Stunned By Power

You gotta admit, (or maybe ya don’t) how easy it is to get carried away with power.

I can no more deny this of myself in particular than I can deny the disciple’s experience. It happens.

And the seventy returned again with joy, saying, Lord, even the devils are subject unto us through thy name.

Joy is a wonderful thing in its buoyancy, especially if one has even known the dread weights so commonly experienced upon the soul. Relief, but more. Happiness, but more. An estate of being carried along above considerations of care, worry, or doubt, but more. And there is a power in joy to lift, to elevate, to have even some imparting of a clarity often rare…even to some extent of (for us) how things should be.

It becomes less of a seeming mystery (if any remains of it) that:

The joy of the Lord is my strength.

Also kind of hard to conceal and/or disguise. Simply because in that estate there is no care for such things as necessitate concealment or disguising…or even a tamping down. Joy is always surprisingly surprising. And mostly, and often, it only suffers by any trying to define or describe it, like a thing that vanishes when put under the microscope of logic.

Or, like an autopsy by examination, we may be able to say what killed a thing, but never find what made it alive in the first place. And we may be too often expert at stopping things for examination, not knowing it is our own ways of examination, or own ways of finding things out, our own ways of looking at and after things, is the very thing that robs sight of essence. Think butterfly pinned in display case for study.

(And God knows how tedious a man can be made in explanations! Ha!)

It may make a smart (to himself) man look stupid, or a stupid man look stupider. And if made aware of that estate, as if looking more the fool now being aware as being under the eye of others, the worse thing he may do might be the only thing then more present(ed) he sees to do, recover from it. For it is a very complete strain and drain upon the convinced joyless who are often not uneager to cast an eye of judgment upon it.

(Think David’s dancing and his wife Michal’s words, and both his response…and her reward.)

But for those (is it few?) not given over to such convincing, a hunger may be stirred. Or a curiosity that may engender to genuine interest if allowed full course.

Is that us? God knows.

Joy and source of it is for an “us” (if born of the spirit) particularly defined. Not for some inherent enforcement of restriction as is commonly assigned defining, but even contrariwise, for entrance into its, or a, fullness. Jesus says this:

These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full.

These things have I spoken to you…

Which things? We might ask. Only those immediately prior? (No one necessarily wants to be accused of bad exegesis, even if the joyous don’t much care about accusations) Some things? All things(?) to some encompassing as might justifiably include, and be justified by our neither exempting nor excepting:

It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.

If we do not except, but rather accept that all of the Lord’s (is it our Lord’s?) words are of, and to, spirit and life, then even what may at first appear rebuke or reproval is/are no less so. We may do well to remember this bit of scripture in that regard:

The full soul loatheth an honeycomb; but to the hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet.

It may appear contradiction of sorts, my (or any man’s referencing) of the Lord’s will and desire for our fullness that seems in contradiction to the above verse quoted. The logic would appear to support against the hungry soul…if the Lord fills us all. And God forbid I or any speak in such manner against the Lord’s will and intent for us as believers. Or that in any way the fullness of Himself that He gives is ever in any less measure than the all of Himself…from most novice to most aged saint. God forbid.

Yet, we learn.

Perhaps even that there is a necessary maintenance of a hungry soul that does not belie the promise of fullness. And we may also learn it is not we ourselves, nor of ourselves, that such maintenance is ministered in order to fulfill a promise of blessedness as even in:

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.

We tend to, or more, like to feel filled, less so (it often seems) hungry and thirsty. For there we feel some impelling to do something about it. Do some work, take some action, find some food or drink, to alleviate or come to such “blessing” as we might describe being filled is.

Yet, hear the peculiarity, if you are made able.

The hungry and thirsty (in this case for righteousness) are already pronounced the blessed. And so what appears a great paradox is unveiled…it is the hungry and thirsty only that can receive the promise of being filled, and, if believing, do. As even indicated by hunger and thirst. Now the hungry soul that finds sweetness in even the bitter (or seeming so) morsel. And though not supported by man’s logic, is the only estate healthy for the disciple.

Every word. Every word is spirit and life. Rebuke. Reproval. Being contradicted by the Lord. Being told one knows not, or even knows nothing, by the Lord. Being told one is glorying in what ought to be shame…when by the Lord. You are being a presumptuous and spiteful wretch…when told by the Lord.

My own list is innumerable and for you would be an insufferable listing, but I assure you (as God is witness) that if it be for your health God must make it known to you, He would, and will. No one escapes being some form of example to, and for, the man in God’s clutch.

Yet, even that some of the things a man “like me” might enumerate as heard spoken to remain spirit and life spoken…when delivered of the Christ of God. We often make so much of certain things, perhaps even forgetting (or is it the not like remembering?) that even such as “get thee behind me Satan” in the Lord’s address to a man, is made spirit and life to him…because of whom the Christ of God is.

He alone is the deliverer, keeper, preserver, and glory of those that are His own, and they are appointed to know both it (salvation), and Him.

Yes, even the one whom, even as a disciple may find he has “let” a certain work through him to even rebuke the Lord.

Then Peter took him, and began to rebuke him, saying, Be it far from thee, Lord: this shall not be unto thee.

And I am far more inclined (even if it be just me, persuaded) it is only the mercy of God that reveals to us those places where we have sought to be the Lord’s counsellor and the folly of it.

And if there be as any who might seemingly (to me) “pearl clutch” and exclaim “O! But I have never done that nor ever would, that would be just crazy!”, I wonder if we have the same Lord. And communication if even possible between us, will be very very difficult.

But the good news is communication with me, as from me, or of me, is of absolutely no matter.

Nevertheless, I will testify of a man who has done all I cannot, could not (and would not) in His joy and the joy as set before Him, to endure the cross. Knowing so little of both it and Him, but with a hunger for what appears (to me) as righteousness (even Himself) and yes, even liberty (which is of Himself) I sense no inhibition to confess the many times when faced with this thing I know so little of, the cross, I have balked, stuttered…yes even stammered (in some form of advising)

“Lord, there’s gotta be another way”.

“Lord, this is just too much for me”

Yes silly child. All is. When will you be glad I got it?

And, I too, am stunned by power.

It may be foolishly, God knows. Making a stupid man look even stupider.

But God forbid I lay any burden upon any other to have to be “smart”.

So that even rebukes and corrections (of far too many to mention) have been changed in tone and hue by He who makes all things new…and even (even particularly) unto the way of spirit and life.

And the seventy returned again with joy, saying, Lord, even the devils are subject unto us through thy name.

And a few verses is later spoken:

Notwithstanding in this rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you; but rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven.

“…in this, rejoice not,”

Maybe at best described as a mild rebuke? But perhaps not.
Because power over “things” has a way of turning a head.

Thanks be to God His cannot be turned from His own.

In His beholding them from where He is, and His beholding them in that to which He has moved them, redeemed as to and into Himself…where names are written to be discovered as never forgotten (even upon His hands)…and where “heaven is”.

In Him.

Where all joy is.