The Lord is doing some of the scariest things in my life, walking me into places of unknown, but it’s better and more glorious than I could ever dream up. In reading through Exodus 33:12-17 in church this morning..
I don’t fit in with any particular church right now or with any specific organization or even in the same mindset as my closest friends. Is that how it’s supposed to be? Even now, as I type these words, I realize I’ve lost focus on Jesus, on the Father, and on the Spirit. I’ve never known it to be quite like this. Not that I’ve focused on something else but rather in order to combat push back of fellow believers I’ve slipped into a ‘my ways are God’s ways’ mentality. The gospel needs no defending. The Father doesn’t need me to represent him; he can do that himself, though he chooses to use me. I have a lot of good suppositions of a lot of things but I know absolutely nothing without first recognizing I know naught and then looking to Jesus for all inspiration, knowing the Spirit will guide me, knowing the Father is already pleased with me.
I don’t want to adhere to some side or train of thought or denomination, no matter how deeply I resonate with what they believe, teach, do, etc. I’ve put my foot in my mouth too many times. I’ve crushed too many people for the sake of defending opinions that weren’t mine. I just want Jesus and all his loveliness. I don’t want to point out faults of others when I have the obvious opportunity to create change because of the Spirit in me, to call them to a higher standard because of the Spirit in them, and even strive on their behalf in prayer for the Lord to change in their hearts what they cannot see themselves. I would want that for me, for others to pray that my faults would be broken because I am too blind to see them.
I want Jesus, all of Jesus, and I don’t want to hinder anything that gives me more of Jesus. Jesus points to the Father and so I want the Father, all of the Father and I don’t want to hinder anything that gives me more of the Father. Jesus has given the Spirit and so I want the Spirit, all of the Spirit and I don’t want to hinder anything that gives me more of the Spirit. I want God to change in my heart everything that I understand about him until it’s just the pure, raw truth of who he is spoken by him because that’s exactly what I want – just him. I don’t want my lenses to be of community, of church, of culture. No, my lens is Jesus and through him who has created all these I have an understanding of community, church, culture. I don’t want previous understandings of who I understood him to be to cloud more understanding of who he is. I don’t want my slice of intellect and knowledge of what it means to follow Jesus to hinder following Jesus when I don’t understand these things. Simply, I don’t want my known of him to stop me from delving more into the unknown of him. Yes, test all things. Yes, stay away from false teachings and prophets. But if the Spirit empowers us to change the world, can he not do the same to make certain within us the character of who he is when questioning arises?
My highest authority is the Lord. He speaks to me through his Spirit in the tangibility of his word, then through teachers and people over me, then through people I am over, always testing these aspects with my current understanding of who he is. It’s a constant double sided sharpening and testing of what I know to what I am taught.
Show me your ways Lord – be it through your word, people, through personal revelation. If you are faithful to me in my unfaithfulness, how much more faithful will you be to me in my Spirit empowered attempts to be faithful. When you called me to yourself, you didn’t say walk along side of this church or this organization, but rather walk along side my brothers and sisters, who are the Church. I won’t ever have the same perspective as any of them because my understanding of you will always differ from theirs just by my experiences and what you have taught me and revealed to me.
If you go before me, I will go with you – no one planned for the Lord to call them to that person they can’t stand, to the closed country that persecutes believers, to martyrdom. His presence is our agenda and if it’s not constantly changing us and calling us to greater things, have we created a false presence of the Lord? Does this ‘presence’ make us full, but never satisfied? Then we have lost sight of his true presence. Ask for it, want it, desire it, long for it, relent to it, however that may look in your life. We can not grow in a relationship without the presence of the one we wish to grow with.
Make this my unceasing goal Father: to want Jesus and to desire those things that help me see Him more clearly and more dearly and then to desire for people to know Jesus and to want to give anything and everything to help them see Him more clearly and more dearly. Destroy all temperance that restrains me from radically loving Jesus and loving others, to placing Him above myself and placing them above myself as well. Make me transparent, vulnerable and a fool for the sake of Jesus and for the sake of others to know Him and know Him more deeply. Bring me low that He be brought higher. Destroy me if it brings any more glory to Your name.
