Month: October 2016

 

“ Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;  That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.”

~  Jesus

Am I capable of this? Am I capable of really, truly loving those who have hurt me the most? Am I able to really, sincerely forgive those who have done me wrong in the worst possible way? I can see from the thoughts that pass through my mind that it does not come readily, or naturally, this love. It is something entirely foreign to the way I’m used to acting.  I have to choose to break the normal pattern of the way I do things, and to respond in the specific way that Christ in my (the hope of glory) would choose to respond.

What does the Christ in me want to do in response to this pain?

How does the Christ in me wish for me to treat this person, who has done these things to me?

It’s not something that I need to study the Bible or ask a minister in order to figure out. It’s just as built-in now as the old, habitual brokenness is…it’s just built into my spirit. I am used to thinking and acting based on flesh, and based on my soul (she is such a selfish, broken girl, this soul of mine…I must choose to soak in the presence of God, and to let her heal.)

But yes, this love is built-in, now. It’s a part of me. It’s the deepest truth about the man I was made to be, and I have the power to be that man now. I need to choose what is right, and what is good, and I need to let those bad things go. It’s so hard sometimes. Jesus, please help me.

Nothing throws me off like switching gears back to works mode, and trying to get into a room that I’m already in. It can spin me out for weeks, if I let it. There is something about relying on our own sufficiency that seems to be very alluring to us, as humans, even though it is an utterly hopeless place to be in.

“I do not treat the grace of God as meaningless. For if keeping the law could make us right with God, then there was no need for Christ to die.” ~ Galatians 2:21

There is literally nothing that any of us can do, or that we ever could have done — ever, under any circumstances whatsoever — to make us right with God. The natural rift created by sin was something that human beings simply did not have the power to undo. I use past tense here, because those days are over. Because of what Jesus Christ did for you and me, we all have free access to the throne of God, to ask for help whenever we need it.

Because of this, spending time with God is something that we can do immediately, and it can happen whenever we want. The sense that our prayers are not heard, that we must struggle to convince Him to listen, is based on a faulty consciousness of a situation that is simply not based in reality anymore. All separation was completely done away with by what Jesus has already done. Nothing more could ever be added to the atoning work of Calvary, and nothing can ever be taken away from it. Not really.

We can become convinced that this is not true, though…and the faith of a human being is a powerful thing, whether it’s in the right thing or not. This is the devil’s only real power: to convince us that God is against us. If he can do that, then he’s got you. Ugh. He’s such a jerk. Don’t let him do it! Do not put more faith in your sin than you do in God’s grace. Remember that you came to Jesus by grace alone, and only grace can keep you. If there is ever to be any hope of full deliverance from everything that does not line up with the Word of God, then it is only in His grace. Know that.

 

Today I choose to walk by faith, and not by sight. I will continue to abide, to be like the tree planted by the rivers of water…I turn my attention to the rivers of water that are flowing out of my very own being, and I choose to be aware of these things to the exclusion of external circumstances which would appear to tell a different story.

Pain and confusion will pass away. They are the harvest of the seeds sown in the ignorance of yesteryear, but today (while it is called today) I will sow new seeds. I speak the Word of God over every situation, and I will choose to cease from all other striving, and to be still, and to know with every fiber of my being that He is God, and that I am not. I am His temple. I am the earthen vessel into which He has poured the treasure of His Spirit, and I will have respect to these articles of truth. I refuse the lies of the enemy, always too far to one side or the other, either that I am worthless and cannot expect help from God, or that I basically am God, and that God will side with me in unrighteousness if I so choose — all of this is a part of the strong delusion that is coming upon those who would not receive a love of the truth…

…But I reject every bit of it. I reject all lies. I cast aside that invitation I was given to the great falling away party, and instead I take up the eternal, all-encompassing invitation of Jesus to trust in Him, and to abide in Him, and to come away with Him into the secret place, where there is no time, and there is only this Love that has captured my heart, this Agape which God describes as being so united with who He is that it is synonymous with His identity itself…He is Love, and that is forever true.

To all of this I hold on for dear life, though the storms threaten to tear me down and make me into nothing…I say here and now that they will wash away only the sand that I foolishly built my house on (for the house itself has long been destroyed) and strip my land of the rocks and thorns which ruin the soil, and everything which is not found in Him, until all that is left after their merciless ravages is the pure and simple Rock of Ages, the spiritual Rock that is Christ, the only true foundation of my new identity, the person God made me to be…and upon this Rock I will begin to build again. And this new house, when the storms of this world come, though it be battered and assailed from every side by the fury of the elements, will not be shaken, and will not be destroyed.

I shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water again, and this time the entire work will be one hundred percent tried and tested, measured and found to be in accordance with all of the very best that Love has to offer. The day is arriving, the night is long spent, and I arise now into my true self to see and behold that the best is truly yet to come.