Hope Hangs Upon Seeing

The Need Of The Hour

That brings us, then, to the need of the hour, the need which, of course, is the need of every hour, of every day, of every age. But we are made more and more aware in our time of this need, and in a sense, we can say there never was a time when there was a greater need for people who could say and can say, I see! That is the need just now. Great and terrible is that need, and not until that need is met will there be any hope. Hope hangs upon this, that there would arise people in this world, this dark world of confusion and chaos and tragedy and contradiction, people who are able to say, I see! If there should arise a man to-day who had position, to exercise influence and be taken account of, and such a man who saw, what new hope would arise with him, what a new prospect! That is the need. Whether that need will be met in a public, national, international way or not, I do not know, but that need must be met in a spiritual way by people on this earth who are in that position, who really can say, I see!

You see, Christianity has so largely become a tradition. The truth has been resolved into truths and put into a Blue-Book, the Blue-Book of Evangelical Doctrine, a set and fenced up thing. These are the evangelical doctrines, they set the bounds of evangelical Christianity in preaching and in teaching. Yes, they are presented in many and various forms. They are served up with interesting and attractive anecdotes and illustrations, and with studied originality and uniqueness, so that the old truths will not be too obvious, but will stand some chance of getting over because of the clothes in which they are dressed up; and a very great deal depends upon the ability and the personality of the preacher or the teacher. People say, I like his style, I like his manner, I like his way of saying things! - and much depends upon that: but when all those trappings have been stripped off, the stories, the anecdotes, the illustrations, and the personality and the ability of the preacher or teacher: when that has all gone, you have simply got again the same old things, and some of us come along and outdo the last man in the way of presenting them in order to gain for them some acceptance, some impression. I do not think that is unkind criticism, for that is what it amounts to; and no one will think that I am asking for a change or dismissal of the old truths.

But what I am trying to get at is this: it is not new truths, it is not the changing of the truth, but it is that there shall be those who, in presenting the truth, can be recognised by those who listen as men who have seen: and that makes all the difference. Not men who have read and studied and prepared, but men who have seen, about whom there is that which we find in this man in John 9 - the element of wonder. "Whether he is a sinner, I know not: one thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see". And you know whether a person has seen or not, you know where it has come from and how it has come: and that is the need: that something, that indefinable something, which works out in wonder, and you have to say, That man has seen something, that woman has seen something! It is that seeing factor which makes all the difference.

Rich

Hopeless Situations

In having no to very little revelation in our lives, we simply do what we have learned to do from birth, draw from our bankrupt resources, going real fast nowhere.
Here’s the kicker in my opinion, Jesus said, “Except you are born anew, you cannot see, or enter the Kingdom of God!”
Why is there such pandemic blindness in our lives especially if the source of Life is resident in us as us? "In him was life; and the life was the light of men."

Chapter 4 of John is but another way of setting forth the same truth. The woman after all is found to be bankrupt, at zero. Jesus gradually draws her out and the final expression from her side is, in effect, Well, I don't know anything about that, I have not anything of that; I have been coming here every day, day after day, but I know nothing about what you are talking of! She is down to zero: and then He says, That is where we begin. The water that I shall give is not the drawing upon your own resources at all, not bringing something out of your well, it is not something that you can produce and I improve upon and make better. No, it is something which comes solely and only from Myself; it is a new act altogether apart from you; it is the water that I shall give. We begin all over again in this matter.

The glory of God is not found in improving, the glory of God is found in resurrection. That is what is coming out here. The glory of God is not found in our being able to produce something or put something into God's hands, something of ours, that He can take up and make use of. The glory of God is something solely out from God Himself, and we can contribute nothing. The glory of God comes out of zero.
he glory of God is in resurrection, and therefore love demands that everything shall come to the place where only resurrection will meet the situation; no curing of things, no remedying of the old man.

Oh, let me start right back at the beginning if it is necessary. There are still a lot of people in this world who think that there is something in man that can contribute to the glory of God and that Christianity is only the bringing up out of man of something that is for the glory of God. That is a long-, long-standing fallacy and lie. It is not true. Call it what you like; it goes by various names, such as 'the inner light' or 'the vital spark'. The Word of God all the way through is coming down tremendously on this thing. I start at zero, and zero for me means that I can contribute nothing. Everything has to come from God. The very fact that the gift of God is eternal life means that you have not got it until it is given to you. You are blind until God gives you the faculty of sight. You are dead until God gives you life. You are a hopeless cripple until God does something for you and in you which you can never do. Unless God does this thing, unless this act takes place, well, there you lie. Spiritually, that is how you are. You can contribute nothing. Nicodemus, you have nothing to give, you must be born again; I cannot take you at the point at which you come to Me! Woman of Samaria, you have nothing, and you know it and confess it: that is where I begin! Man of Bethesda, you can do nothing, and you know it: then it all rests with Me! If ever there is to be anything, it rests with Me! Lazarus, what can you do now, and what can anybody make of you? If I do not come right in as out from heaven and do this thing, then there is nothing but corruption!
Glory—that the Lord shall be glorified in us. What greater thing could happen than that the Lord should be glorified in us? The glory of God is bound up with the resurrection, and resurrection is God's unique and sole prerogative. So that if God is to be glorified in us, you and I have to live on Him as the resurrection and the life from day to day, and know Him as that as we go through life.

Rich

The Gateway to the Family of God

I love these thoughts from Oz Chambers this morning, they smack of wonder and awe of Him and His ability to accomplish the impossible in anyone!

Rich

Beware of placing Our Lord as a Teacher first. If Jesus Christ is a Teacher only, then all He can do is to tantalize me by erecting a standard I can not attain. What is the use of presenting me with an ideal I cannot possibly come near? I am happier without knowing it. What is the good of telling me to be what I never can be - to be pure in heart, to do more than my duty, to be perfectly devoted to God? I must know Jesus Christ as Saviour before His teaching has any meaning for me other than that of an ideal which leads to despair. But when I am born again of the Spirit of God, I know that Jesus Christ did not come to teach only: He came to make me what He teaches I should be. The Redemption means that Jesus Christ can put into any man the disposition that ruled His own life, and all the standards God gives are based on that disposition.

The teaching of the Sermon on the Mount produces despair in the natural man - the very thing Jesus means it to do. As long as we have a self-righteous, conceited notion that we can carry out Our Lord's teaching, God will allow us to go on until we break our ignorance over some obstacle, then we are willing to come to Him as paupers and receive from Him. "Blessed are the paupers in spirit," that is the first principle in the Kingdom of God. The bedrock in Jesus Christ's kingdom is poverty, not possession; not decisions for Jesus Christ, but a sense of absolute futility - I cannot begin to do it. Then Jesus says - Blessed are you. That is the entrance, and it does take us a long while to believe we are poor! The knowledge of our own poverty brings us to the moral frontier where Jesus Christ works.

Blame Versus Intent

If we have derived any portion of an identity apart from the true knowledge of God the Father’s love, it is an accident looking for a place to happen. I cannot escape the grip of His total and consuming love for me, drawing me ever deeper into the true knowledge of “Whose I am,” which gives definition to who I actually am.

The truth is an amazingly sharp and penetrating liberator as it is being applied to the lies that have shaped me into someone, something that has no resemblance to what He has purposed me to be – which is to be 100% His. It continues to be the truth of His love for me that is unraveling the grave clothes that have kept me bound in fear, long after He apprehended me. It is this love that empowers me to embrace this skilled heart surgeon to finish extracting me from all and everything that has blinded me from a true view of my God and Father. It’s our view of Him that defines our lives!

My wife was sharing with me this morning something she overheard on the Dr. Phil show, a program she rarely watches - but that morning she heard Father speaking through Dr. Phil. The following exchange is in many ways similar to my own my story, including the money issue.

Background information: the guest on Dr. Phil was an accountant who had lost his entire life savings in the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme:
The accountant told Dr. Phil that his hatred of Bernie Madoff now consumes him, all day, every day, particularly since Madoff continues to live in his $10 million dollar apartment awaiting his court date, while the accountant and his wife were ruined financially. Dr. Phil replied:
"Have you forgiven yourself? Because the only thing worse than this guy stealing your money is him stealing your life...and if he can steal your life he can steal your spirit."
When the accountant said he blamed himself for what happened (because as an accountant he should have known better and he should have seen it coming), Dr. Phil said:
"There's a huge difference between blame and responsibility. Blame implies intent. You don't have blame without intent."
He went on to ask the accountant whether by investing with Madoff he had intended to lose his life’s savings by getting caught up in a colossal fraud.
The accountant replied no - his intent had been to increase his savings so he and his wife could retire comfortably. At the time he thought he was doing the right thing. Dr. Phil told him therefore he was not to blame for what had happened because his original intent had been good. The responsibility, and ultimately the blame for what happened was Madoff's, not the accountant's.

How is this story similar to mine? Well, shortly after being gloriously born again I felt the ‘call’ of the ministry. Dozens of others agreed in the ensuing years. I lost count of the number of ‘prophetic’ words that were spoken over me. I really did believe that being in the ministry was God’s plan for my life. I ended up achieving that status, only to see it all crumble before my eyes. I was not only out of a job, but my family suffered greatly in many ways – not the least of which was financially. We lost everything we owned and were left essentially homeless for a while.

This all surfaced last weekend when I told my wife how I held a lot of anger against people who had money to burn. Then I had a nightmare in which I was accused over and over about how I had ruined my family and hadn’t even provided for them financially.

It was in hearing this story of the accountant and his life being sucked out of him and what Dr. Phil shared with him that spoke such life, hope and freedom for me with regard to so much self imposed blame and irresponsibility that I had taken ownership of.
As this eye opening insight washed over me, I went about my day seeking His further objectivity on so much I seem so blind to, knowing that it is only in His light that I will continue to be set, made free.

Rich

But You Don’t Know…

You have no idea what I’m going through, you have no idea how painful this is, this crippling fear, lost my job, rebellious children, someone broke into my house, my dog and cat died, my wife/husband left me, found out I had cancer etc. etc!

"Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." How much evil has begun to threaten you to-day? What kind of mean little imps have been looking in and saying - Now what are you going to do next month - this summer? "Be anxious for nothing," Jesus says. Look again and think. Keep your mind on the "much more" of your heavenly Father.

The longing of our heart is to KNOW an absolute security and folks it’s found in one place, person, Christ Jesus the Lord, and frankly I don’t give a rats ass how this may sound harsh or insensitive to any reading this especially those who are in some of the pain filled scenarios I’ve listed above.
Bottom line, “Today” is the day of salvation!

What you need, not what you or I want, is as close as the mention of His name, JESUS!
You ask, “If God loves me so much, then why am I looking up only to see bottom,” great question. It takes what it takes to bring us to an awakened need and somehow believing it can only be met in turning to Him.

Our world is filled with unthinkable terror, horror, pain and defilement, but it is this world that God sent His only begotten Son to become flesh to fully identify with you and me. Our humanity is something that he fully embraced, as a matter of fact; Jesus the Word introduced into the God head forever that very humanity.

Friend, stranger, brother, sister, He loves you as you are, He has removed ever obstacle that would try and convince you that there is NO way to find any reason or purpose for being alive.
I am convinced that anyone who has committed suicide did so not because they were tired of life, but actually tired of NOT having life.

Rich

The Apple You Were Fed

I want to put this up for any interested, please go to the following link, Windblown Hope.

I love what Father is doing in making Himself known in the depths of this brothers being, as He so desires to do in each of my siblings.

Rich

“Man-up”

I’m not sure where I first came across this expression. Roughly, it means to step up, to take responsibility and to display fortitude, courage, steadfastness, etc. despite the odds or how tough the situation may be…all those ‘manly’ characteristics that generally make women swoon. Think old movie stars like John Wayne, Gregory Peck, and Charlton Heston – the ‘manly men’. Now, those guys knew how to man-up!

These days, for men to ‘man-up’ in our culture is practically a foreign concept: consider the men who won’t commit, men who try to ‘score’ with as many women as possible, men who shirk responsibility for the children that result from these liaisons, religious men who treat their wives as chattels or who demand submission despite how poorly they treat their spouses, men who willingly allow women to take over the man’s responsibilities, men who either won’t work or who skip from job to job, men who’d rather play video games than face life’s challenges.

Where did this all start, and why is it so rampant?

Here’s food for thought:

Scene: the Garden of Eden
Characters: Adam, Eve, the Serpent

For thousands of years, women have taken the blame for the downfall of the human race because Eve succumbed to temptation in the garden, but I ask you this: where was ADAM when Even was being tempted - far away in some distant vineyard? No – he was right there!

Could it possibly be that when God said they could eat of any tree in the garden except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that suddenly that very tree became mighty attractive to them? Consider Romans 7:7 that states:

I would not have come to know sin except through the Law; for I would not have known about coveting if the Law had not said, " YOU SHALL NOT COVET."

I am reminded of my Kindergarten kids – every year I wrestle with this dilemma: should I point out the red fire alarm box on the wall in my classroom? If I do, will it become irresistible to them to the point that somebody just has to touch it, or do I just ignore it and hope they will too?

So here’s my speculation:
I’m guessing that Adam was drawn to this tree like a bee to honey! I’m guessing that he secretly confided this attraction to Eve, but he wouldn’t man-up enough to actually act on his sinful inclination himself. How long were those two in the garden before the serpent arrived? Eons? Who knows? It doesn’t matter. It needn’t have been long at all – just long enough to inflame a desire so acute as to drive Adam wild! So, could it be that he conveniently allowed Eve to take the fall for something he himself longed to do? If so, he got a big pay-off. Not only did he get to blame the woman for the fall, but he also got to get a bite of the desired forbidden fruit. Remember, he was right there when Eve was being tempted and he did nothing! He didn’t step in to stop her, nor advise her to resist the enemy, nor chase the serpent away himself. After all, he had the authority. You’ve got to wonder why he didn’t exert it.

What was the result? For the next two thousand plus years, women have been treated as second-class citizens at best and less than dung at worst. A familiar Jewish adage goes something like this: “Thank you, God, that you didn’t make me a Gentile, a dog or a woman”. For centuries, women have been used and abused – by men.

Why is it that women typically have had to man-up far more often then the men in their lives? Why do so many men forsake their marriage vows, refuse to pay child support or hold down a job? Why is it that even Christian men shirk their responsibilities and allow their wives to take on the lion’s share and more of the workload when it comes to the workforce, child-rearing, meal preparation, laundry, etc. etc., all the while playing the ‘submit to me’ card?

On the other hand, I ask you: how many Christian men LOVE THEIR WIVES AS CHRIST LOVED THE CHURCH??? I hazard to guess: not many.

If my speculation is true – that Adam didn’t man-up to Satan and allowed Eve to take the fall (literally) – it would explain why men, from that day in the garden on, have wimped out. It would also explain why women will never attain equality with men in this corrupt, Satan-inspired world system.

Where are the manly men? Where are the warriors? Where are the men who, like Jesus, are willing to persevere with courage and fortitude, no matter the cost?

Jesus broke the curse! The world is waiting for manly men, those who realize who they are in Christ and who have learned from the master Himself what it means to man-up.

Mgo

Where Are You Now

I want to conduct an inquiry here especially directed toward those who have been heavily involved in the Charismatic back ground and now, are either ‘outside the box’ of institutional organized religion or you’re some place else.

My inquiry has to do with this; those of you who were visible and vocal with regards to the prophetic, preaching, teaching, worship leading-leader/s, whatever, where are you now that you have NO outlet for your specific ‘gifting/s, calling, anointing, ministry?’
Where and what is your identity now apart from the holy place, holy huddle, with the holy folks?

I hope to be enlightened here if I’m wrong, but from what I can see especially with those who have been heavily involved within the Charismatic stuff, e.g. the Vineyard and others, folks are either, POW’s, statistics-casualties of the war, simply settling into some form or expression of religion or have come to know and experience Life totally apart from the religious land of Oz.

Also I am aware of those trying to reinvent the religious wheel of ‘church’ only trying so very hard not to call it that if possible. Please hear me I am not judging anyone; this is but an observation on my part.

Another thing I’m going to throw in here is this. What’s with those, the ones many of us have looked up to as viable ‘leaders’ who likewise came to a crash and burn reality and encountered the God of Grace, and then slowly walked away from this personal sobering grace wakeup call, and established yet another ministry (identity) only this time its based upon the ‘truth’ of grace verses law?
I find it amazing how this encounter with the grace of God can, like anything else be turned into a means of promoting self and profiting big time by it!

I know I’m drifting away from my original question, but hey, let’s go along for the ride.

If I were to ask one of these folks who have turned grace into a (their) new ministry-calling how and why they did so, I think I might get this kind of explanation. How could this not be of God, just look at the many, many, many cards and letters and emails and on and on that I get in response to what the Lord has spoken through me, ‘my ministry-pod cast-books-my-my-my-! I guess one can’t argue with cold hard facts, or can one?

With the fresh and sobering news leaking out from the Lakeland Florida-Todd Bentley thing, it is very easy to see how as Brad Cummings said on a recent pod cast, ‘It’s not the wickedness of my heart that alarms me as much as it is the ability to be deceived by my own thinking, rationalizing.’On a blog I was led to, I posted this comment regarding the author’s comments revolving around the Lakeland/Bentley issue.

“The carnage continues and will continue as long as we choose to drink the holy 'Kool-Aid’ offered by the angel of light himself. The kicker is that the enemy of our soul is powerless until we give a mind to him. I share this as one who has been resurrected from the dead, one of John Arnott’s former assistant pastors.

It is truly amazing how we allow ourselves to be deceived through the deceitfulness of our own hearts. Father loves us too much to violate us, to force us to choose life verses death, and yet it takes a death to witness His power to turn that which was intended for evil, into the Good only He can bring out of it.

Here is something I want to say as well. If we persist in going our own way the Father will allow us to do so. He will allow us to live with the consequences of those actions. The demonstration of the Father’s love in these situations is not in getting us out of them but in what He does with them. There is no one who can get so much good out of a lousy situation as God can. The Father allows us to experience the consequences of our follies but He is also right there with us in them.”

I look forward to any who wish to respond to my inquiries,
Rich

Nurture or Nature

After all, if I’m ok, then you’re ok ...

A few years ago, I saw a cartoon that depicted the two thieves and Jesus hanging on the cross. At that time, the book “I’m O.K, You’re Okay” (a self-help guide for people with deep-seated mental problems) was very popular. The two thieves were talking. One of them said, “If I’m okay, and you’re okay, then why’s that guy hanging on the cross?”

Over the past while I have been delving into this mind field (be careful where you step) of whether or not man was born with or without a nature, and it’s this very nerve I want to poke one more time, damn it that hurts!

I have a question right off the bat for you, did Jesus actually say, ‘apart from Him we could really do nothing,’ or apart from Him whatever we did or could do, would cease to exist the moment we took our last breath?

Also I want to say right up front here, I am not someone who is good at arranging my thoughts in a lucid and coherent grammatically correct way at all, heck, maybe I’m dysfunctional.
When my wife is able to proof read my stuff, it is most appreciated as she is an English lover with an intense passion and she is able to magically turn my bowel of alphabet soup into a more coherent menu.
My point is, anyone reading this and you stumble over my jumbled ramblings, please feel free to ask, Rich, what the hell are you saying, this doesn’t make sense or, could you please explain what this means?

I hate the word ‘dysfunctional’, hate it, but for conversation sake I will use this word because it is applicable for further illustration.
If the whole of humanity is not (born in sin, shaped in iniquity) dysfunctional, then why the hell did God become incarnate, the Word becoming flesh-a man and living here among us?

I love how the Scriptures do not try to cover up the reality of a fallen, broken, bankrupt, dysfunctional race of people that Jesus’ very genealogy included.If by dysfunctional I mean that this race of people were void of Life, His Life, then yes they, we, are all hopelessly dysfunctional!
Don’t you find it stimulating that something within our ‘nature’ is able to separate the bad from the good, functional from the dysfunctional? Maybe it was this rationalization that Jesus threw the monkey wrench into by saying when someone asked, “Good master, what must I do to..” and Jesus replied, “why do you call me GOOD, there is no one good but God”? Was this simply a case of reverse psychology Jesus was using, or was it actually being directed like a laser beam cutting right to the heart of this insidious cesspool of malignancy within man?

If I seem to be rambling here, please forgive, it's what I do best.

At the moment my wife is desperately (and has been for a very long time) wanting to see light, hope in this prolonged time of darkness in her life that has everything to do with what this post is about- ‘nature or nurturing’.

I grew up with two parents that loved and cared for me as best they could, but the God factor was never there, more specifically knowing God as Life. Many know God only as a religion, and some of that smattering touched my life but had NO impact within the place of lifeless empty heart. It wasn’t until I was twenty two years of age that the miracle of my world being violently invaded, to this day, I remember so clearly saying, not in a religious, pious head bowed, eyes close way, but-God, Jesus, whoever you are, if you’re real, I need you-BAMM, like a bomb going off from within me, I knew somehow I was not in that moment the same son of a bitch I had been the moment before. I see here that is going to take much more time and thought to try and put together my story which over laps into my wife’s story as well, so I will stop here and continue later.

Rich

Unmerited (Grace)

I’m wondering if the church has been trying to live vicariously via paltry intellectual knowledge that has filtered down through the centuries meaning, we usually rely upon what people have said versus having experiential knowledge. But is there any ‘knowledge’ we can claim as ours apart from the Father revealing it to us?

Let’s take a look at an absurd illustration for a moment: let’s say you desperately need to get into a room within your house but the door is stuck. You have become intensely focused on doing your best to open this door! You fail to realize in your heated frenzy that you are in fact already in that very room. “Balderdash!” you say, “How could I be so dense? I am in my right mind…aren’t I?”

Maybe being in our “right mind” isn’t going to attain what grace has already achieved for us!

There has and continues to be so much carnal maneuvering and attempted manipulation of the scriptures on our part to try and get God to cooperate with us or for us to ‘get it right’. However, Paul emphatically stated that his encounter with and ongoing transformation by Christ was NOT received of man, nor was it taught by man, but in fact was a direct revelation of Jesus Christ, by Jesus Christ himself. Parroting truthful facts are no substitute for the Lord’s ability to awaken within me an inner knowing of this same Christ Paul knew.

I have to believe that our introduction into God’s marvelous grace was precipitated by an awareness of how empty and depleted we really are, and the knowledge of that bankruptcy prepared us to simply receive of His unmerited favor. Does it stand to reason that although we started on this miraculous journey by God calling us unto Himself that we can now resort to fleshly means of seeing this walk brought to completion?

It is ludicrous to think that the power of His grace, having been made available to helpless, needy and lifeless creatures, was going to be pushed aside for what we think we can do to merit that grace - rather than acknowledging that the Christian life is all about Him living it in us as us.

Is it possible that much, if not all, of institutional religious ware-housing has fostered a mentality where we keep learning, but never come to the knowledge of the Truth - as if the truth were something separate from the embodiment of truth (Jesus)? The price we pay for not accepting God’s justification as born-again believers is that we continue to toil fruitlessly in a vain attempt to earn what we already have!

My conclusion to all of this is that we have gone dreadfully wrong in allowing such overwhelming pressures, of trying ‘to get it right’ to come upon us. The Father is opening our eyes to see that ‘unmerited’ grace is already ours - not something we have to attain by our own efforts.

The reality of this Christ must invade our souls with a despair so intense that we throw ourselves at his feet in a fresh recognition that what we think He requires us to do, apart from what He has already done, is impossible and fruitless. Somehow in the heated frenzy of trying to ‘get it right’ we fail to recognize Him! He said, “I will build My church”! It is crucial that we learn the answer to His relentless question, “Who do you say I AM”?

Rich

Hope

When Jesus was taken to the cross; Satan (in His flesh) had to go with Him: Colossians 2:13-15 (The Message).
If for no other reason than this, Jesus had to have a flesh part of His makeup. This allows the sacrifice of Christ as Jesus to extend to us as the offer of a new life through our death to the old sin-slave-nature. If Jesus, with all the attributes (weaknesses and frailties) that we have, can over come the power of Satan and all that goes with it (written law, condemnation, guilt, etc.) then we have the hope that we can do likewise.
To turn this around, if we have all the attributes of Jesus, the life of God in our human spirit, then we are capable of living as Christ did as Jesus. We can have the confidence that we can live as Jesus lived by the same means, that is by surrendering to the operation of the life of God in our spirit as our only life. However, if Jesus was somehow different from us in His makeup then no such parallel can be drawn.

It is no big deal for God to live without sinning. The only way that Jesus could have significance in our lives is that He had to contain the same components as we do. The only difference in makeup between Jesus and us is that He was born originally (physically) in what we know as a born again state. The only functional difference between Jesus and us was that He always focused on the Father’s life leading in His human spirit and never allowed Himself to be led by the flesh. It is only in Jesus being fully human and fully God that He could serve His intended function in the Father’s plan. It is only in this way that Jesus’ life can be the model for what all of us might become.

It is becoming so much more real to/in me when I read stuff like this (Heb.4:15) and realize that what was available to my elder brother Jesus Christ is equally available to me!

Rich

Pondering

Like a meteor ripping into our hemisphere and lights up the whole sky, this was but a dim flickering light compared to him-Jesus the light of all men, which had been incarnated within the virgin womb of a young Jewish girl.
When the birth of the Christ child happened there was an angelic host that appeared to a group of shepherds proclaiming the promised ones introduction into our space, time and history had come.
The shepherds went and found this child exactly where the angel had said he would be, and after they had seen him, they made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child, and it says that Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.

Eight days later Mary and Joseph take the child to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord, and in the process of doing this, once again this child is singled out and particularly by one Simeon, who says many different things regarding the child but this in particular, is what has captured my thoughts.

“And Simeon blessed them and said to Mary His mother, "Behold, this Child is appointed for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and for a sign to be opposed-- and a sword will pierce even your own soul--to the end that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed."

Its this sword piercing stuff that I want to think out loud about, you know, the Prince of Peace stuff, only this Prince is wielding (brandishing) a very sharp sword in his hands.

Back in 2002 there was a series on television called ‘Firefly’, I honestly don’t ever remember seeing it at the time, but when the movie Serenity came out I became curious about its roots and then discovered the movie was birthed out of the original series on TV.In the series there was an episode called Objects in Space where this bounty hunter invades the ship the crew is on, (it’s called Serenity) for the purpose of capturing one of the crew a young woman called River, but in the process of this happening there was a slice of dialog between the bounty hunter and River’s brother Doctor Tam that fits in with my pondering here regarding ‘His sword piercing our souls’.

‘Have you (the bounty hunter asking Tam) been shot-No…You ought to be shot…or stabbed, loose a leg. To be a surgeon you know?To know what kind of pain you are dealing with. They make psychiatrists get psychoanalyzed before they can get certified… but they don’t make a surgeon get cut on…does that seem right to you’?

It is so easy to parrot the words, ‘I know what you’re going through’, without having the remotest clue of their pain, I know, I’ve done that.I would imagine there are many folks who have never known the addictions of drugs, sexual permissiveness or other in your face bondages/vices, and I don’t see God the Father requiring us to have experienced drunkenness (or other bondages) so that we can relate to those in slavery to alcohol.
But I do see Him making it very clear that even the Mother of Jesus was not going to be exempted from a sword piercing her very soul, and like wise I am inclined to believe none of us will get away from this soul piercing encounter with the sword brandishing Prince of Peace.

Like with Doctor Tam and the bounty hunter’s remarks regarding Tam’s need to be made aware experientially of the pain most folks walk in every day, there is a much needed soul piercing required in all who have flesh, as it were a heart circumcision that will address these issues.

As I was walking to work this morning, I sensed Papa speaking most clearly to me, and here are some of those thoughts. The sicknesses of sins influence within our flesh resorts to this demented logic, our works or lack thereof either qualify or disqualify us for or from the grace of God. Papa says to both-the religious flesh group-your works do not qualify you for my grace and to the sinful flesh group- your lack of works do NOT disqualify you from my grace. We qualify for his grace based upon His unconditional love, nothing more or less!! And it’s the wonder of this unfolding revelation caused by His sword-word piercing the core of our being bringing us to clearly see our true condition and recognize the total depravity of our flesh. So that we might be led to the place of hearing, ‘Blessed are you, who no longer measure yourself within fleshly means.

This majestic work of grace freeing us from the lies of knowing we are deserving of his grace because of what we have done, and for others, freeing them for all that they have not done to deserve His grace.

Rich

Discovering Delight in the Mundane

Yesterday I shared some thoughts regarding the mundane repetitious stuff we all have to face.

I talked about how many either by omission or with intent don't necessarily lie, but maybe fudge the truth somewhat in saying things like, 'I love my job, my kids, my car, the street I live on etc.' I liked this photo, noticing the beauty in the mundane.

I was so delighted to discover the same spirit and heart being so wonderfully and simply expressed by the same spirit and Father through another brother, Jim, over at Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!

His entry is a must to read, Status Quotidian

Rich