Sharing this, before it’s forgotten:
The world is unfair. The game is rigged. So-and-so has it out for you.
Maybe these stories are true, but practically speaking – for the right here and now – what good are they to you?
That government report or that sympathetic news article isn’t going to pay the bills or rehab your broken leg or find that bridge loan you need.
Succumbing to the self-pity and “woe is me” narrative accomplishes nothing – nothing except sapping you of the energy and motivation you need to do something about your problem.
We have a choice: Do we focus on the ways we have been wronged, or do we use what we’ve given and get to work?
Will we wait for someone to save us, or will we listen to Marcus Aurelius’ call to “get active in your own rescue – if you care for yourself at all – and do it while you can.”
That’s better than just blowing your own nose (which is a step forward in itself).
– @dailystoic post on Instagram
Something I wrote down while I was out and about couple of days ago:
To only a King of all Kings,
Do I bow my head and sing,
give my everything.
I am thankful today, for the grace of our God, present – actually, glaringly present – especially during the most uncertain of times.
He shows Himself as dominant, His feet treading gracefully and effortlessly over the uncharted, unknown waters. We see His absolute sovereignty and authority firmly over one and all of us who struggle to stand on all we insist is sure, yet ultimately faulty foundation.
And the irony is that the more we find fault in what we insist on trusting on, the more we insist on trusting on it – that, and/or we find less cause to trust in the One who IS sure.
Yet even in the external turmoil (The storms, the waves and the wind), and even in the internal conflict (the confusion, the pride, and the anxiety), the One who walks on the water, the Creator whose foot is upon all Creation – He calls to us, benevolently, intentionally; ‘Come!’, He cries out.
Yet we can also see – to those pushed to and fro, to those broken by what happens around them, He calls out – ‘Come!’; ‘Come to Me’, He says, ‘all who are weary and burdened; come to Me, and I will give you rest.’
And to those who could not sit still, and to those torn apart by what they see happening inside of them, behold, He calls to them – yet, not as Sovereign over the waters, but the One who stands at the door, knocking gently, humbly.
To think, to consider: To the same World which the Holy Spirit convicts of sin – He calls out to them, He stands by their doors and knocks. If only they would hear His voice.
Also consider, consequently: To those of us who have come to believe in Christ, I am convinced that the Holy Spirit convicts us of righteousness specifically. However, if we find ourselves trying too figure out how He does that specifically, He picks us up when we begin to sink, and lovingly rebukes us.
But it doesn’t stop there. Consider that what Christ says is another image or perspective of our righteousness. Because we have heard His voice, and because we have opened our doors, “I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.”; this is linked to where Christ also says: “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.”
I am thankful today, for the grace of our God, present – actually, glaringly present – especially during the most uncertain of times.
When we say He is present, it means that He is active and ready to pick us up when the storms of life would have us sink. He is willing and able, not only to encourage us, but also to lovingly correct us soon as disaster in any form compromises any or all aspects of our being.
When we say He is present, it also means that He’s not merely ‘there’ – No, it goes much more than that, in that the entire Godhead – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are in us; They have come to us, They have made Their home with us, and we have full and complete communion with them.
Something that came up that I don’t want to forget:
Just a while back, while I was driving around as part of my being out and about, I was brought to tears. ‘Your Love’ by Lakewood was playing at a good-enough level on the car stereo, and all of a sudden I was brought to just give thanks…
…I mean, as I always say, there’s always a reason to give thanks, but for this particular occasion, it hit a whole lot deeper than it usually does, in that I was realizing that, sure, I was running out of money, I was running out of resources and savings. I was also realizing how I’ve squandered and wasted my opportunities for a relationship in times past, and I’m at an age now where I find myself depressed and wanting, more than I used to.
I was brought to tears, partially because of this, but also because in place of the money, and in place of the absence of satisfaction on my terms, I HAD a great reason – I had GREAT reasons to give thanks, and to praise God: I had people!
As I was driving, I cried more and more, as face after face appeared in my mind – first, those I truly held dear to me: My mother, my brothers, their families, my church team; one by one they appeared, within just enough time for me to give thanks to the Lord for each of them, in between tears and me driving.
Then other people began showing up – people who I’m not necessarily close with, people I was closer to in the past, people I’ve hurt, people who have hurt me, and before they transitioned to the next face, each and every one of them mentioned, ‘we’re going to be okay’.
I took that phrase differently, considering who was actually saying it. To some I’ve hurt, they clearly said, in my mind, ‘we’re going to be okay’, implying that the both of us, regardless of the pain present between us, would be, at the very least, in good standing with each other – or, whenever we remember each other, we would at least remember the good.
There were a few I’ve hurt who said the same thing, but in a manner or tone which was more submissive, as if they no longer choose pain, or they certainly had much reason to keep on going with resentment, but decided to just say, ‘oh, okay. We’re going to be okay’.
To others, like my Dad and others who have passed away, when they said ‘we’re going to be okay’, they meant they were going to be okay… or, even if we aren’t seeing each other now, they were okay.
To others still, like those who haven’t necessarily died, but have ghosted me – and I swear I wasn’t pushing her face from showing up – they said ‘we’re going to be okay’, implying both to me – ‘I’m going to be okay, and you and I are going to be okay.’
While all of this was going on in my mind (and, thankfully, through all of it, I was actually driving pretty good), one verse I’ve been brought to meditate on a lot recently also came to mind:
When a man’s ways please the LORD, he makes even his enemies to be at peace with him.
Proverbs 16:7
Not all of these folks that showed up in my mind were necessarily ‘enemies’, but by that phrase – ‘we’re going to be okay’ – I felt a personal degree of peace. I thought, was all that to imply that my ways WERE pleasing to the Lord?
Considering my current state, and my own assessment of how I am right now – financially, professionally, relationally, physically, mentally, and so on – I mean, if I was going to base my answer on my assessment, I’d say I’m nowhere NEAR pleasing, much less DOING anything pleasing – that is, I’m NOT pleasing to the Lord, nor are my WAYS pleasing to the Lord…
…And I could have stayed with that, and started lamenting and grieving, dismissing everything – rather, everyone I saw as just wishful thinking.
If I’m completely honest it’s probably ALL wishful thinking. I don’t have any right to imagine, much less assume or even much less insist that all these people – friend, family, foe, all these folks I’ve been seriously hurt by, and all these folks I’ve dealt great emotional blows to, all these folks I’ve hurt – saying ‘we’re going to be okay’.
But, self assessment notwithstanding, I’m not about to say God is NOT pleased with me or my ways. Unlike everyone else in all Creation, I actually have MORE confidence to imagine, assume, and insist that the infinite and eternal Creator of the Universe and all that is seen and unseen IS pleased with me – BUT it’s not according to who I am, or what I do…
At around the same time I was crying over all these wonderful people, and every single time I’ve heard the phrase ‘we’re going to be okay’ in my mind… It’s as if God was on cue, because, as a Father, He speaks – clearer than ‘we’re going to be okay’, He doesn’t just say, ‘I am pleased with your ways’; He speaks, according to the Word – ‘I am VERY pleased with you, anak (my child)’.
The fear and anxiety associated to the complexities of ALL our relationships with each other in this world seems to – OUGHT TO – take a step away from being in the center of our thoughts and beings, and we should all take in the fact, the TRUTH:
That through Jesus Christ, the Son of God who rose from the dead and is Lord and Savior of all, we’re able to live, move, and have our being based on our great and almighty God telling us; the voice of many waters, the still, small, gentle voice, saying: ‘My child, I am VERY pleased with you.’
Through Christ, the LORD is pleased with us, and He makes all people, even our enemies to be at peace with us.
Something that also came up at a separate time that may also be linked to that one revelation:
We had our Midweek Service slash Bible Study slash Prayer Meeting yesterday, and it was a follow-up discussion to what we covered last Sunday: Romans 11, a final-boss difficulty part of Scripture that I was, as in other parts of Scripture, excited to take on.
Anyway, really quick, I recapped what we discussed last Sunday: We shouldn’t focus too much on why God said through Malachi, ‘Jacob I loved, and Esau I hated’, and why God ‘hardened’ Pharaoh’s heart, or even why God chose the route of hardening most of the Jews, causing them to ‘stumble’, for salvation to be made available to the Gentiles.
In the same token we shouldn’t be focusing too much on ‘who shall ascend to heaven’, and ‘who shall descend to hell’; No, our focus, and our motivation and discipline ought to have its foundation from what Paul indicated were words borne out of the righteousness of faith: “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim); (Romans 10:8)
For that Midweek Service slash Bible Study slash Prayer Meeting, I continued in Romans 11: Emphasizing how we also shouldn’t stay, or even be proud or arrogant against other believers. Now, Paul said this regarding Gentile Christians’ attitudes toward Jewish believers in particular, but I also said that we shouldn’t be so smug towards ‘baby’ Christians, and I also stretched this by saying that we shouldn’t be so arrogant, again, to assume who goes to heaven and who is going to hell.
My heart behind this was to dare those within the sound of my voice to consider that those politicians, and those criminals whom the media paint as corrupt and evil aren’t exactly, immediately, definitely going to ‘H-E-double hockey sticks’ (as the fictional Raymond Barone once said)… I wanted them to set their eyes and appreciate, CELEBRATE the fact that Christ has done all He did in order for us, as individuals, to be sure and secure that we aren’t going to hell and we’re going to heaven, that we shall not perish but have everlasting life!
Leave it to my Mom to have at this claim: She just had to ask, as if none of what I mentioned stuck – ‘How do you know if someone is saved?’
Well, I answered her straight up, first by agreeing with what she was probably expecting me to say – that ‘we shall know them by their fruits’; This then turned into a discussion, which ultimately had me emphasizing that the one way for us to truly understand and sense if someone else is ‘saved’ as my Mom would have it, is to stay exposed to the Word (the Scripture, the Bible), and, equally important, is to be led by the Holy Spirit, who produces His fruit in us in the first place.
A couple of folks (my Mom included) responded by emphasizing the need for us to read and to keep understanding the Word. I agreed with what my Mom said in particular – ‘How could you claim the promises of God which are ‘yes’, and in Christ ‘amen’, if you don’t know WHAT those promises are in the first place?’ (Well, now that I think of it, I should have responded to this by saying that the focus should be on Christ more than the promises – for Christ HIMSELF is God’s promise fulfilled)…
I didn’t allow the final word to be that we should just keep reading our Bibles. Nothing wrong with that, but I just had to bring it back to my point – That is, our focus shouldn’t be on ‘saving’ others, nor should it be on who is saved or who isn’t… No, we should primarily be living, thankful and appreciative, that we OURSELVES are sure of our own salvation through Christ and His finished work…
…and while we couldn’t say exactly if those within our spheres of influence are saved or not, you can be sure that, one way or the other, you may have the same vision as I did – that is, that they also would say to you, ‘we’re going to be okay’, because ‘God is very pleased with you, His child’.
I’ll end with this. A good friend of mine who happened to be attending the same Midweek Service slash Bible Study slash Prayer Meeting had to comment, that he may have the hunger for the Word, but he isn’t necessarily enthusiastic about reading the Bible.
To him, and to myself, and to all of us, I’ll go ahead and just bring us back to Romans 10:8, where it doesn’t say anything about our being adept and knowledgeable of the Scripture, but it does have us celebrating, specifically because “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart”.
We understand, through Christ and His finished work, we no longer read and meditate on the Bible for the Word to be close to us. Quite the (profound) opposite! It’s the Word – Christ, the Living Word, and the Word of Life – who is near us, and because of this, we find cause and hunger to read, meditate, speak, listen to, or otherwise take in what the Bible says!
For all that happens around us, Christ is alive in us, NEAR us to pick us up when we begin to sink, and for all that happens within us, Christ is alive in us – the whole Godhead is in fellowship with us, so constantly close that they have made Their home with us, and we have full and complete communion with them!
THIS is what we celebrate, THIS is what we focus on, THIS TRUTH is what we take in, live and project as endless light – that, as we all behold His goodness, we would ALL be brought to repentance!
Friends, first of all, thank you for making it this far – this has been a pleasure for me to write. It all HAD to be shared.
Second, I pray that we (myself included) continue to take in the great truths we’ve discussed here… and in all that’s happening to us, all that’s happening in us, all the temptation to trust in our own works, and to trust in ‘analysis’ of who goes to heaven and who stays out, and to act arrogant – In all this, our God continues to talk to us, by the Holy Spirit, with the grace as only a loving everlasting Father could express: ‘I am very pleased with you, anak’.
May we always be focused on our Savior, who, while we were sinners, chose to love us and to lay His life down for us to be saved – to be dead to sin, alive unto God, fully humble, and so on.
The grace of God, and the power of the Holy Spirit, be with us all, through none other than the Lord Jesus Christ, and His birth, death, resurrection and ascension. To Him be all the praise. May He always be glorified in all that is going on. May He always be acknowledged in all of our plans, and may our thoughts always be established…
…in Jesus’ name, amen.
May our Father bless us all.
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