Blessed Assurance: My Woo Hoo Moment

Last updated on: August 27, 2015 at 10:54 pm by John Mark N. Reynolds

Blessed Assurance: My Woo Hoo Moment 2015-08-27T22:54:42-04:00 John Mark N. Reynolds

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Life gets tedious.

“Sometimes,”an older friend said, “life gets tedious.” My problems may be first world problems, ISIS isn’t coming to get my family today, but they are my problems. I cannot wish away the nattering of the negative including the doubt in my heart. Is there a man so arrogant he knows beyond doubt his work is awesome and his course correct? That man has a different and worse problem than tedium.

Enough worry or self-doubt breeds tedium and enough tedium isn’t boredom, but a weariness of soul. We grow tired of petty people placing roadblocks in our way. They cannot create and so they tear down, but the cure to this soul weariness is not dwelling on pettiness. This can so easily become a petty response to pettiness! “Enough of negativity!” cries my soul, but still I am tired.

At that moment I think of the old song Blessed Assurance. Read the words:

vs.1
Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine!
O what a foretaste of glory divine!
Heir of salvation, purchase of God,
Born of His Spirit, washed in His blood.

I do not feel this truth at all times, but truth it is. Jesus is not mine as a piece of property, Jesus is mine in the Valentine’s Day sense. He loves me even when I do not feel His love. Because He loves you and me, the rest follows. He will give us, weary us, glory divine. Jesus never puts the heavy burden on us, He is never petty. The weariness either comes from our own smallness or from little people.

Jesus sees us from the eternal perspective as all done!

Refrain:
This is my story, this is my song,
praising my Savior all the day long;
this is my story, this is my song,
praising my Savior all the day long.

Misunderstood, this chorus sounds like doom…hymn sing without end. But just as we can pray without ceasing by developing a heart of quiet, constant prayerfulness, so we can sing all the time. We can be thankful as a disposition. Bluntly, when we are in the toils of tedium being told to have “a song in our hearts,” itself feels as an argument for fakery. We must never plaster on a smile or fake it until we make it…yet our emotions are rarely so simple as all happy or all sad. We are a bit happy even if awash in tedium. This chorus becomes a reminder to cultivate the better self or find men or women to help us.

vs.2
Perfect submission, perfect delight!
Visions of rapture now burst on my sight;
Angels descending bring from above
Echoes of mercy, whispers of love.

“Rapture”? We now think of rapture as avoiding pain by being snatched away. The blind woman who wrote these words saw rapture, sights of unsurpassed beauty, in this life in the midst of her pain. She experienced mercy directly and love through the mercy. Like Homer, she saw into the spiritual realm, perhaps in part because she was not distracted by the physical. Fanny Crosby found bliss not because she escaped her troubles, but in acceptance of them. Her submission to the will of God led to delight.

I rarely have such visions or such delight because my submission to Love is so qualified. I confuse superficial desires with what my heart needs and so I miss out on the rapture God would give me.

(Refrain)

vs.3
Perfect submission, all is at rest!
I in my Savior am happy and blest,
Watching and waiting, looking above,
Filled with His goodness, lost in His love.
(Refrain)

Submission allows for rest. My first world problems and the pettiness will not vanish, but I can rest. Jesus is Lord and I (blessedly!) am not. We find our place in the cosmic order and so are fulfilled, happy, and experience the goodness of God, blest. Our sorrows do not vanish, but we watch and wait with the surety that all will come to goodness.

And ever so often comes the “woo hoo” moment . . . so wonderful I wish I could live in it always. This is the realization that I am filled with His goodness and I become utterly unaware of this world. I shout for joy . . . I am delighted, but not just now. I watch and wait, I look above for the moment when all my life will become one “woo hoo” moment because I will be at very moment lost in His love.

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