Imagine that Jesus is calling you today. He extends a second invitation to accept His Father’s love. And maybe you answer, “Oh, I know that. It’s old hat.”…And God answers, ‘No, that’s what you don’t know. You don’t know how much I love you. The moment you think you understand is the moment you do not understand. I am God, not man. You tell others about Me – your words are glib. My words are written in the blood of My only Son. The next time you preach about My love with such obnoxious familiarity, I may come and blow your whole prayer meeting apart. Did you know that every time you tell Me you love Me, I say thank you?”
~Brennan Manning
If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For His sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith—that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and may share His sufferings, becoming like him in His death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead… Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me His own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you. Only let us hold true to what we have attained.
~ paul, The Least of The Apostles, in Philippians 3
Oh beloved, it is true. We are so willing to stay in the place we think we need to be. We so often believe that our current position has to be the penultimate spot in our maturation process. Of course we are wrong, but it is so hard to see beyond – and into the future. Our egos cannot imagine something better than it already is.
However, we will regularly come upon a crisis that requires us to make a change. We will see something within ourselves that simply cannot meet the challenge before us. And at first, we just kind of hope that the thing we face will go away if we ignore it long enough.
Then, we often take another track. We begin to try to see if we could just live with the problem that is emerging within us. We have a sneaking suspicion that this is not going to work, but try it we do. The problem is that a crisis is just that. We have to change in some way to meet and beat the issue. We begin to lean toward the idea that doing the same old thing, the same old way is not going to work.
However, our flesh will want to take as many swings at a problem as possible – as long as it does not have to give way to improvement. Our old man will scream out ideas. And too often, we listen to the whine and give ourselves over to the voice. We may take on any sort of self-comforting behaviors that will keep us (we think) from having to face the crisis. We will drink or eat or sleep or pop a pill to keep the crisis at arms length. Even with all of the screaming though, none of this works.
The crisis can be anything:
Anger
Fear
Addiction
Promotion
Change
Relationships
Career
Perception
Faith
Anything.
But the crisis cannot last. It will either beat us down, or we are going to live as Designed, and be victorious through it. And to win, however, there is always something we need to let go of, rather than utilizing something within us to fight. The crisis itself gives witness to the fact that nothing within us is going to fix the problem before us.
However, there is indeed suffering that goes with this. The pain of the death of part of our ego is profound. The “I” within me really does not want to go away, even though it has been declared dead. However again, this suffering is actually a sign that the breakthrough is near.
As we lay down that part of us that needs to go away, He does indeed sweep it away from us as far away as the East is from the West. And as the fallen part of us falls away, in sweeps a new strength or talent or way of thinking that we never thought possible. Amazing.
And then comes another crisis.
But now, can we see it? Each time the new crisis emerges, somehow the voice of the flesh is a bit weaker than before. We get to the point where we really don’t want to look back at the places we were stuck either. We are actually beginning to look ahead to the next problem, because we have finally found the truth that the crisis is simply the gateway to the next upgrade He has planned for us to receive. We begin to look forward to the suffering like a cyclist that is training his legs with intense cadence and gearing. We are finding that the less of us there is, the stronger we become. And so, the shedding of our flesh by the suffering of the crisis is now welcome.
So beloved, are you facing a crisis in your walk? Excellent. Looks like another, in an endless series of breakthroughs is in your near future. Tonight is your night. Time to allow the part of you which needs to die, to die. Fear not! On the other side of this death will come a step into ever-wider freedom and strength in Christ.
