Disconcerting Dyslexia

The following quote from Oz Chambers does me good. “Faith must be tested, because it can be turned into a personal possession only through conflict. What is your faith up against just now? The test will either prove that your faith is right, or it will kill it. "Blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended in Me." The final thing is confidence in Jesus. Believe steadfastly on Him and all you come up against will develop your faith. There is continual testing in the life of faith, and the last great test is death. May God keep us in fighting trim! Faith is unutterable trust in God, trust which never dreams that He will not stand by us.”

For those who are not being disturbed (disconcerted) in their God journey, I doubt you have been comforted, meaning, He comforts the disturbed as well as disturbs the comfortable!
Yes those who have received Christ or more to my liking, ‘having been received of the Father’ are perfect, IN THEIR SPIRIT! Depending on how you look at it, there is much more to us than just a spirit, although that is the essence of which we are, a spirit being.

In my continuing journey of discovering the inexhaustible unconditional love of God the Father for me, I am realizing that that is the foundation upon which upholds all that He continues to do in the needed transformation within my soul.
There is no way as Oz said in the quote, “Faith must be tested, because it can be turned into a personal possession only through conflict” that we’re going to have anything more than a form of godliness apart from having to face, go through whatever conflict He deems necessary to make what we say we believe, into a personal possession.

Everything is being disarranged the deeper we go in following Him, being led by His spirit, it is needed and necessary, otherwise we will have nothing more than a clinical, sterile, smugness to our superior stance, looking down on those whose lives He has graciously and lovingly torn apart!

As our supposed unshakable equilibrium is going through the wringer, we are no longer able to interpret the signs; it’s as if we have become dyslexic as everything seems so back-wards to us. This is nothing less than moving from having a great theology of trusting in the Lord to being brought to the place where that perfect life we have in our spirit is invading our very soul, mind will, and our emotions!
Anything less is nothing more than what any other dead religious system is willing to offer.

Rich

A Consuming Fire

Scripture speaks of God being a “consuming fire” and as the adage goes, if one plays with fire they will get burnt.
His engagement of us is that which instills a spontaneous (combustion) fire deep from within us; He becomes that living consuming fire that burns within our very bones.

The Apostle Paul said, “I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision”, and beloved, that is how the true knowledge of God’s purpose has to dwell in us. It has to be something that is stronger than the situation surrounding us, deeper than our own feelings and emotions or emotional experience. It has to be something that is more than what we are in our moods, a mightier thing than all that to which we are subject to in our soul life. It has to be able to bring us up out of our spiritual pits and mire, and keep us going. Vision is the only dynamic in days like these, and this will be proven more and more.

Rich

What Has Stopped You

A little child shall lead them!

What is it that has buried you alive, shattered you in a million pieces, enveloped you in an ocean of grief, disemboweled you with the heartless and cruel razor slashing of daily living, what is it that has caused you to become immobilized, detoured you from following Him?

Just hear the heart of the Father of our spirit in these words spoken by our dear brother Paul to BE your ability to take the next step forward: “What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised— who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, "For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered." No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Part of the meaning of the name Papa chose and gave to me, by my earthly parents is “bold.” Richard the Lion hearted. It derives from Proverbs 28: “The wicked flee when no man pursued: but the righteous are bold as a lion.”
The key word I am seeing in this verse is not bold, but “Righteous,” it is the Righteous One in me as that bold one!
This Righteous One in me is allowing me to partake of my birth right, my inheritance, He is becoming more and more my daily bread, His strength is becoming so perfectly displayed in my absolute, total weakness, it is His boldness that is taking hold of me and turning me into a mad man for Him.
It is becoming a roaring and intensified mandate within me, to see His freedom established in His saints the church which IS His body, spirit, soul and body!

Father is using whatever it takes to bring us to a “knowing” of Him in us as us, as our ONLY life, and for me this morning it was in beginning to read from the book of Daniel. The orchestra begins its musical score in a minor key, foreboding and tension fills the air.
A great ruler, King Nebuchadnezzar has just conquered Jerusalem and besieged it. In claiming as his sole possession all of Jerusalem and all within it, he takes along with his army many captives, but four Jews in particular, Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, the names given to them by the prince of the eunuchs.
Here’s where the musical score takes on a major key, Daniel it says, “Purposed in his heart not to defile himself with the portion of the king’s meat, nor with the wine which he drank: therefore he requested of the prince of the eunuchs that he might not defile himself.”
Now God had brought Daniel into favour and tender love with the prince of the eunuchs. Please read all of this here.
My point in all of this is to point you to the One, the only One who is your ability to, ‘having done all stand’ or, to take the next seemingly impossible step forward in spite of all logic or myth understand.

I want to close this with a quote from He Loves Me by Wayne Jacobsen: “For the first time since that cruel day in Eden, God was sitting down with people he loved and they were not cowering in fear.
For centuries men and women had stood at a great distance from God, shamed by their sin and intimidated by his holiness. With only a few notable exceptions, people wanted nothing to do with the immediacy of God’s presence. When Mount Sinai shook with thunder and earthquakes, the people begged Moses to go to God for them. God was a terrifying figure, and feeling safe with him was unthinkable.
But God had never thought so. He was unfolding his plan to restore the fellowship with humanity that Adam and Eve had lost in their fall. In Jesus, he was able to sit down in the company of those he loved, and they were comfortable enough to engage him in a real conversation. What an incredible moment that must have been for Jesus, to be with people who were not so awed by him that they could not enjoy his presence.
Of course, it happened only because the disciples had no idea that it was God who stoked the fire as they sat around and laughed. For although we now know that Jesus was God incarnate on Earth, they had no idea, and that made all the difference.”

By His grace I intend to become that safe place for many to discover the Righteous One, their boldness, as I simply love them as he loves me!

Rich