How often is the believer accused of wishful thinking! And, if the disciple is made honest and has more than a passing interest in the truth, he will understand that power of vain imagination and imaginings. He will not be quick to dismiss the notion of wishful thinking as being too poor a motive for his own consideration, or the possibility his mind may yet retain some subjection to in being.
Indeed, his hope is to be free of it through and through, that peculiar fashioning of matters whose verity is only established upon the appeal of such matters to it. It is not as though a disciple is unaware that man, and especially carnal man, is forever fashioning a reality in his mind that is always to his own advantage. His care for truth, even if he suggests he has any at all, is always secondary to this. Always.
The darkness of this bondage, so profound and unrelenting as to be even self hiding in delusion can only be dispelled by light and such light the disciple comes to understand cannot, and must not be made subject to his own approval. Light that lays darkness to waste cannot be subject to the one in any darkness, for such light alone is what brings all else into subjection to it. It is a peculiarly two edged sword of a gift, but the disciple even being cut by it, nevertheless comes to appreciate the saving nature of it as gift.
There are several scriptures that ought to come easily to mind with unsubtle references to actions mentioned.
For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.
If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
He that speaketh of himself seeketh his own glory: but he that seeketh his glory that sent him, the same is true, and no unrighteousness is in him.
Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.
For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty.
Any desire that our testimony be pure and un-corrupted comes with all awareness of how pervasive is the inclination to lie…to see man’s propensity to “make things up” that even if sounding good, hold that kernel of death (as all lies do) that must be disclosed.
Again, the disciple becomes aware of this as gift, his being “worked upon” by another, and even more unrelenting as once his bent was toward fashioning comfort for himself. He is so very aware (even when in failure, and then perhaps even more particularly so) he is to represent the interests of another and not his own, by whose will salvation is come.
For that disciple it is no vain saying or theory that the Lord rebukes and chastens those whom he loves…and he comes to count this as salvation itself, being made subject to them. For he dare not let go of that truth having been made to see the utter peril of despair in considering the alternative. “Those whom I love I rebuke and chasten, be zealous therefore and repent.” What is under the Lord’s discipline belongs to the Lord as a disciple out of His love of possession, what is not subject to such has no part with Him. Fearful.
It was not in folly that Paul said:
Knowing the terror of the Lord we persuade men.
God forbid we be unsobered by chastening and brought to understand. It is not as though we are not understood in this discipline born in such care of love:
Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby.
God knows how unpleasant it feels at the moment of chastening. But, we are being ministered such by the sustainer of all things, and despite how it seems or feels, He is likewise able to keep us through it, show the life in it, and keep us from all despair even if, and when, it feels like we are losing all. And we begin to appreciate His working…even if (and thankfully so) it most often feels unrelenting.
What the world will not receive, and cannot, is made salvation to us. How much is accomplished in Him!
The clarity only found in Jesus Christ, the light sent into the world to retrieve His own becomes all of precious to us. And the cutting away of wishful thinking, it’s paring by a hand formed and skilled to such, is also life to us.
This matter of coming under His discipline I have not sought to soften, not by inclusion of my own testimony, but by those of faithful apostles and men found faithful to their calling. It seems to almost border on the harsh…and would indeed, were it not for the care and sustaining of the One ministering. Here the matter of wishful thinking begins to be dealt with for the sake of testimony…and the disciple’s own appreciation of salvation.
He knows he could not make up the precision with which he is dealt chastening of such accuracy to disclosure…but also…he would not have been able to choose this for himself. Men are called and summoned here, and no disciple mistakes the weight of coming under the mighty hand of God as something he could have perceived for his own preference from the onset. He sees God’s patience with him (and begins to appreciate it is likewise extended to all of His) that such is reserved to time of bearing, that such seeming painful sorrows could reveal such enduring glory. And he begins in some way…to see the sufferings of His Lord.
I understand how little of this at first hearing sounds pleasant. But, how much needing to be dealt with is…in it. And not only so is the matter of wishful thinking needing address made plain…but also how much else in the mind is disabused. For here is the matter of any and all resort to comforting ourselves, even if tempted to think we have suffered much “for the Name” comes into the focus of our Lord’s enduring.
Our enduring of such is called a “light thing” a momentary affliction in light of the Lord’s descent into the heart of the earth (of what is man made?) to retrieve His inheritance, His treasure. The revelation of Christ’s glory in accomplishment causes all else to pale…even those matters upon which we may have once thought we might horse trade with the Lord. We come to see our own religiosity exposed.
Here all is, and can never be less than (and could certainly never be more than) gift. I would die under the Hand if the Hand did not sustain me. I would curse the Hand if the Hand did not reprove me. I would run from the Hand if the Hand did not hold me. I would rue the Hand if it were not for the revelation of its piercing…for my sake.
The perfection of indebtedness made all too plain is the very thing that completely undercuts any hope…and as revealed, call, to repay. Till then…the vanity of wishful thinking, a seeming weight to “come up with” something to offer…even to men as to why such “chooses” to believe as they do is consumed. It is not that man has approved of Christ…and so chooses his own approval of Him, but that God has graciously revealed His approval of Him; the Father’s delight in the Son as manifest in the resurrection is given. God is delighted in those made sharing this approval found in Him.
We will know of the perfection of this faith through the resurrection as we too come under the mighty hand of God, knowing that no man can live there, except God sustain and raise.
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