The Word of Truth Ministries

Deep Calls Unto Deep
"Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy waterspouts; all thy waves and thy billows are gone over me."
[Psa. 42:7]
______________

Two years ago, I was driving from Chicago back home to California, and I was  listening to a preacher tackle the above scripture. His tackling was awful. It was clear he liked the scripture. And it was clear he lacked any idea what it meant. But not allowing ignorance of the scripture to stop his use of it in a bad sermon, he preached on, repeating the scripture several times but never scratching the surface of it.

To repeat a scripture or a concept is not the same as explaining it, analyzing it, or shading light on it. And none of these did he do. But the other day as I was in bible-class at a brother's house, this scripture came up and I began to explain it. I offer that explanation to you, my readers.

First, however, I recall the words of Alfred Lord Tennyson in his famous poem Ulysses.  Tennyson uses similar words as David: 

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail;
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me,--
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads,-- you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honor and his toil.
Death closes all; but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks;
The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends.
'T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die

In Tennyson's poem of the character in Homer's Odyssey, Odysseus [called Ulysses in Latin], he writes of Odysseus giving  the island kingdom of Ithaca  to his son Laertes and going back to his first and lasting passion, which he knows and feels within the very fiber of his being--the sea. As  Odysseus sits upon his throne, he is discomforted with being king, for he still has within him the love of the sea and warfare.  Finally he sees how to get back to that which is within him. He gives Ithaca to Laertes  [Telemachus in Ulysses] and summons his men back to adventures of the sea.

Odysseus knows that this adventure will be his last, but he cannot resist the longing within him. When transferring the kingdom, he looks over at the ships and the sea, which he loves, and exclaims, "There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail...."

And as he and his sailors are called and assembled by their unrelenting passions for the sea, Tennyson writes the words that Odysseus says: "...the deep moans round with many voices...."  That which is in him and in them calls out to go back to that they know, that they love, to that crying out within them, to that which defines them, and to that which is the essence of who they are.

An understanding of what Tennyson sees in  Odysseus/Ulysses and writes about in his poem Ulysses is more than a clue to what David is saying in Psalms 42:7, where he writes,  "Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy waterspouts...." Tennyson uses this "deep" term to describe a urgency and passion defining them, shaping their longings, hopes, ambitions, and their very actions. They could not resist the strength of their deep, and though being old and diminished in strength, they moved with the calling of that which was in them.

And so it is with all of us. That which is deep within us is who we are, and in times of distress, peril, or desperation we tend to revert to our deep inner self, pathologically or  otherwise. In other words, we go back to that which we know and are comfortable with--our deep calls to return to our deep. There was an old TV commercial that said to all who saw it, "Come back to Jamaica." The commercial suggested and implied that all of us have Jamaica in us. So why not come back that which we are and know?

When Jesus was crucified, the scripture had spoken forehand saying, smite the shepherd and the sheep will be scattered. [Mark 14:27] Therefore, Peter and the other disciples reverted to that which they knew, when Jesus was crucified on Calvary: Peter said, "I go fishing." And the other disciples said they go with him. [John 21] 

They had been fishermen when Jesus called them, and they went back to that which they knew--their deep, inner self, called to them during this time of despair, disappointment, uncertainty, and desperation. Being fishermen was not wrong; it was where Jesus found them; it was what they had occupied their time with prior to Jesus moving them up to fishers of men. [Mat. 4:19]

The deep of a person is where his comfort zone is. Some who are psychologically afflicted and under great stress revert back to finger sucking or a fetal position. In hours of great street some may call out to a long dead parent, some may go deep within themselves, being unable to function under the state of stress they are under. This is a behavior of man. 

When Jonah had exhausted all his humanly effort and still found himself in the belly of a giant fish instead of where God told him to go or where he thought he was going, he cried out of  to God, which, in spite of his attempted disobedience,  was his inner deep after all the years of being a prophet of God. In him was the knowledge and truth that  only God could deliver him from the hell he had worked himself into. So his deep inner self that was God-focused and God-filled cried out to God and God delivered him from his hell. A hell he had gotten himself into. [Jon. 2:1-4]

Since of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaketh, [Mat. 12:34]what is in a man comes forth from his mouth. And from the mouth springs forth the issues of his life. [Prov. 4:23] What is in the inner man will be made known by the actions and words of that man. If the inner man is not of God, not like God, not tutored by God, it will be shown; just let the mouth speak for some time! If the inner man is filled with God's word, that too will be shown. But carnal man is not of God and cannot understand or think the things of God. [Rom. 8:7]

God has said that his ways are not our ways and his thoughts are not our thoughts. He is different from us, so we must try to become like him. [Isa.55:8] And since that is so, Christians, to be Christians or to be like him, must take on the mind of Christ to have the mind of God. [Eph. 6:11] 

The Apostle Paul says to all Christians, not to be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of our minds. Our minds are renewed by abandoning our ways of seeing things, our ways of acting, our ways of behaving and taking on the ways of Christ. Furthermore, he argues we should allow his mind be in us. [Rom. 12:2; Phil. 2:5] And in order to get our minds into conformity to God, Paul tells us how to think like Christ. [Phil. 4:8] Each saint must see that his very thoughts are distorted and confused if they are not in conformity to God's word and God's way; only God's way is right!

One reason many "Christians" are not walking and talking in the image of Christ is because they are not thinking as God has instructed them to think. And when a person is not thinking and doing what God has told him to do, he can never be as God has commanded him to be. [Mat. 5:48; 2 Cor. 13:11; 2 Tim.3:17; Heb. 6:1-2; 13:21]  And as a person continues in his unrighteous state, not doing as God has instructed, that person starts to think that his state is a state God allows. [Rom. 1:28; 2 Thes. 2:11; 1 Tim. 4:2] But that is a state of self-deception by a canal deep that cries out and calls unto his ungodly state.

Jesus said, if you abide in me and my word abides in you, you can ask what you will and it shall be unto you. [John 15:7] When we abide in him as He says, we are heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ because the word of God has come into us and stayed within us. Then we can exercise the power and authority of God, because God is in our inner deep and that is the essence of who we are and what our actions are. [John 10:34-35; Rom. 8:17] Of course, this does not happen overnight. But it should not takes the many years that many Christians are allowing themselves to inculcate God's word into their deep. 

God's word has to abide within us so that God's word transplants the world's notions and our own notions of our innermost deep self. God's word must become a habit with us: a habit of living it so that we breath, think, and surely walk it. And as that occurs, we, the just who are living by faith, take a path in his word so that our path is a shinning light that becomes brighter unto the perfect day. And when despair comes, desperation overtakes us, we will then do as Jonah did; we will cry out unto God, for God is abiding in us. [Jon. 2:2] But if we fail to abide in his word, we will be as Jonah said,  We will have observed lying vanities and forsook our own mercies. [Jon. 2:8]

Dear saints of God, we must make our deep that of God and not the world or ourselves; when our deep is God we find him to be a shelter in the time of storm that we can run into and are safe. [Prov. 18:10] 

I close with the situation of Job. He knew this, God destroys the perfect and the wicked--indeed, that is the thing he greatly feared. [Job. 9:22] But in spite of that, Job had fed himself God's word, he had lived God's word, and when tragedy came, his inner deep was God. And to God he cleaved mightily and nothing else, stoutly proclaiming that All the days of my appointed time I'll wait until his change came. [Job. 14:14] This was a man whose inner deep was God, and that deep called out to God. Oh, saints of God, see what we must do and be--let your mind and behavior be transformed into the mind and behavior of God! That is my prayer for you in Jesus' high and holy name.

The Word of Truth Ministry
P.O. Box 6573
Oakland, CA 94603