“For God has shut up all mankind together in disobedience,
in order that He might show mercy to all.
in order that He might show mercy to all.
O, the depth of the riches & the wisdom & knowledge of God!
How inscrutable are His judgments! How unsearchable are His ways!
For, “Who has known the mind of the LORD? Who has been His counselor?”
Or, “Who has given Him anything and made Him pay it back?”
For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things.
To Him be the glory forever! Amen…”.
(Rabbi Paul, Paul’s Letter To The Roman Ekklesia, Chapter 11:32-35)
i should probably just apologize now for repeating myself in theological posts. Everything has been distilled down for me in the previous recent years to just a handful of important grasps, and one of those is the diamond of redemption. i use the description “diamond,” because all of God’s dealings with humanity are like diamonds: they are beautiful, but they are uniquely so when viewed from any of an infinite number of angles. For example, You can set a diamond in the middle of a room, and everywhere You walk will yield a different view of its beauty — because of the different refractive angle of the Lighting in that position — than anywhere else in the room. So it is with YHWH (Blessed be His Holy Name).
So, i’m going to apologize now for constantly mentioning in this Blog the matter of redemption (along with several other themes) that have become the basis for my understanding of the Almighty and my relationship with Them. Hopefully, You will be able to gain something from my posts anyway….
This week, i started dabbling with reading the condensed version of The Search For Significance by Robert McGee. It is a great book, and it has come highly recommended to me over the years from numerous people whose opinions i trust. Even so, i’ve never read it until now. When people give me a book, i wait. i wait until Abba prompts me to read it, and — when i do read it in His timing — it is usually incredibly poignant and profoundly impacting. In the past few years, i have stopped deciding what to read, and now i just let Him decide that for me. So, in case any of You ever give me a book, don’t be offended in any way if i don’t immediately read it. i wouldn’t normally open a bottle of precious wine right away, either, but — rest assured — it will be consumed….
McGee writes in the first chapter (i’m reading the condensed version) that he came to a point where acknowledging the hurt in his existence is what allowed God to provide him with the comfort he needed. What a great example of redemption and so many other things from God, and — when i read that this week — it hit me again how grateful i am to Abba for how He treats me. Maybe the only thing worse than not having access to something You need is not even knowing the thing to which You need access….
For me, i went for years coping with my circumstances instead of entrusting myself to Abba. What do i mean by that? Well, let me unpack it a bit for You….
As someone who counsels people and receives regular affirmation from them that my counsel is insightful, helpful, & profound, let me say here that i know about coping. i am familiar with all kinds of coping (both in others and in my own self): the development of various coping “mechanisms” to handle certain types of situations, the preference of certain kinds of postures to navigate different kinds of interpersonal interactions, the dependence on a number of activities, substances, or other distractions to mask the voids in our personal reservoirs, etc., etc. In fact, in my own Life, i have come to a place where i no longer view myself as either “high functioning” or “highly capable.” Instead, i now describe myself — in my natural abilities — as “highly adept at coping.” What i mistook all of my Life for a good thing (the natural capability to function reasonably well no matter the situational circumstances) has now become apparent and known to me — in my opinion — as my greatest personal weakness. i know that we are all taught to aspire to suchness, but i believe this to be an evil thing: the ability to function "well" (as defined by society) without depending on God and instead while depending on ourselves. That, to me, seems clearly now to be what i have done most of my previous existence.
By contrast, my Master (Y’shua, the Savior of humanity) never depended on Himself and certainly not instead of depending on Abba or the Holy Spirit. A large part of what i think LORD Y’shua intends to teach me on this next leg of our journey together is how Live out His ChristLife in me while i learn to — by a new nature — default to depending on Him instead of defaulting (in my old nature) to depending on my own coping skills. It is not something to which i look forward in terms of the suffering involved, but it is something to which i look forward in regard to glorifying Abba, maturing as His son & heir, pleasing my Master, and being useful to others.
One of my favorite passages in the New Covenant reads thusly: “For You have been called for the purpose of doing right & then suffering for it, since Christ also suffered for You thereby leaving You an example to follow in His steps: “He committed no sin nor was any deceit found in His mouth,” and — while being reviled — He did not revile in return and — while suffering — He uttered no threats, but rather He kept entrusting Himself to the One Who judges righteously…” (1st Peter 2:21-23, NAS).
This passage has been affecting me for all of my Life, but never more so than in the past few years as my Life has taken a turn toward maturity and the commensurate suffering that must accompany such a movement. i was taught all my Life — as a part of the conditioning of the world upon me with its free education in coping mechanisms and the incessant pressure of its structural systems and the cultural labs in divination-oriented protocols of manipulating people and on and on — that suffering was to be avoided at all cost. Now, i am finally aware of those indoctrinations, and i know why my enemy taught me so and conditioned me thusly as a child: so that, as an adult, i would not be familiar with the very weapons that could undo his hold on me. Those divine weapons are both defensive antidotes and, simultaneously, offensive destroyers: Truth, dependence on God, Love, suffering while practicing righteousness, hope, communion with Abba (sometimes called “prayer”), receiving discipline from my Father, acquiring the mind of Y’shua Christos (or, in other words, what King David called learning God’s thoughts & ways), rest from works of my own, gardening with the Holy Spirit (to, of course, cultivate His fruits in my ChristLife instead of the weeds of the world for both others to enjoy and to sustain me), and many more (like understanding destiny, learning to navigate creation as a steward instead of a user, etc.). i never heard any talk of these things in any substantial way in the world, and the church didn’t discuss them in any meaningful way, either. And, yet, there it is — in black & white: “For You have been called for the purpose of doing right & then suffering for it…”.
But now, as scales are beginning to fall from my eyes and the Grima Wormtongue is being banished to rouse Theoden from his trance, i am beginning to understand the place of suffering. It is a tool that Abba uses to teach us to depend on Him — not in order to avoid suffering, but in order to endure suffering for His glory and for the benefit of others as we become not just conquerors but "more than conquerors." Knowing that i have been called for the purpose of doing righteously & then suffering for it used to greatly vex me, but no longer….
Instead of addressing suffering or easing discomfort or altering unhappiness or any other thing i would desire to change by learning to cope even better within the confines of my own abilities, Abba wants to teach me to depend on Him whatever the circumstances and, in doing so, find myself glorifying Him as my Father and being beneficial to others who might be within a close enough proximity to somehow witness my ChristLife in action. A big part of that turn is acknowledging that everything around me — even the hurts, pains, deficits, and other markers of experiences of suffering that adorn my existence like cave drawings or tattoos or street signs mark a previous culture or reflect on the outside of a person what they hold valuable inside or show the correct route to take in order to arrive at Your desire destination, respectively — are just tools in the hand of a redemptive Creator to reveal destiny, clarify purpose, and draw us closer to Him in deeper intimacy, a more cherished closeness, and a more abiding security. The things that have happened to me, around me, in me, outside of me, through me, for me, against me, etc. — those things have not surprised God. They have not snuck up on Him and caught Him off His guard. They are not making Him nervous as He frantically scurries about to figure out how to handle this new revelation. No, on the contrary, they were accounted for long ago, before the enemy was even privy to Your coming or aware of the grace God would deposit into a broken world via Your journey & experience.
Paul writes, “For God has shut up all mankind together in disobedience, in order that He might show mercy to all…”. His point is that mercy can only come when disobedience is made manifest, and God is neither afraid of disobedience or lacking in mercy. In fact, He relishes the chance to address one with the other. Indeed, redemption draws near when disobedience stirs up things. You can almost hear God mockingly say to our enemy, “Bring it, Luci. Stir things up! Incite whatever You want! I AM here to respond with a balm of mercy to Your wounds of rebellion and brokenness of disobedience!”
Let us be grateful to God for His great Love toward all of us. Let us acknowledge our circumstances as His personal playgrounds of grace. Let us embrace suffering as His key to becoming who He designed us and destined us to be. Let us mature in His kind salvation and bask in the severity of His Love. Let us share with each other our stories of diamond-like redemption that shine with the attraction of His warmth, photosynthesis, & Light, our experiences of literally watching bad morph into good before our very eyes in the presence of our God, our enemy, & our witnesses, and our journeys of perfectly paced rest that accomplishes more than all our combined works could ever merit when stacked in death next to the Life of our Master Y’shua….
Selah, and Blessings to You from the LORD Most High today….
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