working things out

He who has the courage to believe in God’s immeasurable Goodness will find Strength to withstand even the gravest opposition.

This is what I woke up with in my head. Don’t recall hearing it before so it appears to be an original thought, but I never know what stray cat someone of my Committee might bring home unannounced. If I truly believe that He is immeasurable Goodness, if I cast aside all illusion and suspicion to the contrary, it would be the simplest, the most natural, confident, peace-full and even joy-full thing to join Him in Whatever.

I ran down to the computer to record it and journal, and in looking up an Amp vs that contains the word “believe,” He stopped me short at this:

Do not let your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. Stop allowing yourselves to be agitated and disturbed; and do not permit yourselves to be fearful and intimidated and cowardly and unsettled. ~Jn 4:27

The words “agitated” and “cowardly” stood out. I keep using the word “agitated” in describing my current condition. And in writing about Tina last night, I made reference to her courage and thought hard about my cowardly unwillingness. Zing!

Jn 3:16 Amp expounds on “believes” with trusts in, clings to, relies on. I asked Him last night where my faith is to believe the Truth against the onslaught of lies and twisted thinking. If He supplies everything we need to live lives of godliness, then where is the faith? Or does that actually reside in the land of free choice?

How is it that sometimes I come upon some pearl and instantly I get it? Wait--maybe it’s not instant--maybe it’s been in the mixer, one ingredient at a time, apart from conscious awareness, and the moment I get it is the moment it has come to fruition and become what He has been working it to be. And it only seems instant because that one last bit was all it took to put me over the edge and enter that place of I Get It.

Jesus replied, This is the work (service) that God asks of you: that you believe in the One Whom He has sent (that you cleave to, trust, rely on, and have faith in His Messenger)~Jn 6:29. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. I quick flip to Heb 11:1 – Now faith is the assurance (the confirmation, the title deed) of the things we hope for, being the proof of things we do not see and the conviction of their reality (faith perceiving as real fact what is not revealed to the senses). Vs. 2 – For by faith—trust and holy fervor born of faith... Vs 6 – But without faith it is impossible to please and be satisfactory to Him. For whoever would come near to God must necessarily believe that God exists and that He is the rewarder of those who earnestly and diligently seek Him out.

Oswald Chambers advises not to wrestle God, but to wrestle before God over an issue. He also says that it’s in the struggle that a thing is made our own. If I am lazy and do not strive to make the thing clear, it will never be mine, not the way the things are that I have dug into and endeavored to work out. Those are mine. I can give them voice because I engaged in the effort, and they are now by His gifting, something I can author that might help someone else. There are countless things I take on someone’s word for it, and they are not mine, and they lack the passion, conviction, and power of the wrestled booty. Struggle then, can be and indeed usually is, an appropriate forerunner of Belief. For me anyway. I look forward to the day I want the All of Him as desperately as air, as in the tale of the poor student whose head Socrates kept pushing & holding underwater.

He is building up courage and willingness in me. And belief. The trees are leafed out, and there are the barest buds so I know it’s happening. And of course, there is my spirit, where those things take place in perfect congruency with His divine nature. I believe He is moving heaven and earth, “taxing the last grain of sand and the remotest star” in order that I might get this.

I believe...