"Is Not Thine a Captured Heart?" ~ Part 1

This morning Zhenia (who speaks Russian and English) and Gayaineh (who speaks Armenian, pretty good Russian, and a little bit of English), and Arla (who only speaks English) spent time early this morning to pray over some verses and to sing. We did it in at least two, but I'm pretty sure in three languages*. It was very sweet. For three-language juggling, the point we were impressed with is pretty deep. We enjoyed so much that for the fulfillment of God's eternal purpose, we must live a life of consecration by having a change in our concept of value. The life of consecration, the life of giving ourselves as a vow to the Lord, is the issue of the change in our concept of value. Oh, the Lord is so worthy, so we hold Him above all else. First Peter 2:7 is the verse we prayed over together:

"To you therefore who believe is the preciousness;
but to the unbelieving,
'The stone which the builders rejected,
this has become the head of the corner.'"

This wonderful verse follows the phrase:

"rejected by men
but with God chosen and precious."

So as we gave ourselves to this lovely, precious One, there was such a sweetness and a sense that nothing is better, more reasonable, or preferable than loving and treasuring Him.

I had spent some time looking at the last chapter of Leviticus since I had woken at 5:00 and had to do something quiet while others were still asleep, so here is what I found in the footnotes to the verses:

The offerings are types of Christ. To present an offering to God indicates that we realize we cannot do anything to please God; hence, we offer Christ to God as our replacement that we may be accepted to God.

A vow is a bit different. Leviticus is a book on what God has done for our enjoyment, so it ends with God's aspiration that we vow to devote ourselves to Him. God has done everything for us, and now He needs us to enjoy Him. At the end of Leviticus, God expresses His aspiration and expectation that we vow to devote to Him whatever we are, whatever we have, and whatever we can do. The purpose of this devotion is that we would enjoy the Lord in all that He has purposed for us.

Then after we had prayed together, it was still dark outside, so we had time before breakfast to sing a hymn in three languages, which is so sweet--one of my favorites:

Hast thou heard Him, seen Him, known Him?
Is not thine a captured heart?
Chief among ten thousand own Him;
Joyful choose the better part.

     Captivated by His beauty,
     Worthy tribute haste to bring;
     Let His peerless worth constrain thee,
     Crown Him now unrivaled King.

Idols once they won thee, charmed thee,
Lovely things of time and sense;
Gilded thus does sin disarm thee,
Honeyed lest thou turn thee thence.

What has stripped the seeming beauty
From the idols of the earth?
Not a sense of right or duty,
But the sight of peerless worth.

Not the crushing of those idols,
With its bitter void and smart;
But the beaming of His beauty,
The unveiling of His heart.

Who extinguishes their taper
Till they hail the rising sun?
Who discards the garb of winter
Till the summer has begun?

'Tis that look that melted Peter,
'Tis that face that Stephen saw,
'Tis that heart that wept with Mary,
Can alone from idols draw:

Draw and win and fill completely,
Till the cup o'erflow the brim;
What have we do to with idols
Who have companied with Him.

So as we finished the hymn, it was then time to get busy and start the day.

This is all in a context of the fellowship through the weekend. The college-age young people had finished a week-long training, and two young sisters had shared with us at lunch on the Lord's Day about their time of sharing with one another, praying for one another, and giving themselves with a vow to the Lord to enjoy Him in a thorough way by getting into the Word daily, praying, and contacting the Lord. One of the young people is the dear one on the left.

The meeting that morning had been a reminder that when we see the highest peak of the divine revelation, out of that flows the life practices that intensify our enjoyment of the Lord. So daily we call on Him, pray-read the Word as the Spirit, always rejoice, unceasingly pray, and give thanks for all things, not quench the Spirit, and highly regard prophesying because this builds the church. If we have really seen the vision, this is the result.

So a day of serving with the sisters took place...of which I have not had time to digest how to explain how that is going, but the last two days have been very profitable. At the end of the day, Gayaineh and I were exhausted, so we laid down and took a nap while the house was quiet for a little while. Here is a picture of Gayaineh.

Here is a picture of a young sister named Ilena who came to the Tuesday night home meeting and brought with her Sonya, a girl who grew up in the easternmost parts of Russia near Japan.

Sonya came from a Moslem town and a Moslem family. Seven years ago she came to work in Moscow, but before left home, she had told her parents that she was not satisfied with Islam and was interested in knowing about Christianity. Of course, they were very much against that. After she had been working in Moscow for about four years, her mother and two other women in the village back home apparently had the same dream on the same night, and as a result, her mother had a word for Sonya: "What you are about to do is good." Well, Sonya got saved, and evidently her mother had given her blessing to it--at least inadvertently. Then she came to her job at the cafe with a big smile on her face, and everyone knew that she was very different. She had brought a big cake, plopped it on the table, and announced, "I am ready to receive your congratualtions because this is my birthday and I have been baptised." I think she works in a cafe where a lot of Moslems work and eat. They would mock her, and one girl told her that in her village, if someone got baptised, they would be stoned. But for Sonya, the family seems to be resigned to her enthusiasm. Recently her sister was in labor, and the family was told that she and her unborn twins would probably all die. So Sonya got on the phone and called every Christian whom she knew and asked them to pray. She comes from a very small village, so everyone knew what was going on. The mom delivered the twins; however, one of the babies is not doing very well, and we prayed for him. The father has not been saved, but maybe he is wondering what will happen now. Not only so, she told us that when some of the ones in her village are in need, they ask the Christians to pray because their prayers are answered. Sonya has a Moslem friend here in Moscow who was curious, then prayed, and then was wondering about getting baptised, but Sonya and the believers she knows were warning the friend that she had better be sure about it before she gets baptised, because she could be putting herself in some danger. The friend did get baptised, then went back home, met a boy who is Moslem, and now things are not going very well, so we prayed for the friend. Then we sang some hymns to the Lord, and we ended up singing the hymn we had started with this morning. Very very sweet. Then we read some about Exodus 4.

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*Now for a short note that is a bit of shift in tone. (The * means that there is the need for a footnote here because the story that goes with the * doesn't go with the context above.) I have learned how to say Amen in two more languages. Pretty good for this monoglot! Amen in Armenian is pretty easy; it is "aw-men." But in Russian it is "I mean." And here is where the funny story starts. One time several came from Russia, and as they were being shown around the campus in Anaheim, a sister was saying, "I mean, I mean." The brother who was explaining things eventually figured that she was too overwhelmed to explain for herself what she meant, but was trying really hard to get started. So now the sisters here have a small joke that one will say, Amen, Amen (I mean, I mean), and the other will say, "Yes, I know what you mean." ha ha??