The acid test...

Israel

BANNED
or sweetness test, depending.

A new commandment I give to you, That you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another.

The goal of our instruction is the love that comes from a pure heart, a clear conscience, and a sincere faith.



"...as I have loved you..."...who isn't finding that a bit deeper than first understood? Who isn't seeing there's more there than at the first assay?

Is anyone else finding in deepest conviction the the Lord's ways are not our own? That His desire burns with a fervent heat, His jealousy is fiercely unlike anything other by which we have been touched?

Who isn't learning that in surrender of the reins to a right leading, to pleasant pastures, is also a surrender of reins to all that can unsettle us? That in the yielding for peace in the Lord's good pleasure comes also this knowing "I am also yielding to all I previously thought I did not want...or need"?

In the "giving one" the right to be alone what pleases, by confession or inward conviction, comes certainly the right to minister seeming disappointments also.

I do not write to those already perfect, for they know the salience of that word seeming there. What seems the dashing of some hopes, that a greater hope may be revealed is already of some accomplishment in the stabilizing of their faith. The right pinning of hope surely has included for them the unpinning from things previously masquerading.

Hope makes not ashamed. Even when what seems our most abysmal failures in recognition are revealed, we are never chided by the Spirit for having hope. The discipline found in being a disciple is made so very plain to us as something the world cannot receive.

Really, I write to my younger self. The one always with me, although unrecognized in what I think I know to which, as elder "me", is always revealed. That one needing schooling in Christ. The one who thinks he already has been.

This is where the "as I have loved you" is never exhausted, no matter how much may have been previously seen, or imagined so. The perfection of this working is beyond any description or explaining, how that in seemingly manifest failures, the further glory of Christ is revealed.

The desire to "attain" runs far deeper than I believe is left our own hands to monkey with, to adjust to our own liking (and thinking), a thing placed so perfectly beyond our control, so deeply beyond our own knowing, we may come to glimpse the truth of Hephzibah "my delight is in her".

You shall no more be termed Forsaken; neither shall your land any more be termed Desolate: but you shall be called Hephzibah, and your land Beulah: for the LORD delights in you, and your land shall be married.

Your land...shall be married. Your earth, your place of dwelling, if once seemingly alone (as my 5 foot 8 inch of it) is under contract...covenant. There's a delight in possession to be seen, no longer as seems, but of reality.

Paul understood the ease with which this wrong accusation would come "let us go on sinning that grace may abound". Appearances that are so easily given to wrong interpretation are not something of which we are unfamiliar. But we can never deny that the Lord's ways are not our own despite what we may know of this way. His way...is, and remains perfect.

So, if there be any purpose or hope to be found in anything I have been moved to write in these few words it is in hope (for myself no less than any other) that what seems abounding failures to love as we are convicted we have been, it is all to the end that we may apprehend more surely (even in our seeming failure) the depths and heights and breadth of that which we are compelled to know, remains.


This compelling to search out what is endless, becomes for us the greatest comfort in the face of our seeming failure in application. It moves us to a hiding place, appointed for self admitted failures, where the greatest triumph may be revealed.