You get hammered in life, but you get hammered into interesting shapes.
Like most, I'd prefer my blessings to come without disguises! And then Life happened.......
A son discovering the reality of God as his Father.
Words that do not become flesh in us remain "just words." They have no power to affect our lives. If someone says, "I love you," without any deep emotion, the words do more harm than good. But if these same words are spoken from the heart, they can create new life.
It is important that we keep in touch with the source of our words. Our great temptation is to become "pleasers," people who say the right words to please others but whose words have no roots in their interior lives. We have to keep making sure our words are rooted in our hearts. The best way to do that is in prayerful silence.
The Cross of Christ was a triumph for the Son of Man. It was not only a sign that our Lord had triumphed, but that He had triumphed to save the human race. Because of what the Son of Man went through, every human being has been provided with a way of access into the very presence of God.
'Until the crisis-dis-illusionments come into our lives, the greater-higher purposes of the Father remain hidden.' (totally obscure to us)
No assembly, no church, no movement, no testimony, no fellowship, is justified in its existence from God's standpoint except insofar as Christ is expressed by it.
We who preach the gospel must not think of ourselves as public relations agents sent to establish good will between Christ and the world. We must not imagine ourselves commissioned to make Christ acceptable to big business, the press, the world of sports or modern education. We are not diplomats but prophets, and our message is not a compromise but an ultimatum.
You wrote: "God loves us, we love him, and life happens" which is interesting because "And Then Life Happened" just happens to be the title of my blog. I chose that title because it's the chords to the song the Lord is playing as he directs my life.
Due to the length of my wife's musings, I thought I would answer your question as a new entry in my blog.
This is a combined response, btw. My wife, Margo, is adding her input below:
From Margo:
Dear Beth, You are a very good writer, and we both love how the Lord is revealing his heart to you, personally, as an individual. Love that about him!
Here's my take about the advice you were given:
I think the advice was good (thank heavens for the Internet!), but even if you didn't have access to cyberspace I believe God would have been able to answer your question. Why? Because you appear to have a sincere, inquiring heart...and I believe that sort of thing gets him all fired up (not being disrespectful...but I am coming to know him as a person and I do think he gets excited about some things)! Life does tend to happen to everyone and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to discern that good and bad things occur all the time for no apparent reason. Having access to the scriptures is nice but not necessary. Case in point; Job didn't have a bible either!
The book of Job has played a big part in our lives, simply because we had our own kind of Job experience that lasted about ten miserable years. During that time, God not only crushed and ground us to bits but then pulverized the resulting dust. You may ask why a God of love would do such a thing, as did we - billions of times!
I think there are innumerable things our finite, clay-based minds cannot possibly comprehend about our Heavenly Father - the wonder, the terror, the majesty, the meekness...BUT - there is one thing that's a constant, and that is God is love. Until we get our minds around that truth, and know it as an unchanging, unalterable fact (no matter how chaotic, cruel or nonsensical life can be) then nothing else is relevant. I can take comfort in that never-changing truth: God is love. It seems so simplistic, yet is so all-encompassing. It seems like a platitude, but it's pregnant with truth. And at times, that's all we can manage to whisper when we are broken with grief or horror or disappointment or depression or gut-wrenching sorrow: "God is love".
God is love. I guess that's enough for us to know right now. One day we will understand, but until we get to the sweet by-and-by, in the nasty now-and-now that's where faith comes in, faith founded on the truth that "God is love".
I recall the story of Helen Rosevere. She was a medical missionary doctor stationed in the Congo. Eventually, guerrilla forces overtook her camp and she was savagely beaten and brutally raped many times. She demanded to know from God why he had allowed it to happen, particularly when she had sacrificed her own life in order to serve him. I won't ruin the story for you in case you ever read the account, but when God gave her the answer she was ashamed she had asked. It was sufficient to her to know...God is love.
And yes, I do agree: "there is nothing greater than being with God, in all meanings of that preposition." With God, in God...love those prepositions!
Re Job: You already know God took away all that he had (children, livestock, real estate, health, respect etc.) But isn't it interesting that at the end of his life, God replaced it all - in double portion - everything that is, EXCEPT his children. Job originally had ten. You would have thought that the next family would consist of twenty. Now, why do you think that was? I think I know the answer but I would be interested in hearing what you think!
From Richard: Beth,
Here is a link, see here, to something that reaches into the depths of my being. I perceive what is penned here to be succinctly relevant to what is being postulated by us both.
In the ongoing continued inner dealings of the spirit of God, our being trained in the schooling of being loved, is the Father of our spirit pontificating or is he postulating regarding the intense breaking that continues their redemptive crushing and crashing upon our souls?
Is that how it seemed to our brother and friend Job when God basically told Job to stand up on his hind legs and listen to a wisdom that was intricately apart of all that was undoing this man’s life!
Starting from Job chapters 38 to 41, you are brought into this close encounter with God and a man whose life has been up to this point been defined by misguided and darkened counsel. Soon there is to be a forth coming illumination in Job’s life, out of the whirlwind God is now going to speak.
In not knowing, knowing internally that is, that the Law was and remains fulfilled by love, is it any wonder that much of what is supposedly conveyed as the “good news,” is nothing more than a counterfeit gospel, (one among a plethora of others), one steeped in morality. Something that gives the appearance of rightness (righteousness) but in fact has not ever been something that lovingly flows from ones heart bringing to pass an outer change because of that which altered them first from the inside.
“Love does no wrong to a neighbour; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.”
“For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.”
Last night my good friend Dave sent me a link that is still resonating in my heart (a direct answer to my crying out to God as I went to sleep) and it is the one at the top of what I’m sharing here, it’s about 16 minutes long, but well worth the viewing.
I said to my wife today, If I do not really believe and I don’t mean wish or hope, but deep down where I really live, respond to the reality that God my Father actually lavishly celebrates me as a chosen delight and treasure to Himself, then why the hell would I give a rats ass of concern for anyone else around me, other than to do it with my mouth, but my heart really not engaged in it?
It says that while I was a “sinner-enemy,” He, God, chose to lay down His life FOR me, then why is it a chore to love those still seeing themselves as sinners and enemies of God, unless of course I’m projecting law onto them?
It is of my understanding from the scriptures, we are to speak the truth in love, the out come being a steady and continued maturation, or being perfected in the spirit of love contained within the truth. As long as we are in a cemented static fixed heart condition of looking at things, especially what the truth is within the scriptures, we might have gleaned something that we see as being ‘good’ but it will prevent us from seeing the much more readily available, to those wanting to stay fluid in heart and mind.
Fear and intimidation are the common weapons of choice used, hurled, at anyone who opposes the established collective body of knowledge that has become the prescribed template with NO exceptions. Into this caustic arena Life will always fine a way of trying to woo hearts from having become fossilized and once again embedded in stone, into a living vibrant knowing the truth from the bewitching lies that have ensnared them.
The charges often brought against brothers and sisters who long for a deeper relationship with the Father are not new. Similar charges of the same sort were spoken of in the account of the stoning of Stephen. “They produced false witnesses, who testified, “This fellow never stops speaking against this holy place.” (Acts 6:13). Let’s give our heads a shake, what crimes are these people charging to Stephen? They are upset what they perceive as testimony against a physical place and against the law. You may see right away that these people are wrong to attack Stephen for speaking against a place. You may, however, say it is wrong to oppose the law because it is God’s law. But do we really teach against the law, or do we teach that the law is NOW fulfilled in Christ? This is why these were false witnesses. We do not speak against the law, but against the failure to recognize the new thing that God has done.
What has been is now happening all over again, as people are being driven out of religious (organized churches) institutions because they simply want to go the distance in further discovering further depths and heights of the vastness of His love. In the rigid mind sets of the adherents of the religious communities, when we speak against the organization of religion, we speak “against this holy place.” When we assert the freedom in Christ, we are accused of speaking against the law.”
What glorious days we the church, His body find ourselves in, being swept into the under-current-tow of a boundless, unmeasured love branding us with the marks of our master.
Some of the thoughts here, I gleaned from my friends book, "Life in the Leper Colony, by Bill Landon."
If my point of reference is me being led by a broken compass going in what I think has to be the right direction, (after all I didn’t skimp out on buying a ‘cheap’ compass) then why the hell do my eyes hurt so much when the truth is realized, my compass was broken?Neo: “Why do my eyes hurt?” Morpheus: “You’ve never used then before.”If nothing is as it appears to be, then why do we suddenly feel so alone, isolated, cut off from this world, as well as from people, unless we begin to see through the lie that our well being, acceptance was only as good as our performance!!
Somewhere in the process of being born I crossed over into the Twilight Zone and for the better part of my life it was as if I hadn’t even existed. It’s one thing to experience guilt for a number of reasons, actual or merely perceived, but to live out of shame; it is an inner branding that poisons everything and screams back at you, “You’re less than shit”!
It has only been within the last twelve years or so that out of this dung heap of an identity of shame that my precious, kind and caring Father has made it possible to begin to know the reality of not measuring my worth based upon what I have or don’t have, and that includes being born and all that which unfolded within my life from that point. He has and continues to draw me ever deeper into the light of his consuming love, and as I am beginning to adjust to my belovedness in Him, the clouds of fear and shame that have tried to define who I am are slowly melting before my eyes.
As the clouds roll away, the unclouded expression of His deep affection and love for me reach out like a heat seeking missile seeking other lost and shamed gripped orphans. The abundant fruitfulness that is coming forth from my utter infertility is gripping my soul with such awe and wonder, I hesitate to even consider what yet lies ahead.
For me, living out loud, sharing my thoughts here on my blog/s are primarily to do with my continued and growing relationship with God my loving heavenly Father. It is out this budding revelation I want to share these fresh from the oven thoughts that came straight from His heart to mine this morning.
Because of how fear has so polluted and imprisoned me, whenever the Lord would try to speak to the hurts in my life, usually through my loving caring treasured wife, I would usually be launched into a diatribe defense of myself, but this morning was another glimpse into what is being undone in the depths of my being. I have a problem with excessive talkativeness. Probably everyone around me could attest to this – everyone, that is, except me! It has only been within the last two days that the Lord has finally been able to infiltrate the slightest crack in the veneer I had created for myself that has existed since childhood. When I shared with my wife how exhausted I was after talking for hours with a house guest and how I couldn’t seem to keep myself from going on and on, she noticed that it was the first time I had ever admitted to having a problem in this area. In the past, when she noticed how others would politely zone out after a while and suggested I learn to listen more and talk less, I would get very angry. I’d immediately come to my own defense and shut her down, saying, “I talk because that is how God made me! If people don’t like it, it’s tough!” However, today was a different story. I admitted that I didn’t know how to stop myself from talking on and on. My wife said she felt it was a nervous reaction, and by me finally admitting it as such was the beginning of seeing this bastion that has so negatively shaped my life starting to crumble. On the heels of this Father spoke this heart message to me, Son, it was out of fear you carved, established an identity to compensate for all of the terror, trauma and abandonment you experienced in growing up as a child, but know this, it is my love for you that is setting the stage for this to all be dismantled, it is my love that will calm your soul and as you rest in the security of my Love for you, this surgical procedure will release and bring to the surface your true identity, one totally established, rooted in a love that has NO conditions!
Father’s day being just around the corner and seeing as how my dad passed away January the 21 2006, I wanted to honour him as well as my heavenly father with what I have shared here. Speaking of my earthly dad, Father brought back to mind a memory of mine that happened a few short years before he died, it was while I was visiting him in a nursing home, when I said to him just before leaving to head back home, “Dad, you owe me nothing, I owe you everything.” Later Father spoke to me about that which I said to me dad, “Son, do you know what you are doing, I thought, Lord, I’m not sure I’m hearing you right, He said, you are fathering your father, as you are discovering the truth of my healing, restoring love as your Father, you are presenting your father with a father he as well never had.”
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