Tonia’s ScribeLife Blog Has Moved

Featured

Tonia’s blog, now called New Covenant Life, currently lives on Tonia’s author website at www.toniawoolever.com.

All of Tonia blog posts previously published as ScribeLife can now be found on her author blog at the above link, as well as a subscription form.

Future posts on this site will be made by both Ron and Tonia concerning Shammah Ministries news, or articles on what we teach.

God Keeps Us

Bible-on-deskI once had a dear friend who loved “to keep Christmas.” As the season drew near she would begin preparing for it, cleaning house, rearranging things to make room for a display of her huge nativity collection, shopping for gifts, writing cards, setting her December schedule around activities with friends and at church. By the time December came, Patrice had everything in place, wrapped and done, so she could then tend to keeping Christmas in her favorite way: in private daily devotions to Jesus, special Scriptures and Advent calendar readings; in public church activities with family and friends. She did all this to rebuild in her heart anew each year the childlike sense of anticipation and wonder over Emmanuel, God with us. Patrice loved Jesus with all her heart, and “keeping Christmas” was one of her favorite ways of showing it. Before I knew her I’d never heard the word “keep” used this way, as a reference to how one carefully observes a thing of great importance, preparing for it, attending to it in every detail, giving it priority. To “keep Christmas” meant all that to her, and came to mean that to me. She might remark of someone, “They like Christmas, but they don’t really keep Christmas, you know.”

Against this backdrop, as I studied God’s covenant ways with his people, I noticed something: God uses the word keep in precisely the same way. The began to come on when I read 1 Samuel 2:9, where Hannah says of the Lord:

He keeps the feet of His godly ones… (NAS)

When I first read this I Immediately thought of Patrice and her devotion to observe Christmas. Could “keeps” have the same meaning here? I just had to know, so I looked it up in my trusty Hebrew-Greek Key Word Study Bible.

A Word Study: Shamar

The word “keeps” is the Hebrew word shamar, which means to hedge around something in order to keep, guard, preserve, tend to or be attentive to (i.e. “keep a promise”). Hebrew scholar Spiros Zodhiates says this is an important Hebrew verb appearing 470 times in the Old Testament, the first of which is Genesis 2:15, where it refers to the tending or exercising of great care over the garden in Eden. Zodhiates comments, “In a religious vein, shamar expresses the careful attention which was paid to the obligations of a covenant, to laws or to statutes. Abraham gave orders to his children to ‘keep’ the way of the Lord in Genesis 18:29.”*

When Hannah said, “He keeps the feet of His godly ones,” she was praising Him for watching over the path of His beloved children, ever at work to steer our footsteps into His best will, for our joy and for His glory. I believe the Spirit of the Lord is continually stirring in our hearts to know and do what the Lord wants (which Paul actually says in Philippians 2:13). However, the Lord does this so gently — without a hint of manipulation or encroaching on our freedom — that such guidance can go unnoticed by the inattentive child of God.

The Spirit is always trying to lead you. As one of God’s beloveds, He keeps you, watching personally over every contemplation of your heart and mind, hoping you will be attentive to His presence and guidance. He is ready to help you to what is right, good, and wise in all matters large and small.

“But,” you might say, “I haven’t been keeping devotion to God lately, and Hannah said that He keeps the feet of His ‘godly ones.’ I’m sure I don’t qualify as one of those right now.”

The fact is, you are one of His godly ones if you are in Christ! The Hebrew word underlying this phrase refers to those who are in covenant with God. So while yes, you should absolutely live in an upright and devoted manner with the Lord, your failure to do so doesn’t cause Him to shut down on His faithful devotion to guide you. After all, that would defeat His purpose — He always wants to guide you right back into His ways. Never forget that God’s faithfulness is based upon His character, not yours.

Jesus said to His disciples:

“Abide in my love. If you keep my commands, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments, and abide in His love.” (John 15:9-10 NASB)

Here is truth: God is always keeping the feet of His beloved children, watching over them.

Here is truth: God has given us free will to walk where we wish and choose whatever we want.

Here is truth: The one who believes in God’s guidance will be attentive to the Spirit within, and find that guidance always at hand. Keeping God’s ways and commands will keep us in His love. Abundant life is not guaranteed to all who wear the name “Christian”; It is the reward of the yielded, obedient child, who abides in the love of God.

This is the reciprocal covenant life we are offered through Jesus Christ: God tends to our lives with all diligence; we tend to His life with all diligence. This is where life abounds. Shamar is another word among many that has great meaning in the context of covenant relationship — which is exactly what we have with the Lord, through Jesus Christ. (Explained in detail in my new book, They Will All Know Me.) I think I shall add shamar to my Covenant Glossary.

On His side of the equation, God keeps our covenant relationship with all devotion. Let us “keep faith” with Him the same way Patrice kept Christmas.

*Lexical Aids to the Old Testament, Hebrew-Greek Key Word Study Bible, New American Standard Bible, Editor Spiros Zodhiates, Th.D.

Why I’m Excited About The New Book

I know what you’re thinking: “Of course she’s excited about the new book — she wrote it!”

True. But the response we are getting to this book is greater than any other book we have published so far. In fact, I was thrilled when the team who helped me edit the book ordered it by the case-full when it was published, because they wanted to give a copy to everyone they love or mentor. And though they had all each read it, they couldn’t wait to read it again!

I hear people testifying already of how it is plugging into their hunger for something more with God that has eluded them so far. People are finding hope in They Will All Know Me that they can know God and that knowing Him will nourish them in all the ways they have been left hungry.

I don’t say these things to brag on me, I say them to rejoice in the partnership of expression that I believe began in His heart and flowed over into mine, for your sake… because Jesus doesn’t just love you, He LOVES you! He wants to share life with you…. NOW! I believe He wanted this book written to give hope to hungry hearts who have been left malnourished by the current widespread model of church and Christianity, which typically teaches ABOUT God more than how to really KNOW God.

TWAKM Cover FrontEternal life is what Jesus suffered for us to receive, and in John 17:2-3 He defined eternal life as knowing the Father and Jesus Christ. This book is all about the full message of this new life, about not settling for anything less than knowing God in personal experience, and sharing my stories of how I learned to know God so far and how that has changed my heart and life… which it has, like nothing else could

There are oodles of great books out there, and this is just one. But God has a target for every book He stirs one of His children to write, and we pray daily for this one to find HIS target. I often feel the Lord’s love for His people, and I felt it daily in waves as we wrote this book together. I praise the Lord for His unfailing love and His passion to find every possible way to get the word out!

 

Knowing Is Everything

You know you’re in a “season” when weeks go by and the Spirit keeps you focused on the same thing, no matter what you are reading. The work of this season of my life in Christ is to keep speaking to my audience about the importance of knowing God. I do not really know who my audience is these days… But I must be faithful to the source of my joy and keep talking of what we share that is the source of that joy… Knowing Him.

On my side of the equation, it is a terribly flawed relationship. I am far less consistent in my devotion to my Lord and Friend than he deserves. Yet this I know of Him: the right response to every failure of mine is to keep running back to Him, because His gracious self always forgives. He who told us to forgive 7 times 70 (I.e., 490, also known as “too many to count”) does so himself, because there is no hypocrisy in him, not a hint.

So I awaken every day to my ever present Friend and the offer to know Him, and the New Covenant promise to know Him. To live worthy of that great honor is also, I have learned, the means by which every thing promised by Him is realized — the peace, the wisdom, the soul’s rest, the security and safety. These were never designed to be available apart from knowing God, not in any substantial and enduring way.

I saw something new in the Scripture last night about knowing God — that our so-called natural desires, the will to do right or wrong, to crave what is good or what is evil, is either supported or abandoned by the Lord, in response to our actual choices. It is in Romans 1:28, and reading it in the CJB (Complete Jewish Bible) translation made it abundantly clear: “…since they have not considered God worth knowing, God has given them up to worthless ways of thinking; so that they do improper things.”

The immediate context is those who choose to engage in what God considers sexual perversion, but it is surely a general principle as well, an insight into how God works in response to our choices. I have seen ample evidence in the Bible that God essentially gives us what we really want. In fact, My students will verify that I am fond of saying God doesn’t need to come up with a punishment for our sin, he just lets us have what we really want and that choice will eventually punish us by its natural consequences.

So that concept is well established in my mind, but I have never before seen the very inclination towards good or evil connected so clearly to our value or lack of value for knowing God. It is tempting to think we are pretty much on our own when it comes to the inward struggle of choosing right or wrong, but this is not true. Philippians 2:13 negates this idea when it says, “…for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.” (NASB).

This I know of God also: he is not quick to give us over to our bad choices. He is long suffering. He is seen repeatedly in Scripture giving his people an incredible number of chances to choose what is right before “giving them over.” Yet, if we stubbornly adhere to a lifestyle of “not considering God worth knowing,” the day will come when God will cease his efforts to turn you towards his heart and totally let you have a life without Him. And there is a terrifying list of possibilities in the verses immediately following Romans 1:28…. All shades of evil character. You don’t want to become that person!

The wonderfully positive side of this truth is that when God sees any movement in your heart and mind towards the desire to know him, his Spirit steps right up and says, “Here, let me help you!”

Meant to Live By God’s Voice

“Man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord.”  Deuteronomy 8:3, NASB

When Moses spoke these words, he was teaching the people about manna — the commanded bread that fell from heaven every morning to feed them in the wilderness. In fact, he begins by telling the people that God actually led them to the place where they would be humbled by their inability to provide food for themselves, and have to rely on God to be nourished. It was always meant to be this way between us and God.

We were created to live by the word of God — and I am not referring to having a gazillion Bible verses memorized. The Bible is an awesome gift to us, but it is only meant to point us to the Voice of God, by which we are meant to live. We are meant to be guided by His faithful Voice, to know him and walk with him. We are likewise meant to live through the provision of all that Voice commands on our behalf. Jesus did this, and it was the secret of his life and strength as a man on the earth like us.

Two things I’d like you to take away from these thoughts:

  • When you pray, ask the Father to command your life as he wants to give it — to command you, to command His creation to release what you need today. It will please him for you to acknowledge in this way that his Voice is faithful and is meant to provide all the sustenance of your life.
  • When you walk out of your prayer place, you will go out into a world full of voices: the voices of the media, your friends, your books; voices that may have some truth and love in them, but none that will give you life. God won’t allow it, and it is good for you to remember it. Let His Voice be the one you seek to hear, honor and value above all other voices.

This is how you were meant to live, and if you do, you shall REALLY live!

Loving Him together with you,

Tonia

Our Salvation Is A Covenant

Our Passover/Easter season was extra special this year. We enjoyed an elegant, meaningful and joyful Seder meal with several dozen brothers and sisters in Christ on Good Friday, then joined other worshipping friends for a sunrise service and breakfast early Easter morning, and finished at a local church with a celebration of Christ’s resurrection filled with jubilant music, children dancing and baptism of new believers. Thinking back upon it all I realized how covenant-centric it all is…. in a small way we moved from one covenant snapshot to another.

The Seder is a remembrance commanded by God of the Passover protection covenant through which Moses brought God’s people out from their bondage. Tho commemorating a specific event in history, it also foreshadowed the time when God would deliver his children from their cruel bondage to sin in order to bring them into in the Promised Land of sharing life with God.

At the Passover supper Jesus lifted the cup and said, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood.” That event concluded with Jesus’ prayer to the Father, a prayer laced with references to the core purpose and result of covenant — “I in you and you in me” — becoming those who share life forever:

I pray also for those who will believe in me through [my disciples’] message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.  I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one — I in them and you in me…  (John 17:20-23)

Jesus was motivated by his passion to see us brought into that covenant fellowship, that shared life with God. Our salvation is a covenant, established in God’s heart from before the beginning of time, made between Father and Son, now offered to those who come to trust in the Son and his sacrifice for our sin. And its purpose is to bring us into God’s promise to share life with him, now and forevermore.

 

Our Hungry Orphans

Zambia Orphans

Some of our orphans in Zambia

I’ve not written here of our Zambian Orphan feeding mission; many of you may not even know that we collect and send money to a church in Zambia every month to feed the street orphans of Chifubu, the “third world” district of Ndola. Several facts prompt me to speak up about it now:

  • Since 2004, we’ve been able to raise and send money to feed 80-100 orphans one hot healthy meal every Saturday. We now have 250 orphans who come for a meal.
  • Occasionally we have succeeded in offering 2 or 3 meals to the orphans a week, especially when some other organizations have helped. However, these have been temporary commitments, and we are back to only being able to feed the orphans once on Saturdays.
  • Donations have trickled to an all-time low while the number of orphans is at an all-time high, and after this month, we will not be able to regularly feed the orphans one meal every Saturday unless new funds begin to come in.

Would you pray about making a donation for our Zambian orphans, or even a monthly commitment?

Donations can be made by credit card sent securely through Paypal sent to tonia@shammah.org. Or you can send a check or money order to Shammah Ministries,1346 Oak Park Drive, Aransas Pass, TX 78336, with the notation “Feed Zambian Orphans.”

PLEASE WATCH OUR 9-MINUTE VIDEO on our website to see a complete description of this project.

Please publicize this need to your home group or local church.  100% of donations are used to feed and provide for these orphans. Thanks for your time and prayers for these needy ones!

Love me, love my orphans….

Tonia

The Energy and Enabling of the Spirit

One of the things that breaks my heart as we work with believers is to see them living in frustration, anxiety and even resignation in connection with knowing and serving their indwelling Lord. People shrink back from stepping out in their gifts, or they just can’t get over their own perceived inadequacies, or still feel as if God is far away and only present as some sort of token that ensures their passage into heaven at death. How far this is from the life Christ died to give us! While we have all experienced moments like this (and surely shall again), we are not meant to live there. Being stuck in this place usually comes from ignorance or unbelief about how God’s Spirit works in us.

God characterizes our life with him as “entering rest.” Put that on your refrigerator, my fellow pilgrims. That is the goal — not to strive, not to be perfect, but to live at rest in the shadow of his wings. Okay, now you’re asking (and rightly so),  “What does that flowery poetic language really look like in real life?” As I learned and later taught in the series “Entering God’s Rest,” God’s promised rest is expressed to and through us in various ways, but the one that pertains to this discussion is learning to walk in the energy and enabling of the Spirit.

If you have received the Father’s gift of the Holy Spirit, here is what you can expect, according to Peter:

“Grace and peace be yours in abundance through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.”  2 Peter 1:2-3, NIV.

It begins with GRACE. Grace is not merely “God’s unmerited favor.” Grace is God’s ability to do what we cannot do on our own. This is is what Paul refers to next when he speaks of God’s divine power as “everything we need for life and godliness…”  I think perhaps the word “power” has the effect of overshooting our everyday lives; in other words, we expect “power” for the big stuff, but not for the everyday ability needed to walk with and know God. Paul spoke of this ability in another way when he said in Philippians 2:13:

“For it is God who is at work in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.”

The word translated here as “at work” is energeo — God’s energy! In the Greek this word is defined as “to be active and efficient in.” The Message translates it wonderfully:

“That energy is God’s energy, an energy deep within you, God himself willing and working at what will give him the most pleasure.”

The Holy Spirit’s presence in you means you’re not on your own. When you want to step out in obedience to some nudge from the Lord, don’t shrink back in fear that it is all up to you. Simply believe in His presence and His willingness to give you his ability to do what you desire. What God calls for, he empowers. We usually don’t feel that enabling until we take a step into it, but once we do, it comes, faithfully. And the funny thing is, it won’t feel “supernatural,” it will feel natural — like it is you doing it; only you know better.

I have experienced this enabling in matters large and small, from praying for a miracle of healing to having a wise answer to a tough question to knowing how to order your day for productivity and joy. In fact, a friend just called and said, “I entered God’s rest yesterday when I met a young woman I needed to counsel, and didn’t have a clue what direction to take, and after I prayed, a simple question came clearly to my mind. When I asked her the question, everything else unfolded between us.” That is what the energy and enabling of the Spirit looks like in daily life.

The Holy Spirit is a gentle, quiet presence in you, but don’t underestimate his power, his energy waiting for you when you want to step towards God or step out for God. This applies to seeking God in private as much (or perhaps even more than) public works.Weariness, anxiety and frustration are signs that you are probably not leaning into the grace (the real ability to do that thing) of God. The energy and enabling of the Spirit is crucial if we are to enter God’s rest. More on rest soon, fellow pilgrims.

Tonia

Tonia’s 6-part teaching series “Entering God’s Rest” is available in the Shammah Store.

The Fountain That Satisfies

Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life. (John 4:13-14 NIV).

More than any other book in the New Testament, the gospel of John drives home the fact that our relationship with God is meant to be a deeply satisfying one. Jesus repeatedly acknowledged man’s hunger and thirst, always promising they would be satisfied. Although Jesus was surely referring God’s promises, I think it even more likely that he was speaking from his experience as a human being on this earth, having to live by faith like the rest of us, knowing hunger of body and soul, and discovering the rewards of offering his hunger to the Father.

When Jesus spoke the above words to the Samaritan woman at her well, he not only promised her a drink of water, he claimed that his water would become in her a spring of water. The original Greek describes a spring-fed well that is not politely bubbling, but gushing up profusely!

Again, Christ later assured his disciples, I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty. (John 6:35 NIV).

The word “life” in these and most New Testament verses is the Greek word zoe. Strong’s Greek Dictionary defines zoe as “the absolute fullness of life” which belongs to God. It refers to a vitality that goes well beyond just existing, living and breathing. Zoe life is the life only God can give, and what he longs for us to have.

The promise that we would never remain in our thirst or hunger again is so startling that we dare not believe it, lest we be disappointed in Christ. But the greatest sin we can commit against God is to not believe him. The life we are promised through Christ is intended to satisfy our souls and heal us of all neediness, that we may live contented and at peace, no matter what our circumstances.

God does not want us to dig or construct our own fountains. In fact, he complained through Jeremiah: My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water. (Jeremiah 2:13 NIV).

Jesus echoed this same complaint against the religious leaders of his day: You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life. (John 5:39-40 NIV)

Surely it breaks God’s heart to offer every means of satisfying the souls of his children and have them live such mean, lonely, frustrated lives. Many Christians wear themselves out trying to give themselves life, focusing on religious formulas or programs, teachers, or ministries. These can be excellent aids to growth, but will never substitute for going to the fountain of life. Such spiritual pursuits can become the means for building one’s own cistern that will never satisfy.

How do we drink from the fountain of life? Jesus revealed this would come only through the Holy Spirit: Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.” By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified. (John 7:37-39 NIV).

But for us who believe, the Spirit HAS been given, and Christianity 101 should teach us how to live by that stream of living water. David knew this very well. His life and writings reveal a human soul who knew and understood God through the Holy Spirit’s help. He suffered just about every problem a man could have: danger, betrayal, hatred, rejection, long-suffering (waiting years for God’s promises to be fulfilled). Without benefit of Bible, church programs and podcasts, he experienced such a deeply satisfying relationship with God through the Spirit that he uttered ecstatically:

I have seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your power and your glory. Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you. I will praise you as long as I live, and in your name I will lift up my hands. My soul will be satisfied as with the richest of foods; with singing lips my mouth will praise you. (Psalm 63:2-5 NIV).

A hungry soul is a vulnerable soul. The honest man who goes hungry long enough may even become a thief to get a piece of bread. An unsatisfied soul is exposed to myriad dangers as it reaches for something to make it feel okay: wrong relationships, addictions, perverted lifestyles, dead-end careers. Being saved doesn’t automatically keep you from these dangers, but being satisfied by the bread and water of Christ does. Only the person who is free of need is safe from that which would possess and rule his soul. You will find some neediness of soul at the root of all man’s problems. Jesus’ message is simple: Come to me; I can satisfy your soul.

My own understanding of how powerfully God can satisfy came when he helped me overcome a hopeless 18-year addiction to cigarettes in 1986. In the process of laying those down, I learned to turn my longings — of body, soul and spirit — to the Holy Spirit. I learned firsthand that the Lord is delighted to step into any opportunity to give life to his child and set him free from temptation by satisfying him deeply.

We will experience God’s zoe life only when the Spirit lives in us, and as we learn to turn to him for a drink, expecting to have our neediness sated and our souls brought to rest. Spirit life is living with a fountain that really satisfies, and going often for a long drink.

(This is an excerpt from “Meditations on Spirit Life,” a devotional book Tonia plans to publish in 2011).

Why I ScribeLife

The Lord of all Creation has made me a teacher, a writer, and a witness to his awesome love and goodness. Every morning when I sit with the Lord, I enjoy things with him that I long to share with the world, in hopes that someone out there wondering about God will be encouraged to seek Him. Please, please do. You will not be disappointed.

I have been enjoying the love and Fatherhood of God since 1979, so I do not write out of the blush of first love, but in the midst of a journey undertaken long ago. I write to share what I know of God personally — and inevitably teach along the way. I don’t know God perfectly, perhaps not even well compared to some, but what I do know of Him is too wonderful to keep to myself. He is good; relentlessly good, and his love is the most satisfying thing in the world.
How have I come to know God? I’ve been brought into a covenant relationship with God through the self-sacrifice of Jesus, his Son. What the world calls salvation is actually a covenant offered, an invitation to be joined with Father, Son and Holy Spirit in a never-ending relationship of love and faithfulness. In this covenant God has given everything to make it possible for me to know him, to be a personal witness of his character, wisdom and power.
My job in this covenant is to be a faithful lover and witness to who this amazing God is, revealing an invisible God to a world who does not have eyes to see Him. This is my glimpse of His Glory. May it always be faithful to Him. Like my brother John, who leaned against the bosom of Jesus at the table, I write these things to make my joy complete, and in hopes that you too will seek the fellowship of the Father and the Son.