Bride of the High Places

94 Pages·2012·11.43 MB·English

Discipleship and Devotionals
A W ’ I H
OMANS NNER EART
as seen through
Hannah Hurnard’s
Allegory
Hinds’ Feet on High Places
for women who mostly know
and men seeking clues
A Time to Read
© 2003 by Karl Duff. All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Packaged by Pleasant Word, a division of WinePress Publishing, PO Box 428, Enumclaw,
WA 98022. The views expressed or implied in this work do not necessarily reflect those
of Pleasant Word, a division of WinePress Publishing. The author(s) is ultimately
responsible for the design, content and editorial accuracy of this work.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted
in any way by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise—
without the prior permission of the copyright holder, except as provided by USA
copyright law.
Note to the Reader
All text on the left-hand side is from Hinds’ Feet on High Places, by Hannah Hurnard.
All text on the right-hand side is by Karl Duff and pertains to this set of devotional
studies. Each devotional study is placed on the page opposite the related text of Hinds’
Feet....to which it applies. Copyright of Bride of the High Places applies only to
devotional text.
Scripture quoted by Hannah Hurnard is from the King James Version of the Bible.
Scripture quoted by Karl Duff is from the New American Standard Bible
© 1960, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977 by The Lockman Foundation.
Used by permission.
ISBN 1-57921-518-1
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2002114632
2
Bride of the High Places
Author’s Preface
“The LORD your God is in your midst, a victorious warrior.
He will exult over you with joy, He will be quiet in His love, He will
rejoice over you with shouts of joy.” —Zephaniah 3:17
A zillion or so classic novels and movies have been written to portray what God writes
on a young girl’s heart; a brave man who will face death to gain her love, fight dragons and
set her free from curse or imprisonment. She recognizes him as her true love and lives with
him “happily ever after.” There are many more details. This “imprint” of God’s plan of salva-
tion is no accident and has application in the world as well as in the Kingdom of God. The
details of this vision should aid a woman’s recognition of the gospel of Jesus Christ and His
conquest of Satan on behalf of His chosen eternal Bride. They also confirm the biblical
portraits of gender roles on earth, in courtship, marriage and in reproduction of Godly
seed.
Many boys consider the above vision to be nonsense and contribute greatly to its
damage. Yet they have another vision, dim and elusive. What is it? They have a general
sense of their destiny for “greatness”. They know they are purposed to accomplish some-
thing mighty in their lives. Yet most grow old and die without discovering what this “great-
ness” was meant to be (reflected in “mid-life crisis” for millions.) What goes wrong?
Answers to these questions are hidden in the mystery of love. Boys don’t comprehend
these things until they have discovered a love worth dying for. They become men through
the process. Love discovered must be refined and proven by fire and water; established on
a firm foundation. A ransom must be paid. The same is true between Christ and His Bride.
The Bride is won by a love which conquers all.
Hannah Hurnard’s famous allegory, Hinds’ Feet on High Places, offers a classic portrait of
discipleship in Christ, worth serious study and personal application. In addition, perhaps
unwittingly, Hurnard also portrays her own female heart and soul through her heroine,
“Much-Afraid”, brilliantly capturing things unique to the hearts of girls and women but
mostly hidden to men. Many of her expressions of emotions, perplexity, fear and the cir-
cumstances which induce these things are female gender specific. Many of Hurnard’s por-
traits of how women naturally view the issues of life, relationships and happiness are simply
3
A Time to Read
stunning! Reviewing the allegory offers opportunity to apply lessons of discipleship into
our own lives, drawing both men and women into conformance with Christ, in the fashion
of Hurnard’s heroine “Much Afraid”, to rid themselves of the deformities that keep them
from more effectual service.
Text is formatted to enable devotional study, prayer and personal decision making.
Limited space is provided for notes; however, a journal notebook for note-taking, record-
ing prayers and discipleship decisions would be helpful. Extensive scriptures not refer-
enced in Hurnard’s work have been added to the commentary to strengthen and validate
Hurnard’s portraits. It is recommended they all be incorporated into the study, but this is
ultimately the reader’s choice.
KMD
4
Bride of the High Places
Preface to the Allegory
One morning during the daily Bible reading on our mission compound in Palestine, our
little Arab nurse read from Daily Light a quotation from the Song of Songs, “The voice of
my Beloved! behold, he cometh leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills” (Song
of Solomon 2:8). When asked what the verse meant, she looked up with a happy smile of
understanding and said, “It means there are no obstacles which our Savior’s love cannot
overcome, and that to him, mountains of difficulty are as easy as an asphalt road!”
From the garden at the back of the mission house at the foot of Mount Gerizim we
could often watch the gazelles bounding up the mountainside, leaping from rock to
rock with extraordinary grace and agility. Their motion was one of the most beautiful ex-
amples of exultant and apparently effortless ease in surmounting obstacles which I have
ever seen.
How deeply we who love the Lord of Love and desire to follow Him long for the
power to surmount all difficulties and tests and conflicts in life in the same exultant and
triumphant way. To learn the secret of victorious living has been the heart’s desire of those
who love the Lord, in every generation.
We feel we would give anything if only we could, in actual experience, live on the
High Places of love and victory here on this earth and during this life—able always to react
to evil, tribulation, sorrow, pain and every wrong thing in such a way that they would be
overcome and transformed into something to the praise and glory of God forever. As Chris-
tians we know, in theory at least, that in the life of a child of God there are no second
causes, that even the most unjust and cruel things, as well as all seemingly pointless and
undeserved sufferings, have been permitted by God as a glorious opportunity for us to
react to them in such a way that our Lord and Savior is able to produce in us, little by little,
His own lovely character.
The Song of Songs expresses the desire implanted in every human heart, to be
reunited with God Himself, and to know perfect and unbroken union with Him. He has
5
A Time to Read
made us for Himself, and our hearts can never know rest and perfect satisfaction until
they find it in Him.
It is God’s will that some of His children should learn this deep union with Himself
through the perfect flowering of natural human love in marriage. For others it is equally
His will that the same perfect union should be learned through the experience of learn-
ing to lay down completely this natural and instinctive desire for marriage and parent-
hood, and accept the circumstances of life which deny them this experience. This instinct
for love, so firmly implanted in the human heart, is the supreme way by which we learn to
desire and love God Himself above all else.
But the High Places of victory and union with Christ cannot be reached by any
mental reckoning of self to be dead to sin, or by seeking to devise some way or disci-
pline by which the will can be crucified. The only way is by learning to accept, day by day,
the actual conditions and tests permitted by God, by a continually repeated laying down of
our own will and acceptance of His as it is presented to us in the form of the people with
whom we have to live and work, and in the things which happen to us. Every acceptance of
His will becomes an altar of sacrifice, and every such surrender and abandonment of our-
selves to His will is a means of furthering us on the way to the High Places to which He
desires to bring every child of His while they are still living on earth.
The lessons of accepting and triumphing over evil, of becoming acquainted with grief,
and pain, and ultimately, of finding them transformed into something incomparably pre-
cious; of learning through constant glad surrender to know the Lord of Love Himself in a
new way and to experience unbroken union with Him—these are the lessons of the alle-
gory in this book. The High Places and the hinds’ feet do not refer to heavenly places after
death, but are meant to be the glorious experience of God’s children here and now—if they
will follow the path He chooses for them.
Perhaps the Lord will use it to speak comfort to some of His loved ones who are
finding themselves forced to keep company with Sorrow and Suffering, or who walk in
darkness and have no light or feel themselves tossed with tempest and not comforted. It
may help them to understand a new meaning in what is happening, for the experiences
through which they are passing are all part of the wonderful process by which the Lord
is making real in their lives the same experience which made David and Habakkuk cry
out exultantly, “The Lord God maketh my feet like hinds’ feet, and setteth me upon
mine High Places” (Psa. 18:33 and Hab. 3:19).
6
Bride of the High Places
Allegories and Parables
READ: Hinds’ Feet, Preface to the Allegory & Matthew 13:1–53
“And He said, ‘Go, and tell this people: “Keep on listening, but do not perceive;
keep on looking, but do not understand. Render the hearts of this people insensitive,
their ears dull and their eyes dim, lest they see with their eyes, hear with their ears,
understand with their hearts, and return and be healed.’”
—Isaiah 6:9–10
Webster’s New World Dictionary defines allegory as “a story in which people, things,
and happenings have a hidden or symbolic meaning; used for teaching or explaining
ideas, moral principles, etc.” It is also “the presenting of ideas by means of such stories”.
In walking with Much-Afraid through her journey with the Chief Shepherd, we read
the allegory by Hannah Hurnard to teach and explain ideas applicable to our own lives. In
using the words “walking” and “journey” in the last sentence, we are using allegorical terms.
Jesus used parables (simple allegoric relations and analogies) to teach, and quoted Isaiah to
show that truth is best taught in this manner to separate those able to hear from those
unable to hear.
Both Hurnard and her allegorical disciple are female, important because there are dif-
ferences in how men and women see God. In the relationship between the Bridegroom,
Jesus Christ, and his bride, we are all female. Yet men must also be conformed to the Bride-
groom in order to minister to their wives. Women remain brides in both cases and God is
given headship through their fathers, then their husbands. Women see God and experience
value and uniqueness primarily through men who love them, while the reverse is not iden-
tically true. Men experience Christ’s headship while dying for their wives (I Cor. 11:1–3,
8–12, Eph. 5:21–33). One goal of this study is to give men deeper perceptions of the
unique heart of women and the mysteries of the husband-wife (and father-daughter) rela-
tionships.
May the grace of God be upon this text and the prayers of each person who under-
takes its study. (Zech. 12:10–14, Eph. 3:1–10). Amen.
QUESTIONS AND PRAYER: What are your goals in this study? Would you
please write them down below at this time? _________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________
7
A Time to Read
Part One
“Weeping may endure for a night”
(Psalm 30:5)
CHAPTER 1
Invitation to the High Places
This is the story of how Much-Afraid escaped from her Fearing relatives and
went with the Shepherd to the High Places where “perfect love casteth out fear.”
For several years Much-Afraid had been in the service of the Chief Shepherd,
Whose great flocks were pastured down in the Valley of Humiliation. She lived
with her friends and fellow workers Mercy and Peace in a tranquil little white
cottage in the village of Much-Trembling. She loved her work and desired in-
tensely to please the Chief Shepherd, but happy as she was in most ways, she was
conscious of several things which hindered her in her work and caused her much
secret distress and shame.
In the first place she was a cripple, with feet so crooked that they often caused
her to limp and stumble as she went about her work. She had also the very un-
sightly blemish of a crooked mouth which greatly disfigured both expression and
speech, and was sadly conscious that these ugly blemishes must be a cause of
astonishment and offense to many who knew that she was in the service of the
great Shepherd.
Most earnestly she longed to be completely delivered from these shortcom-
ings and to be made beautiful, gracious, and strong as were so many of the
Shepherd’s other workers, and above all to be made like the Chief Shepherd Him-
self. But she feared that there could be no deliverance from these two crippling
disfigurements and that they must continue to mar her service always.
8
Bride of the High Places
Deformities
READ: Page 1 of Hinds’ Feet….(facing page) & Romans 8:26–39
“Strengthen the hands that are weak and the knees that are feeble.”
—Hebrews 12:12
“But we have renounced the things hidden because of shame, not walking in
craftiness or adulterating the word of God, but by manifestation of the truth
commending ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God.”
—II Corinthians 4:2
Much-Afraid has two serious deformities which cause her distress and shame. One has
to do with her “walk” and the other with her “talk”. Do you see the analogy this is pointing
out? All of us have major problems in our inability to act and speak according to what we
know to be right, because of sin in our mind and in our flesh. In a moment you will be asked
to identify some areas in your own life. Our mind and flesh is influenced by the prince of
power of the air (Eph.2:2–3) who seeks to ruin the work of the Prince of Peace. This is
Much-Afraid’s problem and ours, too.
Also, we have both visible and hidden disfigurements; some behavior so vile we would
be ashamed of having other people see it and other behavior which is accepted by others
only because they love us (or tolerate us.) Many of us didn’t notice these things until we
came into service of the True Shepherd. Now, like Much-Afraid, we are as “sadly conscious”
as she is of her deformities. Have you become aware of your deformities and an earnest
desire to become free of them?
There is a characteristic in all of us; we would like to be attractive and gracious, draw-
ing people to us because of our character and wisdom. We want to be regarded as righteous,
but have little power to be righteous! Much-Afraid is no different and, tormented by all sorts
of fears and doubts regarding her value, is to be challenged to leave her world and walk
with the Shepherd in order to be changed.
The press of the “relatives” of fear are driving Much-Afraid toward action. Though she
abhors Craven Fear, she is not able to be free of him and is being further pressured to come
into closer relationship—to marry him! If she succumbs to that choice, he will be her mas-
ter! And our bad habits will only get worse if we are not rid of them.
QUESTIONS AND PRAYER: Please list your deformities which make it
difficult for you to serve Christ. Talk to God about your desire to please Him.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________
9