100823 faithposting

[prismaticbleed]

 

VOTD challenge = text someone you love honor & respect
Immediately texted mom reply.
Too Ashamed to say those sentiments though? Feel like a hypocrite for my evil past. But honestly THIS is how we CHANGE OUR FUTURE.
Also challenged to thank & encourage our pastors. Hit me that I don't go out of my way to do that and SHOULD. They are all cornerstones in my life.
BTW HOLY SPIRIT PUSHED ME I SENT MOM A LOVING THANK YOU TEXT. I felt the nudge and rightly refused to put it off. Bravery by grace for the sake of love!
And for my priests-- because right now I have three; it used to be more when I traveled-- I can PRAY SPECIALLY for them.
I also like the idea of sending a note or card. I did that for dear Father Pauselli before I even knew he was retiring, and I am so so grateful I made that effort. I want to do the same for my current priests. I really do owe them that much.
Gotta be anonymous though. I don't want special credit or recognition. I just want to give that encouragement purely.



Kid's VOTD = "often God is not looking for our understanding; He's looking for our obedience... [He wants to see us] take steps of faith [in order] to obey... and we need to persist. We might not always understand the way God does things, but we should still obey. [Only when we obey will we see the completion of God's plans for us.]"
We're still too instinctively skeptical. Is it a "brain pattern"?? I know we learned it from the family, but have we been choosing it as an adult without even realizing it?? We need to evaluate this, and then actively & determinedly CHOOSE FAITH IN GOD instead. He will NEVER trick you or fail you. You can trust Him absolutely, even if His orders are unexpected, and that trustworthiness is LIBERATING.

1 Cor 6:4 referral. What seemingly innocuous "allowed" things are actually keeping me from growing closer to God?
My gut keeps saying "music." That's a hard but fair conviction.
I focus too much on the music selection during prayer. Yes, it CAN and DOES help me meditate on the Mysteries-- when I use it rightly!!-- but when I'm "browsing" or "finding new tracks" instead of just letting it be a familiar ambient BGM... that's when it becomes an obstacle to honest piety.
Thank You Holy Spirit for the gentle but firm nudge there. Thank You for loving me enough to correct me up front & tell it to me straight. 

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Okay, no more news articles, they hurt my head. Back to Barclay.

"John does not tell us of the agony in Gethsemane. It is here that he shows us Jesus fighting His battle with His human longing to avoid the Cross... There would have been no virtue in Jesus' obedience to God, if it had come easily and without cost. Real courage does not mean not being afraid. It means to be terribly afraid, and yet to do the thing that ought to be done. That was the courage of Jesus... Here there met the horror of death and the ardour of obedience. God's will meant the Cross, and Jesus had to nerve himself to accept it. But the end of the story is not tension; it is triumph and certainty. Jesus was certain that if He went on, something would happen which would break the power of evil once and for all. If He was obedient to the Cross, he was sure that a death-blow would be struck to the ruler of this world, Satan. It was to be one last struggle which would break forever the power of evil. Further, He was certain that if He went to the Cross, the sight of His upraised and crucified figure would in the end draw all men to Him. Jesus, too, wanted conquest; He, too, wanted to subdue men; but He knew that the only way to conquer and to subdue the hearts of men for ever was to show Himself to them on the Cross. He began with the tension; he ended with the triumph. What came between the tension and the triumph and changed the one into the other? It was the voice of God."
All right, one by one.
1. I never even considered that Jesus had to FIGHT HIS FEARS. I never considered that He HAD fears. Most shockingly of all, I always considered that His obedience WAS EFFORTLESS. My perspective of my Savior was, in a subtle way, almost Apollinarian. I saw Him as superhuman in His sinlessness, unsullied by the parts of my own wretched existence that I hated so much-- which were, in near totality, my human body & emotional mind.
...
2. The FINALITY of the Cross.
3. THE TRUE CONQUEST OF THE CROSS. We touched on this last night.
...


"What God did for Jesus, He does for every man. When He sends us out upon a road, He does not send us without directions and without guidance. When He gives us a task, He does not leave us to do it in the lonely weakness of our own strength. God is not silent, and ever and again, when the strain of life is too much for us, and the effort of His way is beyond our human resources, if we listen we will hear Him speak, and we will go on with His strength surging through our frame. Our trouble is not that God does not speak, but that we do not listen."
Again, this illustrates how we have failed to consider the constancy of God's character. Just because we're not Jesus, or a prophet, or an Israelite, we have historically assumed that God WILL TREAT US DIFFERENTLY, and we thought that such a shift WAS "constancy of character," because it would "always happen." That's not what constancy means. Constancy means being nice to your date AND to the waiter. Constancy means being kind & merciful to your friends AND to your enemies. It means your very heart is trustworthy in its behavior, within all contexts. It does NOT mean "you can trust it to change." But THAT is how we've been seeing God.
This proves the opposite. If God acted one way in the distant past, guess what? HE STILL ACTS THAT WAY. If God said one thing in ancient history, guess what? HE STILL SAYS THOSE THINGS. If God treated the Human Jesus like this, then YES, He will treat ALL HUMANS IN JESUS THE SAME WAY. And yes, that includes you, by HIS decision, so stop automatically excluding yourself from grace out of self-hatred. God chose YOU to have faith. God CHOSE to save you by that faith OF HIS OWN FREE LOVING WILL. So stop resisting, thinking you aren't worthy. So what? No one is worthy of God. That's where Love comes in. That's where Mercy shines. Surrender to that unfathomable goodness already; you have nothing to lose but misery.
God is NOT spiteful, or a trickster, or a conniving genie. God is straightforward, candid, benevolent, and just. If He tells you to do something, it is out of kindness & for your benefit, AND He ACTUALLY DOES WANT YOU TO SUCCEED. He is not "messing with you" or "seeing if you'll fail." No way, not ever. When He sends you on a journey, especially without clear up-front instructions, He's not pranking you, or leading you into a trap, or gleefully watching you get lost. He's not trying to "get you out of His hair." No way! When He sends you, even if you don't have a map, HE DOES, AND HE IS LEADING THE WAY. Does that shock you? Does it astound you that God actually doesn't just want you gone? He's actually sending you on a journey WITH Him! It boggles the mind. His desire to remain with me is almost beyond comprehension. His deeper desire to draw closer to me is almost too much to bear. But deep down, I want that too. I want to feel safe enough to accept it. I want to trust in His goodness enough to not fear. I'm still so haunted and weak. But... deep down, deep down, I don't ever want Him to stop wanting that. I pray that He never gives up on me. One day I'll look up and He'll be close enough to touch and it won't scare me at all. I'll be home at last.
...
This "voice of God" concept also obviously ties in to our experience of the "Spirit Radio," once called the "God Phone" before we realized we were picking up FALSE gods when our frequency was tuned in low.
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Why don't I listen?
I blush at the boldness of saying, "we do listen a lot more than we used to." But take no pride, you still don't listen!! You HEAR, sure, but you don't listen. You don't trust it. You don't obey. You're too cynical, too skeptical, too scared. Of what? Hasn't it been proven trustworthy enough? You know it has. Or is that what scares you?
...

"The more a man lets himself become fixed in his ways, the harder it is to jerk himself out of them. [And so] the decision to trust life and all things to Jesus, the decision to take him as Master and Guide and Saviour, must be made in time. In life all things must be done in time, or they will not be done at all. There is work which we can do only when we have the physical strength to do it. There is study which can be carried out only when our minds are keen enough and our memories retentive enough to cope with it. There are things which have to be said and done or the time for saying and doing them is gone for ever. It is so with Jesus... this is an eternal truth... In Christ the supreme blessedness is offered to men; in one sense it is never too late to grasp it; but nonetheless it remains true that it must be grasped in time."
THIS is a HUGE part of why I hate the false doctrines of reincarnation and "alternate selves." YOU ONLY GET THIS ONE SHOT. IT'S NOT A PRACTICE RUN. IT'S NOT A DO-OVER. IT'S NOT A GAME. IT'S LIFE AND DEATH, RIGHT NOW.
I hate it because I used to believe it and oh how I wasted my precious life on it!!!
...

Pondering Isaiah 6:9-10 again, and considering that those words are what God charged Jeremiah to tell the unbelieving Israelites... the way it is phrased, it sounds almost ironic. God does speak to the disobedient in unusual ways in the OT; this wouldn't be a first. It's a Scriptural truth-- God deals with us as we deal with Him. We see what we believe; we hear similarly.
Still, God wants ALL people to be saved, especially His chosen people, no matter how stubborn they were and are. But if they won't hear His kind voice, how will He speak to them? How can He call them to conversion when their ears are stopped up against Him?
Well... apparently like this. Reverse psychology. Child talk.
Think about it. The sinful and proud heart hates to be opposed, or joked about, or denied. It thinks it can do no wrong,

"We must try to think ourselves back into Isaiah's heart and mind. He had proclaimed the word of God and put everything he had into his message. And men had refused to listen... Instead of making men better [his] message [seemed] to have made them worse. They might as well never have heard it, for they [were] simply confirmed in their lethargy and their disobedience and their unbelief... But there is something else. It was a basic belief of the Jews that God is behind everything. They believed that nothing could happen outside the purpose of God... so they were bound to believe that when men would not accept God's message their unbelief was still within God's purpose... we would not say that unbelief is God's purpose, but we would say that God in His controlling wisdom and power can use even men's unbelief for furthering His eternal purposes... These Jews did not believe in Jesus; that was not God's fault but theirs; but even that has somehow its place in God's scheme. "Ill that He blesses is our good." God is so great that there is nothing in this world, not even sin, which is outside His power."
...
This is immensely reassuring to a faithful heart.
Nevertheless it is NOT grounds for presumption.
God is able to use even your foolish sins to further His ends, absolutely-- but that will not exempt you from judgment! "God forbid!" as Saint Paul powerfully argues in Romans 6. The guilt of evil is still yours. Don't be the shaytan stupidly trying to justify his rebellious malice by tacking God's honor to it. That just doubles the blasphemy.
...


"they were afraid to confess their faith, because they did not wish to run the risk of being excommunicated from the synagogue. These people were seeking to carry out the impossible; they were trying to be secret disciples. Secret discipleship is a contradiction in terms for, "either the secrecy kills the discipleship, or the discipleship kills the secrecy." They feared that by becoming confessed followers of Jesus they would 'lose so much'. It is strange how often men have got their values mixed up. Again and again they have failed to support some great cause because it interfered with some lesser interest...These Jewish rulers [who believed] knew that Jesus was right; they [also] knew that their fellow-rulers were out to destroy Him and all that He was seeking to do for God; but they were not prepared to take the risk of openly declaring for him. It would have meant an end of their place, their profit, and their prestige. They would have been ostracized from society and banished from orthodox religion. It was too high a price to pay. So they lived a lie because they were not big enough to stand up for the truth...They preferred to stand well with men rather than with God. No doubt they thought themselves wise and prudent; but their wisdom did not extend to remembering that while the opinion of men might matter for the few years in which they lived upon this earth, the judgment of God mattered for all eternity. It is true wisdom and prudence to prefer the good opinion of God to the good opinion of men; it is always better to be right for eternity than to be right for time."
THAT is the proper framing and it is SHOCKING.
Notice what the "lesser interests" are. Profit, sure. Prestige, sure. Place of honor, sure. For many believers those are easily set aside. But to be cast out of society? To be banished from their very religion?? Don't both those things seem to contradict the alleged morality of what you're doing? Except... no, they don't. THAT'S the killer. Society is not a moral standard. Religion can be corrupt. Both can indeed be opposed to the Truth-- and that Truth IS JESUS, and Jesus is GOD. Therefore HE ALONE is THE GREATEST CAUSE. HE is the highest interest; HE is the truest value. EVERYTHING ELSE IS SECONDARY.
Oh but does that ever fly in the face of human wisdom & prudence, for sure. Its shocking, too, that those virtues can be watered down by HUMAN weakness, when they are detached FROM God, Who IS Virtue, and therefore their TRUE definition.
...
We're seeing this conflict of interests a LOT now, and with the religious wars, we'll be seeing it a LOT MORE, with VERY HIGH STAKES. We will NEED grace and moral fortitude, to be able to stand for Truth in the crossfire, when declaring Christ Jesus will cost us our mortal lives... or, perhaps even more arduously, in the spiritual warfare being waged on all fronts even now. When the cost of Christianity isn't an instant martyrs palm, but instead the prolonged torture & torment of a life now persecuted by all, even stripped down to the bones... would you still make that confession, and KEEP making it, day after day, even as each time earned you more hardship and less health? THAT is discipleship-- that is FOLLOWING Christ, even into His Passion.
Just remember: this is temporary. Christ is waiting for you in eternity. Stake everything on Him.


"Jesus makes the claim which is the basis of His whole life: that in Him men are confronted with God. To listen to him is to listen to God; to see him is to see God. In him God meets man, and man meets God."
This simple yet profound truth, this central doctrine, should be one of the first, if not the very first, thing that a Christian learns about Jesus.
I WAS NOT TAUGHT THIS. It was left entirely unstated, something only clumsily inferred, and so I NEVER "GOT" JESUS UNTIL NOW, in obsessively studying Protestant commentary. Again, I've been a Catholic for THREE DECADES and I am just now meeting my Savior. THIS is why I am burning to get into CCD education at my parish. I want these kids to KNOW JESUS as best they can, as early as they can, in ways they can. A very real part of my heart is legit ON FIRE to teach kids the faith, and although its inexplicable and surprising, I cannot deny it. I MUST act on it. I MUST answer the phone. I MUST offer my whole nature for this grace to build upon. And I MUST do it IN TIME.


Last bit of Barclay.
"It was not the wrath of God which sent Jesus to men; it was His Love. Yet the coming of Jesus inevitably involves judgment... Because by his attitude to Jesus a man shows what he is and therefore judges himself. If he finds in Jesus an infinite magnetism and attraction, even if he never succeeds in making his life what he knows he ought to make it, he has felt the tug of God upon his heart [and responded to it in faith]; and therefore he is safe. If on the other hand he sees in Jesus nothing lovely and his heart remains completely untouched in His presence, it means that he is impervious to God; and he has therefore judged himself. Always in the Fourth Gospel there is this essential paradox; Jesus came in love, yet His coming is a judgment. As we have said before, we can in perfect, unmixed love offer a person some great experience, and find that he sees nothing in it; the experience offered in love has become a judgment. Jesus is God's touchstone. By a man's attitude to Him, he himself stands revealed.
Jesus said that at the last day the words which these people had heard would be their judges. That is one of the great truths of life. A man cannot be blamed for not knowing. But if he knows the right and does the wrong his condemnation is all the more serious. Therefore every wise thing that we have heard, and every opportunity we have had to know the truth, will in the end be a witness against us.
An old eighteenth century divine wrote a kind of catechism of the Christian faith for ordinary people. At the end there was a question which asked what would happen to a person if he disregarded the Christian message. The answer was that condemnation would follow, "and so much the more because thou hast read this book."
All that we have known and did not do will be a witness against us at the last."
...This is why I'm constantly afraid for my soul, honestly. To whom much is given, much will be expected of him." Well I am absolutely being given, with how much I'm reading, so I MUST invest this wealth FOR GOD-- and yes, it IS wealth, don't try to dumb it down or deny it!! You have been PRIVILEGED to be ABLE to read all of this about the faith! And even if it is just one meager coin, GOD GAVE IT TO YOU, and it's infinitely more than you would ever have had on your own, you spiritual pauper. But God gave it to you AS HIS INVESTMENT. IT'S NOT YOURS. YOU'RE JUST A STEWARD, AND YOU NEED TO ACT ON IT.
Maybe in the past I was ignorant. I'm not in any place to determine that. God is. I can only beg for mercy, and atone for my sinful stupidity by OBEYING THE KNOWLEDGE HE IS NOW GIVING ME OUTRIGHT. If Christ's very Presence is judgment, and Scripture IS His Word, then just as that catechism said long ago, THESE WORDS WILL JUDGE ME, for good or ill, because they are HIS WORDS.
So I must constantly check my heart. Is it moved? Is it touched by His beauty and Truth? Is it inspired to LIVE what it has read? Are we living out that prayer we read twice a day-- to "not only cherish those things which are written, but to do them?"