Author: Benjamin

The very first thing, the only thing, the ultimate thing I must do before anything else…the thing upon which everything else I do must be based; that’s what this is.

You have chased me with your love. Well, here I am…

I am me, and You know that. You are not surprised, or shocked, and still I am sorry (really, though) about all this mess. Knowing so fully all the ways in which I have fallen short, I feel as though I must be this gigantic disappointment to you, but somehow it’s the enemy’s voice which brings this up, this consciousness of the travesty of the state of my self. You have never showed up to rub my nose in something. The real You has never done this. Not. One. Time.

Christ in me is my only hope. There is a certain way in which an understanding of this idea forms the centermost foundational thing in each present moment now, if I am engaging that moment in the best way possible — that is, in the way which would prove most beneficial to my soul, and thus to the world.

Jesus, sometimes I feel like my soul is kind of a dumb bird. But You do not feel this way. To You, my soul is the most beautiful thing…worth dying for. Worth enduring unspeakable pain. Worth sacrificing a lifetime of pleasure and opportunity…

To sacrifice one’s life is already a super huge thing.

To sacrifice your life for someone who hates you? You did that for me, for us…this is like the ultimate example of what we all know real love is. We all know it, deep down. Real love endures anything and everything, and it just keeps believing in the redeeming value of the thing that it loves.

And you’re not taking it back. You’re not saying to me, “Ugh, actually, you know what? Never mind. This is dumb. I guess you’re not worth it after all.”

Because You don’t think that way. That’s not what You’re like. That’s not who You are.

You’re staying 100 percent fully committed, in each and every moment. Even the moments where I’m totally screwing it up, all you are ever actually wanting to do is to be with me. All you want me to do is to come to You, and to just be there in that place. We call it the secret place, under the shadow of Your wings.

Its crazy that You have wings.

In any given situation, no matter how twisted around things may have gotten, the only thing you want me to do is to run to you. You just want me to be with You. I have been in the dark, Lord, and when I was there I did not feel like you wanted me to run to you. I felt like you wanted to unleash wrath on me. But my feelings, real as though they were, did not reflect an accurate understanding of reality…

The only healthy way in which I can respond to anything is in love. There are many ways in which I can choose to respond, of course, but I must only respond in love. This is absolutely first and foremost in the priorities of a believer, unless they have gotten knocked off course. 

If your enemy knows that you know this, then he will try to redefine your perceptions of what love really is. He will cause you to question your conscience on the matter of treating others with equity. He will attempt to persuade you that offense is okay. 

Offense is never okay. The only unavoidable offense is the kind where you did absolutely everything you could to act in love, and they reacted out of a place of pain, and that kind is something that you cannot control. All other offense can be absolutely avoided, though, simply by choosing to, as a rule, act in love.

As a father, I can tell you that my teenage son often takes issue with me, when I am speaking to him from a place of authority about behavior that requires correction. I was lamenting over this to a friend of mine some time ago. I was telling them about a recent incident where my kid dismissed everything I was saying outright, on the grounds that I was “just being a jerk.” 

Instead of agreeing with my overall disdain for this response, my friend said, “Yeah, but you probably were being a jerk, though.”

Instantly, I felt conviction. I had replayed the incident in my mind, and observed my own attitude and tone of voice. I realized I’d been speaking out of frustration, and in a condescending, patronizing tone. I hadn’t been staying in that place of peace, where love is the most important thing.

Do we wanna be really real here? At that moment I realized that, an embarrassingly large percentage of the time, when I am engaged in a conflict of any kind, I am acting mostly from a place of fear, and not from a place of peace and security, and this is so backwards for a believer. It’s tragic, really.

Thankfully, it is easy to correct! The source of those bedrock characteristics of faith (peace, security, and so on — the source of these itself, I say) has been planted solidly in the soil of my heart. It has taken root, and there has fruit been borne of it; it is an integral part of who I am, way deep down. It is the very core of who I am. 

I must be careful in all things to consider the place of prominence that should be given to the Christ in me. I must allow Him to come first, in all things. I must let this mind be in me. And it’s really not an “I must” kind of thing. It’s something I am given the unspeakably wonderful privilege of enjoying! However uncomfortable it may seem to my flesh, however disoriented it may cause me to become while I am still unused to doing it in a certain way, its practice will inevitably lead me into the greatest possible place of personal fruition and fulfillment. It will guide me into the becoming of the best possible version of myself. 

This is a huge deal. 

 

I choose to be here with You now, because You choose to be here with me now. This is a mutual love thing going on…and You chose me first. I am not winning Your affections on account of any special virtue…This love relationship has been one hundred percent initiated by You and You alone, and the only way I can actually reciprocate it is to do so from a place of complete honesty. I am what I am, and You offer to accept me that way, and only as we continue on these terms am I transformed from glory to glory, into the person You’ve intended me to become. This is how I step into my destiny…by being honest about who I am, and about who You are, and by continuing in a place of simple acceptance.

As I rise this morning, I look first to You, Jesus. You are always with me, and I choose to keep this first in my mind. I need this truth to permeate everything I think, say, and do, in order for You to do your healing work in my life as effectively as possible. I choose now to refuse the lies of my enemy, which slither and stalk, threatening me with fear and condemnation. These thoughts are not mine, and they do not come from You, Jesus, and they have nothing to do with Your ways or Your kingdom. I cast them down, and I stand firm in the original words You have spoken to your servant…

I even repent a little bit, Lord, for thinking lower of our relationship than You do, for you say in Your word they You have called me no longer a servant, but a friend! Help me to understand this friendship better today, as I go about my life. Help me to understand and to believe that I have friendship with God.

I stand as one guilty of accusing God’s plan. I don’t resist these charges. Their allegations are true. I’ve been weighed and found wanting in all kinds of ways. But Jesus, you are always, always, always calling me up and away with you,  asking me to forgive myself and move forward, as if these things that I have done don’t even matter at all.

How can this be? I am told that you are a holy God, absolutely intolerant of sin, and I am shown my own trespasses in a light and a way after which I have no misgivings about the severity of things, in general.

None of this matters to you. Jesus, your atonement has rendered all my transgressions inert, removed, harmless, irrelevant…and my only actual instructions from you now are to come up and away, away from the catastrophe, away from the lies, away from the things which put my mind in a place where I am vulnerable to believing that there is anything beneficial at all whatsoever about the way things can go, apart from you, because there is no separation now. I must retain NOW in my thoughts, in my memories. I must remember NOW.

You are with me NOW. You call me up to you NOW. You call me up and away in the moment, in each individual moment, and they are adventures, all of them, beyond my most optimistic inclinations, and they are wonderful beyond words, and all of this is too much for me. It is too good.

This is what I am called to wake up to, in this great, violent spasm of repentance. This is what you mean when you talk about choosing you. This is righteousness, this beautiful perfection. I have been a fool, and you call me anyway. I have been a transgressor, an accuser, a wretched, vengeful glutton, running blindly from pain, and into pain, and slapping away the helps and the provisions, and the opportunities for more and greater freedom. I have chosen the darkness, and I was choosing the darkness when you found me, and I continued to choose it in all kinds of ways when you broke in upon me and invaded my soul with peace.

You take me from this perch of malevolent fear, and you place me in a garden of joy.

I must remember the NOW. I look at each present moment as only an opportunity for more of what you are in my NOW.

In this place of choosing only you, there flows a river of healing that never stops. Death no longer progresses, no longer attains, no longer controls or directs. Life has been chosen here now, and it is all that there is for me, for us…and we choose it together.

You are my base reality. The words You speak to me, they are life, and they make me clean from the pain of the lies I’ve believed my whole life. You do not condemn me, for You came not into the world to condemn us, but to rescue us from the lies. The strength of their influence is impenetrable to us on our own. Different counterfeit methods are available, methods that pretend to offer deliverance, but which only actually offer transition into another version of the big lie. You are the only actual truth, and the words You’ve spoken over me will not return void; they will accomplish the thing that you intended them to accomplish – that being the full and complete transition of my soul out of the darkness to which it has become so accustomed, and into the light wherein You dwell, full and absolute, complete, lacking nothing, requiring nothing, providing everything, perpetuating peace, and joy, and the fruition of all good things.

I am in You.

In you…I Am. 

Let go. Really let go. Trust you with everything. That’s what this life is. I trust you with everything, even when it’s scary. Especially then, actually.

How to actually do this, once things have gotten complicated, and I can no longer relate to you in that clean, simple way that I once could, back at the beginning, back when this all started out. Plot twist: I actually can. Nothing has changed between us. Nothing has ever had the power to change your commitment to me. You have chosen me, and I then chose you, and we are locked in this love, now and forever, this eternal dance of learning and peace.

All those perceptions of how I’ve screwed up, and how I’ve failed the tests, and how you’ve passed over me and found someone better…those are all the enemy’s ideas. Those are his whispers I hear, saying those things to my soul. I shouldn’t listen to them. I refuse to listen to them. I can identify them because of the vast difference between their overall vibe and the pure and simple love that you are, Jesus. Those lies feel cold and harsh. Your love is the opposite; gentle and warm.

I am swayed and troubled, because he uses your words to support what he says. He twists the Bible, and applies it to those whispered fears…but it’s the same old tricks that he used on you. He said, “But Jesus, the Bible says this: ________,” and you answered right back, “But you’re dumb, and this is what it actually means:________.” *

Help me to know your word like that, God. Help me to know it so thoroughly that, when the enemy tries to use it against me, I have something solid and familiar to resist it with. Help me in general. I need it so badly. I need you so much. I can’t do this without you.

Help me to really let go of everything I think I know, and to rest in your embrace. Help me to stay there. Help me to hate the things of the flesh, that draw me away, and that numb out my sensitivity to you. Help me to hear you more, and to feel you better.

* (In reference to the temptation of Christ in the wilderness — Matthew 4, Luke 4) 

If fear is the seed that is planted, then fear is the tree that will grow. Love ends fear. Love destroys fear. In the presence of love, fear and all its unholy children have to either leave or die; there can be no compromise. Love does not require fear in order to induce obedience. Love does not involve fear on any level at all, whatsoever. The two things do not coexist in harmony. Rather, they clash. One must, of necessity, antagonize the other. They are not ever actually friends, and anyone who would convince you they are is trying to sell you something poisonous.

So much of our religion has adopted fear as a sort of hired thug; someone to do the dirty work of terrifying the ostensibly halfhearted into submission, and making true believers out of them. This whole business is based on an an altogether faulty pretext, this being that reconciliation must, of necessity, be the progeny of condemnation. It’s the single most warned-about thing in the New Testament, this lie.

Fear is appealing, because it allows us to control people…we use it to startle, and to give pause, and then we use the vulnerability this creates as an opportunity to reach in and gain a handle on  the person’s decision making. It’s something we do when we’re not trusting God. It’s something we do when we haven’t let go. These are lessons impossible to be learned without pain, pain so bad I almost wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy…

…And yet, it is a pain that God uses to perfect that which concerns us, his masterpiece. I repent for ever thinking otherwise (which I have done to no end, me having been a particularly troublesome human, at times.) I rejoice in the truth of the risen Christ, who loved me and gave himself for me (and for you!) and who absolutely succeeded. I thank you, Jesus for the things you have taught me about fear, and how bad it is, and how toxic, and deadly. Allow me the grace to never use this knowledge for evil. Allow me the strength to use every drop of my energy to love the world the way you do. Amen.

 

Intimacy with You is the deepest reality. Everything good is a refraction of this, and everything contradictory is a temporary aberration from the true order of things. You are love. I was made for love. These are the main, basic truths.

Is there anything separating us, Lord? No. Your blood erased all boundaries. So why do I listen to the condemning thoughts that pretend to accuse and deride? All things considered, they are obviously from the enemy. So why give in to them, or give ear at all?

Because I am distracted. Because I am not focused on you. Because I carelessly allow my attention to be consumed with ungodly things. But why do I do this? Because I doubt the solidity of your commitment to me. Because I feel certain of my own impending failure, and because, ultimately, I believe that your faithfulness hinges on my own performance, which, though it has been tried, has been oft found untrue, and which therefore presents a foundation of sand.

Jesus, help me to until this knot. Help me to know first and foremost that you are with me, and that you are for me, and that the one who is against me is therefore not you. You have promised this in your Word.

Only with a confidence in these main, basic things can even the slightest actual progress be made. Anything outside the realm of this already-perfect love amounts to law, and law cannot cohabitate with faith. Any attempt at it will produce nothing but an awkward symbiosis, born of fear, and doomed to failure. The true Christian faith is based on faith alone; favor without merit or qualification. It is to this faith that the law and all the prophets always pointed; God, please open my eyes in every way to behold these wonderful things.

I will not be drawn aside, to the right hand or the left, to behold and absorb the characteristics of either extreme. Every place on the spectrum of this teeter-totter religion system is equally in error. It is all down here, based in Earth things, based in flesh. God, your system is up there, and in you, and through you, and therefore in me, but at a level beyond flesh, beyond fear and striving, beyond the fray of whatever this is that haunts us and keeps us here against the will of our spirit (our true self.)

I will be distracted by nothing and no one, nothing will stop me from diving in anymore. Here in the present moment — always here, no matter what or when it is in other terms, I am always here with you, I see that now. Nothing can separate me from this anymore.