Oh Dear Annie! and Dorcas! You guys just said something so loaded! So...IT! It's a mystery. Oh Dear Lord, for the words to tell it! But I'm not sure it can be told. Maybe it has to be intuited.
Ok, I'm gonna ramble right here. Mike where are you, Brother, cause you sometimes understand my ramblings. I'm just gonna cut loose and let my heart run, people, so be patient.
I awoke this morning thinking about that scripture in Ephesians 5:32, [i]"This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church."[/i]
You see, it all started for me about 13 year ago when I left my husband for another man. I had lived in a tumultuous marriage where there was violence and discord for 19 years and I had just come to the end of being able to go on. I met someone I liked better (at the time) and so I went with him (it's much more complicated than that, but my testimony is on SI somewhere). But, let me tell you folks, I went from the frying pan into the fire. That's an old saying, but in my case it translates like this, if I thought it was bad before...I ain't seen nothing yet. I ended up marrying the man I had left my husband for (we had a child together out of wedlock). Oh yeah, folks, this is a hideous tale.
Well, about 6 years into this marriage, I got serious with God, because I was desperate. It happened one bright August afternoon when my alcoholic husband came home drunk and tore the kitchen cabinets off the wall with his bare hands and picked me up by the neck and threatened to kill me. I knew right then that I wasn't going back to church. I knew right then that I didn't know something...something really important about the "mystery of Christ and the church" that I needed to know. I knew I had been in church my whole life and nothing I had learned in church had prepared me for that moment. I knew I needed to know God. That's all I knew. And so...I set out on a quest. The next day, I called my sweet pastor and told him what happened and I told him I was dropping out of church. I had been up all night praying to God...or should I say wailing to God? Me and my children had spent the night at my sister's house and I had just laid in this tiny bed in the attic and sobbed unto the Lord, begging Him to teach me how to do this...this life. I knew it was easy for God. I believe His way is right. So...I knew there was something really important that [i]I[/i] didn't know.
Hey folks, don't leave me now, please, I have something to say, please.
That was in August '04. That's when I found Sermonindex and began listening to sermons by Leonard Ravenhill and A.W. Tozer and Art Katz and Paris Reidhead. God took me apart piece by piece like an old car in his garage. He dismantled my so-called Christianity and when he got all those rusty parts spread out on the floor, there was so much sh-- in there I didn't recognize. I was saying to God, "What's that?" And he would say to me, "I don't know, you tell me?" And I would try to figure out where it came from and whether or not it even belonged in the new thing that God was going to assemble called, "Dian-The Disciple of Jesus Christ".
Oh, Dear Lord, there isn't enough time or space to tell this. Ya'll ain't gonna read all this. I wish I could just stand on a car hood and talk to everyone here at SI today, cause my heart is so full...
God help me! I want to tell you guys what God has been doing in me! So...I realized that yes, my marriages were a disaster, but more than that, I realized that I didn't know God enough to make a difference in that disaster. So...I turned my attention to knowing God. I knew Jesus would not be confounded by my situation. I knew Jesus had the answer, so all I had to do was really know Him.
In Oswald Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest, he says on the last day of the year, December 31st, "...God is the God of our yesterdays, and He allows the memory of them in order to turn the past into a ministry of spiritual culture for the future..Our yesterdays present irrepairable things to us; it is true that we have lost opportunities which will never return, but God can transform this destructive anxiety into a constructive thoughtfulness for the future. Let the past sleep, but let it sleep on the bosom of Christ. Leave the Irrepairable Past in His hands, and step out into the irresistable Future with Him." And again on May 8th, OC says, "God wants us to venture our all in abandoned confidence in Him...Faith is not a pathetic sentiment, but robust vigorous confidence built on the fact that God is holy love...The real meaning of eternal life is a life that can face anything it has to face without wavering. If we take this view, life becomes one great romance, a glorious opportunity for seeing marvelous things all the time."
Oh! I love that! "The real meaning of eternal life is a life that can face anything it has to face without wavering." That is so good! So I set out to stay in this marrige and make it work, by the grace of God.
I'll try to shorten this in hopes that you will finish reading it. God has been teaching me how to trust him, how to "hold my nerve" in the face of a bloody battle. He has been teaching me how to live by faith, but it all started right after I quit church and started meeting with two other desperate ladies in my home for Bible study. One day, we were reading and we came to this verse, Matthew 16:35, "For whoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it." As I meditated on this verse and determined to "lose my life", I realized that this is the crux of the gospel. And over time, I've identified the key tap root in my life that was going to have to be cut and how God was going to cut it. I've realized that everything hinges on me loving my husband, accepting his humanity and failings and loving him in spite of them. So much of my life (I've been married since I was 18) I have felt just...trapped. I have been in these marriages...married to men whose faults stick out like a sore thumb (not that mine don't, mind you), and constantly feeling like I've got to disassociate myself with this person. It must happen several times a day that I think to myself, 'this guy's an idiot', but just last night, as I lay in bed talking to God, I realized that this desire or urge that I have to disassocaite myself from my husband is so ungodly. I realize that I must draw myself unto him in spite of his faults and failings...like Christ does the church. He came to us while we were yet sinners and asked us to marry him. He loves us with a love that has forgiven our...every failure and frailty. What love! Jesus never wishes he could get away from us and disassociate himself from us! What an amazing love! Jesus doesn't sit in our living room (spiritually speaking)thinking how he wishes he were somewhere else. Can you imagine that? Jesus is commited to His church. He totally believes in His church an He totally plans to spend eternity with Her. Oh, My God!
It's the love. The Love. The world will know that we are His disciples when they see how deeply we love one another. How quickly we judge one another and think to ourselves we would better off if this one would just leave. Oh, Lord. Help us!
What does all this have to do with prophets? Prophets have to love. They have to love God and God's people and righteousness and be jealous for the glory of God and if they haven't laid down their lives, lost their life for Christ's sake, they can't be prophets at all because they speak as an expression of the heart of God...and that is such a mystery. |