Writing helps. Remembering the Lord openly and sharing what He's showing me, what He's revealing, what He's teaching...helps. These past couple days, there've been so many things become more clear, in terms of the parallels of modern society with what He describes of His people's straying...and of their faith. I haven't written it all down, and so much of it has come and gone in the haze that's continued. But I've been grateful for His fellowship.
He has been allowing me insight regarding delusion and hardheartedness which arises from refusing to endure grief, sorrows, hardship, suffering, and confusions--from refusing to submit them to Him and walk through, with Him beside. Instead, we choose lies instead of holding onto truth so very often. Lies unto delusion, unto hardheartedness. Lies unto bitterness. Lies, unto a lack of keen feeling. Such delusion seems less painful. Is less of a struggle to endure. Lies also allow for less disagreement between opposing views. Lies allow for avoiding disapproval. And especially when the disapproval is come from others we esteem, lies to ourselves and to others permit us to have a false sense of approval and security in the company of others: Supervisors, parents, bosses, mentors, spiritual leaders.
So not only can lies "help us escape" from pain and suffering, there's ofttimes less friction in social circumstances if we choose lies rather than submitting to truth. Because truth is unwavering. Truth is unyielding. Truth can be shared with the utmost love, but if something is truth, then it cannot compromise or otherwise it becomes something other than truth. In a world where we sinfully determine our own course--believing ourselves capable of discerning right and wrong without waiting on God's guidance--refusing to give in to the pressure to yield (especially when openly waiting on and submitting to God) especially infuriates.
Like of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. They honored the Lord in their hearts and thus weren't able to bow to Nebuchadnezzar (or his statue, moreover) as god. They couldn't bow to his statue. Not out of defiance, but because of their love for and worship of the Lord.
And when they were taken before the king to answer for their lack of worship, they spoke very simply. Not out of defiance. They didn't boast that God was going to certainly deliver them out of the hand of a tyrant. They simply acknowledged that God was God, alone, and they couldn't bow to another. And they acknowledged that God was capable of saving them, while simultaneously acknowledging that He is God, alone, even if He chose not to deliver them.
In the face of death--in the face of the king so proud and haughty and domineering that he had a kingdom bowing to a statue of him as their god, at intervals--they submitted to God, honored God, and even attested they whether He saved them or not He was the only true God.
They committed themselves into God's hands, doing so--cast themselves wholly on His mercy, out of loving devotion. And I know it was loving devotion, because the Lord calls the greatest law to be that we love Him--and He has honored the devotion of these men for all time by recording this instance of their submission to Him and His deliverance.
So there wasn't a disagreement and unwillingness to yield borne out of defiance of self-assurance. These men wanted to be obedient to God. And obedience is of the heart, or it's not obedience (Isaiah 29:13): So, their refusal to worship was borne out of love, desiring God's will be done, casting all else upon God's discretion, casting themselves wholly upon His mercy and loving Him no less whether He allowed them to perish in the fire or delivered them. Yet doesn't He say He will be with us in the fire--He joins us therein, allows our bonds be disintegrated, and delivers us to a greater freedom than before.
Thinking on all this, as I'm really struggling not to be taken by bitterness, really struggling not to give in to willful forgetfulness. Uncomfortable truths are true, regardless how uncomfortable. And I'd rather rest in the Lord and suffer grief, clinging to truth, than allow comforting lies to arise in my heart. Lies don't help anyone, ultimately, but at least the Lord is faithful to forgive us when we return to Him and ask. And He will deliver those who are His, and teach us how not to do these things.
Just...He's teaching me how to go about not lying to (id est, deluding) myself in order to avoid pain, right now. Suppressing memories just because they're painful, pretending things never happened, isn't something that allows for picking and choosing what stays and what goes. And while it's been my only means of continuing to function through much life, I have the Lord to help me, now. And He has been. He's been carrying me through, as well as literally, for a week now. And still. If people had any idea the extent...
He's teaching me to be able to endure grief and unfairness and being wronged without seeking my own way or seeking to otherwise assert myself. Teaching how to trust Him in the midst, showing His faithfulness and His sufficiency. And He's showing me all the ways I'd been surviving which were damaging me and leading to damage unto others. So, although I would prefer to hide my shame and pretend it doesn't exist and hasn't happened, let alone the heartbreak and grief of loss, ever so much the pain then there's all the more reason not to hide nor repress these things because doing so is unto delusion, unto hardheartedness. Thus allowing the pain to otherwise fester, less openly, become something that offers a foothold to the enemy.
They enemy is having enough of a heyday with my grief, right now, as it is. I haven't the energy to give in to shame, and the Lord has borne my shame anyway. So, the temptation to give in and suppress memory is such an open door for the enemy. If I give into the temptation to deny truth, unto temptation to suppress or repress memory, I give room for bitterness, for anger, for resentment, for self-seeking, for pity, for all many things more to come in. I'm so grateful Jesus is so faithful and constant. He even let me lose the pack of cigarettes I had, a few hours ago. No idea what happened to them. Still not even sure they're lost. But I couldn't find them and haven't the strength of will or mind to continue searching. So that's done again before even really starting. I'm very grateful.
Just...He's faithful.
I trust Him.
Another thing about bringing light into a situation full of shadows is that those things which lurk in darkness tend to get pretty angry. Violently angry, sometimes. Like Nebuchadnezzar did. He was so infuriated that people were effectively murdered just per course of enacting the punishment he decreed upon those who dared defy him. That's pretty angry. But, again, the thing is--they weren't acting against Nebuchadnezzar in concerted defiance against him, rather their submission to God was unto inability to submit to Nebuchadnezzar. Which...effectively meant they defied Nebuchadnezzar's decree, but out of submission to God...not out of a spirit of defiance against Nebuchadnezzar. And that's vital. They submitted to God, so their actions were as unto Him. So He was the defense they sheltered under, as such.
If we're acting simply on our own merit, according to our own understanding, by our own strength, we have no defense or justification for ourselves. We can call various things to mind, but we can't ultimately defend ourselves. God is the only actual defense. Submitting to Him. And that arises simply out of the fact that He is truth, and He is just. And all justice and truth are of Him and from Him or they aren't justice, they aren't truth. No matter what anyone says or does, otherwise. Things and matters might otherwise call themselves truth and justice, but unless they arise as a matter of a heart being submitted to Him and His ways, there's deviance from God's law at the outset, thus from His ways and nature, then deviant from truth and justice too. He's the one who, in His wisdom, created these things. He is the one who orders them. And He's the one who calls their limits. Of all law, of all truth, of all justice. And He is concerned with out hearts, not merely our actions.
So, to whatever extent we've deviated from God, we've effectively deviated from truth and justice, too. And as best I can tell from what I read and from what He's revealed to me, even of myself, I don't ever have the faintest clue how far that happens to be except to note that the last time He allowed me significant insight into my sinfulness--as an overview of my "sanctified self"--I am so utterly wretched and sin-stained and marred that it's all I can do to collapse on Him in wonder that He would even entreat me, let alone love me and call me His own. Just...yeah--we don't know our own hearts. We don't know our own minds, either, though. The intentions of our hearts and our most well-intended plans all are so convoluted and twisted and influenced by all the many years of sin and deviation that we just don't have clarity at all. We just don't. He, alone, gives us bits and pieces of it, over time. Revealing, as we seek. But all the further we stray from Him, the more deluded we become. And if we choose to actively refuse to retain truth in our hearts and minds, then how deep that darkness becomes...while all the while, we're fed on our own delusions, believing our own lies.
Just, if we don't actually know where we stand--whether feasting on lies unto unknown depths of delusion or seeking truth yet still being delivered out of the delusions wrought per sin--how could we hope to defend our position?...moreover, defend it as relative to what? Whereas, we know God is perfectly just and we know He is wholly true. He is unassailable. While our positions are wholly indefensible, comparatively. And our positions are otherwise ultimately undeterminable if only viewed as relative to varied, similarly shifting others--but God's position is wholly unwavering. He is the only true defense, as such.
There has to be a fixed point from which one can build a defense, in order to defend anything, is all. Otherwise, defense is merely relative to the perspectives of others, which shift dependent upon varying interpretation or mood or relative determination of what justice even means. In situations as such, there can be no true justice. Just as there can be no truth without an absolute from which it arises, no justice can come except that there is an absolute ideal from which it is being derived and according to which it is being sought.
And this lattermost is all very piecemeal, and I still don't entirely understand it. I really didn't intend to write about justice and except for reading Isaiah and...well, there are things which are seriously unjust which are going on. But these are things I generally tend to just cast upon the Lord, entirely, because I'm so bereft of all things meaningful to the world. And all the moreso, now. But this is here for now. There's something still which is missing, regarding attempt to defend oneself apart from God. Rather than submitting to Him, and trusting Him as one's defense. Which is a very solemn path. Very solemn. Or maybe it's here, now. I'm not sure. I'm just done right now. Maybe to walk, now.
Seek justice, love mercy, walk humbly with your God.
(Michael 6:7-8)
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