I am simply writing this for the sake of posterity, that perhaps maybe some good come to my children’s children. Plato said ‘a wise man speaks because he has something to say, a fool speaks because he has to say something.’ I pray my speaking is a results of wisdom and not foolishness, and my transfer of thoughts to you will remain profitable; ‘for Jesus himself testifieth a prophet hath no honor in his own country,’ not that I am a prophet.
I have been home now for a few weeks, after a longterm stay in rehabilitation center and even in my family`s christian home, the world persists, as it does in I dare say, every home in the union. It is of no fault of their own, the world is the material, and we also are of the same material, so worldly material is easily disguised, and the cracks in the resistance are born, and through the processes of time and nature the world has flooded the lives of the elect, and marred and distorted and ‘changed the truth into a lie.’ I speak as though it does not touch my shores, and this is true in part, as the cracks begin to appear in my own levy; yet we are to ‘keep ourselves unspotted from the world,’ ‘hating even the garment spotted by the flesh.’ How are we to survive?
A man was recently, and forgive my spotty recollection, explaining to me why the early church had so much greater a power than this last days church. His theory was the early church’s power was a result of physical persecutions, whereas the church of today’s persecutions are psychological in nature; you see the adversary will not make the same mistake twice, and the evidence is found right before our eyes.
In Russia, before the fall of communism, there was a united church, albeit underground, and their power was greatly diminished at the fall of the iron curtain as denominations and doctrines rushed in with their worldy attachments, and carved the Russian church into sects and pieces. Their power was a result of their unity due to their physical persecution and their need and reliance on God.
As I sit here today I contemplate my need for God, I contemplate my own power in Jesus Christ as I recall my life two years ago, waking up and lying next to me in bed, was a woman who was pregnant with my child, a woman who only a month and two weeks earlier accepted my betrothal, when we exchanged the rings that united us before God. I will never be able to explain, or recall in entirety the great fear I experienced, as I awoke; and the once alive, beautiful, child of God lay motionless, without life and breath. Two years later I think of Jacob, as Genesis describes, his brother Esau was coming to meet him, and the Word of God describes Jacob being in great fear of his brother. That night as his family passed over the ford Jabok, Jacob remained alone, in great fear, for he loved his family and could not bear to have them taken from him and killed before his eyes, as was a cruel custom in those days. In great fear did Jacob wrestle with God, and it was that night his named was changed to Israel.
In great fear I awoke as my newly betrothed love lay lifeless, in great fear did I call upon the Lord, in great fear did I begin CPR, desperately and with all my all try to restore her life. So great was my fear that I was forever changed by that moment, and like Jacob (who forever after ‘halted on his thigh’) I too received a token to remember it by.
I know another great fear, a fear that in my feebleness of language shall attempt to convey. After waking up that Saturday morning, a year and a half later, I was strapped down to a bed in ICU (my 9th visit in my life to an ICU) tubes running everywhere, on life support, and a new perspective on life presented itself to me; even waking up in the same hospital, the same floor, and perhaps the same room that ultimately my love’s last breaths were breathed for her, gave me a new perspective. Whether or not that perspective is profitable for God remains to be seen. Whether or not this perspective can help drive me towards perfection also remains to be seen.
For all pain is profitable, and Solomon declares this in Ecclesiastes 7:3 ” sorrow is better than laughter for by the sadness of the countenance the heart is made better.” But I find myself disillusioned, and disconnected from this truth at times. I find myself in great fear even know, likened only by this sensation of feeling: have you ever imagined yourself holding to a kite or a balloon that with a gust of wind begins to pull you away from this earth and into the air ever drifting further and further and further away from earth, and the fear is so great for if you let go, surely you will fall to the ground, instantly destroyed by the impact, and the longer you hold on the higher you climb and the more certain the destruction that awaits if you let go; and herein lies the great fear, for if I let go I will surely die and if I hang on I will surely die, and every moment that passes the greater the fear becomes.
I tell you now, and God revealed this to me as I wrote this one week ago, that He is that kite or that balloon, and as I cling to Him, I cling to the only lifeline I have. For the Spirit speaks expressively that though I cannot see it, If I but trust in Him, He is lifting me out of my mess and carrying me through fog and uncertainty to a Higher Place, to a mountaintop just over the way there. Just over there, but I cannot see it in the flesh, all I see is the Earth and all the things I can cope with, and all my tricks and all my comfort zones disappearing further away from me, and if I let go now and fall back into them, I will surely die, but if I can but Hang On, and cling to that lifeline God is telling me I will be carried to a higher place and my ‘feet set on a solid rock,’ and as Peter so perfectly stated in I Pet 5:10 that Christ Jesus will ” After that ye have suffered a while, make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you.” What a great promise, Just hang on cause God is carrying you also through this suffering, and will set you on a foundation that only comes after one ‘suffers a while.’ A foundation of suffering that will make you perfect, establish you, strengthen you and settle you, saith GOD.
God teach me to hang on, and help me to stay unspotted from this world and give me the courage that compels me toward you, resisting this world and diligently seeking you, in Jesus Name,
Amen.
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