Recent events have again been trying. By the grace of God.
Writing here largely is about sharing whatever He's most recently revealed to me, almost always in terms of deliverance from long-standing (and even recently adopted) prejudices and misunderstandings and worldly reasonings. A lifelong process, this, and it seems that certain momentary bits of insight are still--clarion as they may be and revolutionary to thought, in each instance of revelation unto extrapolation--points of passage along a progressive path. Still, each bit only ever represents potential parts of the whole, as out-workings of ongoing striving unto a greater realization of the truth of who God is and what are His ways (even as to experientially know Him more intimately). In love, pursued--not a practical matter (though it's eminently practical to seek to know the Creator and Sustainer of life), nor a matter endeavored so to be more right, more correct, more adroit in comprehending and appropriating truth (though to truly come to know Him more intimately is to become increasingly more familiar with truth--as He is truth and things which aren't like Him pass away upon entering more deeply into His presence, as unto conformity to His nature).
But apt pursuit of Him is for the sake of love (i.e., the Greatest Commandment), although there are so many out-workings of such a pursuit considered desirable or good, in themselves: To love Him is to love truth. To love Him is to love others. To love Him is to love doing right. To love Him is to absolutely adore doing whatsoever would be pleasing to Him. Drawing nearer to Him pleases Him. To draw nearer to Him is to love Him more, as things which aren't like Him ever further pass away.
I don't know why things are cyclic, even like the prior essentially implies: drawing nearer to God (coming to know Him better) inspires greater faith, knowing Him better inspires deeper love for Him, loving Him more inspires desire to be more pleasing to Him (to obey Him: love Him, love others, do what's right, walk in faith), so the desire to be more pleasing inspires desire to have greater faith, and to come to greater faith we draw nearer to God.
I don't know why He's made things the way He has. I don't know why there's a continual process of striving, rather than arrival at a heart turned toward Him in love which remains fully emblazoned and impassioned to seek Him ardently without trial nor faltering. I don't fully know why He has made it so that there's such a struggle to remain ardently focused upon the truth of who He is, and why it's oft a struggle to maintain a heart undivided.
Except that I know He is good. And that all things work to good for those who are called by Him.
And, of myself, I know that my "way of being" is one which finds best fulfillment in having ruled out outliers--testing and retesting and testing again to ensure that the path being pursued is well and good and right. Testing all along the way to ensure the course isn't actually only a distraction or a detour from truth, from actual growth and progress. Because there have ever been minor points of distraction which lead to major points of error if pursued--all of life has been of that, and now that I am following truth in Christ...it's been no different, only within the realm of actual truth. There've continually been minor points of distraction, especially in terms of "doctrine," which deviate even if only slightly from the Spirit of God and His will...deviating so slightly as to seem initially innocuous. Although leading to some decidedly strange (id est, not of God) places, mentally and emotionally and spiritually. If taken according to my own understanding, alone, and even only taken according to a superficial assessment of Scripture...many of these particular (recent-ish) detours have been particularly insidious for having all appearances of rightness and goodness and wholesome intentions, especially. When what they've bred in my heart has been divisiveness, assuring my mind of its inherent abilities for maintaining conscious discernment of what is and isn't righteous.
So, all along the way, there's need of testing all things. I don't have to understand exactly what it is about certain doctrines that's actually the point of divergence--the Lord will most certainly explain these things to me, if I persist in asking Him on those points, especially. Whether through the work of others He's revealed them to, already, or through prayer and intense reading of Scripture. However--He does explain Himself to those who really want to know. To minor extents, at least, even as Scripture testifies to the truth of who He is and how and why He does what He does.
As far as being delivered from error goes, it's something that happens when the focus is on Jesus--not on man, nor on self. Also, being content to just sit in one place--in terms of relationship with God and depth of regard for Him--is definitely somewhat an option...but the more valid option is to persistently pursue Him to greater depths of knowledge and awareness and love and peace and deliverance and service and surrender and to all and sundry else which come by way of such pursuit of One who is eternal and gracious.
Put another way, "sitting still" seems odd (at best) when there's active opportunity to more intimately know the God of the universe.
And personally speaking, "sitting still" (aka, "resting on my laurels," "living off of yesterday's manna," etc.) leaves me in an apparent point of serious vulnerability: if I'm not actively pursuing something which is actually productive, it seems I'm always instead actually decomposing.
Either I'm progressing or regressing--there's never been a point of remaining "stationary" without some manner of madness cropping up as thoughts not actively engaged in attaining greater heights of awareness or understanding or satisfying curiosity...are not wont to remain inactive but rather becone increasingly disposed toward (increasingly) rancid amusements which ultimately lead to absolute, whole-hearted breakdown.
So, either I'm progressing and testing things all the while to ensure consistency with truth...or I'm faltering. And I don't recommend courting every single error on the planet just as to have first-hand knowledge of each, but being someone who's personally inclined to test the boundaries in all directions...there've been numerous boundaries crossed which need not have done, into error, and yet the Lord has had mercy on me. And not just mercy, but my appreciation for Him and my love for Him and my faith in Him has increased so much as a result of having it be more clearly evidenced, again and again and again, that it's only by grace that I'm not completely bonkers, and only by His grace that I'm not still laboring under even so many delusions as have tempted and even settled in, moment to moment, over course already of my active walk with Him, as a regenerated disciple.
For these reasons and many others, though, we're each responsible to discern truth in everything, according to the Holy Spirit's guidance--even our most respected and esteemed leaders of the faith were still human and not divine. Test all things. Not being suspicious or paranoid, either--trusting the Lord will give clarity, that He'll direct and deliver. But not being unwilling to hold up to the light of Scripture anything which causes a twinge of spiritual discomfort--that twinge may either be indication of need for repentance or of need for further clarification of a perhaps marginally twisted point of interpretation. We can trust Him to deliver us. We can trust Him to guide us. He will keep us, who are His. And yet we need to draw ever nearer to Him, all along the way, as temptations to err (even on the side of caution, quite frankly) are vast and insidious and seeking to trap us at every opportunity.
These are what's been seen by me, though. He is faithful. And I need Him. And I would be lost, except that He continually kept me. I'm not capable, in and of myself, of refraining from falling prey to all manner of deviations from His loving Spirit.
Perhaps it's the same, if to varying degrees and in varying ways, with all of us. Paul said we're none tempted except as is common to all of us.
And Peter also wrote that we're to have our faith tried in the fire, refined to become more valuable than gold. Jesus Himself even told John that we're to buy from Him riches which are of this kind...refined in fire.
So all the while, whenever we get to a point of thinking ourselves steadfast, bolstered against error--we're to be that much more vigilant, as such attitude evidences an aptitude to fall (pride comes before the fall, and self-reliance is an ostensibly prideful notion regarding spiritual pursuits). Those who believe they have things wholly ordered and rightly divided are the ones perhaps furthest from actually realizing the truth of our complete and utter reliance upon God's active and continual mercies and grace, is the thing. (None are worthy, but yet all are loved: He died for the world, that whosoever believes in Him would have the life of God.)
It's a difficult thing to the mind--having to accept personal incapacity, incapability, ineptitude: such as is our actual state, in terms of spiritual rightness. We're none of us in position to judge ourselves nor others, truthfully--all of us have had our vision clouded by the working of sin. Which is why we must open our lives to be judged by Scripture, by the living Spirit of God which interprets His Scripture to us--convicting us of sin, even as per viewing the truth of His goodness we're brought to repentance and into ardent desire to be conformed to Christ's will, to be led by Him in all righteousness, even for His Name's sake.
The problem, after all, is a matter of spiritual/mental/emotional righteousness--not of presenting a particular argument well, nor of acting consistently according to a way which seems right according to one's own understanding.
The problem, in terms of the general world/church view on this, though...is that we're just not capable of knowing or doing righteousness according to our own understanding, thus neither are we capable of maintaining it by our own strength, nor per the collective will of our highest earthly understandings. We just can't manage to be righteous before God, can't walk in a way that pleases Him. Not apart from Christ, that is.
That's another testament to our utter dependence upon Him in all things, such that we who are His will be led by His Spirit. Even as abiding in His love, as He did in the Father's.
As far as a "right exposition" of that particular matter goes (which is the same thing, put in two slightly different ways, as a matter to note)--if you can contrive to fully and inerrantly expound an explicitly spiritual matter in wholly carnal terms, according to understood methods of interpretation which aren't wholly and explicitly reliant upon God for the all, then you've deviated from the essence of what being led by the Spirit means even over the process of attempting to elaborate on the actual matter of being so led. (Except for grace, that is: His kindness is just incomprehensible, especially when contemplation our endless rebellions--His mercy overflows, despite the hardness of our hearts.)
Similarly to consider: Can you tell someone about your personal experience of the love of Jesus, and make such description itself be so explicit and encompassing as to effectively birth His love in their heart?
Or, likewise and yet "nearer to home," in terms of common carnal knowledge: Can you tell an aspiring-mother what the experience of loving a child is and have her wholly embody those principles unto an experiential knowledge of each which is apt, accurate...without her having yet conceived and birthed even long-desired child?
You could describe features and reasons and out-workings of these things all day, but except that there's actual, personal experience of them--individually embarked and possessed and continually endeavored--words will only ever fall far short of what the actual experience and process is regarding any matter which is emotionally and spiritually known to the exclusion of physical and mental comprehension. The carnal mind is enmity against God. Exclusively spiritual matters, then, cannot be wholly embarked unto comprehension by the carnal mind, or otherwise they're degraded into a shadow of what their true nature is, as to be so "comprehended." It's a matter of which is "larger," in a sense. "Can you fit a school bus into a (standard) telephone booth?"-sort of deal. Some things are a matter of knowing and thus trusting God, Himself. We don't dictate to Him. He's beyond us. Entirely. Yet He loves us and does things for us in ways we can't even begin to comprehend, except to know they're just so because He told us about them in terms we could somewhat understand.
Like as with the actual event of regeneration, even.
I could provide numerous details pertaining to the vast differences I've thus far noted and been able to comprehend between prior ways of life and what life is like now, in Christ: manners of thought, emotion, spirit, and habit changed and being changed.
I could provide details descriptive of how odd and futile were many prior ways of thinking--now realized as definitively, drastically different manners of being which are both intimately and trepidatiously remembered...yet blessedly no longer prevalently active.
I could give terms descriptive of progressive recognition of and adaptation to an increasing experience of peace and hope and love, unexpectedly become manifest upon witnessing Christ's own love displayed, desiring (in that very moment) naught else to do with sin while longing only for Him: Such difference wasn't express as all old habits of thought and act instantly and fully falling away...but a foreignness was unexpectedly experienced of all matters (disconcerting, to say the least), even as some matters of prior habitual normalcy became utterly inconceivable for continuation: alcohol consumption, for one--prior unable to stop drinking, unable to drink in moderation, craving it almost constantly...and then, inexplicable lack of desire for it, unto a fear of being trapped by it again (not expecting to have been able to stop drinking, finding it so...then fearing to fall back), now to a point of humbly hoping to be kept even from temptation to ever return to such bondage. Two years, now. Two years free, after many years of bondage. Self-made, but no less captive.
I could tell you about so many things that Jesus has freed me from, but that won't make you free--He alone can do that.
I could tell you so many things that He's shown me--the ways He's taught me, the trials He's carried me through, the things He's revealed of Himself in Scripture (such a blessed steadfast touchstone and help!--for growth and continuation and testing of all thoughts and impulses, along the way)...
...I could tell You what it's been to come to know Him--to remain constantly, increasingly aware of His presence in such a way as maintains peace in the midst of abject terror and utter panic (yes--directly opposed, and yet...it's been the case numerous times), and what it's been to come to know and increasingly love all those whom He's created, yet also to have particular compulsion toward those who similarly know Him and love Him.
...I could talk to you about His heart, His mind, His thoughts, and the love He has for all of us (even those who despise Him). I could tell you about His utter purity and absolutely incomprehensible goodness--loving indiscriminately despite being utterly despised, loving unmitigatedly despite being egregiously mocked, loving consummately despite being ripped to shreds, completely demeaned, and maliciously degraded by every means at our then-present disposal. I could talk to you about the steadfastness of His all-consuming love even while we attempted by all means to break Him, to destroy Him, to utterly crush Him, to completely and wholly subject Him to all the wrath we could muster, out of absolute derision and abject hatred and complete loathing of such goodness and mercy and love and unmitigated purity in Him as made wholly evident our own absolute wretchedness and wickedness and depravity (even what we consider "slight" deviations are egregious offenses against an infinitely good God).
I could talk to you about His longing that all would be reconciled to Him, in love. Through His sacrifice that made a way. He endured the suffering, the pain of sin, the wrath due...
...I could talk to you about how vast a suffering that was, is...of sin endured by the sinless for the sake of our salvation from it...couldn't say much, for being unable to bear to look full upon the suffering of One who deserves only love, devastated..devastating.
...I could talk to you about what desolation actually is, in terms of what it is to be fully without Him, without His love, as consciously in an "outer darkness" for moments which seem an eternity. Abject pain of inconsolable loss--inexpressible, incomprehensible, mind-numbing until light began again to dawn. A resurrection of hope, in Him.
...but I could tell you of a tormented groaning and gnashing of teeth, where many thusly strike against darkness to no avail: having rejected the light of Christ's love, the truth of His sovereignty, the opportunity for forgiveness freely given...darkness engulfs the soul.
No air, is the nearest approximation--like suffocation. As though there were no air without His indiscriminate love, without His ineffable mercies, without His sustaining grace. Without His love, there was nothing but pain, torment..suffering...blind loathing.. Nothing else. Blind despair.
His love sustains. It overcomes and covers a multitude of sins. And casts out fear, where love reigns. Love makes ways where there are no ways. And brings the dead to life.
So, having seem what it is to be without Him--only having regarded Him from afar and not sincerely enough as acknowledge Him and submit to His as Lord God--I was so lost. But seeing His love, experiencing His love for us--even such love as sees all the wickedness and vile rebellion my life has been...
He saw all matters of my disdain and loathing of Him and was more intimately familiar with the truth of them than I even now am, despite having been given a glimpse...despite continually now seeking further points which yet require repentance...
...seeing His love which led Him willing to suffer for my salvation--fully aware of my hatred, yet loving me no less--that broke me. Seeing His absolute willingness to endure the brunt of what I'd done (done against Him, even--yet He was willing to endure the shame, the pain, the punishment), so to free me from even my hatred of Him...seeing that--though I despised Him, He looked on me with love...
...and gave Himself in my place, that I could be free from the wretchedness I'd actually chosen.
...seeing all that, as made sin utterly horrific in that instant...
...I could talk to you at length about what it is to witness His love, to see His sacrifice, even (of a particular, explicit sort) to have the mind of Christ.
But words won't make these things real for you as they unexpectedly and assuredly became for me, in an instant--an instant which yet continues to flourish, in effect.
He can make the words real, though. And if the experiential truth of His love is to be real to anyone, then it's only by His direct intervention that it can be so.
Asking about what it means to "walk in the Spirit" is not entirely the same but very like asking what it is to experience (single-instance vs. ongoing) the love of God in one's own heart--these are not disengaged effects of having studied Christ and having a right theology (though those things are means which He certainly uses to draw unto Himself), but these are matters intimately and wholly originating from, with, of, and by the One whom such leading and such love focuses upon...as incited, sustained, and propelled entirely by Him, in all actuality.
Such that being led by the Holy Spirit is not by any means such an impersonal matter as would be potentially codified into broadly prescriptive determinations as would be applicable unto any or all such progressive, yet individually-unprecedented instances as do cumulatively constitute each person's life. Otherwise, if there were an outline to follow (i.e., a step-by-step "how to walk by the Spirit," "how to have faith"), we'd not be led by Him but by the outline. Seeking to outline things like this, we actually undermine what the effective process really is: coming to know God, Himself, thus coming to trust Him more fully, and in trusting Him more completely, walking with a greater faith/trust in what He's said, so trusting His directions.
But we want methodology because we want and crave self-sufficiency as opposed to reliance upon God: Our flesh ever wages a war to regain dominion...a battle oft attempted on the front of esteeming carnal understanding, so to exalt worldly understanding and fleshly wisdom as our prevailing source of security and direction.
So, as goes all things, then it's mercy we have to seek in order to be kept, directed, and sanctified. And trials do much to exercise our faith, forcing a greater, more conscious reliance upon Him. Our hope is in a living God, though--not in principles. And what gifts we have are from Him.
Where there's the love of God in one's heart, then He instills and maintains it. And likewise, if we're led by His Spirit, then it's His doing. We're opposed to Him from start to finish, otherwise, according to the workings of our own minds. But that's the whole deal about "being led"--we're not the one doing the leading. Ours is a submissive role. We're led when we're being subject to direct, active intervention of the One doing the leading, or otherwise we're not being led. Even as to walk by the Spirit is then actively being led by the Holy Spirit of God; otherwise, we're actually just doing our own thing, according to our own understanding, but maybe attributing it to Him.
But, again, His mercies are so incomprehensible that He even leads despite our blindness to His leading, despite our unwillingness often, and regardless of our lack of acknowledgment of divine intervention. Because it's all about what He's done, any way it goes.
Trials just help to clarify realization of how vast and encompassing are His mercies, when we will actually look to Him in the midst of them. Because they're going to come, regardless where we turn when they come. Even if the worst you ever face in life is a hangnail, then still, the manifest disease and devastation wrought by sin will still impact your life in some regard...even as death is eventual.
He offers peace, love, joy, hope, and comfort. He doesn't ask us to pretend to be something we're not. He doesn't ask us to act like we're on top of the world regardless of how much we're hurting, if we're despairing even of life.
No, He just wants us to trust Him in the midst of the storm, in the midst of the pain, in the middle of the darkest night. Because He can sustain us, even there. No matter how dark the night, no matter how painful the tragedy.
We don't have to pretend we're not hurting. We just need to admit and embrace the fact that we do hurt and that our need for Him is so much greater than our ability to keep ourselves afloat. Because no matter what else we figure out, we're not actually going to be able to defeat death.
We can mimic things. We have adapted a facsimile of the creation of life, even, in terms of many things like cloning, and various likewise techniques. But we didn't create life. You can't create what already exists, you can only mimic or modify.
Same as we're not actually capable of "deleting" something from existence. We might exterminate hundreds of species from the planet, might drive them to extinction...but they won't have ceased to ever exist, they won't have ceased to have been, only to no longer walk among us. And with death, even as cellular die off is a constant fact of life, then the ending of life for each organism is no different. We may modify things, find "work-arounds," as it were...in a sense...but we won't have eradicated the "problem." Because we'll never be the Creator.
We can't be in control of those things which we did not create and cannot destroy. We cannot be God. It's just a fact of nature. Created beings will only ever be created beings, no matter what we might attempt otherwise--we can still only operate within the limits of our ordained being.
Which is where being led by the Spirit is such a vital matter, in terms of seeking conformity to Christ--the implication therein, still, is that there's a divide. Either be led by the Spirit or not. And if not, we're walking according to something else, then.
But who is in a higher position, as to know what's right and good and necessary, even if a thing seems incomprehensible? God is, is who. Our perspective is just too limited.
We can't figure everything out.
Because we're not God, Holmes.
And it's taken me basically 20 years to come back around to that realization, only on the other side of the fence, now. When it first became clear to me, I utterly despaired and absolutely despised the fact of that truth. Because the only way to know fully well whether all things are right and good and true and consistent is to have sufficient context as to accurately weigh and consider each and the all against all and the sundry.
In other words, the only way to be absolutely certain of knowing absolutely anything...is either to know absolute truth absolutely...or to know all things and thus be positioned so as to attempt unprejudiced discernment of what is right and what is good, what is well-ordered and what is false. Either to know, absolutely. Or to have sufficient context--all knowledge--as to be equipped to judge.
Because knowing partial amounts of truth only equips sufficiently to be partially equipped to discern between those particular matters most familiar...as to operate only within such context as is adequately known sufficiently to operate effectively according to what circumstances necessitate. But you wouldn't call a plumber (who, in this example, has no knowledge of combustion engines) to help you work on a diesel engine. And you would seek advice on baking chocolate chip cookies from an architectural engineer who never cooks and doesn't want to learn.
There's expertise of a sort, but within specific realms of knowledge. And while there are vast overlaps in overt mechanism, there's such differentiation that makes impossible the extrapolation of entire principles of operation from one specific realm unto another effectively in such instances as those cited. Ask a quantum physicist who happens to dislike urban living to point you to the best restaurant in Manhattan, without simultaneously allowing them the opportunity to "phone a friend" or "ask Google," and you get the point. One thing doesn't lead to knowledge of the others. And similarities in function don't equate to explicit similarities in active, practical form.
Not to say that it's impossible to deduce information. But not without proper context.
That's like walking in the Spirit. Being led by the Holy Spirit.
He knows things we don't.
Like...why did He keep Paul out of Asia and send him to Macedonia, at that one point? Do you know? I don't, but He does.
And He restrained them from preaching in Asia. He knows why. Which basically means that we don't have to, but we need to know Him well enough to be able and willing to heed His explicit, individual direction.
Which isn't necessarily always going to make sense to the physical world nor to the carnal mind. Or, maybe never--He alone knows what He wills of each of us. But we can know it's all for good.
Trying to argue against there being individual direction, explicit unto each, on this count...ultimately would undermine the utility of prayer, too, just as a head's up. You can't attack bits and pieces just because they're difficult to accept and impossible to explain or understand. Having God's perspective on it all, in truth and in full would be the only sustainable perspective from which to argue such a claim and have any hope of doing so without undermining the entirety of Scripture, simultaneous.
Trust is trust, any way you want to attempt to reinterpret what trust entails.
Faith is a matter of having been convinced we can trust God. Which, first off, requires you actually know He exists. It's not a blind thing, is the point of it all--it's in a living, active God.
And He's willing to make Himself known. He said so throughout all of Scripture in so many ways. And, Scripture itself, is an absolute testament to that fact.
Either seek to know Him or don't...but we'll all come face to face with Him, either way.
Enough, for now.
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