Others May, You Cannot

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A reflection of the Holy Spirit. This really touched my heart deeply, and I know that this is for some of you. You’ll know right away if this is God’s word for you.

by G. D. Watson

If God has called you to be really like Christ in all your spirit, He will draw you into a life of crucifixion and humility and put on you such demands of obedience, that He will not allow you to follow other Christians, and in many ways He will seem to let other good people do things which He will not let you do.

Others can brag on themselves, and their work, on their success, on their writings, but the Holy Spirit will not allow you to do any such thing, and if you begin it, He will lead you into some deep mortification that will make you despise yourself and all your good works.

The Lord will let others be honored and put forward, and keep you hid away in obscurity because He wants to produce some choice fragrant fruit for His glory, which can be produced only in the shade.

Others will be allowed to succeed in making money, but it is likely God will keep you poor because he wants you to have something far better than gold and that is a helpless dependence on Him; that He may have the privilege of supplying your needs day by day – out of an unseen treasury.

God will let others be great, but He will keep you small. He will let others do a great work for Him and get credit for it, but He will make you work and toil on without knowing how much you are doing; and then to make your work still more precious, He will let others get the credit for the work you have done, and this will make your reward ten times greater when He comes.

The Holy Spirit will put strict watch over you, with a jealous love, and will rebuke you for little words and feelings, or for wasting your time, which other Christians never seem distressed over.

So make up your mind that God is an infinite Sovereign, and has a right to do what He pleases with His own, and He will not explain to you a thousand things which may puzzle your reason in His dealing with you. He will wrap you up in a jealous love, and let other people say and do many things that you cannot do or say.

Settle it forever, that you are to deal directly with the Holy Spirit, and that He is to have the privilege of tying your tongue, or chaining your hand, or closing your eyes, in ways that others are not dealt with.

Now, when you are so possessed with the Living God that you are, in your secret heart, pleased and delighted over this particular personal, private, jealous guardianship and management of the Holy Spirit over your life, you will have found the vestibule of heaven.

Dung Goggles and the New Arithmetic

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Read these astounding words from the Apostle Paul…

7But whatever things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ. 8But no, rather, I also count all things to be loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them to be dung, so that I may win Christ 9and be found in Him… that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable to His death; 11if by any means I might attain to the resurrection of the dead. (Phil 3:7-11 MKJV)

And then read this slightly different translation of Paul’s words…

7 I once thought these things were valuable, but now I consider them worthless because of what Christ has done. 8 Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ 9 and become one with him… 10 I want to know Christ and experience the mighty power that raised him from the dead. I want to suffer with him, sharing in his death, 11 so that one way or another, I will experience the resurrection from the dead! (Phil 3:7-11 NLT)

Paul truly was an alien. A strange man in this world! He was a man who wore “dung goggles”. He looked at life through these lenses. Everything was dung compared to the desire and longing to know Christ and to be one with Him. But we read his written words above and we just can’t seem to connect. We are quite in love with this world; we are enamored with this life. The thought of dying and losing our lives and our lifestyle and our possessions seems more like a tragedy than a genuine upgrade! We certainly don’t consider our lives on earth as “dung” (garbage, rubbish, worthless stuff…). We’d much rather wear some trendy shades than to put on dung goggles.

I love what Mrs. Charles Cowman wrote in her famous devotional book ‘Streams in the Desert’:

St. Paul won the race; he gained the prize, and he has not only the admiration of earth today, but the admiration of Heaven. Why do we not act as if it paid to lose all to win Christ? Why are we not loyal to truth as he was? Ah, we haven’t his arithmetic. He counted differently from us; we count the things gain that he counted loss. We must have his faith, and keep it if we would wear the same crown. (Mrs. Cowman)

I could write a book about what God has been doing in my heart in recent months… but some things feel too precious to post on here, but what I will say is that God is weaning me of my dependencies on earthly things. All this “STUFF” I have called gain, and been unwilling to lose, I have clung to and grasped onto as though they were my most valuable possession. But I’m in this place now in life, where I am just so weary of holding on to these “cling-on addictions” — God’s got me cornered and I am too tired to resist Him any longer. I just want to follow the Lord into this time of deep relinquishment, even if the pain level threatens to take me out. I just want to let go now….

You see, I have seen the letting go of these ‘loves’ as the losing of myself, the losing of what makes me “ME”, the losing of all things precious. God is weaning me of these dependencies – those things I have lived and moved and breathed and had my being in.

To wean means to “accustom someone to managing without something on which they have become dependent or of which they have become excessively fond”

I truly am being weaned, like a baby, by its Parent. I am crying and flailing my arms in protest, I am having my hissy fits, my moments of panic as I fear I cannot survive without these security blankets, this milk, this soother, this “STUFF” that comforts me. God is re-aligning me so that I can begin to manage without this “STUFF” on which I have become exceedingly dependent, and of which I have become exceedingly fond. I have given this “STUFF” my heart, my love, my energy, my focus, my leaning. I have leaned and leaned and leaned upon this “STUFF”. I have fallen in love with this dung, this rubbish pile, this garbage – and called it treasure, precious to me.

In replacement? I am being given a new food, with a taste that is foreign to my tongue and slightly frightening in flavour. It seems quite bitter to the taste as I begin to partake, but I sense a strange sweetness is on its way… Something deep within me knows there will be some gain in this, some nourishment, some unknown nutrient that will bring the longed-for fulfillment to my stomach, oxygen to my lungs and blood to my heart. But I don’t think I am yet experiencing the reality of this treasure that is being cultivated in my inner world.

I still think this new way adds up to zero, or possibly in the negatives. I have not fully grasped that it could really be a number uncountable, of gain upon gain, of rich abundance spilling over into more abundance…

Lord, you are weaning me off the dung. You are making me accustomed to a new food, the only real treasure, and teaching me a new arithmetic:

To lose is gain.

 

Consecration and Surrender to God’s Will

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An amazing quote from E.M. Bounds on consecration, surrender and God’s will:

“God’s great men have not been men who have originated great plans for God, but rather men, who, like Christ, the great model, have laid aside their own wills, however wise and good, and submitted themselves to follow so these mighty and renowned workers for God have felt the pressure of God’s hand. They were flexible to its slightest touch, listening to His softest whispers, and obedient to His every call.

“This submission to God’s will is an active virtue; it works, as well as suffers, under the sweet supremacy of God’s direction. It bears the rod, but works under the rule of the same divine will when the rod is not seen, feared, or felt. The consecrated life adores the fact that God is sovereign. It is His business and wisdom to plan and arrange His own work, settle His methods, and choose His agents to carry out His purposes. The efficiency and success of these agents does not depend on the maturity of their plans, or on their skill, but on their submission to God’s will, and their faithfulness in executing God’s plans.

“To surrender our life purpose to God’s will; to put forth all our energy in doing that will, and walking in God’s ways, this and this alone is consecration. In this, the servant will not be above his Lord. Active submission to, and working out God’s will is consecration.”

(E.M. Bounds)

Why I Sing

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Do you want to know why I sing? This quote says it quite clearly:

“Christianity is about the crucified Christ and the dancing Christ. We exist to wash the feet of men as Christ washed the feet of the apostles. But inside of our hearts joy should sing, for if our faith does not sing it is a kind of dead faith. For love is a song, the echo of God’s voice, and we must make this echo available.” (Catherine Wild)

This comes from the wonderful book by Father Robert Wild on the life of Catherine Doherty, called “Journey to the Heart of Christ”. I can’t shake this picture of the crucified AND dancing Christ. Truly, as Christians, is it not both the juxtaposition of mourning and joy together, that makes our faith so rich, deep, and somewhat surprising and unexpected?

We die daily, but in this death, we find joy everlasting! In our dying, we pick up life eternal.

Let the sound of singing come from a heart that is alive in faith. And if there is no singing, let faith arise once again! And let the song arise again within us, lest in our silence, the rocks would cry out!

This echo must be heard on this earth…

Marriage to Death

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My brother sent me this article. If my brother sends me something, I know it will be deep and profound; and this is no exception. Curious, from the title, what this article is about? Without any introduction, I will just say: read it, you’ll be better for it.

ARTICLE: A Bridegroom’s Reflections on his Wedding Day
By Sub-deacon Adam Deville

There comes a moment in life at which one’s perspective begins to shift from the unending gaze of youthfulness to the finite view of adulthood. There comes a point when the significant milestones of early life have all been crossed and one enters a new phase, acquiring a new outlook. There comes a time when one begins to think of death.

Such thoughts do not typically occur on one’s wedding day! For marriage, to be sure, begins in joy but – as Fr. Paul Evdokimov reminds us – “…the hour has not yet come.” That “hour”—as the word is invariably used in John’s gospel –pertains to the hour of Christ’s death. When one is baptized into Christ, one dies with Him; when one is married in Christ, one dies to self. In all things, one seeks that transposition of self which can only come about through death, so that, with Saint Paul, one may say “It is no longer I who live but Christ Who lives in me.”

The life and death of Christ is powerfully illustrated in the icon of Christ the Bridegroom. About an hour before I was married at St. Elias, I took my bestman – himself engaged to be married in the spring of 2004 – into the church to show him this icon. He and I had been having ad hoc discussions about what Christian marriage, properly so called, requires and entails, but I knew that all my disquisitions would be powerfully supplemented – if not supplanted – by that one sacred image which conveys everything I could hope to say in an hour or more. It is an exceedingly simple, and therefore exceedingly powerful, image.
For those of you unfamiliar with this icon, its most salient feature is a downcast Christ crowned with thorns and pierced through with many arrows. It makes that point that Saint Paul articulated so powerfully in his letter to the Ephesians: Continue reading →