So much brokenness. Perhaps the same is not the case everywhere, but in my current personal sphere there is an assault on the unity of the church. Always, there seem rational, reasonable causes. Always, there seems "good reason" for division.
Who do we think we are, though? Why do we so easily forget the call to be united in Christ?
This is not a call for ecumenical, false unity, however. Truth divides from error. Period.
But personal grievances are not a call for forgetting our covenanting with one another, nor for forgetting are covenanting to be shepherded.
So, I've been seeking the Lord's guidance on these matters. There seem such griefs at the core of all. And don't we all strike out, once grief has set too long without the Master's touch? Job did, we know. He cried out that the Lord should answer his call, or let him be, rather than to persist in griefs.
That's the progression, for those of us who are fleshly still. Christ did not capitulate to such disheartened, aggrieved cries. In His sorest trial, He cried out for deliverance, if possible, but to submit to the Father's will. And He endured, to the very end, without a turning of heart. He, alone, has and does.
We, though, want scapegoats--we want, toward the bitterness of our grief--to find some focal point upon which we can set the all, putting our sins upon that one, and casting them into the wilderness for Azazel. However, no matter how that goat is cast down or destroyed, no matter how far into the wilderness it is sent...those sins are not atoned, except by the blood of the True Lamb.
Don't we seek solace in so many matters, elsewhere, though? Rather than to face bitter truths and have them touched by the searing hand of our Master? Indeed, He wounds to heal. Yet, if we will not present and continue to present to Him our wounds, they fester.
And they will fester. No matter what woven lace is placed atop, how flowery the speech nor manner. No matter the men of earth who may have their ears turned toward such conspiring--to avert the Holy Gaze, rather than submit to His care.
Even if we fool ourselves and all the world, we will never fool Him--light and darkness are alike transparent before His weighty gaze. He knows our hearts, and our thoughts before we ever turned to consider feeling or thinking.
And He requires honesty, in the inward parts--honesty with ourselves and with Him.
Many times, I recall a slapdash sign hanging high on a telephone pole in New Orleans, seen shortly before fleeing that town to preserve my life, "Think that you might be wrong." That unsettled me then, before coming to Christ.
Now, it reverberates as a cry to remain humble, and to always go to the Word.
For there is truth, but we are not the arbiters. There is One Way, and His name is Christ. And that which He has revealed of reality is indeed true. And what He's let us know of our own hearts and proclivities is that we should not trust them, but always test ourselves. The heart is deceitfully wicked, and frankly even after being reconciled to Him, there seems an endless deepening of the humility of recognizing quite how unabashedly and uncontrovertibly wrong I am at times--both in my approach to others, my perception of circumstances, and even of my own conception of myself.
Which, apart from knowing Him and having been led increasingly to be reconciled to truth through His guidance, would be a barren wilderness, itself.
When we are convinced that we know all things, we don't know at all as we ought, according to Paul. There's a humility in coming to increasingly learn that the depths of wisdom revealed by God, though valid and certain, are still the very shoreline of the depths of the truth which He holds.
As it goes, we had all suppressed the truth in unrighteousness, and thus were all given over to futile minds. Which isn't to say that He hasn't allowed the preservation of some of our faculty for reasoning, or otherwise we would be bereft of the ability to fend for ourselves in the world, at all. God is merciful beyond comprehension, as it goes. And He does not delight in the death of the wicked, but leaves opening for repentance. And calls some to repent, changing desires as to do so. Or we would all be consumed.
To see the havoc run amok, though, makes me long to see more of us have a healthy does of reflection upon where we are wrong. Where are we yet unreconciled to truth, unconformed to Christ, unreconciled to our brothers (even if according to wrong desires, being aloof).
Temptation that overtakes any one of us is common to all, we know--even if the depths of depravity of those spectrums of illicit desire don't progress within each of us, it's by grace alone. So, which of us can cast stones?
I know men who are considered international prodigies of the faith, who are blind to their heartlessness and ruthlessness in speech, and who yet would dare decry another for what's perceived as being thus. Calumny is a wretched matter among saints.
I know I have been blind to my own heartlessness, too. And so I won't speak any more plainly, except the Lord give room. Rather, matters are not as they ought to be. With pride at the heart of matters, that's always the case.
So, let us all submit to Christ's call to humble ourselves, then. And if we have made commitments, honor them, rather than breaking them and enjoining others to do the same as to quell pangs of conviction.
When we justify ourselves in our own eyes, we are far from our call. We have no justification except Christ--always beggars of grace.
To strike a shepherd and scatter the sheep is not the work of Christ. Yet God will prevail, always. And He does indeed wound to heal.
Praying for mercy on all.
