Sifting Out the Heart's of Men

I have always loved the song, The Battle Hymn of the Republic and for those wanting to know a bit of its history you can read of it here.
As I have often over the years reflected upon the lyrics, recently I have seen these in a whole new light, especially this stanza, “He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat; He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat: Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! Be jubilant, my feet! Our God is marching on.”

It is truly amazing how His grace and love powerfully and silently works deep within the mind shafts of ones heart, as in mine. Seeing and experiencing such awe and wonder of this One who is passionately and compassionately working to sift, and purge my inner being from any and everything that desires to try and destroy me.
As I continue to wade out into the untold and fathomless depths of His total unconditional love the unpronounceable is happening. The very spirit and nature of this God and Father is breathing clarity, sobriety and depth of meaning and purpose to words that formerly scared the hell out of me.

This in particular did just that, “For the Word that God speaks is alive and full of power [making it active, operative, energizing, and effective]; it is sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrating to the dividing line of the breath of life (soul) and [the immortal] spirit, and of joints and marrow [of the deepest parts of our nature], exposing and sifting and analyzing and judging the very thoughts and purposes of the heart.”
This all ties in with the fore mention stanza from the song, “He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat; He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat: Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! Be jubilant, my feet! Our God is marching on.”

Fear being the spirit we were born with in the natural is taking a back set in the rebirthing, it is the residual and collateral carnage being slowly displaced, cast out, as we begin to see and experience the reality of His Son-shinning and branding affirmation of Whose we are. We/I, bear the marks of ownership, the spirit of son-ship and adoption are the blazing and burning awareness of increasing and liberating intensity.
Not always, but more often than ever before am I now wanting to embrace His scrutinizing, purging work of continued salvation, exposing, analyzing, and judging the very thoughts and purposes of my heart.
His motivation is never to destroy man, but in fact His longing is to destroy that which has purposed to seek our destruction.

Rich

Blessed Are You

In not knowing the truth of God the Father and his love for us, we merely exist, some might even call it, “dead men walking.”
Those who have ears to hear, and eyes to see said Jesus, let them feast upon the hidden manna the fertile and fruitful one, Christ in us.

There is a story in the Old Testament 1Samuel 1, where it talks about a man who had two wives, one bore him children and the other Hannah could not, because the Lord had shut up her womb.
It goes on to say, “And her rival (the other wife) used to provoke her grievously to irritate her, because the LORD had closed her womb. So it went on year by year. As often as she went up to the house of the LORD, she used to provoke her. Therefore Hannah wept and would not eat. And Elkanah, her husband, said to her, "Hannah, why do you weep? And why do you not eat? And why is your heart sad? Am I not more to you than ten sons?"

There is such wonderful liberating truth in this, at least for me. What I see so clearly is as follows. What all of us are not discerning except for those who have had it revealed to them, is that everything that we assume is God working through many that we look upon or up to, as being vibrant, fruitful leader types, are in fact if it is NOT His life in them as them, are merely a cheap and bewitching mirage.

We like Hannah despise our bareness, but the kicker is that it is the Lord God himself who has like wise closed our womb, why, so that we don’t have to resort to fleshly means to see His life, fruitfulness realized in us.
There is NO one who jumps up and down ecstatically when they hear Him say, “Blessed are you who are poor, barren, fruitless, mourn etc, why, being weak, lifeless, unfruitful apart from Him is not very attractive, so, the alternative is to succumb to becoming bewitched. When we no longer measure ourselves by His unconditional love for us, we resort to looking in the mirror of performing all over again. We compare ourselves with one another and see how we fail, fall short according to the lies we have once gain become ensnared in, and start competing.

There are NO short cuts to knowing Him, it is either going to Be a living walking talking miracle of His grace bringing forth His life inwardly and outwardly in us, or we’re going to shop at the nearest boutique of vogue stick and past forms of godliness!

Rich