Jesus died and lives to make you His bride.
Satan just wants you to be his whore.
~ Makala Barnabas Doulos
See to it that no one comes short of the grace of God; that no root of bitterness springing up causes trouble, and by it many be defiled; that there be no immoral or godless person like Esau, who sold his own birthright for a single meal.
~ from Hebrews 12
Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and His servants will worship Him. They will see His face, and His name will be on their foreheads. And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever. And he said to me, “These words are trustworthy and true. And the Lord, the God of the spirits of the prophets, has sent His angel to show his servants what must soon take place.” “And behold, I am coming soon. Blessed is the one who keeps the words of the prophecy of this book.”
~ from Revelation 22
Oh beloved, it is true. We don’t want to believe what is true about our past. And neither do we want to believe what is true about right now. And we, most definitely, do not put any real stock in our future.
We are ever so willing to abandon the grace of our G_d and take a moment into our own hands that we might fulfill some desire or lust or fear or want. And we do this, because in the moment, we take our own lives back into our hands. We do this forgetting the immense depravity from which He has lifted us. We have some sort of euphoric recall about the power we thought we used to wield in our own lives.
And oh surely, we quickly realize we have made a gross error in judgement. For suddenly we feel the choking and dying and fetid wastes of our former life. We wonder, in that instant, how we ever were able to even breath before He brought us out into the free air of His Spirit where now live and move and have our being.
And then, though, what is worse is that we make things even worse, because we then sit in the after-moment of shame – and take on again the weight of our sins. We instantly feel the crushing mass on our shoulders – having traded again the fitting and light burden of the One who has already born the weight of the former away.
And the truth is, right now, right here, right in this moment,
we are totally forgiven.
We are totally free.
We are totally clean.
We are totally righteous.
We are totally blameless in His sight.
We are totally Loved by Him.
But we choose not to believe. We feel more comfortable being uncomfortable about our failures. The pride begins to well up in us, as we bring about the abject self-abasing behaviors of our religious past. And the evil one loves this, because in the flesh absolutely nothing good dwells. In fact, our religious guilt over our guile becomes the cauldron in which the witches brew of our next failure boils.
We know we are in deep here. And we even know what to do. But why is it that we are so willing to hold onto the old person we used to be? Might this fool of a writer propose something? Can we see it? It is (mostly) because we have also forgotten about our future.
We are to be made one with The One who made us. Earth and time and death and pain and worry and wishing will all drop away on that Day. And in their place will only be a new earth, an eternal moment, real Life, complete wholeness and the fulfillment of every deep desire within us with Him.
And when we choose to sit under the burden of who we used to be, instead of taking on the mantle of who we really are now – and what we are to become – we (like Esau) actually begin to despise the birthrights given to us be the very Highest Authority.
Perhaps we should stop it. Like. Right. Now. And simply start to enjoy the beautiful situation we are really, truly, and completely in right now.
Yeah.
