Until the Day Breaks

Yesterday we were once more singing through John 1 in our 2pm set with Jon Thurlow’s team. Each week as we have sung this passage—for some six months now—a new arrow pierces my heart. This time it was the arrow of the love that was God and the God that was love long before you and I were ever given access or insight into its burnings…
“And the Word was with God” says John (Jn. 1:1). This phrase translates “And the Word (Jesus, the beloved Son) was towards God (the eternal Father).” It denotes relationship and fellowship, a community of essence and sharing in glory. With the words “In the beginning…” John purposefully triggers everyone’s memory to the Genesis account, starting in the same way as the story of creation opens. Yet rather than skipping immediately to creation and to the part that humanity enters the story…he lingers in the story before our story. He pauses in the beholding of the Trinitarian love from eternity past. As though to say, “At the opening of the Great Story, the very onset of all things, let me tell you of the divine heart and passion at the center of all.” 
Before we knew God as the God of love He was love from everlasting. Long before man was ever given access or entrance or insight into the vast heights, depths, length and width of God’s love, God’s love—within the Godhead—was eternally immeasurable. And here is the beginning of all things—the Fount and primal Source of all. What God demonstrated in the giving of His Son unto us and what Christ manifested in the laying down of His life for all was something eternally ancient in its goings forth, something God knew long before He introduced us to it.
This brings our hearts into the deep confidence of our inability to alter the love that was never contingent upon our own doings. God has offered us access into a love and fellowship that we did nothing to earn and can do nothing to preserve. Its instigation began far before our invitation to receive it and its preservation is sustained by a power far superior to our own ability to maintain it. Paul expressed this confidence when he said, “What shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?…For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:35 – 39).
John points us to the Love that was before time to settle our hearts in its certainty and press us into assurance. I was not a part of the origin of this Love nor am I able to affect its continuance. My role is to be an active receiver and participator of a fellowship I did nothing to earn—to live as a drinker of so great an ocean. I am to take my place amidst the Great Story, to run wholly and entirely with all of my being into the waters of this love and in such an immersion to rest in the truth that what He began He will finish and that the God of love—who was love from everlasting—is the God who is the same yesterday, today and forever.                 

 from Deep unto Deep 
“…I will set your prisoners free from the waterless pit. Return to the stronghold, you prisoners of hope. Even today I declare that I will restore double to you” (Zechariah 9:11-12).
Seasons of divine silence are the prison sentences that He gives us to pass through while in the boundaries of time. They are noiseless times of stillness that God brings us through not for punishment but for refinement of our faith, hope and love. He imprisons us within “waterless pits.” These are the kind of depths that keep the prisoner deep in their yawn, yet still with the hope of deliverance. They are too dry to drown us and yet too deep to easily escape. Though God gives them permission to hold us for a time, they are not allowed to kill us, and this hope of deliverance keeps us alive throughout the duration of our sentence. We are alive and well even in the deep of this designated darkness. The Lord’s message to us in these times is that He Himself will set us free from the waterless pit in His perfect timing. He calls us a “prisoner of hope” as we wait for Him, because our one hope within this cell is anchored in Him: that He would come and show Himself as our Deliverer.
One of the scariest things about these prisons is that only one Person knows where we are. We are tied up and helpless in the depth of a pit, and only one Man knows our exact location. Though we may try a thousand times, we cannot explain its darkness to others. Though we yearn to leave our loneliness, no man is aloud to find us here and deliver us. There are no visiting hours. We’re not allowed the comfort of company in these prisons, for they are reserved for God and soul. Though we try to let others in, most always, our prison walls keep us from the ability to bring them in through words or descriptions. Though we cry out, our voice is quickly swallowed by the silencing shadows. Only one Man knows where we are. One Person has led us here, and He alone can free us once again. He alone knows the pit in which we are held captive, and His voice alone will break open the doorway of freedom. Salvation belongs to the Lord (Psalm 3:8), and He is jealous to be the One who deliverers it to our door.
Our comfort in these times rests solely in our knowledge of God’s heart. Yes, He is the only One who knows our whereabouts, yet He Himself is also the supreme Deliverer of all time, and surely He will come and deliver His chosen one. He will not leave us here. He will come for us. All of His ways are love, and therefore, we are confident that He has not brought us here for punishment or neglect but only for greater love. When the Lord gives the invitation of suffering and endurance, the end intended by Him is that we would enter into the depths of His compassion and mercy (James 5:10-11).We have asked Him to deepen our love and take us into the fullness of all He would give the human heart, and these prison sentences are part of His answer. They are God’s agents to produce the love and agreement that we ourselves have longed for. He will surely deliver us the very moment Love’s longsuffering has had its full way within us. The only One who knows our whereabouts will not leave us nor forsake us. He will come, just like He promised. He will answer our hope with deliverance.
“…But hope that is seen is not hope; for why does one still hope for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with perseverance” (Romans 8:24-25).
We hope in what we cannot see, and our faith is the proof that what is unseen is truly real. The hope within us is Christ in us, our hope of glory (Colossians 1:27). It is an ever-abiding reality, anchoring our soul to eternity. We would be like waves tossed to and fro by the sea, if we were not forever fastened to the God unseen.
Jesus has brought Himself to the low place of earth by setting eternity in the hearts of men, and He has brought weak human beings such as ourselves to the highest place by making a way for us to be seated with Him in heavenly places. The One who is our Mediator, who ascended before us, passed through the heavens and took His seat at the right hand of the Father. Fully God. Fully Man. He is the Lamb in the midst of the throne (Revelation 5:6). Who can fathom the possibility that the One who is seated upon the throne is one like us, a MAN? And yet, He is also the God of the whole earth. He is the God-Man Jesus Christ. He is the One who is ever interceding for us and bringing us forth in this journey of wholehearted love. After His ascension, when He took His place at the right hand of the Father, He sent forth His Holy Spirit to dwell within us.
We are prisoners of hope. In this prison, we are kept alive because of a living hope. Everyday we search our horizon for any sign of the Beloved. Yes, there are days when that hope wears bright eyes and a smile, but most days it wears a gnawing ache and many tears. Still, it always keeps our hearts alive—ever rattling at the door, ever crying out for deliverance. Hope is our companion. Hope is our friend. Hope is what keeps our hearts alive.