A Poem of Hope When the Sorrows are Strong

    I just came across this poem I had written four years ago. As I reminisced my way through it, I realized that the feelings I was expressing then are just as familiar now. I thought I might as well share it online in the hope it would encourage someone else to walk in hope when the sorrows are most overwhelming.

The following introduction and the poem were written on August 6, 2021.

    “Over the years I have heard many people resist bringing their childhood traumas to God because they fear that if they ever started opening their hearts they would be stuck in a flood of overwhelming emotions for months or years. What I have witnessed is God bringing us into relationship with himself where he will prepare us for looking at things, bring them up when it is time, and quickly comfort us and give us peace about each thing we need to face. And today I just had to try writing a poem about it.”

 

A Poem of Hope When the Sorrows are Strong
 
In a moment of grief between laughter and tears
(the quiet that comes before morning appears),
An old wave of sorrow came over the rise,
And poured down the valley where the secret heart cries.
 
The sun would soon come with the duties of life,
Calling for realness in comforts and strife,
And the fresh wave of sorrow that threatened the soul,
Had only this moment to wield its control.
 
The shadows of night gave their nod to the grief,
While the Morning Star shone with its promised relief,
But the flooding of sorrow felt too much to bear
For the heart that was sure it would always be there.
 
While dragons breathed fire and demons screamed, “Fear!”
The soul in the darkness felt no friend was near.
And so, what was known of the all-present past,
Boasted to love, “I will surely outlast!”
 
But the first beam of sunshine to hit the far hills,
Welcomed the Father who does as he wills.
And the secret heart crying in shadows of night,
Had hope that its Savior would make all things right.
 
So, the brightening hues of the promised relief,
Broke the grip of the night that had flooded with grief.
And the child who had thought that the darkness would stay
Walked into the light of the Father’s new day.
 
“But what of the monsters that come in the night?”
The little child asked while enjoying the light.
“They are but a dream that is gone when you wake,
And I love to slay monsters for my own great name’s sake!”
 
“So walk in the light of this gracious new day,
And listen so well to the words that I say.
As they are the truth that will set your soul free,
For even in sorrow, you will still be with me!”
 
Poem © 2021 Monte Vigh (August 6, 2021)

 

© 2025 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

 

On This Day: The Ultimate Higher is Jesus Himself

   But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.” Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.”
(John 4:23-26)

   For a very long time I have had a verse of Scripture overlaid over everything I do, and everything I desire for other people. It is Jesus’ words in his High Priestly prayer of John 17, “And this is eternal life, that they KNOW YOU, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”

   Everything the Scriptures say about eternal life is ultimately about knowing the Triune God. Everything we do in the church is about people knowing God. Every leader of anything in the church should have a testimony of knowing God in a constantly growing and maturing kind of way.

   With that in mind, when I look at Jesus’ interaction with the Samaritan woman, and I consider his aim of leading her to drink of the living water that would well up within her to eternal life, and then I feel the weight of his concluding words, “I am he”, I see how masterfully he led her to HIM. He was leading her to KNOW him.

   As I consider a lifetime of Highers-Deepers with Jesus, I see how he led me through “the valley of the shadow of death” on so many occasions to get me to the next experience of feeding in green pastures and lying down beside quiet waters. These experiences were all coordinated by God to lead me to know that “The LORD” who is “my shepherd” is “Yahweh” the Son. Meaning, Jesus is the shepherd David was talking about.

   This is why David was so personal about everything long before “the gospel” (good news) rang out at Jesus’ birth. Because the Lord Jesus Christ is my shepherd, “I shall not want”, or be lacking in anything I need. And then it is so clear:

   “HE makes me lie down in green pastures.”

   “HE leads me beside still waters.”

   “HE restores my soul.”

   “HE leads me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.”

   Therefore, “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for YOU are with me; YOUR rod and YOUR staff, they comfort me.” Note the amazing change of focus from telling us about HIM, to speaking to HIM about how personally we can know him.

   “YOU prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies”.

   “YOU anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.”

   “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD (Yahweh) forever.”

   What David testified in Psalm 23 a thousand years before Jesus came was a prophecy of the believer’s life. It would be about knowing God. Our life “in Christ” would be all about knowing God. The grand conclusion to Jesus’ dialogue with the Samaritan woman gives us an enduring picture of what it looks like to come to know God.

   I often talk to God about why he chose such a lonely road for me. He often reminds me that his ways and thoughts are so much Higher than mine that I need to trust his sovereign goodness and join him in whatever work he shows me each day. However, he also reminds me that his Holy Spirit has directed me into my place in the body of Christ so I can just be myself in Christ and trust him to build up others as he chooses. 

    Which makes me want to encourage you all the more to set your heart on knowing God. Agree with him about every Higher he shows you in his word no matter how painful or hopeless your life appears to be. Admit to him every Deeper thing you come to next and present it to him the way the Samaritan woman did. And remind yourself that the Samaritan woman was interacting with Jesus for real before she even knew who he was!

   As I write this, I keep having Paul’s words echoing in my mind, “that I may know HIM and the power of his resurrection” (Philippians 3:10). Paul’s example is based on the universal gift of God to all who believe: eternal life. And that eternal life to all believers has a universal reality: to KNOW God.

   Our journey through the Higher-Deepers of the Samaritan woman, along with our own personal experiences of God’s gracious ministry to our souls, invite us to “hunger and thirst” for the “righteousness” of knowing God, because Jesus has already provided everything we need to fulfill the “they shall be satisfied” promise.

 

© 2025 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

 

On This Day: The Time for New-hearted Worship

   Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” (John 4:21-24)

   Many of us are familiar with the expression “worship in spirit and in truth”. My experience is that few want what Jesus was talking about.

   It helps to remember the three possible views of how church people relate to this. The Legalistic pendulum extreme on one side focuses on truth without spirit. The Charismaniac pendulum extreme on the other side focuses on spirit without truth.

   Between the two is the Plumbline experience of worship that always keeps the two together. The “true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth”.

   The Samaritan woman was coming from a background where the worship was physical rather than spiritual. It was all earthly history, earthly heritage, earthly location, earthly prejudices between the Jews and Samaritans.

   It was also false instead of true because the Samaritans had a corrupted version of what God had given in the Scriptures and so their ideas about God and worship were on the wrong track.

   However, even though Jesus clarified that “salvation is from the Jews”, he didn’t mean that the way the Jews were worshiping in Jerusalem was acceptable to God. He meant that the salvation God was now offering the world through his Son came through the Jews. The foundation for knowing God was not in Samaria, it was in Israel. And Jesus was the one who was giving the good news of great joy that a Savior was given to man by which all people could repent and experience the born-again life.

   Jesus made this clear with Nicodemus who needed to be “born again” just as much as the woman at the well needed to drink Jesus’ “living water”. The two expressions are facets of the same diamond. No one is inherently saved. No one is inherently good enough for God. Everyone needs to be born again by drinking the living water of salvation in Jesus Christ our Lord.

   Since I am sharing this as part of the Higher-Deeper way Jesus was relating to the Samaritan woman, I expect that anyone who opens their hearts to how Jesus taught her will also see their own Higher-Deepers in effect. All of us are called to look Higher in worship than we ever have before. Not to something different that no one has ever thought of, but what is in Jesus’ words, that our worship must be both spirit and truth. And we must look Deeper inside ourselves to bring everything within us to worship God spiritually and truthfully no matter what we see coming up from our secret hearts.

   It is twenty-five years ago that God was leading me into home church ministry without me seeing the destination. He had spoken in his word of some Higher things that were in the works, but I had the same obtuseness of the disciples that simply couldn’t see where he was going with the Deeper things that were unfolding.  

   However, only months later I could see this most amazing gift of a group of people discovering that we did not need to confine our worship of God to church buildings, single locations, structured rules and regulations, denominational distinctives, or anything else that was physical.

   Rather, we were on our way to learning a new dimension of worshiping in spirit and in truth. We could gather in anyone’s home, any time that was good for our people, seeking what was best in encouraging our spiritual attachment to God in fellowship with a love of the truth of his word.

   No, worshiping in spirit and in truth is not confined to home church ministry since that would just be continuing the Jewish/Samaritan feud about where to worship.

   Yes, anyone who has been born again into the new life of the Spirit can worship in spirit and in truth anytime they worship, anywhere they gather with fellow believers in their version of church, and with anyone who is a spirit and truth worshiper of God.

   So, why do I think that many church folk know this Scripture, but few want to live it?

   Answer: because I am now old enough to have decades of experience in many different churches that has shown me what Larry Crabb prophesied to me in his book, Inside Out, 35ish years ago: church people are more committed to self-protection than to knowing and doing the will of God.

   Using the Highers-Deepers of the Samaritan woman as a measure, I have now learned that people will initially feel an amazement and wonder that they are getting to know God in Higher ways and beginning to learn how to relate to him from their Deeper state of being.

   However (and this is close enough to unanimous to treat it as such), the consistent pattern has been that one day, God leads someone from the amazing Higher they just shared about with excitement, to a Deeper that opens a door through their self-protection to things they had hidden from everyone (God included), and suddenly they can’t trust God for the next Higher. And yes, I have seen this as much in home churches as in institutional churches.

   I share this as a Higher-Deeper of its own. The Higher is God’s calling to worship him in spirit and in truth because he seeks us out with a desire to have us, and he has given us the new covenant in Jesus’ blood which gives us new hearts by which to worship him in the “new way of the Spirit”, as Paul called it.

   The Deeper is whatever we see inside ourselves that isn’t there yet. Hidden sins? Childhood trauma? Unresolved guilt, shame, and fear? Feeling worthless and seeing no hope of that every changing? Experiences shrouded in darkness that do not want to come into the light?

   We can bring ALL THOSE THINGS to God the Father in spirit (a genuinely spiritual way) and in truth (letting what is true about us cling to what is true about God). And meeting God in our Deepers that do not yet know him for real will continue leading us into the Highers of knowing God for real in spirit and truth kinds of ways.

   If any of this doesn’t sound quite right to you because of thoughts that are coming out of nowhere, please do not read things in to this that I’m not saying as if I’m the one saying them. And please do not take my word for it! Join Jesus and the Samaritan woman in the Higher-Deeper journey of John chapter 4, and make sure you are relating to God in your spirit (new heart), while seeking to know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth of God from his word and his Spirit.

   And, if you don’t have anyone in a church to talk about whatever is coming up for you, make sure you keep talking to God your Father about it without fail, and let me know if I can contribute anything from my place in the body of Christ.

 

© 2025 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

 

On This Day: The Higher-Deeper of Heaven and Earth

   Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.” (John 4:10-12)

   As I continue through John 4 (Jesus’ visit with the Samaritan woman), I am sharing how Jesus led her to look at something Higher than she had ever had to think about, followed by something Deeper inside her that she had to admit before the next Higher. I can’t recall when I first noticed this pattern (my first writing about it appears to be January of 2008), but I have not been able to unsee it!

   The first Higher-Deeper for “the woman at the well” was that Jesus blew her mind by giving her a first-time experience of a Jewish man treating her with respect, followed by her deep feelings of how the animosity from the Jews had shaped her understanding of herself in their eyes. From Jesus’ first words, “Give me a drink,” something was radically different. You can read more about this in my previous post.

   The next Higher is expressed in Jesus’ words, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” This lifts the woman’s thoughts into something that could only be revealed from heaven, that there was a gift of God, and there was something distinct about Jesus. These realities together were of such a profound goodness and grace that, if she had only known these things when she saw Jesus at the well, Jesus wouldn’t have even had time to ask her for water, because she would have been pleading with him for the living water that only he can give.

   This sense of, “If you knew…” hit me very personally. It took me back through the spiritual markers of my life where I came to know God better than ever. Each time that happened, it was Jesus giving me something I hadn’t known. And it led me through Highers and Deepers I did not even recognize as a pattern for many years.

   I believe there is a universal sense in which we can come to God’s word every day and expect a Higher of the heavenly variety. God’s ways are higher than our ways, and his thoughts are higher than our thoughts, so every time with God, every sermon in church, every teaching video online, will have something in it that lifts our thoughts higher than we have ever considered. And as we expect this to happen for us, we will get a sense of what it felt like for the Samaritan woman the first time it happened for her.

   The Deeper part of this is the way it led the woman into her heart where she had to verbalize a simple reality: all she knew about a gift from God was “our father Jacob” who “gave us the well…” That may have been a unique Deeper for her, but it is also a universal Deeper for us as we realize that, at the same time as God opens our minds to some new truth from heaven (as revealed in Scripture), it will confront the limitations of our earthly experience. Perhaps the limits of our church’s denominational distinctives, or the limits of our parent’s experience (or non-experience) of God, or even just the fact that every day we are only so far along on our journey and today’s lesson from heaven will show us the limit of where we left off the day before.

   While there is so much more to say about this (including how this continues to rhyme with what Jesus taught Nicodemus, and how it shows the Beatitudinal Valley Jesus was leading the woman on at the same time), the focus for today is to consider how the Holy Spirit will reveal Highers to us in the word that feel like we are being told kingdom-of-heaven things we hadn’t known before, and this will expose the Deepers of whatever earthly limitations we have put on our walk with God up to this time.

   My encouragement is to meet God in both. If his word says something Higher we simply haven’t seen before, welcome it right away and feel the childlike wonder of a heart, soul, mind, and brain, being graced with the gift of knowing something that is on our Father’s mind.

   At the same time, if the “if you knew…” truth exposes a Deeper awareness of how earthly our thinking is about ourselves, and God, and the kingdom of heaven, and the “good news of great joy”, and walking in the Spirit, praise God for the “blessed are the poor in spirit” gift of grace and tell him what you’re thinking. Whatever thoughts come to mind, tell “our Father in heaven” in prayer, and continue meditating on his word as he works these things out in our lives in the most real and personal of ways.

 

© 2025 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

 

On This Day: The Higher-Deeper of Love and Prejudice

   Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John (although Jesus himself did not baptize, but only his disciples), he left Judea and departed again for Galilee. And he had to pass through Samaria. So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob's well was there; so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour.

   A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) (John 4:1-9)

   Years ago, my journey through Jesus’ visit with the Samaritan woman led me to see the way Jesus would say something to her that made her thoughts go HIGHER than ever before, but that led to her having to look DEEPER into herself than she had ever done. Ever since, this HIGHER/DEEPER way of relating to God in his word has richly blessed me.

   So, coming again to John 4 is like a return trip to Ucluelet, BC. There is a history of visits to this passage of Scripture, an anticipation of seeing things I haven’t seen before, and the expectation of experiencing it as the person I am this time through the journey.

   The first Higher/Deeper experience came in the opening scene of the drama. We have what appears to be a typical Jewish man resting by the local well. Enter stage right is a not-typical Samaritan woman. Typical in being Samaritan, yes. Typical in being a woman, yes. But not-typical in coming to the well all alone.

   Think of the shock and strangeness to this woman when a lifetime of animosity between Jews and Samaritans is blasted with something she could never have expected. The cultural stereotype of prideful and hateful Jewish men relating to despised and hated Samaritans (and the feeling was mutual) was being utterly broken by Immanuel, God with us, the Word who became flesh to dwell among us.

   The first application of this is to encourage you to have a daily time with God in his word and prayer where you listen for what he is saying, look for how he is working to accomplish his will in those things, and diligently join him in his work as best as you know to do. As much as we can learn from someone else’s sharing from the word, we always learn more from attaching to God for ourselves in the two-way relationship of his word and our prayer.

   The second application is to consider our own experience with encountering God’s Highers and our Deepers. Every time we read God’s word, he will be revealing something to us that is Higher than what we have learned about him. When we say, “I’ve never noticed that before,” or “something stood out that I never considered,” or “Why have I never noticed that verse!”, or even just, “What stood out today was…”, we are describing a Higher. And, since God says that “as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:9), we sure better expect that when we meet with him, seeing “higher” things is a way of life for his children.

   The Deepers to look for are always where God points his spotlight inside us. What do we suddenly see inside ourselves that tells us how we are doing? What clash do we feel between the Higher thing God is showing us in his word and our “blessed are the poor in spirit” acknowledgement of how sadly we aren’t experiencing what is written, or we just don’t know him like that. This is the gift of the Deeper, seeing where we are in relation to what God is saying and doing.

   In the case of the Samaritan woman, her Deeper was the inescapable feeling of being despised and rejected by the Jewish people. She had to feel that before discovering that this was the Messiah who “was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not” (Isaiah 53:3).

   Do you see that? In the first-step of the Higher/Deeper she encounters a man who is willing to break all the barriers of custom and culture to give her the honor of helping him out with a drink of water, and she feels this strange event on the Deeper of a heart that has borne the shame and disgrace over her ethnicity in the eyes of Jewish men. And that, we will see, is the genius of the Savior who has compassion on the people living in darkness because he saw them as sheep without a shepherd.

   I am truly looking forward to the rest of this journey through John 4 and the gift of meeting with Jesus and this woman who becomes my sister in Christ before the scene is finished. I am in awe and wonder that John takes us from Jesus’ one-on-one with Nicodemus, a good, Jewish religious leader who struggled with Jesus’ teaching on being born again, and leads us through Jesus’ one-on-one visit with a sinful Samaritan woman who entered the kingdom of heaven on the same day she just went to the well for water.

   In all of this, as John put front and center in his prologue, “…we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth… For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace… No one has ever seen God; God the only Son, who is at the Father's side, he has made him known” (John 1:14-18).

   This is what was happening to this poor and unsuspecting Samaritan then, and it shines even more brightly for us today as we get to see the whole scene in just a few minutes of reading (and hour-upon-hour of meditating!). Can you see how God is doing this very thing with you today?

 

© 2025 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)