How many, right now? ...in all the world.
I know there are some. Today, I wandered across one. Didn't know what the wait was for, but when pulling out of the church parking lot...well after dark...there was a man walking. Asking permission, it was well granted.
We spoke of Jesus and His majesty and His glory. And He and I are both walking miracles.
In terms of salvation first--as the greatest of all miracles. And also of being alive.
His injury left him with greater reminders than mine. He wants to keep them, though. And I don't blame him, really.
To have a physically visible distinction from those around you, as a mark of salvation--as a mark of Christ's work of grace in one's own life--is an honor.
Mine are all...weird, as far as that particular death-yielding incident goes.
According to medical science, there's absolutely no way I'm alive. (Not to mention the C-3 vertebra that was fractured in the first scan was whole in all subsequent scans...?)
According to medical science, if I am alive, then I'm a vegetable.
And according to medical science, if I'm alive and not a vegetable, then I'm totally paralyzed.
...can't talk.
...can't reason.
...can't read.
...can't write.
Oh, yeah.
And I'm blind, by the way.
My lawyer insisted upon that last one, for years. That...you know...I'm blind.
Or, as she finally adapted it...at any moment, I'll lose vision.
Until, six years after the incident, she finally stopped trying to force it on me.
Amazing grace, Holmes. I once was blind, but now I see.
And even though medical science still believes I'm blind, I can pass vision exams with no problem.
Blunt trauma to the entire span of the occipital lobe is supposed to override all that, according to them. Especially when it's so severe a trauma as to crack the bone.
And cause death, as it were.
But God's good.
So, I take up my cross. Because He's faithful and He leads me.
Why is it so difficult a thing, really?
Just--and I know writing is particularly choppy today, but there's been a lot, and each point need space for due significance.
Does anyone take time to consider, any longer? Or is it all just a rush job?
Goodness, there are things from a week+ ago that I'm still pondering on and praying about. From far longer than that, even. And still new things added, as of today.
Understanding takes time, but everything which is tossed out-of-hand with immediacy prior to even a superficial consideration...? Some of it's stuff that need not be looked upon, yeah, but where does discernment derive from, without prayerful and ardent pursuit?
The Holy Spirit gives these things to those who seek, to those who ask, and to those who love the Lord wholeheartedly. None of which is a process that occurs overnight.
I'm just a bit ...grieved, I guess would be the best word... that people run away from the Lord. He's everything that is good! SERIOUSLY.
Everything that anyone ever craves, fulfilled in Him, complete!
He IS what we crave, for the very love of God!
AND PEOPLE RUN AWAY
How does that even begin to make sense? And I know I'm not the only one who's had this realization, either. Because it's something Jesus, Himself, even spoke of. Only, to actually knowingly experience people running from unadulterated love...is just so heart-rending.
Why wallow in misery, though, when faced with a blatant alternative? Not TOLD about one. Not having had one explained to the best of another's ability to conceive such a thing... ...but when faced with it?
People attack, instead. Porcupines come to mind.
(I love His sense of humor.)
Isaiah 41 included a rather heart-rending bit wherein He did exercise a bit of humor in frustration of the idolatries being practiced. Inviting the makers of idols to sit down with Him that they could together watch and see what good or evil the idols would commit, then to ask the idols to foretell the future.
It's completely heart-rending, knowing how much He loves us (knowing to any degree), and hearing His lament.
Why can't we all just turn to Him? Why won't we all just talk to Him?
It's all He wants, when it comes down to brass tacks. He's already done the rest. Christ sacrificed so we could fellowship with Him, through the miraculous power of His resurrection, that we might be able to be freed from all the stuff that mires us and binds us.
So we can be fulfilled, as we all so long for, by entering into an intimate friendship of communication with Him.
It's open to everyone. EVERYONE
JUST TALK TO HIM
It's not hard. Really. Feels kinda awkward at first, given all the idolatry that we've all been so confounded by (including science, especially). But He listens. And will continue to listen.
And will respond when we allow Him to.
Personally, I'm bad for talking over everything, but have gotten a lot better about it, through prayer and the grace of His willing direction and tutelage.
Why is it so difficult to conceive of, really?
I mean, seriously. People everywhere look to weather forecasters for information they gauge from satellite and radar imagery which is so far distant from their immediate understanding and physical presence that it's odd to think they do it without a second thought.
And, yet, they won't talk to God. The one who fashioned the earth and designed the atmosphere.
All the satellite imagery in the world, and they won't have a truly heart-to-heart conversation with the one who orders the winds and orders the change of the seasons.
As far as mysticism goes, too--because that's just been brought up...
...the thing which is so frustrating, now, as far as the climate of current spiritual warfare goes--
--His people are truly destroyed for a lack of knowledge.
To put it simply:
We are nothing.
He is everything.
There's nothing we can do to change that.
No works.
No pleading.
No strategies.
No plans.
No seasonal papal robes.
No thematic candelabra designs.
No ordered system of exegesis.
No structured matter of pursuing prophecy for insight.
No atomic nor quantum theoretical approaches unto revealing "god particles."
No promise to reform our ways.
No intention to be more ardent in our pursuit of Him.
No "prayer of salvation."
...nothing we can do to change that our very natures separate us from God, thus condemn us.
But He is so merciful and full of grace that it's His will none should perish.
Despite our wickedness and deceits, He loves us enough that He sacrificed Himself--enduring untold heartache and horrendous suffering unto death.
Becoming a curse, taking our diseases and sin upon Himself, then dying so that He might defeat death, once and for all, destroying the works of Satan, once and for all, through His resurrection.
Recovering the keys to death, hell, and the grave.
So that we could be free, through Him.
Yet, even as to know Him, the Father has to lead us into a revelation of Christ's identity as His own son. The very son of God. So that we can believe in Him.
So, it's all the work of the Lord.
Being drawn to salvation is by grace, through faith.
Not by works, lest any man should boast.
MYSTICISM regards works.
It looks to there being some sort of unholy bartering system which ousts the magnificence of grace's work in us, as putting the onus of both ability, responsibility, and result upon man's efforts. Be it by a varied method of reading, as to a particular end. Or by way of establishment of a series of doctrine which supercedes fellowship with the Holy Spirit as being possible ONLY by grace.
I gladly tell you that it was not of me, to have a revelation of Christ. Neither was it something I one day decided, as to even be able to have a relationship with Him.
But, all my life I've craved love. And I sought it with all my being, by various means, even unto contortion. Only to find that the only points of contact which were ultimately fulfilling were those whereby I'd been so graced as to experience the Presence of the Lord during worship.
Song.
I heard singing, when I was young. It was beautiful, and there was no fear in me, then. In the pitch darkness of the night, no fear.
Until, one night, I told my mother about the singing. And she told me I didn't hear anything.
And I didn't again, until recently. One of the sound/video clips in a youtube video shared yesterday...in an "Unknown" area...sounds like the same singing. With the lightning flashing, in that bit.
But the absolute peace I'd experienced, listening to those voices in the darkness--they were a point of light, even then, without words for it.
I still went around the house humming. Until my father questioned me, one day, and informed me that "only crazy people hum songs they don't know."
The melody never left, though. Even though I strayed.
I didn't do all that. It wasn't by, through, or of me.
Nor was it when my mother had to resuscitate me in the middle of the driveway when I was two years old. I'd stopped breathing, heart stopped. In the middle of the driveway, apparently.
My dad says it was a fever.
Does it matter, though? You tell me.
Point being, though--none of it was by a decision on my part. Merely, there developed an unnamed yearning within me and I sought to fulfill it. The whole "God-shaped hole" sort of thing which folks talk about, to put it in vernacular.
Everyone has that, though. Most, for some reason, are accepting hollow imitations and demonic substitutions.
Just say no, is all.
If you seek, you WILL find. Draw nearer to Him, and He DOES draw nearer to You.
And He's faithful to deliver. Our faith and belief are the only hindrances. If we don't believe, or if we lack faith--we, in actuality, are pushing Him away and refusing to turn our eyes upon Him.
He gives us free will as to do so, even though it grieves.
And we all do it. We all doubt, time to time. But He's so loving and faithful that even in the midst of our doubt, He's faithful to lead us into faith, so long as we want Him to. So long as we LET Him.
Which is what utterly blows my mind, now, seeing how blind I truly was. How blind we all have been, as to refuse Him. Seriously.
He's NOT silent. Just...so few listen. So few even are WILLING to hear.
It's not Him that's faithless--it's US. It's ALWAYS been us.
ALWAYS.
Getting to know Him is learning to repent. And repentance is vital to being able to known Him more fully.
He must guide us in all things, merely we must surrender the delusion that our will is in any capacity effective in the matter of reaching Him.
He fashioned us in such a way that we are to glorify Him, and without doing so there's ever an absence in our lives. A felt absence. That's not something we have control over, no matter what might be done to try to numb or distract or illogically from that such yearning for our Creator.
Our love for Him comes only from knowing that He first loved us.
But that craving is designed to draw us into that relationship. To draw us nearer to Him. An actual (and, for once in a century properly used!) HONEST TO GOD relationship, wherein we aren't trying to hide any longer. He knows us, anyway. Hiding is pointless.
He formed us. He loves us.
He wants us to be reconciled to Him, into open fellowship. Friendship, yo.
Trying to offer Him anything other than just honest communication is a sidetrack from what's necessary, is all. And that's what mysticism, at its least demonic, ultimately equates to (man can do bad enough on his own--we don't always need an outside influence to mess up horrendously, just to note). That would be like...oh, having God ask you for a fish and you hand him a snake, hm?
Eh. Enough for now.
Why do so few listen?
Just talk to Jesus. Ask Him. He'll explain it all to you.
You don't need to take my word for it, just make sure you're certain it's His voice--the scripture helps SOOOO much, with that.
There are SO MANY attempted imposters which abound, right now. Some of them have almost fooled me...were it not for grace being sufficient and the Lord keeping His own.
It's taken a lifetime worth of messing up, to finally have gotten things right.
And that is ONLY by grace.
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