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.
Isn’t in interesting that God our Father is dealing in direct proportion, going to the depth of the ingrained habitual sin habit pattern in our lives? There is a potent innate desire within the very spiritual DNA of our make up that spells out how He wants to make known to us experientially that there is a way of escape from those ingrained sin habit patterns that have imprisoned us all. “If death got the upper hand through one man's wrongdoing, can you imagine the breathtaking recovery life makes, sovereign life, in those who grasp with both hands this wildly extravagant life-gift, this grand setting-everything-right, that the one man Jesus Christ provides?”
“For if, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.” Before anyone says, Rich, you’re too sin focused, let me clarify that, “Anything not done out of faith, IS sin!”
Most of “Christendom” has been operating out of and from a natural soulish stance, you know, that which is but the meager remnants of the first Adam, purely soulish, with no imparting (quickening) power. For those being extricated from the corrupting toxic pollution of the Religious Matrix many are experiencing for maybe the first time in their lives the serious withdrawals (the D T’s) of being all on their own, with no other mediator between them and God the Father except for the man, Christ Jesus.
So many are crying out to the Lord in the abyss of their intensified loneliness, isolation, being as it were cut off from those who use to tell them everything they needed to do and know. It would ‘appear’ that God has answered their cry for bread with a stone, or a snake or scorpion instead of some mouth watering morsel. Is He really neglecting us, or is He actually using this pain filled season in our lives to cause a further expansion, enlargement from within for the needed and required preparation for the unfolding revelation of “Who’s we are and out of that Who we are!”
I do NOT apologize for the repeated redundancy of this statement, “It’s NOT a seminar, it’s a revelation!” There is so much engendering Father is bringing to pass in my journey with Himself, at times I feel much like a very pregnant woman about to explode.
In the heart beat of a moment in being received by God the Father we instantly became His 4-ever child, but that is so far from His ultimate purpose and intention for us individually or collectively. His intension is to move us in and through grace, to become fully mature Son’s!!! I want to encourage you to NOT settle for the good at the risk of it turning out to be the enemy of His best for you in Christ.
The increased knowledge of the grace and love of the Father at least for me is spelling an intensified awareness of a noticeable limp. You know much like Jacob of old encountered in his wrestling match with an angle. In the process of this struggle Jacob is adamant; I will not let you go until you bless me. The blessing was all about a change of identity, removing his past, formerly known as Jacob, and bringing him into the present, now to be known as Israel!
Here’s the kicker, this transformational wrestling match of identity marked him for the rest of his days in his body, he walked with a limp!
For sure you say that you are craving to see Him in an even greater clarity, why not, go ahead, heck just think of the wonder of it all. Remember Paul and those out of the body heavenly God encounters, things he saw and heard that he wasn’t permitted to share with anyone, oh, and don’t forget about this, as a result of those close encounters of the most holy kind, his receiving of a most wonderful gift~a messenger of Satan to buffet him lest he become a pontificating peacock. Interesting how a deepened insight into His love and grace not only frees us, but enslaves us as well.
A question for you, what the heck good is it in being permitted to have these glorious spectacular encounters with the Father, and you can’t say a word (brag about it) about it to anyone?
It is within the crucible of life, daily living that the fashioning and the forging of the Life of God in Christ is either becoming fully formed within us, or we try to go the path of little or no resistance and settle for having a form of Godliness, knowing all about Him, but experiencing NO power. (Knowing about God’s love and not experiencing it is far to much of a serious issue to dismiss).
In a recent episode on the Oprah Winfrey show, four out of five people quizzed in a CareerBuilder.com survey are unhappy at work—that's 84 percent of the nation's workforce!
It is not enough to simply be re-birthed, but the re-birthing is that which was meant to facilitate what the scriptures point to, Jesus being the first born of many sons.
Before the fall of man within the garden there was effort, but there was no sin, no sweating or strain. All of that suddenly changed when man committed high treason in willful and defiant rebellion by declaring he was in control of his own life. . As Dave Coleman, (Wayne Jacobsen’s friend) so succinctly put it on the most recent pod cast; (Why Religion Doesn’t Work) that sin is simply us wanting to have control. Funny how pride blinds us, in thinking that we can obtain control over our own lives without seeing the inevitable and devastating consequences that turn our lives into a forgery.
It was into this arena of death and grinding devastation that the Word (Jesus Christ) became flesh and lived here with us on planet earth. The mortar and pestle of everyday circumstances and situations were used of the Father in the perfecting (forging) of His Son. It says, though he (Jesus) was the Father’s only begotten, yet he was made perfect (fully forged) through that which he suffered, or, he learned obedience through that which he suffered.
I need to touch upon what I said earlier re: the episode on Oprah about 84% of (the nations work force in the USA) people being unhappy at work.
In my opinion there is so much ambiguity regarding, ‘I love my job, I am unhappy with my job, I love my kids, my marriage etc’, without qualifying (elucidating) the adjectives being used, it all becomes a blurred generic smear. I for one love my job, but to qualify this, it has to be understood that mixed into this love of my job is a grinding, a forging, straining as it were.
In my opinion, simply stating, “I love my job…I am unhappy with my job…I love my kids…I love ice cream…I hate broccoli” etc. isn’t clear. How does the speaker define the words ‘love’, ‘unhappy’ and ‘hate’? One may love one’s job – but intermixed with all that a person’s job entails has to be a certain amount of strain. To elaborate: Jesus said that but for the joy set before him, he endured the shame of the cross. It wasn’t easy sailing, by any stretch. In the same way, when believers declare they love something – it’s important that they qualify the word ‘love’. For example: I love my dog, but when my wife and I have to spend hours de-matting his 10 inch long hair, or clean the yard of his excrement, or suffer the pain of his puppy nails raking down our bare legs in his exuberant excitement of seeing us…the word ‘love’ takes on a bit of a different meaning.
I am seeing that by either omission or intent, without elucidating with as much clarity as possible, (which encompasses both positive and negative, chaffing, grinding factors) regarding, ‘I love my job, marriage, kids, co-workers, the street I live on etc,’ will leave those struggling with the notion that if they are beset with anything less than warm, fuzzy, happy feelings, there must be something radically wrong with them.
It was through Jesus that a door was opened up for all of humanity to clearly see how the Son of God/Son of Man was going to attain perfection…and that it was not going to be achieved by his Father removing the grinding, chaffing, forging circumstances and situations needed to accomplish this perfection.
‘I pity the fool’, a phrase that became synonymous with Laurence Tureaud aka, Mr. T, I guess this somewhat dates me, eh?
Somehow that catch phrase seems to be my jumping off point here this morning, ‘I pity the fool’ that thinks that the grace and unconditional loving acceptance of God the Father is but a placebo or maybe better yet some kind of opiate that anesthetizes (neutralizes) us and gives us a sense of euphoric bliss? Seems to me if I remember correctly, that was how the first Matrix was designed by the architect in the first Matrix movie.
The intelligence of His love is indeed totally freeing, for a laugh,click on to YouTube - Mr. T: The "T" in I.T. One doesn’t have to look too long or hard at the miracle of spring and its powerful invasion within nature all around us to realize there is a huge battle, struggle and straining taking place. Funny how our present senses are so limited especially in seeing and in hearing, because I’m sure if we really had ears and eyes to see and hear, maybe what appears to be but in bud form regarding the buried bulbs bursting forth in our gardens and the buds becoming ever so much more pregnant on the trees, the silence would be eclipsed with the cacophony of the sounds of Life and its liberating beauty displacing death, and all of this beauty coming forth into the ‘visible’ world through great consternation.
Actually this is but a continuation of my thoughts from over here.
I want to say that in experiencing the love and grace of the Father, it is not nor was it ever meant to be an escape from having to face and go through the stuff as Jesus mentioned; ‘Sufficient unto the day are the struggles we will all have to face,’ or something close to that, and yes, there is grace for all of this and more!
It truly is amazing how those (and that includes a vast populace) who simply want to give the impression or keeping some kind of religious veneer/appearance of never having to sweat it, struggle anymore since being set free from their fear/control issues. If they were ever to admit to experiencing the gravitational pull of sin and having to rely upon His grace in the throes of this daily struggle/battle would somehow tarnish their new found testimony of what it means to live loved. Two words come to mind when thinking on this crock of crap-bull shit!!
If grace (love) is the power to be known for who we are (and who we are becoming), then pride must be that which chooses to try and pull the wool over the eyes of others to be seen for who we’re NOT? Sure sounds a lot like the religious self-righteous dicks Jesus bumped into a lot of the time. In my opinion, who we are and are becoming is not really real apart from His grace (love) bringing forth His son being fully formed within us apart from the strained struggle of Life displacing, overcoming the ‘true lies’ we have all believed.
‘If you continue to follow Me (Jesus), you will Know the Truth, and the Truth will set/make you free.’
The sacrifices the Law demanded could never perfect us, at best those blood sacrifices simply covered our sin. Jesus is spoken of in Psalm 40, and it says of Him, 'Burt offering and sin offering you have not required. Then I said, "Behold I come; In the scroll of the book it is written of me. I delight to do your will, oh my God".
I can never escape this One who keeps lovingly getting into my face, with the urgency of his heart probing question , "Who do you say that I Am"? There is nothing simpler or easier than to have a vicarious relationship with God done through and by what others have to say, those who have forged, treaded the wine/olive press alone. Before Jesus asked, "Who do you say I Am, he first asked, Who do men say that I Am"? Somehow trying to ride on the wave of where others have been brought into an eye witness encounter with the Lord, is not going to cut it in our being processed by Him.
This morning reading Oz Chambers, http://www.heartlight.org/cgi-shl/my_utmost/utm.cgi it so deeply touched me, again the call, being called to Himself, not to some position, status, but simply to Himself, the lover of my soul. I would say the key word that stood out to me in what Oz shared was the word 'struggle'! This quote is what I believe defines the journey I have been on and am moving into: You must struggle to get expression experimentally, then there will come a time when that expression will become the very wine of strengthening to someone else; but if you say lazily - "I am not going to struggle to express this thing for myself, I will borrow what I say," the expression will not only be of no use to you, but of no use to anyone. Try to state to yourself what you feel implicitly to be God's truth, and you give God a chance to pass it on to someone else through you.
Getting back to delighting in Him. My wife and I were discussing this very thing over breakfast this morning. My thoughts were as follows. It is my understanding that when Jesus said he came to do the Father's will, and that he delighted in doing it, he saw that His will being done in and through a human heart/body was not possible from extreme suffering. Suffering is something everyone is exposed to at one level or another, but the true suffering I see the Son of man/God experiencing, is what we are called to embrace no differently than He did.
Scripture speaks of the Son of man in this light: Though he was God's son, he was perfected through suffering, and he learned obedience through his sufferings. It is these sufferings I am wanting to flesh out here. I am of the opinion that from his earliest times as a child, Jesus was subjected to the barrage of misunderstood reactions from his fellow human beings. In this setting he knew the key to not giving into self-vindication-retaliation, was the growing secure knowledge of His fathers love for him, learning in the thick of these blows to his soul, of giving up over and over again, the 'right to himself'.
I see bondage in its truest expression having its firm hold on all of humanity until love breaks through the lies. For example, look at the multitude of people lead by Moses out of Egypt's bondage. Seemingly it would appear that their bondage was over, or was it? Maybe they would soon discover that bondage still owned them although 'outside the box'.
How is it possible to go on with the Lord as long as I am hanging onto 'my right to myself'? Maybe Jesus wasn't asking anyone to give up things as much as he was asking us to give up that which is more important than any-things, the right to myself? Much like the young rich ruler, his wealth, his abilities defined who he was, his reputation of looking just right was too much of a price to simply let go and discover who he really was meant to be.
Is this all part of what it means to be 'made of no reputation', learning in the struggle of the lies that I no longer have to convince others that I am not the person others say I am? Maybe there will be no real established identity in the believers life apart from learning what it means to empty ourselves as Jesus did.
Posts
