Month: September 2022

If there is anything worth considering in Pt 3, it might be this:

“As many as I love I rebuke and chasten, be zealous therefore and repent”

It’s a rather plain statement, isn’t it? But the implications, plain as they might be in the plainness of the statement, are very penetrating. In one sense we are quite deconstructed in it, and by it. Do any already sense, even as I do in the reading of it, some very deep caution in handling it? At least as far (and no doubt much farther) as to any using of it to any personal end? But this, also and no less, is an intensely personal matter (what isn’t in God’s handling of man in Christ?) that begs our consideration in the light of Jesus Christ.

If our first inclination remains our only inclination, and our only understanding, how much can be missed? Mistaken? Misapprehended? If an all is presented but we are only satisfied with a part, even pleased only “in part”, God remains blameless. But we may find ourselves heaping judgment to ourselves, not by God’s lack of plainness, but by our presumptions in abundance.

I have no doubt, and have already expressed, of the immeasurable comfort that may be found there. But if we stop at, or remain fixed at: “I have felt the Lord’s heavy hand upon me, therefore I am surely (even if sorely) loved”, what might be “the more” we are in fact, despising in our knowing?

Oh, yes, we might admit we are very well aware (and often more aware) of those times, situations, circumstances in which we have sensed the humbling of coming up against the Almighty in a manifest defeat of our own selves (either in attitudes, words, or deeds) and in which, by receiving that gift of repentance we have been clearly shown the Lord’s righteous vindication of His Name.

We were in that sense beaten by another, shown His power of all supremacy that defeated (defeats) us, and, in admission of the fault of opposition now made clear to us (through that gift of repentance) come away or proceeded to, and now from, a place of more clarity. Or greater accord.

Yes, most of us are very aware of “our sufferings”. The things we have endured.

And here I am reminded of another thing mentioned previously to which we may rarely give words (except in an inner bias) “I sure do hope my most severe trials are behind me” Gee, must this also be “brought to light” again!…(if sensing any truth to it?) And why?

Are we yet renewed to the truth that someone indeed knows us better than ourselves, and have we found enough of grace to even admit that at times it is very uncomfortable (even irritating) despite the truth that there is no comfort outside of Him? It’s a strange thing this. Discovering a great desire to be loved, to be accepted (even to be made clear to us as taking place), yet not much wanting the rebukes and chastenings that are that very proof of its taking place. At the least…not wanting too much of them. What then are we refusing by this preference? This inner bias?

If we proceed from some understanding that all communication is to the end of making a thing known, even ourselves…thoughts, opinions, displays of deeds, convictions, dispositions, preferences it would appear there is a desire to be “known”. To make statement of who we are.

But we also find some limiting, do we not? We don’t want to be too well known…we don’t want all the beans spilled, do we? There are thoughts and excursions of mind we really prefer remain hidden and known only to us. A longing to be known…but not too well…known.

How seemingly paradoxical, as so much seems! A fellowship with a one with no seeming lack of knowing us, even to all knowledge of us (true to truth beyond our even knowing of our own selves) nor need to be moved by need! All the things we withhold (and often even deny of ourselves!) to maintain some presentability, even acceptability, are all too plain to Him.

How indeed, is this working? What is impetus? Perhaps there is much rebuking and chastening necessary, or so much more than we could either have ever imagined necessary, nor even ever wanted…to bring us to some fundamental confession that the word love in Christ’s mouth and our own, are two very opposing…and entirely different matters.

And as we discover this true of so many things…perhaps even all things of which Jesus Christ speaks, we might come to a place too plain: “I really have no idea, or had no idea (depending upon our estate) of what you mean, Lord Jesus” Both in the words you use and their meaning to you…nor even the “why” of why you speak them.

By simple confession we may find a door opened to us. Our trouble of understanding (or better, our troubles made plain in our not understanding) may lead to a very large place. Even as is spoken, “There I will give her back her vineyards and I will make the Valley of Achor a door of hope” A door in a place of trouble. And troubling.

(Pt 5 to follow)

Things build on one another. Written matters build on one another. We who believe especially, and are expressly told, we are all being built together into a Holy habitation upon a chief cornerstone and a foundation already laid. Therefore reference to what has “gone before” is never unfitting.

If addressing our need to feel useful in part 1, and the issues of mimicry (quite superficially) in part 2 bore address, may it not be misunderstood to imply that God cares nothing for our need, or indeed despises all attempts at imitation. These matters are made of use by God to help us see His Christ. Even Paul was unashamed to admit that, in part, his ministry was in hope of provoking some envy (the desire to have what another shows…which might progress to a need) and no less, recommended imitation.

Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ. (“Follower” there translated from the Greek word mimetai from which is easily seen the word “mime” derived with which we are familiar)

But what do we learn? Do we not learn there is something both need/desire and imitation lead us to? At least as far as we first understood their working in us?

If it could be reduced apart from presumption on my part (to think in terms of reduction rather than production) do we not find a something driven toward all longing for substance? Do we? Something taking us beyond a mere “want” of envy, (or any good thing even once identified to us as advantage) something beyond matters of performing (as sincerest imitation might reveal) to an almost unspeakable and indescribable hunger and thirst? A singular need (where once we thought in terms of our many needs and wants) of Christ, Himself?

This is a huge jump. And God forbid there be any misleading in these words. It is not that the believer receives any “less of Christ” than all of Christ through the faith delivered to the saints. No, it is not that at all. But there is growth. There is progress and a production being made in a place of earth (even these vessels) where we are advised to fix our eyes as though upon a light rising in a dark place; and to have our minds renewed. Everything is working toward a narrowing of sight, a singular focus less for the exclusion of the “elses”, but that all that is that is (and truly is) may be seen and known. A hugeness of all God has made life to us through His Son.

How much seems paradox! (?) This is a school and schooling like no other, this discipling and discipline. It is entirely contrary to all we have known and understood…especially in regards to what we formerly considered learning. And it touches everything continually, in the same way. All of what we thought we “knew” of desire, of life, of love, of good and evil, of relationship…of being in any and every sense is being handled…touched…illuminated to us, by another. Christ is being Himself in us. Not only in the sense of “acting like Himself” as one might say of another if seen as somewhat peculiar “Oh, he is just being himself”…but also that the very nature of being…is now being “in us”. Christ is all. And we learn something of substance, not only that “it” truly is (and weighty), but that this person of Christ now abiding within cannot and will not (for He cannot deny Himself) cause us to settle for less…than true substance. Himself.

And there is much coming “head to Head”. Yes, frank confrontation. In all of the old by which our minds were once formed to confronting this new abiding man. Many have already called it the battlefield…for it is. Here a curious reversal takes place. And it is glorious. We become unashamed to celebrate our own defeats in the light of His victory…even and particularly…over us! This seems queer, no? How can it be…and why would it? And it cannot be so till there comes the persuasion Jesus Christ has made all of His victory ours through His faith.

Being opposed seems no man’s joy, nor could it ever…apart from the reality of Jesus Christ’s abiding. For it is here these words become more priceless than all else we might find to compare

“As many as I love I rebuke and chasten, be zealous therefore and repent”

We may have once “admired” zeal, even sought after the knowing of it in some youthful exuberance to serve, but now we discover how zeal…is served. It is different. At least as we once thought. We encounter, on a level far more basic than ever known to us, changes of mind in its renewal. We see impossible things resolved to our sight, hidden things, mysterious things…far more than explained, but revealed. We come to know in some part what the apostle experienced and exclaimed:

O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!

Here there is no figuring out. Now calculating of how, or why, God does a thing. He either reveals or we have not known nor seen. All is in His hands to give through the revelation of His Son. He “does” no other way. Even (particularly) to what we may find the simplest sentence/verse of scripture, previously assumed “easy enough for a baby to grasp”…that apart from light given as to its depths we will either stumble about, handling things in a clumsy danger or entirely misconstrue.

Can this be overstressed? God knows. And God knows how needful is so much correcting that “As many as I love I rebuke and chasten…” becomes such a word of encouragement given that we not either lose hope, nor conclude we are on the wrong path. It is easy (for comfort’s sake, and no less, quite wrong) to be given to vain imaginations. The sort of thinking that would have us formerly consider and conclude any education/discipling in a thing makes for that ease of comfort in handling matters. Yet, what have we seen of Christ? What do we know of Gethsemane? And all that followed?

And how that all was leading to this, and for this.

Is there not a man among us who, in some way, harbors a deeply hidden phrase, which, if brought to light might sound like this: “I sure hope my most severe trials are behind me”?

Yes, and without doubt, I know we each have encountered places of testing; whose depths of severity has been both ordained of God, and for His good pleasure, in our growth in His Son. There is only rebuke for the man who thinks his own trials of endurance so far outstrip another’s that he might casually, or disdainfully, look upon those endured by any other part of the body. All in the body are enduring what is for the growth of the whole body, none exempted…and certainly, none unnoticed by God.

Yet, even Paul was somewhat embarrassed to “have to mention” those things endured in his following after Christ for the sobering up of those given into his care. He knew what he had gone through, endured for their sakes in his keeping to the faith, that he was sorely troubled they could be so easily persuaded by the some who sought a preeminence amongst them, not serving, but using them to elevate themselves. Paul saw what was going on. If necessary reread 2 Cor. 11. It is no less a chapter on love than the more widely known and quoted of 1 Cor 13.

Can you see a man discovering “things” about love that were entirely opposed to his once consideration of a man’s experience and estate of being a servant of God? A man once equipped with letters of endorsement, riding (if you will) a high horse on his way to Damascus to “do God’s will” now humbled before those he once sought to do away with? O, how lovely an idol it is to think one’s self a “man of God” till Christ is put on as only garment.

There we begin, by being disabused of such vanity, to understand our own dire need. But also (and not without hope) how sufficient Christ is, as only Christ is, to abundantly meet that every need. There is a pain we endure in watching our idols fall. Which God does not only not despise, but takes a great pleasure in. And as we endure by His grace alone, even to the watching of their toppling in His endurance, His abiding, we find a good pleasure being made known to us, revealed to us and in us…and is for the health of all the body of our Lord and Christ.

(Pt 4 to follow)

It is not hard to understand how the previous entry (Pt 1) seems rather severe. Almost a harsh expos`e. Our need to feel (of ourselves, or to ourselves) useful. And to think one (even, or particularly, as myself) who merely recognizes it has in some way escaped it, or has become immune to its gravitational pull and source; ie the self, would be the greatest folly for me to pose as such. Your folly would be to imagine that a fair exposition (if one has even been made) is interpreted to mean such a one has achieved any mastery.

If I am able to state this clearly enough so that even the wise might understand: No one gets good at bearing the cross.

We perceive things. Even (as believers) things that seem hidden to view by some (sometimes other believers and certainly what are known as unbelievers) and yet, and almost immediately, enter into what is the most common endeavor of all men seeking understanding.

We attempt to deconstruct to its elements; reverse engineer to the most fundamental place of our ability grasp and identify such fundamentals, and then, having it all broken down before us to each discernible piece, reassemble according to the pattern discovered in such reverse engineering and say “now I got it”…I have also made in whole what was once mystery to me. Now, it is no longer mystery. I can do this now, too. How common. How natural. How deceptive.

And since deception would seem, at least in some part, in the purview of the one calling himself believer; we might pay attention as to where it is identified and/or claimed to be. Let’s take a silly example. (Though I am persuaded if one thinks about this he will see how far it extends to almost all matters)

A man sees what he has never seen before, even such a thing he couldn’t believe possible previously. But now, he sees it. He knows now, not only of its possibility, but reality. He watches the Wright brother’s first flight. “How can this be? This thing that now is?” being clearly presented before his eyes.

Let’s say he steals into their hangar by night and either takes the contraption all apart and/or makes the most detailed and meticulous drawings of it…in every detail of angles of attachments, lengths of cables, size of bolts and screws, materials used, shape of wings, control surfaces, propeller, and power source. (You get the idea)

He duplicates perfectly. Now he flies. He may even think himself a flyer just like them. Do you see his deception? Does he…yet? It might not take long. But then again, it might…before he encounters matters of head winds, tail winds, cross winds, matters of which he was completely ignorant (not even thinking in terms of lift or the Bernoulli principle). Things the Wright brothers long experimented with, or in some far greater measure understood, accounted for…not to mention the most fundamental matter of all, the imagination and persuasion such was possible to achieve. Some things (actually many things) are not seen or “left out” due to their invisibility to a mere copier.

Even the very assumptions and presumptions of a copier may be the most invisible to himself, of all. Until. Until he discovers the relationships of climb, and power (thrust), and drag and stall. (After all, all he wanted to do was fly, not have a thing cost him his life!)

I would think I only make myself tedious were I to attempt to make any explanations and correlations of how much more this applies to matters of the faith. Even a faith we are told (do we yet know?) which “worketh by love”.

I would also think stating the obvious to the perceptive/discerning were also not necessary (and far too numerous to recount) of crashings and burnings. How that I have not died…gracefully. How that the “parts” I liked always ended in a part I didn’t like, even a right consequence and due assignment to any taking of the name Jesus Christ into my mouth.

Some of you, God knows, maybe many or all of you already know this. This would again be a great help…to me! to knowing the safety of my own uselessness above all. I am far safer finding myself an object lesson as a copier than being allowed to continue in some presumption I have “come up with anything”.

This searching out of “a” part I didn’t like by my inclusion of it in experience (I rarely endeavor to understand why I like what I like…I just “do”) has even helped me with that part in parenthesis. All has been help to me. All has been help for me. And all made even all the more particularly and exquisitely personal in pain when I have proceeded as though I am a helper. There is all too obviously something made perfectly fitting to me personally for that place of presumption. The piercing is simply too perfectly accurate.

Now, please do not misunderstand. I am not saying there isn’t or shouldn’t be pain. Not as though I would deny the Lord’s sufferings on our behalf, God forbid! Or have some notion He was made immune to pain by some trick of mind or spiritual cleverness…again, God forbid! To the contrary, and hoping to not put too fine a point to the matter, pain and suffering are not quite the same. Suffering has more to do with processing the experience of pain…even as a woman being sawn in half has a different experience of matters than a woman giving birth…though great pain is experienced in both. And both may feel such greatness of it to the convincing of their own death in such excess.

No.

What I am saying is this. I came to perceive a great gulf, a great divide…even insurmountable to me lest I be given some light sorely lacking between the man who said “God, yes” while I discovered only the man screaming “God, no!” in whatever pain he knew. I had to know how this is reconciled. This man, and that man. Something, or better, someone was plaguing me, paining me, with discontent in my darkness. Would God…pain a man so? And…if so…to what end? Why would “that man” ever submit and still maintain such mercy (Father forgive them…) for this man whose only issuing forth in pain was complaint? What “is” working…invisible to the man?

Could it be that one man really knew nothing of suffering? Man, but he’d need a lot of help. Even all of it.

(Pt 3 to follow)

God won’t let it.

That sounds simple enough. And it is.

But whether you’ll find anything worthy of exploration and/or consideration in the following is entirely between you and God. There can be no compelling from my side. There is no authority granted me, or any other man, to determine what is of necessity to you.

The only authority given among any of us who call ourselves believers is to speak according to the Lord’s work in us, ourselves, apart from laying burdens upon one another of such sort. So it is that apostle came to a right conclusion of having no dominion over any man’s faith, but to merely be a helper of their joy. And even that merely described is a result of careful tutelage in many lessons that are testimony to the Lord’s patient endurance with us.

We discover many things about help. And as with almost everything the Lord leads us through our first inclinations may be to think exteriorly. The help is needed “out there”. The gospel is needed out there. Jesus Himself is most needed out there. And so, if under this delusion all is interpreted according to this misapprehension. And much can grow from this soil. And will. And must. Until such time as the Lord allows for our tasting of such fruit that, as if hollowed out and filled with dust, we now know is of no health…both to us, nor to any.

For we have been eating it as it were from the inside before maturity, taking from it for ourselves anything of value beforehand that might yield true life. Nothing lasting nor eternal…is found in it. We have gobbled it up for ourselves. Can this be understood?

We would first have to have disclosed to us the many snares of soul that accompany the delusion mentioned. Do you know the attraction of thinking oneself a “helper”? How that implicit in that presumption of estate resides its most obvious unstated appeal? But let’s state it, for it is all too clear before God. If one is a helper, and sees himself thus (and who hasn’t?) then it is obvious he himself, as helper, is not the one in need of help. He is now set apart (and how the soul loves its own distinction(s)!) as one above, rendering from superior position to the lesser(s) in need of him (and his help).

If allowed to continue in such delusion (even to being deluded as to what is soulish vs the spiritual) one will come to a very frank confrontation with himself as liar before God. For he may, as God allows, sense a truth that there is most shocking to him, even of such magnitude as to awaken him to all that he has previously done in so called “labors in, or for, the Lord”. He will discover he has only been serving himself as idol…all the time while preaching how necessary Jesus Christ is to and for life, he has been holding himself as the one necessary…even as deliverer of such message.

Do we think God does not see? How we use Jesus Christ to our own ends? Not unlike Elijah who bewailed his fortune before God as being the “only” one left to uphold God’s testimony, we find God unimpressed with what the man thinks of himself. But who of us is in any position to judge Elijah in, or for this? We may at best recognize ourselves; and even be thankful God has preserved such testimony that in due time we too may be set in order and remember.

Such experience is not uncommon to man, and such attitude is not rare before God. Ha! Unless we think ourselves so special as to be exempted! And God has a very pointed way of disabusing us, not necessarily of our special-ness, but to redirect to Him who remains singular to us all, Jesus Christ. The cross is unfailing in its work to divide any misconceptions we may have to His ability and our need. Yes, our need…of help.

One would rightly say “But are we not set apart, are we not special (in that sense) to God? Are we not a peculiar people…a treasure even to God, the inheritance of His son, paid for with such a great price?” and such considerations are most worthy to both speak and meditate upon. Yes! Indeed! True! And so true in truth that the soul unappreciating of their magnitude of truth must be rebuked. The soul can stop “trying” to take to itself matters to make itself special all other impoverished matters of propping up that pale as dung before gold in the light of such truth. Yes! Part of the (our) peculiarity (perhaps the greatest part) is that we are given to see by the work of Christ on our behalf the value of true and eternal things that are unshakably accomplished as opposed to the weak and beggarly elements of which all the world is seeking after.

The world strives to be “too big to fail”, too necessary for dispensing with, but we carry a far greater testimony of Him who overcame it…all its glitter, all its offerings, all its threats and intimidating by size and proclamation of dread consequence if resisted. We are saved…by one. One single man…against and from all of the world’s armaments. And all the Devil’s schemes. He alone…is our defense.

But saying this and knowing this may be shown to us as having been two different things in us, yet God is patient to bring us to know our confession(s)…(even if in all weakness made more weak by some foolish attempts to prop up self esteem) are true. God intimately knows our frame…and framing. And here we may find “the one” most in need of all help. Ourselves.

There is absolutely no shame in this, and God forbid any of this sound as though anyone is seeking to shame another. In this we are all “in the same boat” so to speak. Of being enlightened to the glory of the Lord Jesus. There is no shame in that glory. There is no vain coveting of it, as though the Lord would say “you can come this far but no farther, for I am keeping the best part from being sullied by your knowing”. God forbid. “The glory thou hast given me I have given them” must become true in our hearing. Otherwise we shall seek (and if necessary, be allowed to find) the very thing the Lord states as an enemy of faith “How can you believe who receive glory of one another?”

And we might admit, as need be, before God, such cleansing of all other “glory” (that is not glory at all, but a shame to man) is only made ours through the knowledge of His son, our Lord. And how we need it. Yes, we ourselves. Even first before any other. That our only life is in Him, by Him, and through Him and His work. Even to putting striving souls to rest. Souls that have, even in what may appear smallest way sought to make themselves larger having fallen for the “too big to fail” temptation. “If I am just right enough, I am acceptable” And then, can never be found dispensable. Even to “See? I…even I, am just trying to be a help…isn’t that good enough?”

It is good to be made able to hear God’s laughter. It is pure, it is Holy, it is a sure thing. And God forbid any misconstrue the abundant entrance provided by Jesus Christ is not sufficient to even change a being laughed at to the glory of a laughing with. Take the Lord…seriously. Take your calling…seriously. But yourself? Be the most malleable thing of all, the weakest thing as putty in the hands of another. What issues from Heaven to you is above all precious. What may issue from yourself…to yourself, learn to discern.

I think I understand how easily this can all be made subject to some twisting. How that it can be made to sound as though an exercise in merely self abasement, false grasp at humility, and really, no more than a man seeking to make himself necessary, even as a helper. Thus making all this no more than the self aggrandizing it would, or may appear, to decry. Yes, I am kinda trapped myself. A caught thing. A captured thing. A thing that is no less caught “speaking” as though caught in the act is now subject to being accused; and by that very act, of being persuaded it has something to add, something to be of help. Well, yes. I am subject to accusation!

In truth…it’s far safer for me to agree. And I am the one who needs all the help there is. Particularly from the only One who can even save hypocrites.

Part 2 to follow.