The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases.
His mercies never come to an end.
They are new every morning, new every morning.
Great is Your faithfulness, o Lord;
Great is Your faithfulness.
It is with great comfort and relief that I just keep on saying… That our God – the ONLY God – is our Father, and He is faithful, even when we are faithless. He believes in us, even when we doubt ourselves, others, and/or Him.
Every time I am brought to remember His faithfulness, I am brought back to my defaults – defaults that state that I am never without Him, that He never leaves me nor forsakes me.
Consequently, He is always with me, with me right now, as close as He could ever be. Always thinking of me, and always thinking with me. Every thought is as every breath that I take, and every beat of my heart – all done within His glorious, gracious, loving presence.
It’s my default, just as I believe it is our default in the body of Christ – to be reminded by His Spirit that we are always with Him, and He is always with us. That we are as close to Him, and He is as near to us as He could be, for all time, till the end of time and beyond.
My God is with me and He is close to me in the mundane and in the idle.
He is with me, and He is close to me in my stumbling, in my mistakes and in the consequences.
He is with me, and He is close to me in my victories, where I am reminded that they are OUR victories.
Even here, and even now, as I type this, He is with me. Here and now, He is with us, proclaiming – Now is the day of salvation.
I say all this, and I am bold in saying all of it, only because of Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God – and only because of His finished work: His birth, death, resurrection and ascension.
Not because of who I am, not because of what I have done – On the other hand, through Christ I am a new creation, and righteous unto eternal life, and alive unto good works. All credit and glory and honor and recognition belongs to Christ, King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
It’s by His love that we are able to love. It’s by His mercy that we are able to express sincere mercy.
With that, I am able to say – I am able to forgive, with all my capacity, as Christ has forgiven me.
When the stigma of my being ghosted and blocked comes around, I recall Christ at the cross, crying out to God, ‘my God, my God, why have You forsaken me?‘
I am brought to remember that He was forgotten; He was left; He became sin, and was ghosted and blocked, that I would be fully reconciled to God.
He was rejected, so I could be accepted, taken in, remembered and favored.
By this I am able to forgive, wholeheartedly – realizing her possible reasons to ghost me, and her reasons to block me, actually understanding where she was coming from, and forgiving her, loving her by way of releasing her.
Loving and forgiving her by way of allowing myself to heal, and allowing her to live her life; Loving and forgiving her by way of living my own life to the fullest.
Every time I am brought to remember how I was forgotten, I bring it back to the Lord, and release blessings into her life and mine… and every time, it never fails – I am brought back to thanking God, to trusting Him. Remembering that sometimes telling someone you love them is to say thank you, I’m sorry, and goodbye.
That’s one major thing that’s been on my mind for the past weeks, brewing, marinating, ruminating for months – months, that is, since the second attempt to reach out, and the second time being blocked.
It’s opened a critical opportunity for me, to be honest – that is, to finally realize and literally REALIZE (that is, apply in this reality) that the old has died, and the new has come.
Though part of me is saying otherwise, I am led here and now to share and declare that I have no regrets from that connection I’ve had with Michelle for, oh, almost 20 years. Even the darkest of memories and thoughts are converted to object lessons, by the great grace of God. But I believe that what sabotaged it and eventually led to my being miserable (miserable, but sane, stable and secure) today, through all this time, was the insistence of the old flesh (‘Stinking thinking’, as Dr. Andrew Farley would say) being alive in me, freely projecting its lusts and claiming they were mine, even after letting Christ into my life.
The facts may remain. The thoughts, ever lingering. But the Truth endures – The old has died, the new has come.
In all that lingers and prowls about in this world, the Truth endures.
The Lord IS my Shepherd. That’s the Truth.
He is Lord. He is our Lord. There will come a day that every knee bows and every tongue confesses, that He is Lord. He is the glorious Beginning, and He truly is the inevitable, absolute End… and what a terrible day that End would be.
But by God’s grace, Christ’s finished work, and the power of the Holy Spirit, we are led to believing, receiving and living the Truth of the matter – that this Lord is our Shepherd.
And take note, it’s that that He WAS our Shepherd (in the past exclusively) or He WILL BE our Shepherd; Here and now, as I type this, and as we read this – This great Lord of Lords IS our good Shepherd; He guards us, protects us, nurtures us, grooms us, feeds us, directs us, ultimately sustains us, lovingly cares for us.
And it’s from this realization and meditation that we say, as the Psalmist wrote: I shall not want. With Christ, I want for nothing.
This world is relentless in insisting on what I should be wanting and needing. Attention. Shiny toys. Immediate provision. Instant gratification. But as I acquiesce to the lies I am thankful to the Holy Spirit that reminds me that I have all that I need in my Good Shepherd. The life-giving presence of our Creator. Wisdom to be content with what I already have, with the hope and certainty that I am provided for by no less than the Maker of Time and Space. A love that runs deeper than human emotions, and everlasting love that does so much more that satisfy me now, but secures me for all time.
I shall not want. With Christ, I want for nothing. It’s more than mere rationalizing the Word of God to ‘cover’ the urges and the temptation. No, our Father is genuinely thinking about us, and we not only consult Scripture but lift all our concerns up to Him, knowing that Christ was proof of His being willing and able to help us in all things.
Now I was supposed to go down the rest of the verses of Psalm 23… and, well, I suppose I still could, but not going as in-depth here because it’s all going to be leading back to the point I want emphasized and stressed; really, to myself more than anyone else: The old really has died, and the new really has come.
I am a new creation, no longer bound by the demands of the flesh, freed from the burden of sin. As such, I am at rest. No longer do I toil on soil that only bears thorns and thistles, no, I am brought to lie down in green pastures. I venture to assume that this means that the Holy Spirit brings us to rest in ‘fertile’ (fruitful, productive, meaningful and valuable) areas.
We are also led besides still waters. The same Spirit leads us to peace, life, and peaceful life (‘still waters’?); The Spirit that we have brings us to rest, and leads us to peace. This is what it means when we say that the Good Shepherd restores our soul: We rest in peace, with restful peace and peaceful rest. Unshaken, healing, relaxed.
And, for emphasis: No longer do we toil and reap thistles and thorns. No longer are we anxious with our choices and the paths we take (for – wow – the Spirit is with us, keeping us in peace as we are led in still waters). The old flesh is dead with its lusts, and we can trust the Spirit to bring us to rest superior to pleasure, and peace better than seclusion.
It is in the best interests of the Good Shepherd that we are not led astray into danger and torment; He leads us into the paths of righteousness for His’ name’s sake. By the power of the Holy Spirit we are brought to take immediate steps into further pathways most compatible with our Father (righteous), no longer are we aimlessly, recklessly reaching out in the dark, settling only for whats closest to us.
In our being led to paths ahead, our eyes behold much more than what the world insists we focus on. We’re dead to being idle and being real prey to temptation, because we behold the goodness of greatness of God, our eyes opened to the paths set out before us.
And because we see God’s grace and glory present in this reality, so though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we shall fear no evil. The Good Shepherd not only walks us through the troubles and the heavy circumstances of this life, matching us step by step – again, we also see His faithfulness; His goodness and greatness all around us in the process. Once we were anxious with nothing to hold onto, but now, He is with us. His rod and His staff comfort us.
Our enemies who once had free reign over all our being now have no choice but to look at us and gnash their teeth – They are helpless as our Good Shepherd prepares a table before us in the presence of our enemies, anointing our heads with oil.
The old self that insisted on doing all that was necessary for a scrap, with even that being taken away from us by the evil in this world – That’s passed away. The new has come – that is, a new being reliant on Christ to feed us, to protect us and our provisions; We are made new, vindicated, presented before the world as accepted and favored by the Lord Most High.
Christ drained the cup down to the dregs so our cup runs over.
The old self that chased after acceptance of the world, and settled for the filth of the world for some sort of relief – that’s dead. Now, as we have been made new creations, it’s goodness and mercy that follow us all the days of our lives.
The old self was alone, hopeless, and doomed to oblivion. Now all things have been made new – present in the the Lord, here and now, unto forever; We dwell in the house of the Lord, forever.
The pleasures of the flesh and the temptations of this world shall persist, and the difficulty level of life has increased. But we give God the glory, here and now, because all our propensity towards these things, all our intimidation towards the reality of this existence – it’s all been cast out by the perfect love of God.
His perfect love casts out all fear. God’s perfect love reminds us with each and every day, by the power of His Spirit – We are brought to rest.
We have peace beyond understanding.
We are led according to His will, and as we are led, our eyes are open and brought to focus on the infinitely superior goodness and greatness of God in all things.
We see Christ with us, and we see God’s grace and glory intentionally present all around us, in all that concerns us, and in all we are concerned about.
We are protected and provided for and the enemy could only watch powerless as we feast on His bounty, and revel in His anointing.
We are reminded of favor – the defeated enemy could only roar and hope that we heed his words and stumble… But we’re favored in the sense that what we ARE chased down by is God’s goodness and mercy.
By our being made new creations, and by our seeing how all things have been made new do we see difficult circumstances beyond how we used to as the old that is now dead. We take in complete rejection, knowing that in Christ, we’re never alone, and we are always ministered to. As such I am able to intentionally, fully and willingly forgive Michelle, understanding her and wishing nothing but the best for her.
I am also able to keep on going, understanding that the enemy of my soul, which has been relentlessly trying to tear me down – he may have been trying to be constant through all this time, with temptation and lies. He may have been consistent, but I know, here and now, as it shall be for all time (past, present and future and beyond) that Christ is not only faithful, but true.
I’m taking all of this in now, as things happen in and around my existence in this reality – all for the infinite and eternal glory and grace of our Father. Amen, amen, amen.
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JB's Personal Brain Defragmenter 