DIG DEEP

"Deep calls unto deep at the noise of Your waterfalls; all Your waves and billows have gone over me. The Lord will command His love in the daytime, and in the night His song shall be with me, a prayer to the God of my life" (Psalm 42:7). 

In my new journey with Jesus, I want to go deeper than I ever have before. I know Christ as my Savior and He's the Lord of my life. But I want my repentance to deepen.  It isn't enough for me anymore to merely know that I'm forgiven and to experience God's mercy. I'm so very thankful for His mercy! I wouldn't be here except for the grace of God. But I want this endless cycle of sinning to stop! I can't fully explain it, but there's a hunger deep in my heart that isn't satisfied with a superficial knowledge, a tame discipleship, or even life 'as usual.' Something deep inside me is calling out to God. Deep is calling unto deep.

Now, it's not that I feel empty. Just hungrier than I've ever been before. And it's a feeling that I can't seem to shake. It's always there, every morning when I wake up, like Jesus is following me and calling me to something new and different, to go down a path with Him that I've never gone down before. 

It's a call I can't refuse to answer. Because Jesus wants His truth to live deep within my heart, not merely to scratch the surface. One of my favorite psalms says, "Behold, You desire truth in the inward parts" (Psalm 51:6). You see, the problem of sin is entrenched deep inside and so God's remedy must reach  farther than it's ever reached before. Only then will the deep things of God ever touch the deep caverns in my heart. And only Jesus can go down to those depths.

PEBBLES IN THE SHALLOWS

Watchman Nee once said, "Only a call from the depths can provoke a response from the depths. Nothing shallow can ever touch the depths, nor can anything superficial touch the inward parts. Only the deep will respond to the deep."

Our walk with Jesus begins in the shallows, where we first experience God's love and His peace. But if we stay in the shallows, that's exactly what our walk with Christ will be--it will be shallow. There will be no depth that can hold us when trials try to drown us and we find ourselves with the waves and billows engulfing us. 

Jesus once described the shallows through His parable of the sower. Some seed fell on stony ground, where there wasn't much soil. At first, everything was okay. The seed sprouted and a plant emerged "because they had no depth of earth" (Matthew 13:5). But when the sun beat down on that fragile plant, it was scorched and withered away because the roots didn't go deep enough to reach the living water in the soil. So whether you think about the garden or the sea, we can't afford to stay where there's no depth. The shallow life will stunt our growth and even destroy what we once had. It's in the deep where Jesus is waiting for us. 

Then there's my witness to think about. How can I bring someone to Jesus? To really experience His life-changing grace and to walk with Him in newness of life? 

"It we want to render spiritual help to others, something must issue [or come forth] from our depths. If we do not dig deep, we can never gain others. Unless our utterance is from the depths, we will not touch the depths in others, even though we gain their emotions and thoughts and make them cry or be happy or excited for a while. Only deep calls unto deep" (Watchman Nee). 

My prayer is that you and I will dig deeper into God's Word than we ever have before. That we'll pray more fervently--to discover depths in God than we've never seen before! And we'll move on with Him to greater depths of faith, devotion and service. May the truth of God, the truth-as-it-is-in-Jesus penetrate our lives, so only Jesus will be seen and only Jesus will be heard.