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I want to share some additional thoughts that Father has been speaking to me about.I want to start here as a point of reference, please read the following first, if you haven’t already.
There has never been a separation or divorce between the “letter or the spirit,” from the Father’s perspective:
“who has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.”
We are prone to establishing things such as using a word/s to try and definitively state what we mean using that word or words, but maybe much like the line from the movie, The Princess Bride, “maybe that word doesn’t mean what you keep saying it means.”
And one of those words is ‘the prophetic.’
I want to share something from a book by Brennan Manning, and in his case he is using a word, ‘discipleship,’ that I see tying in with my thoughts. Manning is in this portion quoting William Berry. “After the cure, as Jesus was getting into the boat, the man who had been demon possessed begged to go with him. Jesus did not let him, but said, “Go home to your family and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you” (Mark 5:18-19). The man apparently did not bemoan this ‘rejection’ as an injustice. Rather, the man went away and began to tell in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him. And ll the people were amazed.”
Apparently, this man was not called to radical discipleship. Yet he was called, as we are all called, to LISTEN attentively to God’s first word to us. This word is the gift of ourselves to ourselves: our existence, our nature, our personal history, our uniqueness, our identity. All that we have and are is one of the unique and never-to-be-repeated ways God has chosen to express himself in space and time. Each of us , made in his image and likeness, is yet another promise he has made to the universe that he will continue to love it and care for it.
However, even when faith persuades us that we are a word of God, we may remain ignorant of what God is trying to say through us. Thomas Merton wrote: “God utters me like a word containing a partial thought of Himself. A word will never be able to comprehend the voice that utters it. But if I am true to the concept (reality) that God utters in me, if I am true to thought in him I was meant to embody, I shall be full of his actuality and find him everywhere in myself and fine myself nowhere. I shall be lost in Him.”
With endurance and perseverance we must wait for God to make clear what he wants to say through is. Such waiting involves patience and attention, as well as the courage to let yourself be spoken. This courage comes only through faith in God, who utters no false word.
It is this highlighted part here, He has spoken once again into the deep places of my heart, and I invite those whom He, the Father of your spirit has spoken to, to share any thoughts you might have on this.
One thing I know for sure, “there is no way we can straight jacket the Holy Spirit no matter how much we would sometimes like to. The Holy Spirit is the bearer of gifts and these gifts are sometimes lavished in peculiar places.” God bestows his grace abundantly but unevenly. He offers no explanation why some are called to radical discipleship and others are not.
Let’s continue to see a new depth of understanding in the words we are so familiar with, within the scriptures, perhaps there is a fresh-new discovery therein for you and me!
Rich
