"...when you pray, go into your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly."
"But you, when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, so that you do not appear to men to be fasting, but to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly."
-Matthew ch 6
Put
on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts,
kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another
and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as
the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. -Colossians 3:12-13
O child of suffering, be thou patient; God has not passed thee over in his providence. He who is the feeder of sparrows, will also furnish you with what you need. Sit not down in despair; hope on, hope ever. Take up the arms of faith against a sea of trouble, and your opposition shall yet end your distresses. There is One who careth for you. His eye is fixed on you, his heart beats with pity for your woe, and his hand omnipotent shall yet bring you the needed help. The darkest cloud shall scatter itself in showers of mercy.
-Charles Spurgeon
Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your
doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; Learn to do well; seek
judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the
widow. -Isaiah 1
utterance may be given unto me, that I may open my mouth boldly, to make known the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in bonds: that therein I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak. -Ephesians 6
Ah, the mystery of the Gospel, that God's will is so far more perfect than human mind can comprehend. Remember too, the seed of the Gospel, some would fall on weak earth, and other on utterly stony, infertile earth, and in either case, it would be rootless and weak, destitute of belief.
But God's will as being above man, think of the Calvinistic proofs, how those seeking to disprove tie themselves up in knots to knock down Calvin's doctrine. It seems to always come down that Calvin limits God, and limits the redemptive work of the Cross, but nowhere in Calvin's doctrine does it say the blood is not capable of redeeming all, simply that God doesn't plan to redeem all.
Think of Christ, speaking of the stony soil of some hearts, where faith would not live. Even Christ knew some would not believe, and during his day, there were hard real sins, people risen from the dead, among other miracles, and still, some would not believe.
Fast forward to our day, in which "some would not believe", and conquest made against love and peace, the lack of miracles, and the Bible had lamented that people only wanted signs, but blessed moreso are those that have not seen, yet believed.
The Gospel is thusly a mystery because it is not readily apparent to all, but probably to most of the hearers, most of the readers, that redemptive work of the cross lays its shadow across the hearts of the faithful and spurns them to pick up their own crosses and give.
This is a bit of a far-fetched metaphorical reading of scripture, inspired in part by Neville Goddard's interpretations and Ilia Delio's Christogenesis initiatives.
The gas hand in my truck.
I was praying, hoping, petitioning God Himself that I would have enough gas in my truck yesterday to get back and forth to work. On the way there, I was tying myself in knots, in my own thoughts, going back and forth on the matter, whether to just turn around, or press on.
All along the way, Hwy 9, the farmland in Dillon and Marlboro counties in South Carolina, part of the so-called "Cotton Trail", flat land, between the piedmont and the sea, very well-watered and fertile, great for growing cotton every year.
The fog was rising.
I was thinking: I could see the sun through the remnant of the fog, and thought, not the Sun but the Son.
Christ was the solar body, burning off the fog of sin and doubt, and metaphorically, fog can easily be equated to doubt, and more thinly to sin, an obscuring force between ourselves and Christ.
That fog was all the prior dead souls coming up, the dead souls and the doubts, dead souls rising into the air, vaporous, going to dissipate into thin air on the ascent to heaven.
Doubts dissipating, too.
Sin dissipating.
Every obscuring force between ourselves and the Lord coming to some sort of evaporation, leaving behind clarity.
A perfect clarity, just as perfect as the Perfect Law of Liberty, to rest in God's will.
For my own part, it was like God was telling me just to continue my drive to work, as planned. Not that it had the endorsement of God, but maybe that it was better than the alternatives, it was, if not God's outright enumerated plan for me, then it was closer to His will than was turning around and going home.
Under the Perfect Law of Liberty, we look for the will of God to help guide us, we loosen ourselves in our daily walks, to wait for His guidance. This loosening of our schedules and self-imposed time tables is the Liberty of choosing the Father's will. And more importantly, the Father's will slots us into perfection and harmony with everyone else.
Everyone wins when we all go to the Father's will.
But that clarity then, that perfect brilliant orb sitting high in the sky: the Sun, the promise of the Son returned.
A Psalm of Moses: the work has Calvinistic proofs, that God is unfathomable to man, which is appliqued to the doctrines of Election and Irresistible Grace. We timult and kerfluffle as subjects to the King, the Creator; we wish to know yhe unsearchable mind of God.
This week's Psalm reading comes from the selection of Bible Gateway, which has quite a few classical resources for studying this selection to its very marrow.
The key is humility, and it would be cheeky of me to point out that Humility doesn't exist in the TULIP Calvinist doctrine, but everything instead clearly points to humility: not by our will, but by His will alone.
Our key verse is Psalm 90:12, the very thesis of the entire piece, how we stand before the majesty of nature, God's creation, how we deign to stand under the night sky and look at the panorama of stars.
3 Thou turnest man to destruction; and sayest, Return, ye children of men.
6 In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up; in the evening it is cut down, and withereth.
7 For we are consumed by thine anger, and by thy wrath are we troubled.
8 Thou hast set our iniquities before thee, our secret sins in the light of thy countenance.
9 For all our days are passed away in thy wrath: we spend our years as a tale that is told.
11 Who knoweth the power of thine anger? even according to thy fear, so is thy wrath.
12 So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.
