ride on Ephraim.” – Such discipline.
And you think, tens of years have to pass for a man to realized he’s been disciplined, they have been riding on him. He’s in harness, he’s plowing – he goes to his work and plows – isn’t that a cow. Your work should not be such that you plow there – why? You know God! Do you want money so much? You’ve taken so much loan that your life is no good for you anymore. You can’t continue like that, you’ve got to loosen it – we live for Christ, we live for God, not for work! Ah, you are hiding there, but that’s even worse. And this discipline turns a curse – they will ride on him, pointing what to do, and you keep running for a piece of bread in this harness. But there’s no need for you to plow that way, especially if you lower some of your demand in what to eat and wear. The energy that you give into flesh – we rob God this way. Perhaps we better stop and think if could live a different way so that you have bliss inside.
We speak of the duty, but are we slaves? The Lord set them free! Why did He give houses and lands to Israel? He says to them, “you live now where you didn’t build, you eat what you didn’t sow” – why is that”. Because I am God who gives. I give it to you not so that you do nothing and use it all, but so that you understand that there are other goals.
And altogether, are we in faith when we live like this? He says, do not be burdened by what to eat and drink! Are we in faith at all? I know some people hide in their work, they haven’t healed this trauma when they received God. It is deep, an un healed soul. But the problem should be solved differently, it can’t be this way. Life is the most precious thing we have, if there’s not your life, there’s nothing for you.
“… Judah will have to plow, Jacob will harrow his own land” – that’s a life of a plower and of a harrower.
The Lord says: “Sow for yourselves righteousness; reap in mercy; break up your fallow ground…” -Do a new thing, break up your fallow ground! Why live in this cyclicality, in those loops? When you can’t change anything anymore, you’re just making it to your old days in this loop.
“…for it is time to seek the Lord, till He comes and rains righteousness on you”. Now is the time to seek the Lord, brothers and sisters, not tomorrow, not in the afternoon, but now is the time of this Kairos moment, when you say “enough, I want to live with God, I want to be closer to Him, I want to live for His sake”. This is the moment when you ask yourself, maybe I live wrong way, I live not a life of my own, I am out of my purpose? This the Kairos moment when you decide inside yourself to enter into admiration with God! This is the Encounter, when you are taken in to heaven and is joined with the Lord, that your body can’t resist – you take off!
We need time with God. Create this silence within, amidst all the noises of the cities, so that we can abide in this delight with Christ. Time with God – you come for a date with Him and start with all your problems, – help me with and that! – then you give a farewell kiss and run away. But rather look at Him with love and stay in worship, this your time with God. We must have it in our day, in our life. And can’t be any cell apartment, but a palace. Do everything possible to attain this admiration and delight. God is worthy! And that is freedom, the highest life form of a man of God – to live loving, exalting and admiring Him. This is why Samuel danced and shouted as he walked – he was always in this trance. This the reality of Angels and all of heaven – should we be ashamed of this?