Deep Calls Unto Deep

Psalm 42 (NKJV)

⁶ O my God, my soul is cast down within me;

Therefore I will remember You from the land of the Jordan,

And from the heights of Hermon,

From the Hill Mizar.

⁷ Deep calls unto deep at the noise of Your waterfalls;

All Your waves and billows have gone over me.

⁸ The Lord will command His loving kindness in the daytime,

And in the night His song shall be with me—

A prayer to the God of my life.

Consider the text "Deep calls unto deep . . ." and look at what that might mean to the one who is seeking the Kingdom of God first as though it where an experience at the beach. While you stand on the dry sand, you are invited into the water. When you enter into a relationship with Jesus, you have left the beach and are walking in the water. As you walk along in ankle deep or knee deep water, you are in the water but have control of where you are and what you do. Waves can come and go but you can still stand on your own. God, through the Holy Spirit, calls you to deeper water. Next you go waist deep and the waves can become a challenge. Then you go chest deep and each wave wets your face and pushes you around. Deeper yet and you bob up and down trying to keep in touch with the bottom and the control you are so used to having. But the control is no longer there except that you can breath by bouncing up and grabbing your breath.

God calls and draws you out into the deep. You can swim but you grow tired and will have to eventually give up and God says "Yes, give up." HE invites you to come below the surface of the water into a oneness with the water. HE asks, even encourages you to breath it in. You have a panicky feeling at the thought but somehow the idea seems right but all your flesh rebels at the thought of the death to come by drowning yourself as an act of obedience to the words of the Holy One.

In the science fiction movie, "Abyss," Ed Harris is a scientist /explorer who has to dive to a great depth in the ocean. He learns to use a special diving suit in which he breaths a hyper-oxygenated liquid that will work to great depths. In the first experiment of breathing the liquid, he has several increasing anxious expressions that say his body is not going to breath the liquid as it rises in the suit. He knows that he cannot hold his breath forever. With the encouragement of friends and colleagues, he has to let the air in his lungs go and the liquid goes in and a strange thing happens on his face. As he realizes that the liquid does not drown him, he relaxes and smiles with a gentle peace.

That is somewhat how our spiritual breathing in of God’s Spirit will cause us to hold on to the last moment and then, in exasperation, give in. We only find that God is right and that we can live in the Spirit and that it is far better than living in the flesh. When once you have breathed in the ocean water, that is Christ Himself, you find that you do breath a new breath and that the living has changed and the freedom has become extreme. You have entered into the life that Jesus says is the Kingdom of God that is near you and has been there all along.

So how do we do or be this "beach" experience in our spiritual life? I do not know!!!!!!!