Selfishness Consumed in Unquenchable Love

John of the Cross. Brilliant. I’m not sure if there’s much else to say than that.

I am presently three days into “a 40-day journey in the company of John of the Cross”. The book, “You Set My Spirit Free”, is arranged and paraphrased by David Hazard. I do not yet know what days 4-40 hold, but if they are anything like days 1-3, I think this one is worth searching out.

The words of today’s reading are still drifting along the surface of my thoughts. Here are a couple of sentences that nicely convey the general message of this chapter:

“The more we allow love to enter, the more we grow to love others with our whole will–even when they treat us miserably.”

“I tell you, acting in love when others are not acting in love toward you–this is of the highest value to your soul.”

And I am utterly convinced.

This is where the Holy Spirit has been leading me… into love. He is teaching me to desire the most excellent way. He is exposing my selfishness, my coldness, my impatience, my bitterness, and the ways “I barricade and protect myself against others… and mostly against [Him].” (Borrowing that quote from an ouchy little prayer at the end of the chapter.) He is tenderizing my icy heart with the flame of His love. Opening my heart to Him, exposing it to that fire, is the wisest thing I can do. I am so grateful for His leadership.

That is why I am being so deeply moved by today’s reading. It simply and beautifully articulates the lessons that my Teacher has been so persistently unfolding in these last months. The Spirit of Truth has not relented in drawing my stubborn, calloused, and weak heart into wisdom. And amidst the tears and the immense pain of the journey, He has continually manifested Himself as my Comforter and the source of life, the One who sustains and enables me.

Holy Spirit, teach me! You are able to present me faultless. You know how to lead me. Do not relent until You bring it to completion. I commit my way to You. You who are able and faithful. Your words are faithful and true. Bring them to pass.

John 14-16

John 14-16 is presently one of my favorite passages in the Bible. Jesus’ words. He speaks a great deal about three of my favorite topics: Holy Spirit, hope, and love.

Actually, now that I think of it, the Holy Spirit and hope are THE two topics that I am actually highlighting in my current Bible. And love is something I have been seriously focusing on for the last 5 months. No wonder I love this passage so much!

Throughout His dialogue, Jesus elaborates several times on the immanent sending of the Holy Spirit and how this person of the Trinity would serve and help us. (Ah! God’s humility!) I love it when one person of the Trinity talks about another person of the Trinity. They actually do it quite a bit. It’s beautiful! If anyone knows about God and has something to say about God… it’s God.

The hope topic isn’t necessarily evident in a quick scan of the passage. This is primarily because he uses the language of peace, joy, and believing.

And then we have love. Jesus keeps coming back to this theme. And He especially focuses on defining love as obedience.

This post was originally going to be about obedience. I was having one of those really good conversations with the Holy Spirit that felt like it needed to overflow into verbal expression. But then, as I sat down to write… I realized that I wanted to talk about a lot of things from this passage. And that I was so enamored with the other two subjects that I could not leave them alone in order to maintain some level of focus for this post.

So we have, instead, an introduction. I have decided, in my failed attempt to stay on the one topic, to start a tiny series of posts on John 14-16.

I’m not looking at the passage right now. In fact, I haven’t for a few days. So right now I am simply talking from what has stuck with me in the last few months as I have been looking at it and talking to the Lord about it.

From those recollections of the things that have most struck me, I would say that these three topics are essentially the three main themes of this passage. If I sat down and looked at it more analytically, I might change my stance a bit. But, my study of the Bible happens in the context of relationship and primarily exists as dialogue with God about God. (Let us all remember, prayer and love are literally my primary occupation. Sigh… I love life as an intercessory missionary. Apart from being at the core of my job description, though, these are truly what we are called to as Christians.)

So, as I talk about this passage, I will be emphasizing the things that have been the highlights of these “conversations” with God. So, whether hope, Holy Spirit, and love=obedience are the three main themes of this passage or not… I can almost guarantee that they will be the three main themes of this little series.

I’m not going to make any promises about how quickly these posts will be written. I am simply going to state my intent to write them and follow through with that at whatever pace my schedule allows.

I also cannot make any guarantees concerning the length of the series. I anticipate that there will probably be three posts, one for each topic. But… then again… I anticipated, upon sitting down to blog, that I was writing one post about obedience. And now… here I am, introducing a series. So who knows what this will look like when all is said and done.

In any case, I am excited about it. This is the stuff that is moving my heart. I love to talk about the things that move my heart. (Now that I have a heart that moves and all. Thank You, God, for reviving the heart that I spent so many years trying to numb and deaden!)

Yay fun!

Accidentally Studying Song of Solomon

I realized yesterday that I have been accidentally studying Song of Solomon for the last few weeks. I REALLY didn’t mean to.

First, Anne had me working on a bunch of Song of Solomon commentaries, books, and articles that Mike had used in some of his research. I’m still in the middle of a large bin full of them. (This project may never end. My only hope is that a higher-priority project will put this one on pause for a time.)

Because of what I am doing, I’ve had to read, skim, and even type large portions of the text of these resources. While I have not sat down with the intent of taking in any whole book or article, I have certainly absorbed a lot of what has been before my eyes this entire time.

Despite the wide variety of opinions and angles that these authors have taken on these texts, it is somehow all working together in my mind and really impacting me (in a variety of ways).

At first, I was slightly annoyed. Helping a friend plan her wedding (which I am actually delighted to do) and spending more than 30 hours each week staring at the Song of Solomon did not seem like ideal tasks for someone who was walking through very painful boy-related things. (Lest everyone jump to conclusions, these very painful boy-related things are not about Richard. No… please don’t try to figure out the private details of my and other people’s lives at this moment.) But God has certainly used the project to move my heart, on numerous occasions. Sometimes (read, often-times) this started from the place of intense pain and then moved into deep heart-impact. (Like I’ve mentioned before, God really knows how to use our pain.)

(Just a quick side note, this task has had its painfully awkward moments as well. Honestly, I’m not too squeamish around sex-talk… something that abounds in writings about the Song of Solomon. I won’t get into details about the one book, but I thought the thing was going to kill me. It should have been labeled with serious “Stay away!” warnings for single women. That’s all I have to say.)

And then we have the prayer room.

I did decide, a few weeks ago, to start going to Cassie Campbell’s worship with the word on my night off. I did it for the sake of my heart… and it has really paid off. She is currently doing Song of Solomon. This would be my one intentional step in the direction of Song of Solomon.

However, I have also accidentally stumbled across a lot of this book while watching the prayer room webstream. Just in the last few days, both non-NightWatch sets that I randomly chose to watch from the webstream ended up being Song of Solomon worship with the word sets. (These are from teams that I don’t usually see/hear.)

All of these prayer room sets, (Cassie’s and the two other teams’) have made me cry. A lot. And I have encountered the Lord pretty profoundly.

I don’t think I’ve ever accidentally studied a book before. In all truth, though, I am pretty sure it didn’t just happen. SOMEONE was being pretty intentional about pursuing my heart with all of this.

Random String of Emotions

I wanted to write a post about the things that are on my mind. I was going to call it “Grateful” because I am full of gratitude right now.

Then I realized that a lot of what was on my mind was really intimidating and I was scared. Change of plans: I was going to call it “Grateful & Scared”.

Then I realized that a lot of what was on my mind was…

I could keep going like this for a while. We’ll just stop there and sum it up with this: I am feeling A LOT of emotions right now. (I’m feeling. Let’s just pause for a moment to thank the Lord for that one. My heart is alive. So very alive. That wasn’t always true.)

When I said that I would stop there and sum it up, I didn’t mean to stop the entire post. At least I didn’t think that I did.

I started to write about the things that are on my mind.

I realized that this wasn’t stuff to blog about. Not yet.

I highlighted and deleted huge chunks of text.

I stopped and realized that there was nothing left but a play-by-play skeletal description of an event that was never allowed to… happen. Happening is to events as living is to organisms. It seems that there was no event after all.

The post could not bear witness, itself, to the fact that it nearly existed. It could not bear witness because it did not exist. Nonexistent anythings are nothing at all. Something must exist to truly be or do anything.

I judged it as right to leave this. I saw it fitting to leavesome evidence of a thing that nearly existed but was never allowed.

Here this is. And here that isn’t.

Or is it?

Witnessing Love

What I am about to write is actually what motivated me to finally sit down and write my last, introductory post.

As I have been setting myself to behold God’s love and pursue the way of love in my own life, I was recently carried further in the journey by unexpected means. I had a unique opportunity to witness someone else choosing love in a profound way. In fact, I’m not sure that I’ve ever witnessed that kind of love in this measure.

In seeing such incredible beauty, I naturally desire to declare the identity and the specific choices and actions of this one who so remarkably chose the most excellent way, that you might behold this beauty with me. But for more than one reason, I cannot do that.

Love does not parade itself… and I have not been given authority to expose it, either. There is also a facet of this love that finds beauty in it’s hiddenness and secrecy… the silent suffering and sacrifice that demands no acknowledgment or recognition.

Thus, I am going to be a little vague. (Nothing new to this blog.) And I am going to refer to this person using “he/him/his”, as I have done with past posts about anonymous individuals.

“He” might be a woman. And I’m really not worried about you guessing. The small handful of people who will know who I am talking about will find it blaringly obvious. I’m pretty sure the rest of you don’t even have a chance. If I were you, I wouldn’t waste my energy trying to guess who I am talking about and how I know about the choices they made.

And so it begins…

Invitation to Love

I have been spending A LOT of time in 1 Corinthians 13 and 14 lately. It’s kind of creating a new vision statement for my life. In fact, the intensity with which the Lord has been directing me in the ever-famous love passage is what led to my little description in the new box under my profile picture on facebook:

I am choosing the most excellent way. It’s going to kill me, but it has to. I will pursue perfection until faith, hope, and love are the truest things that can be said of me. I WILL love, at the end of the day. God lives in me. It’s not in vain.

Ultimately, it is a journey into discovering God’s heart in ways that far surpass anything I have ever seen or understood before. But this journey, setting myself to gaze on the beauty of His love, is also the means of my transformation. It’s a life-long pursuit, not just a fun new study focus when I open my Bible. And it is a daily discovering of my need for God, my need for the power of the Holy Spirit in my daily life. I really do want faith, hope, and love to be that which is truest of me, and I’m not going to get there without Him.

Good Friday

I don’t really have time to write much about Good Friday, but it seemed like I should at least get something in before Easter (although it is technically Sunday already).

The service on Friday was amazing.

I knew they would be wearing all black. I didn’t expect it to impact me at all. It’s just a different color. I was wrong.

They looked so plain and bare and mournful. Just like the stripped altar at the front of the room. Plain… bare… empty… lacking. I guess I never consciously thought about it, but they usually come out in white or beautiful, bright colors. I had never seen these people stand at the front of the room with no ornamentation… in simple, dull black. There was such an evident absence… such a clear lack.

I knew that they would prostrate themselves once they reached the front of the room. I honestly expected it to feel a little cheesy. I expected to be somewhat amused, whilst yelling at myself internally for being so irreverent. I was wrong.

The moment was so somber. There was no processional music, as in a normal service. They simply entered in silence as we knelt between the pews. When they fell on their faces at the front of the room, my heart turned over within me. As they lingered there in that posture, the sobriety deepened.

Ouch

Well, here is the latest in search engine queries that led others to this blog.

As usual, I had an abundance of searches for “IHOP cult” and the like. In fact, only one day in the last week did not involve such a search. I also had several searches related to topics in my “Marriage and Celibacy” posts. And there were even searches for people (Sarah Stroer, Matt Hartke, and Brooke Turner) that brought others here.

But this is the one that REALLY caught my eye…

can an intj love someone

Of God: Abounding in Steadfast Love

So, in my “Of Man…” post, I explained how my pain and frustrations with a friend led me to a place of worship and gratitude.

This primarily happened in two ways:

Sufficient Grace, Patience , and Faithfulness.

As I struggle to choose rightly and keep my heart open, I find myself grateful for His leadership and the grace He has given to enable me to stand. It is a struggle, but I can succeed… because He has made a way. And I am thankful for His faithfulness. The fact that I can trust Him with my heart and simply rest in Him, rather than scramble to put up walls to try to defend myself. Resting in the Lord is a very peaceful place to be.

I love His mercy. I love the way that He gently leads me. Though I struggle, He is committed to working perfection in me.

Also, as I struggle to continue to choose love, I am awed by the way that He continually loves me in my worst moments of unfaithfulness and inconsistency. I am thankful for His patient love.

Contrast — His love is NOT wavering or inconsistent

Of Man: Wavering and Inconsistent

Have you ever had the experience of your frustrations with a person leading you to the place of gratitude with God? Usually, it’s a case of contrasting God and men. I, for one, am quite pleased with the Lord’s ability (and tendency) to use someone else’s brokenness and immaturity and the pain they unintentionally inflict upon me to lead me to the place of a grateful and adoring heart.

Last night was a big one for me. It began with hurt and frustration, but ended in the place of worship. It hurt a lot, so I spent a lot of time dialoguing with the Lord about it.

This post is part one of two. Tomorrow, I intend to make some time to write about that latter half of what God did in my heart with the experiences and decisions that I describe below. Tomorrow’s post… “Of God… Abounding in Steadfast Love.” 

I will not describe the situation in much detail… and I will certainly not mention a name. But a general explanation may be helpful. For the sake of simplicity, I will be using masculine pronouns and such. We are just going to turn the person into a he. “He” may be male. “He” may be female. I figure you don’t really need to know.