Why I have no friends (and never had any) OR...How it's never too late to learn what friend means when your tutor is so patient

[Israel]

Hilarity, thankfully, is measured out in gracious doses.

Rolling down the road, which was actually what I was doing in my minivan, no less serves as a useful metaphor to any motion through life in which is included consciousness of the Lord. And my consciousness, limited as it is, is just like yours...no more nor less than what it is.

Here there's no useful metric we can apply between us, "comparing ourselves with ourselves" as to who may be "more conscious". Only God knows. Only God knows depth of touch.

So, (with apologies to Hummer for his dislike of sentences that start "So"...) in the temple I cohabit, I'm "going with the flow of thoughts..." they turn to this, to that...watching what bubbles up as I am conversing with the Lord of the temple.

Then a thing that happened came to mind...a thing that to all appearances to that point (in my consideration) was something I had "borne in the Lord". It was no big deal...but obviously big enough for me to remember it as an insult. And when I say insult I do not mean someone said something I considered "bad" to or about me...but an unrighteous incursion into me (as I adjudged it) by an unrighteous excursion by another beyond their right authority...and that by a claiming believer. But that is not the issue at all. Who of us doesn't have these? It's not like it should be a strange thing at all. Cause it's not. James reminds us:

"For in many things we offend all."

But here's is what I began to smell about "that thing". There was an element that, because I'd believed I'd made nothing of it to the offender ( ha ha!) and "borne it in the Lord"...there was a curious odor in thought of "when can I sort of expect payment", a balancing of books toward me... for having done my duty of (what I considered) "bearing it in the Lord". (Are you ROFL yet?)

Now, it had to be sniffed out before these printed words could frame it so succinctly, it wasn't like I thought "OK, Lord...payment due...anytime I might expect it?...just ballpark me a time if you will..." But sniffing that trail didn't take long to uncover in words what sense was there in spirit.

Oy...talk about a stink so bad two friends could only look at each other and laugh..."you smell that too?" (Need I remind you when there are only two in the elevator...each knows who dealt it?) No, this idea of payment wasn't coming from the Lord.

And not "if" me...but definitely me...how does such an odious thing issue? Almost immediately in laughter I repeated aloud "Now to him who works the reward is not reckoned of grace, but of debt, but to him who works not but believes on Him who justifies the unGodly, to him his faith is reckoned as righteousness". Now, in light of the stench it was plain where my need lay. What was I truly looking for? What did I truly need? Can you say "laughably but painfully obvious"?

Lord God! I'm a horse trader! I'm trying to horse trade with you! I can't do that (think of the Wily Coyote trying to put the brakes on before he hits the edge of the cliff the Roadrunner has had him race toward) Whoa! Back up...stop! And it was like "Wow Lord, that kinda cloud has been (on my end) around everything...hasn't it?"

Then it became too clear (still laughably) every relationship I have ever had has been solely based upon what another "can" do for me or does to me. Friend/lover (yep...even wife and children) bin...and enemy bin.

This one (relationship) in the Lord will not suffer that. The Lord's having none of it. And it's not merely "there's nothing you could do to pay me back" (which is as true as anything)...but more...that's not the Lord's motive on His side, at all.

He didn't rope me (or you) into a relationship to the end of saying "You can't pay me baaack...you can't pay me baaack..." That's also too laughable in itself. Even though He's got every right to it because it's true. (Hey Lord...do I "score points" by making a big point of how I can't pay you back? Ha Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!) Is there a bonus round? ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

These things been on my mind and heart a lot lately (maybe even more than usual) with things being what they are, and sensing a sorta hair trigger response among some (to which I am not immune...only knowing a little about ricochets)...about strength needed in times of trial while in these temples of flesh (count every day thus...not merely 2020 as some are wont to, or beginning to be made aware)

"The joy of the Lord is your strength" Neh 8:10

and

"These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full." Jn 15:11

If we believe Jesus joyless, or see Him thus, no doubt we'll say "ho hum" to this, and also by extension...the very things he says he has told us to that end...well...less than any inducement to joy. It'll be the old quid pro quo..."I got this for you...because I want that from you..."

But if we are persuaded Jesus does know what joy is...and in such measure as must be beyond our own understanding, and we are won to it (Him) as truth in Him, well then, obviously those things he has said for that reason (and not only so of having "some" joy...but "fullness" of it) will take on a peculiar shine. All that we may know God in His joy.

Someone...actually only One...is at work continually that we know His joy and love. That's the "all" he wants from us...is to reveal to and in us. There's really no from us to even be...wanted. If, as the Lord Jesus says...we were to understand..."Fear not little flock it is the Father's good pleasure to give you the Kingdom..." Would it even be dependent upon us offering...our want of it? Do not confuse this with meaning offering no want of it. Yet...even there we might ask Paul about God's expediency in giving not only what was not asked for...but strenuously being resisted!

Hey, bud! It's hard to kick against the goads (ain't it?)

Which leads back to His joy...or the "Joy of the Lord"...that is our strength. You and I (I trust) have known eyes upon us. We have known those eyes waiting for us to slip. They are joyless eyes...beholding. Looking not for the good of another, but the fall. Watching not with this:

"For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end."

Am I presumptuous? Do you not know those eyes that run against the above? The eyes that accompany "you do that one more time and see what happens!" I know I have.

But...to be granted to believe the eyes of the Lord are always engaged to one's good in joy...well...what else but strength can issue from them to the beholder if he is granted to see such? All encouragement is found in those. Especially to the acknowledging of things that...under any other eyes...would just be too unbearable to consider...let alone laugh hilariously over. Wow...you really extend love to selfish wretches!

So, (sorry Hummer!) it was those eyes that brought me to confess..Yes...Lord! I see it! I am and have been a horse trader with everyone...even you...especially you! I've never even known what you mean by friendship and just assumed my poor excuse for it was the truest as could be. I have taken the heavenly and tried to wedge it into my own understanding per experience in the earth...rather than the other way round. (Is that what Jesus endured...the Heavenly Himself so tortuously treated in attempt to make fit? "No one could say these things without being a blasphemer!") Rather than to know the heavenly is to change the earthy and earthly understanding to it.

God forbid any of this be mistaken as a despising of right tears. There are times made fit for each. And it may well be only that joy can see us through those times when all appears as sorrow.

I cannot deny saints have known these times.
And still do.

 

[gordon 2]

Thanks for sharing this insight.

 

[gordon 2]

47I will show you what he is like who comes to Me and hears My words and acts on them: 48He is like a man building a house, who dug down deep and laid his foundation on the rock. When the flood came, the torrent crashed against that house but could not shake it, because it was well built. 49But the one who hears My words and does not act on them is like a man who built his house on ground without a foundation. The torrent crashed against that house, and immediately it fell—and great was its destruction.”…

Love as a foundation is often difficult to rest on when one has been or is emotionally injured. It is a struggle even for those who's faith is mighty and even those God witnesses to individually.

Those that are rich and those that are poor suffer for this. Young people suffer for the woppin that dad gave them when Dad was tired, frustrated and anxious and lost his cool. Young adults suffer because spouses were unfaithful or they themselves were not faithful to their spouses. Middle aged people are bullied or have to watch others being bullied at work or in their families. Older adults listen to their children and spouses speak as if the aged parents property and living spaces which they struggled life long to have are as even now not fully their own.

Personally my beams are still settling on the greatest foundation there ever was and like Paul says I want to do what is good but darn sometimes it turns out I'm not settled enough to do it. It's been like that all my life.

So I say and mean Lord I know you as Lord, I know you...but on somedays what I know and mean is not the foundation of what I do. On some days I am barely a friend to myself, but so far I know to return to my first love and start all over again because I know the Lord that touches me when I knock. Sometimes my knocking is loud and sometimes it is a soft tap at His doors.

I know the will of God as the will of love and for it we create. It is in my estimation more than a guess that this is The Way. It Is the stuff of the Kingdom in heaven at least.

 

[hummerpoo]

Hilarity, thankfully, is measured out in gracious doses.

Rolling down the road, which was actually what I was doing in my minivan, no less serves as a useful metaphor to any motion through life in which is included consciousness of the Lord. And my consciousness, limited as it is, is just like yours...no more nor less than what it is.

Here there's no useful metric we can apply between us, "comparing ourselves with ourselves" as to who may be "more conscious". Only God knows. Only God knows depth of touch.

So, (with apologies to Hummer for his dislike of sentences that start "So"...) in the temple I cohabit, I'm "going with the flow of thoughts..." they turn to this, to that...watching what bubbles up as I am conversing with the Lord of the temple.

Then a thing that happened came to mind...a thing that to all appearances to that point (in my consideration) was something I had "borne in the Lord". It was no big deal...but obviously big enough for me to remember it as an insult. And when I say insult I do not mean someone said something I considered "bad" to or about me...but an unrighteous incursion into me (as I adjudged it) by an unrighteous excursion by another beyond their right authority...and that by a claiming believer. But that is not the issue at all. Who of us doesn't have these? It's not like it should be a strange thing at all. Cause it's not. James reminds us:

"For in many things we offend all."

But here's is what I began to smell about "that thing". There was an element that, because I'd believed I'd made nothing of it to the offender ( ha ha!) and "borne it in the Lord"...there was a curious odor in thought of "when can I sort of expect payment", a balancing of books toward me... for having done my duty of (what I considered) "bearing it in the Lord". (Are you ROFL yet?)

Now, it had to be sniffed out before these printed words could frame it so succinctly, it wasn't like I thought "OK, Lord...payment due...anytime I might expect it?...just ballpark me a time if you will..." But sniffing that trail didn't take long to uncover in words what sense was there in spirit.

Oy...talk about a stink so bad two friends could only look at each other and laugh..."you smell that too?" (Need I remind you when there are only two in the elevator...each knows who dealt it?) No, this idea of payment wasn't coming from the Lord.

And not "if" me...but definitely me...how does such an odious thing issue? Almost immediately in laughter I repeated aloud "Now to him who works the reward is not reckoned of grace, but of debt, but to him who works not but believes on Him who justifies the unGodly, to him his faith is reckoned as righteousness". Now, in light of the stench it was plain where my need lay. What was I truly looking for? What did I truly need? Can you say "laughably but painfully obvious"?

Lord God! I'm a horse trader! I'm trying to horse trade with you! I can't do that (think of the Wily Coyote trying to put the brakes on before he hits the edge of the cliff the Roadrunner has had him race toward) Whoa! Back up...stop! And it was like "Wow Lord, that kinda cloud has been (on my end) around everything...hasn't it?"

Then it became too clear (still laughably) every relationship I have ever had has been solely based upon what another "can" do for me or does to me. Friend/lover (yep...even wife and children) bin...and enemy bin.

This one (relationship) in the Lord will not suffer that. The Lord's having none of it. And it's not merely "there's nothing you could do to pay me back" (which is as true as anything)...but more...that's not the Lord's motive on His side, at all.

He didn't rope me (or you) into a relationship to the end of saying "You can't pay me baaack...you can't pay me baaack..." That's also too laughable in itself. Even though He's got every right to it because it's true. (Hey Lord...do I "score points" by making a big point of how I can't pay you back? Ha Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!) Is there a bonus round? ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

These things been on my mind and heart a lot lately (maybe even more than usual) with things being what they are, and sensing a sorta hair trigger response among some (to which I am not immune...only knowing a little about ricochets)...about strength needed in times of trial while in these temples of flesh (count every day thus...not merely 2020 as some are wont to, or beginning to be made aware)

"The joy of the Lord is your strength" Neh 8:10

and

"These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full." Jn 15:11

If we believe Jesus joyless, or see Him thus, no doubt we'll say "ho hum" to this, and also by extension...the very things he says he has told us to that end...well...less than any inducement to joy. It'll be the old quid pro quo..."I got this for you...because I want that from you..."

But if we are persuaded Jesus does know what joy is...and in such measure as must be beyond our own understanding, and we are won to it (Him) as truth in Him, well then, obviously those things he has said for that reason (and not only so of having "some" joy...but "fullness" of it) will take on a peculiar shine. All that we may know God in His joy.

Someone...actually only One...is at work continually that we know His joy and love. That's the "all" he wants from us...is to reveal to and in us. There's really no from us to even be...wanted. If, as the Lord Jesus says...we were to understand..."Fear not little flock it is the Father's good pleasure to give you the Kingdom..." Would it even be dependent upon us offering...our want of it? Do not confuse this with meaning offering no want of it. Yet...even there we might ask Paul about God's expediency in giving not only what was not asked for...but strenuously being resisted!

Hey, bud! It's hard to kick against the goads (ain't it?)

Which leads back to His joy...or the "Joy of the Lord"...that is our strength. You and I (I trust) have known eyes upon us. We have known those eyes waiting for us to slip. They are joyless eyes...beholding. Looking not for the good of another, but the fall. Watching not with this:

"For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end."

Am I presumptuous? Do you not know those eyes that run against the above? The eyes that accompany "you do that one more time and see what happens!" I know I have.

But...to be granted to believe the eyes of the Lord are always engaged to one's good in joy...well...what else but strength can issue from them to the beholder if he is granted to see such? All encouragement is found in those. Especially to the acknowledging of things that...under any other eyes...would just be too unbearable to consider...let alone laugh hilariously over. Wow...you really extend love to selfish wretches!

So, (sorry Hummer!) it was those eyes that brought me to confess..Yes...Lord! I see it! I am and have been a horse trader with everyone...even you...especially you! I've never even known what you mean by friendship and just assumed my poor excuse for it was the truest as could be. I have taken the heavenly and tried to wedge it into my own understanding per experience in the earth...rather than the other way round. (Is that what Jesus endured...the Heavenly Himself so tortuously treated in attempt to make fit? "No one could say these things without being a blasphemer!") Rather than to know the heavenly is to change the earthy and earthly understanding to it.

God forbid any of this be mistaken as a despising of right tears. There are times made fit for each. And it may well be only that joy can see us through those times when all appears as sorrow.

I cannot deny saints have known these times.
And still do.

"I have taken the heavenly and tried to wedge it into my own understanding per experience in the earth...rather than the other way round. (Is that what Jesus endured...the Heavenly Himself so tortuously treated in attempt to make fit? "No one could say these things without being a blasphemer!") Rather than to know the heavenly is to change the earthy and earthly understanding to it."

May God grant to each of us the grace to always see that all things necessarily flow from the Superior to the inferior, and that the reverse is against that which His Creation teaches (Rm. 1).

 

[StriperAddict]

While I dislike the title of this thread, (it conveys the sad loss of respected friends of the earthly kind), this entire "post one" uniquely expresses for us all the passion AND torture of the subject of friendship, with others, with God and with ourselves.

We have a Friend that sticks closer than a brother ... anyway.

I will confess and despise my own lack of understanding in those times an offense was not met by the inner life I confess. There goes yet another moment of lack of vision, of the love that person has but in the time of the grief none of us sees clearly. Yet we must not continue in beating ourselves up in those knee jerk reactions in the flesh - but learn of them. Perhaps I'm going off your point brother, but we all take a hard look at our current belief systems when offended, often vying for rights we do not posses. (Much here is for another post methinks)

Ah! But you spoke of something of beauty, nearly hidden but seen by those hearts mended in grace ...

"Someone...actually only One...is at work continually that we know His joy and love. That's the "all" he wants from us...is to reveal to and in us. There's really no from us to even be...wanted."

What a wonderful and true expression of the Father's heart to us, in all of life. Friends do come, some stay, some go, but the One who will never actively offend us beseeches us to know the depths of this love - yes, this JOY.

For in seeing this love even in my worst of misunderstandings of it, then He becomes all to me in joy and rest, and brings redemption to every offense and hurt I/we endure. (( Working out the gift of gold a trial by fire is, well, that too is for another thread! ))

Wow and amen. Thank you Abba Father.

 

[Israel]

While I dislike the title of this thread, (it conveys the sad loss of respected friends of the earthly kind), this entire "post one" uniquely expresses for us all the passion AND torture of the subject of friendship, with others, with God and with ourselves.

We have a Friend that sticks closer than a brother ... anyway.

I will confess and despise my own lack of understanding in those times an offense was not met by the inner life I confess. There goes yet another moment of lack of vision, of the love that person has but in the time of the grief none of us sees clearly. Yet we must not continue in beating ourselves up in those knee jerk reactions in the flesh - but learn of them. Perhaps I'm going off your point brother, but we all take a hard look at our current belief systems when offended, often vying for rights we do not posses. (Much here is for another post methinks)

Ah! But you spoke of something of beauty, nearly hidden but seen by those hearts mended in grace ...

"Someone...actually only One...is at work continually that we know His joy and love. That's the "all" he wants from us...is to reveal to and in us. There's really no from us to even be...wanted."

What a wonderful and true expression of the Father's heart to us, in all of life. Friends do come, some stay, some go, but the One who will never actively offend us beseeches us to know the depths of this love - yes, this JOY.

For in seeing this love even in my worst of misunderstandings of it, then He becomes all to me in joy and rest, and brings redemption to every offense and hurt I/we endure. (( Working out the gift of gold a trial by fire is, well, that too is for another thread! ))

Wow and amen. Thank you Abba Father.

I amended the title.

I'd hoped the first line would dispel any doom and gloom and "O! poor me" about it (though Jesus is surely a great comfort in our poverty if, or while, we cling to it!).

And I know the original title seems a harsh matter, but only the Lord knows how to bypass my oh so normal offense response to tell me things I need to see and hear.

Projection...or what is understood as that psychological response seems more than just psychobabble. In the world it may have some utility to help identify a condition, but ultimately has that only, or is limited to...that ability. It does nothing to deal with the foundation of that issue at all...simply identifies its existence.

As both Hummer and Gordon address our perspectives are so affected by filters that experience has put in place...Gordon reminding how views of...let's say the "word" Father...can be so skewed by a whipping administered in frustration and loss of control (by an earthly Father) can so wrap a fear around that word God would not have us approach him with...and so He goes about healing it.

Hummer reminds me my perspective from "self" out, taking my own view as "the norm" and going about then with all else compared to it...can never work rightly in eternal matters. That ground that "self would never lie to me" about interpretations of experience and understandings...must also be undercut.

Either someone or something is able to get to the "before" or under that foundation laid (which seems as far as I am ever able to go in identity) or I must always be subject and left to the poverty of "my own view". We strive in some ways for that "clean slate" view...to see rightly...as before even speck of dust begins to cloud the windshield.


Our faith that Jesus is the full representation of God (with no beginning...no "finite" point in time of a foundation beyond which he is sequestered from) is real and true to us. No sin ever clouds nor has ever clouded his eye...and He speaks "from there". Seeing all perfectly. Speaking to the blind in patience...to even what imagine it already "sees" quite well..He remains undeterred. And only He knows what remains of our "cloudiness" that we attach to what we believe we hear Him speaking.

Our confidence He has paid in full a debt that could never be expiated...even were we to offer our very own lives...(because they are already tarnished)...sin and sins completely forgiven...is our entrance. "When thou shalt make HIS SOUL an offering for sin...He shall see His seed..."

But the nature of sin...that "mystery of iniquity" is also made clear, or to be...by receiving Him as that propitiation. Yes...He is Savior! And yes...He is Lord...seeing all things under Him, all things that may even vex us at times...under His feet. Our Savior is no less than the Lord Himself! And He is made to be ours!

Perhaps in part this writer was speaking of such matters:

Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection; not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God, Of the doctrine of baptisms, and of laying on of hands, and of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment.
And this will we do, if God permit.

and this as Paul wrote:

That their hearts might be comforted, being knit together in love, and unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the acknowledgement of the mystery of God, and of the Father, and of Christ; In whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

God help me from expressing anything (as though "better" or beyond...) that might appear as "opposed to" our Lord's work, our Savior's work in ministry of mercy and forgiveness of sin to us. That is itself the entrance into all the gift that is made ours! It is both beginning and end...even as He remains alpha and omega.

Cleansed...to be displayed as made...completely clean! That the Lord of whom we boast...may have boast in His work!

No, there can be no regard of that work as less...or just "basic" in the sense men might assign. We come to find the boldness provided for the asking, seeking, knocking in regard of matters...is only ours because we have been made clean before our God. No...there is no, nor ever could be, and never will be any right thinking that pooh poohs "forgiveness of sin" as just too basic a doctrine to continue to regard.

No! It is that part of the foundation that must be clung to, settled in, even revealed greater than may be assumed...that the whole house go up rightly!

That their hearts might be comforted, being knit together in love,

And I suppose it is that knitting, or the revelation of what I have had contaminated in understanding of it, that was, and (as remains is) I am convinced still needs to be revealed. How does "God love" or mean by love...that must come crashing through in exposing of what I have mistaken for it?

I'd hoped to make it plain I have no sorrow in it. I have a confidence that Hummer is not the only one who would understand how a man might delight...that even if that man is shown he has operated very much from contingency (I only love till cost becomes too dear!) is being dealt with by the God who goes so far beyond dearness of cost...to have such a one! What can I do but become hilarious in the face of such mystery? His contingency so exceeds mine "I love at all cost!"

That's the only reason I can even see how craven I am...is because I am being held by a completely uncraven hand! It is an enigma to what yet tries to figure it out...instead of just delighting. And I find that "delighting" is part and parcel of that gift...even though it seems it is to me "my response"...it is the very response that is and was also included in the gift when given! Such delight as might be found becoming as a son relating to His Father. No wonder this is inexhaustible truth in Christ..."I delight to do thy will O God!". (In the volume of the book it is written of me!) Heb 10 and Psalm 40.

I know how it can sound. To some extent I believe I understand this even if just a little bit.

But if, while we seek to be justified by Christ, we ourselves also are found sinners, is therefore Christ the minister of sin? God forbid.

It could sound (and God knows how I have been a Hebrew! "What...did He only bring us out into this wilderness to slay us?!") as though I have been maneuvered to a place where Christ has brought me to crush me with a revelation of my sin! But...it is not...as any who have been there might attest. No! A million times no.

It is a place where I see one has "stayed with me"...even! through all my blindness and ignorance, even if that cost (to me) is the revealing of it...it pales in cost, in whatever may seem a "loss"...to be told "Hey...can you see I am (says the I am) not like that...at all?" Oh...what is worth comparing to the seeing of that? At least as a man "like me" might be made able to see? There is nothing! Nothing! The only reason I can see (if I am able to see at all)...is due entirely to One's exceeding patience with the blind...even when they think they see! And he is completely without shame! He is not ashamed to call such a one...brother!

How? O! how...can this be? I must turn aside to see this great sight!

But you already know this, and you show that grace by allowing for me.
For as you say...the one who sticks closer than a brother...even!
You let a fool in your midst without trying to bring him to shame...y'all smelling very much like that Rose of Sharon! You smell like Jesus Christ to me!

Bless you, bless you all!

God help me not interfere with His knitting...but simply be made to behold it!

That their hearts might be comforted, being knit together in love,

 

[StriperAddict]

Brother, you've done us all a great kindness here. My thanks. Humbled, blessed and re-awoken certainly! I so enjoy the encouraging notes, amidst my own struggles, in this. And the new title a good fit! At least for a ragamuffin as I.

And that Father would indeed knit us together within the divine Life of lifes, that is liberating to behold and enjoy. As you say, we are "made to behold" it!