my home country under the judgment of God. living thru the greatest holocaust in history. the Church in full scale apostasy. no human fellowship. fiddling 'spiritually' while 'rome' is burning...yet out of the wasted, blasted, weathered, seemingly God-forsaken, barren rock of reality little, tender, full-of-life green tendrils of God's love to me keep appearing out of it's cracks.
told of rapidly increasing prices, hear of the gulf oil spill...i have, anxiously, wanted to purchase heating oil for several months but not enough $. 'wait for Me' came. 'trust Me. let Me provide.' God gave grace to roll my concerns on Him and His peace came. finally the needed $ came and on friday received 226.3 gallons of oil at $2.37 a gallon...25% higher than on april 30, 2009 but one cent higher than the lowest price recorded since calling all local oil companies and tracking their c.o.d. prices. so .56 gallons or $1.33 per day for heating water and house. thank You Lord for Your provision.
since casting a lot which led to giving up much painting work last week, i now have three new jobs.
am in what at this point seems a deepening spiritual crisis. it seems God is simultaneously showing me how wretched a sinner i am...enabling me to trust Him...showing me His precious love... leaving me in a state of despair spiritually, yet strangely aware of His love. i used to read, with uncomprehending amazement accounts or people under deep conviction of sin who would outwardly moan and cry out and wail and roll on the ground with the appearance of great agony, begging for yet not as yet having received assurance of forgiveness. i now find myself in a similar agony inwardly yet not as yet having received Life.
my concern is, am i 'saved'? can one who is as wicked in heart and life as i possibly be forgiven. can one who lives in open disobedience to God, who has little evidence of the life of God within or without possibly have the Life of God? i believe that salvation happens in a moment in time because Jesus clearly likened it to a birth. before a given moment there is no functional life and the next there is. when this may have happened..or will happen, i have no clue. but that it may truly be said by God of me that it HAS happened is of vital concern. it is no longer good enough to outwardly look the part. it is no longer good enough to, in imagination or in reality 'be better' than others who claim salvation. the only thing that matters is what will He say to me when i stand before Him on the day of judgment. will He say, 'good and faithful servant enter into the joy of your Lord' or 'depart from me, wicked, for I never knew You. profession counts for nothing. possession is everything.
the layers of 'salvation' in my life seem to be a series of changes that have occurred which have progressively left me a bit of a changed person. after each change i viewed myself as 'saved' only to come, eventually to
first, as a child i think nothing of God, heaven or hell. then there was the dawning realization that there is a righteous punishment, a never-ending judgment of and punishment of God, an eternal hell and i deserve to be sent there, never to be able to leave...
second, as a teenager, i think, 'i am a good person, not like so and so'....to, in college, i am a sinner. i am not good as good is defined by God and therefore need to be forgiven..saved!
third, from about the same time, my view of the bible moves from 'this does not even make sense to me/i have no desire to read this' ...to 'these are the words of God, these reveal who God is and what He wants me to do'..i cannot get enough of these words, they are my very life.
fourth, this change was experienced after it actually happened. it happened in my late 40's around the time of my divorce. i realized, after the fact, that i had an ongoing, real relationship with God. if experienced as a need not as something qualitatively different that had already occurred within me it might have been framed thus. do i have an ongoing relationship with God such as i might with another person? do we regularly communicate with each other, spend time with each other, are we aware of one another's needs, interests, etc., do we help each other, seek to please each other, not forsake each other no matter what happens? the above was experienced without realizing it for the first time, i believe, at this time.
fifth and currently for the first time, increasingly aware of the facts that most if not all i call good in me is not at all bone-deep but fake, hypocricy and that there are a multitude of areas in which i am in open disobedience. framed in a formalized way it might be stated, do i experience the life of God in me (ie. do i have His love truth and righteousness, do i have His 'compassion?) and flowing out thru me to others (ie. do i keep the commandments of God?) 'always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh'. II cor. 4.11-2 'when Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory'. col. 3.4 'he that hath the Son hath life and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life'. I john 5.12 the honest answer currently would have to be that there is little to no evidence that i have the life of God in me or coming out of me? i view myself more and more as a seeker than one who has found. may God find my poor, lost soul. may i be willing to lose my life, so that i might find it...
hope you have a good week, love, dad
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment