To Be Brief: Trust

Everything is so strange right now. So much hostility, so much fear, and all manner of confusions on all sides.

God is merciful and He will keep those who are Him. He will forgive those who turn to Him.

Again and again, I am reminded of Scriptures which speak of people hiding under rocks and in caves, at God’s judgments—refusing to repent. Still indignant, set against His sovereignty.  

I’ll plead as He leads. But I can’t force hands either. Whatever He wills, He will accomplish. 

I am afraid. But I trust the Lord, when I fear. I trust Him to constrain me, to redirect me, to use me even when my own heart and mind are so woefully, atrociously faithless. To so falter from trusting Him wholeheartedly, as to fear…is sad. 

He is so trustworthy. Jesus laid down His life for us. He humbled Himself, taking on flesh…and bore our disdain and mockery and insensitivity and faithlessness while among us. And He loved the Father perfectly even so, and loved us perfectly from that space, in spite of our wretchedness. 

He gave His life to purchase us, to free us, to give us life. He will not abandon us. And He knows how tomorrow will come, and He will guide our steps.

Whom He loves, He chastens, and He disciplines those who are His children. His judgment begins with us. And for those who are His, this is refining, to His glory and our confirmation to the image of our blessed Lord.

He will not forsake us. We have been bought with His own blood. We can trust Him.

Logistics

 So, I'm shifting just a couple things right now, considering that present circumstances may warrant. 

One step to the next, as the Lord allows and gives. 

Much in the world is seemingly out of order right now. It isn't, given that God is in control, and yet we have been largely given over to sin. Which is, being given over to further and further depths of delusion--even to the end that we destroy ourselves, literally killing ourselves, and yet considering that good. 

Murder assess dads has been considered increasingly acceptable for the most innocent of all, for quite some time in this country. While increasingly, there's a push to obliterate punishment for violent offenses. The past year has been so eye-opening. 

God will not be mocked. Either we will repent or we will be judged, all the more. 

And Jesus stands ready to forgive all who will but come to Him. 

Live in God’s Word

This will bear repeating, always:

How are we to please God, unless we know and understand Him as to distinguish rightly (discern) between His will and the world’s and the flesh’s counterfeits? Because that is always it: counterfeit righteousness, counterfeit goodness, counterfeit love, counterfeit truth. 

Our and Satan’s counterfeits of God’s truth are yet so desultory that to even call them counterfeit is to unduly exalt them in estimation: not approaching unto the mastery of form or representation which a toddler’s drawing manages, in presenting an image of the actual.

And yet, in choosing to exalt something alongside Him, which is to assert there is a matter superior to Him (wholly impossible), is to have so significantly departed from what is real and true that we are effectively blind, becoming increasingly insensate to actual surpassing worth (inestimable) of the source of all meaning of all worth. Forsaking truth...we forsake truth. Choosing blindness...becoming blind. Having forsaken life...we die. Effectively.

So the matter of coming to rightly divide truth is a work of His grace upon the dead, returning some measure of sensibility, if at all returned to life as to fear and love God, in Christ Jesus, who is our Redeemer, God the Son.

We are then to grow in that knowledge. We get to know Him. Via His Word: now illuminated by the Holy Spirit indwelling all His saints.

We take for granted the disparity between what was our blindness, too easily. We were dead in our sins. Dead. Incapable of right thought, act, speech, per our own initiative. We could not obey, even as we would not love Him, for having exalted lies as worthy all our devout pursuit, rather than to worship the Creator and honor Him.

Had He not intervened, none would have come to Him. Yet in His mercy, He has placed His love upon some—He has chosen to have mercy on some, in spite of our reviling and hatred of Him. None of us wanted nor would repent, yet He drew us, and chose some to be set apart for His especial use. According to the good pleasure of His will, some have been adopted as sons and daughters, through and in Jesus Christ, who gave Himself to suffer our just punishment, who satisfied the infinite debt of wrath we incurred...loving us, having set His love upon us, while we yet despised and rejected Him. He has had mercy on some. 

All are commanded to obey and repent. Those whom the Father has given as the portion for which Christ died, they will obey. All had ought. All are without excuse.

So, we must repent. And seek to honor Him. To honor Him, we must know His nature and His will. 

Jesus said that in the last days, if it were possible even the elect would be deceived. How rife the beguiling, nuanced pseudo-truths, then? How insidious the pretense of false hopes and false love and false peace?

When the false prophets called out, “Peace, peace!,” while there was no peace and judgment approached, the people listened. They were destroyed for a lack of knowledge. 

It’s those who know their God who will stand firm. Those who wait upon Him will not grow weary. And if our thoughts are fixed on Him, He will keep us in perfect peace—if we trust Him. He will lead us. 

We must know Him and understand Him. His Word is pure. Fear of Him is pure, and is the beginning of knowledge and wisdom.

How can we trust Him, if we don’t know Him, in truth? And how can we say we know Him, if we do not know Him well enough to understand something of who and how He is? How can we understand Him, if we will not hear Him out and strive to understand what He has said of Himself? If we neglect what He has said, how can we have any hope to learn of Him? We are otherwise contented with phantasms, our own kindling.

Seek Him while He may be found. It is a terrible and awesome thing to fall into the hands of a living God. He is a consuming fire.

We cannot please Him apart from truly believing Him—trusting Him. We must, then, intimately know His Word.