At His Mercy

 And so...

...the Lord is guiding, still. I am in position to potentially be terminated from employment in a matter of weeks, for my convictions.

The choice is to sin against God or to remain an employee of the state, in good standing and good favor with all, recognized by God's grace for exceptional abilities. Exceptional, yesterday, was the commendation. 

And it's all only as God gives grace. Everything we are each able to undertake is only as He empowers, having gifted. Everything we are skilled in, a matter of ordination. Just as our limitations are also divinely ordained. That we glorify Him both through our abilities and through our need, dependent upon Him for all, and then all the more conscious of that total reality. 

Jesus entered this world to redeem. God the Son added to Himself a human nature. He united Himself, in that moment, forever-after with us, as our kindred. 

For God to so humble Himself--the God who created all, in whom all is sustained--as to enter into His creation? And not just that, but to enter in so that He could satisfy justice, in His own flesh, through suffering in our place, through being maligned and rejected and spurned and beaten and crucified...that we could be healed and share in His joy? And even more, that the very wrath we have been storing up--righteous wrath, holy wrath, just wrath...as infinite as the One whom we had erred against, for being against One infinite...

...that very wrath, He entered into on our behalf. Being infinite and holy, He alone was able to drink that cup of wrath to the dregs and leave it dry. In His own being, He endured all the wrath we are due. So that it would be extinguished for any and all who would turn and be rectified in their relationship with Him--any who would willingly turn to Him, seeking forgiveness, then would be able to receive mercy while His righteous nature remains wholly just, even being the justifier of the unrighteous. Because the debt is paid, the penalty has been satisfied. In His own flesh and blood, broken and shed for us. And His fellowship with the Father...rent in some incomprehensible way, humanly speaking, though certainly not Divinely so...

...even as, humanly speaking, the God who is life and who gives life, and from whom all life comes and in whom all life persists...died. On our behalf. He even tasted death for us, and drank it in full measure. 

So that He could put that sin, to death--for, in His dying, those who turn to Him have been united to Him--our sin tallied then to His account, for payment and punishment due...so that, that sin nature itself is put to death, in the flesh, and overcome. Once and for all, for those who have faith. 

And He put death to death, in the flesh as well--entering in, and overcoming. He could not be held, restrained, constrained, extinguished. 

And so...

We should come to Him, all the more, knowing our unworthiness the more abjectly as cast against His utterly perfection and worth. He is good, wholly. He is unwaveringly loving. He has never erred. 

None of us can claim that same, of a single day (or morning, or moment)--we have failed in our primary calling: to love God perfectly and walk in righteous submission to Him. He is preeminent and He is worthy. 

For what moment has any of us known the fullness of the depths of our pride, as to have wholly forsaken self in favor of righteous truth which casts us into complete subjection to the Only, Wise God--the Only Perfect Authority? 

That erring is so far from our understanding. The depth of that wickedness, we see too little--itself, a revelation of our sinfulness. 

He died for us, though. That we may live in and unto Him. We are not our own. Our lives were bought with a price beyond measure: the blood of God's own Son. 

If we know Him, this will liberate us to submit to Him through trial. 

If we know Him, also the fearfulness of His majesty and preeminence will constrain us: He is a terrifying, awesome God: Holy and all-consuming is His power. He speaks and the mountains move into the sea. We should tremble in a terror of Him, though tempered wholly by our love for Him and our knowledge of His love for us, in Christ.

Yet this Father, we had ought to fear to cross. No mere belt would be our reprimand, otherwise. He is not arbitrary, nor is liberal with His disciplines: only the measure needed to accomplish the work of refinement which brings Him glory and is to our good (unto the formation and perfection of the image of His Son in us)...

We had ought to fear to cross Him, even as much as we ought to be wholly grieved to consider doing so. 

Yet we fail so often. 

Apart from His Spirit's work in us, we wouldn't do any of it, ever, at all in righteousness moreover. So, by His power then, by His Spirit working upon and in and through us, we must submit to Him and seek to be constrained by His love and fear of Him, that we would indeed work out our salvation all the more with fear and trembling. 

Even as we do make disciples in all the earth--teaching them all those things which He has taught us. We are to learn of and from Him--He is meek, and lowly in having humbled Himself to speak with us...is our God. So come to Him. Come to Jesus. Ask Him for aid. Ask Him for clarify. Ask Him to guide. 

But above all, ask Him to save you from the penalty of your sin--that the work He accomplished may be applied to your soul, as well. Forsake yourself and your thoughts and your will. You are not of your own making, regardless, so what can it harm to submit wholly to the truth that you have a Maker, and that He is deserving of your abject obedience? 

Cease to fight that. Seek His will.

That He would be glorified to save you, I pray. For His name's sake, that Christ will have His portion, for whom He paid. 

Lord, have mercy.

...on these, my new, dear friends particularly. We are seeking to uphold truth and seek for true justice and merciful, honorable dealings with one another in the world. Even from so many places of darkness and self-deception, and yet still...oh, Father...your love alone, your Spirit alone, can and may deliver. 

Have mercy, Father. I love these people. You have made them, I know You love them more. 

Jesus, will you please save? Lead, Lord. I am nothing. I have nothing. I am an imbecile without words, except you give me speech. Please, help me to honor You in all this. 

And with so many things...be near us, Father, I pray.