Lay it Down
When beliefs are tested the ground seems unstable. I trust this place with the Lord whether or not I comprehend the landscape. He has removed any liaison between us and is positioning me in His direct line of fire.
I am free to name the prescribed beliefs that I have trouble swallowing. As I describe my symptoms to the Lord I am trusting His diagnosis. Contradictions, disagreements, and interpretive differences are not symptomatic of a fatal flaw or a spiritual disease.
He is forming a revelation that is mine to contain and communicate as Christ in me. Subject matter and delivery style may differ but its validity bears His seal. It is important that I learn to trust Him as He is in me regardless of how or if He is received in me. The perspective He is solidifying belongs to Him. It was here before I was born and will be here after I’m gone.
The message He is ascribing is for me first before it is for others. In Luke 22:32 Jesus told Peter, “When you are converted, then strengthen your brethren.” This has been a lonely season, but my loneliness belongs to Him first, before any other. He maintains His right to comfort me. I am being with Him as He desires at this time so that ultimately it may benefit others.
I press the dark for all that He has for me and resist the craving for external agreements. I am offering Him everything I think about Him, the scope of His redemptive work, and relationship with Him. It is an offering that only He can guard and keep. His intent for me to live from His personal word to me is intense (1 Kings 13).
I’ve thought of Paul and how difficult it would be to do what he did. Paul said he did not receive the gospel that he preached from man nor was he taught it by a man. He received it by revelation of Jesus Christ (Galatians 1:11,12). Upon his conversion he did not confer with flesh and blood. He was privately tutored by the Lord for three years before meeting with Peter for fifteen days (Galatians 1:16-24). After that, he preached his revelation of grace for another fourteen years before coming back to Jerusalem at which time he brought correction to certain apostles who were sliding back under the Law. When they perceived the grace that he was given, they gave him the right hand of fellowship (Galatians 2). Now that’s trusting the Lord with your education!
It feels like a battle to trust the Lord with my education. Beliefs are easily dispensed in neat little boxes. Doctrine can feel like a judge that makes me afraid to think outside the box. I fear being labeled an unteachable, unaccountable, out of order, off the mark, erroneous, and out of fellowship rogue! Phew! That’s a mouthful!
In spite of the fear, I cannot deny that Jesus Christ is personally rekindling my love and hunger for the Word. As I study, my eyes find scriptures that confirm that my doubts and questions are reasonable even if they’ve gone unanswered. Answers will not come through the reasoning involved in drawing conclusions or making logical judgments on the basis of other people’s conclusions rather than on the basis of direct observation. The Lord is exercising His right to reveal Himself directly as He chooses. There is an unfathomable kingdom being uncovered that has so very little to do with doctrine.
(I am not opposing doctrine or saying its not relevant. I am merely speaking for myself when I say that doctrine has strangled my childlike imagination and sense of adventure. One side says this, the other says that – and they both back it up with plausible scripture. Take into account that each verse must be kept in context, as well the need to understand the culture in which it was written, the audience for whom it was intended, the prevalent heresies of the day that were being addressed…and phew!…it’s no wonder I dutifully swallow spoon fed beliefs)!
The pure love of scripture and its revealing of Christ can easily become an exegesis. I’m tired. I just want to know Him, receive His life as my own, and to walk as He walks. I want to express who He is in me without the need to explain a doctrinal position. I feel like I have no position; I’m not one to wade through the positional changes that have occurred throughout the centuries and yet I can no longer be told what to believe or how to interpret. Betwixt, I lay it down in favor of simplicity and union with Christ that translates effectively in everyday living.
God will get me where He wants me to be and open my eyes to what He wants me to see. I want to enjoy the journey and I can’t do that while qualifying my beliefs or struggling to understand one doctrinal position over another. It’s blocking my view of Him. I’d rather trust Him all around and inside and out. If another disagrees with what comes out of my mouth (or pen) then I beg they pray for my understanding while praying for their own.
The Lord offered me a solution once while I was trying to explain to others how my marriage to Mike was restored. What did we do to turn the tide? Did we start applying messages we’d heard on marriage? Did we make a concerted effort to be kinder, love without condition, to honor and respect each other? What brought about such radical heart changes?
In considering their questions, the answer remained the same…nothing. We did nothing; the change of heart came as pure gift. At a pivotal point I heard these words,
“Susan, you have two choices. You can dig around and try to find what you did to produce such stellar results, or you can accept that you did nothing, and humbly receive the gift I have given. Consider both options, decide which one magnifies Me and brings greater peace, and then rest your faith in that vein of living.”
In that moment I understood that life is a gift I receive rather than something I produce by the choices I make. Encapsulated in trust, I saw my way to living free from the fear of Susan. The result was movement – the freedom to explore, speak, move, and to just be who He is in me. That alone gave the new perspective cause for celebration!
I am revisiting the Lord’s offer now with regard to my vain attempts to fit my understanding of scripture into the right doctrinal pocket. I’m returning to simplicity by trusting Christ in me…living His life as me.
[For my determined purpose is] that I may know Him [that I may progressively become more deeply and intimately acquainted with Him, perceiving and recognizing and understanding the wonders of His Person more strongly and more clearly], and that I may in that same way come to know the power outflowing from His resurrection [ which it exerts over believers], and that I may so share His sufferings as to be continually transformed [in spirit into His likeness even] to His death, [in the hope] that if possible I may attain to the [spiritual and moral] resurrection [that lifts me] out from among the dead [even while in the body]. Not that I have now attained [this ideal], or have already been made perfect, but I press on to lay hold of (grasp) and make my own, that for which Christ Jesus (the Messiah) has laid hold of me and made me His own. I do not consider, brethren, that I have captured and made it my own [yet]; but one thing I do [it is my one aspiration]: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead,I press on toward the goal to win the [supreme and heavenly] prize to which God in Christ Jesus is calling us upward. So let those [of us] who are spiritually mature and full-grown have this mind and hold these convictions; and if in any respect you have a different attitude of mind, God will make that clear to you also. Only let us hold true to what we have already attained and walk and order our lives by that.
Philippians 3:10-16 (AMP)
As I view these words in the light of union they take on new meaning. I am at rest knowing that He who began a good work in me is faithfully completing it!
I Wait, but I Walk
God is both the Author and the Finisher of my faith. He creates, and He maintains what He has created. I am His and He provides for me. Even nature heralds the sweet dependency of waiting upon Him for all things. As I wait, He increases and I decrease; therefore I continue to trust His instruction for me to wait for His “irresistible movement” within me. Waiting on Him is restoration in motion. I feel most at home in the awareness that I am wholly dependent on Him; it is the necessity of my true being. Unceasing dependence upon Him is cleansing my faith and religious beliefs. It is the raw expression of my relationship with Him in whom I live and move and have my being. I wait on Him and He awakens my whole attention as His servant and His vessel.
I am not waiting on myself to see what I feel or what changes will come to me. I wait on God; first to know Who He is, and then to see what He will do. I only want to do those things that I see Him doing in me; as I wait in Him He purifies the view of His life in mine. His word makes known His ways, His grace makes known His power. I wait, and He ignites both within my heart.
I cannot keep His ways any more than I can manufacture grace. To try is to strip my every confidence in Him. I am surrendered to willingly and trustingly keep His ways…but in the strength I receive as I wait in Him. I do not doubt that I am His without reserve. He proves Himself to be my God as He works in me that which is pleasing in His sight through Christ.
I see His ways in His word, as nature unfolds, as His providence points them out, and as the Holy Spirit indicates. But I know them as I wait in His presence. It matters not that I am weak, only that I am willing…and He takes care of that. He who has worked to will, will also work to do by His power. My waiting is born in recognition of my impotence and His omnipotence. He is the only true power there is. I am content to receive from Him (each moment) the workings of His grace and life. Waiting on God is my strength to run and not be weary, to walk and never faint.
I wait, but I walk. I walk, but I wait. If the fleshly mind takes hold it will misconstrue the motive. The flesh makes “action” the highest measure of man. Its emphasis assumes too much autonomy and will subtly separate doing from being. As a doer of the word (not a hearer only) I must remember that the word is spirit not flesh. Acting on the word is a spiritual response. It belongs to the spirit and when proceeding from the spirit it is true obedience. If we act from our union with Christ – then action cannot be separated from Him. We obey, but with such overshadowing that the action is barely distinguishable as our own. It is Christ, behaving effortlessly and baring no resemblance to what we formerly called obedience.
Action and obedience occur. Some actions come quick, others take longer, but the effort is Christ’s. The hard part is the waiting. To embrace life as a receiver is uncomfortable;it is easy to be misjudged. A long season of waiting is at odds with an action-oriented society that is quick with labels like lazy, selfish, or passive. Mine is to stay the course, to receive life (instead of trying to make it happen) and to trust that every action eventually takes flight in union. Then I will know that I am truly living, yet not I, but Christ is living in, by, through, for, and as me.
Responsibly Trusting Him
I bear fruit, not by struggle, but by resting humbly and receptively in His love for me. His presence is my true home; His voice my true conviction. My hope is in Him and He stimulates growth. I trust His ability to meld with my true desire for holiness. I remain still in the midst of motion and I remain in motion in the midst of stillness. With union in view my being conforms my doing.
Bearing fruit takes energy…to have energy I must receive energy for I have none of my own. The ability to receive is based on identity with Christ Who is the only true being within me. My eyes are opening in response to His command. Do I have responsibility? Yes, but it is not what I thought. As I keep shrinking before His Sovereignty, He keeps amending the way I think, see, and process life. I entrust my being, choices, will, waves of emotions, thoughts, actions and re-actions into His care; and I do it over and over again. I am off my back and on my side.
The art of receiving is wrapped in humility; the kind that comes when I am free to be no one and can let go of every identity, save Christ. Only His righteousness (His level of perfection and performance) has the purity to receive the Life of God. Humility identifies with Christ (is no one of consequence apart from Him) and receives all of heaven thereby.
God has free reign with me and He will get Christ out of me through the easiest means and measures available. He softens my heart and conditions my soil. I am His; He has me where I need to be. He creates cooperation within me. My choice is not greater than His will. He is all the while at work in me aligning choices and actions in accordance with His good pleasure. I responsibly trust Him to be the life, breath, ministry, and propagation of His will and gospel in and through me toward others. I expect Him…