"You may others from sadness to gladness beguile,If you carry your cross with a smile."
I was visiting with Joian last night by phone and as is quite common we had a few portions of our conversation where we were laughing til we were almost sick. Joian is Irish and I delight visiting with her because she gets me and she understands my less than grandiose accounts of my daily life.
So in this visit, I was once again painting a picture of my strange existence where it seems, save the glorious walk I have in the Spirit, the natural man in me will often find the most exciting event of my day is when I step outside and move the lawn sprinkler.
Now, you must understand that I spent much of my life with myriads of friends that loved hangin with this merry prankster. I felt it was my duty to serve as their appointed guide into a life of exciting hijinx, humor and chaos. Far be it anymore, as I now enjoy a pretty reclusive life, having concluded that there is great fun with sin for a season, but that season eventually runs empty and ends in painful ruin (Heb 11:25). One of the greatest miracles I know of, is that God kept me through all the years of my death defying craziness. Now, often times with tears and bended knee, I thank Him for His decades of enduring mercy extended to a once blind and wild prodigal.
Nowadays, I don't have money for gas so I walk most every where I go. My occasional walkabout often takes me to the neighborhood grocery store a few blocks away. There I have made friends with most all the stores employees. I always try to put a smile on their faces with one story or another while occasionally mixing in a few crazy antics. In Jackson Hole, we now have a good sized transit Baltic and Russian constituency employed for a season or two with their work visas. This summer the grocery store employed a number of cute Russian and Moldovan girls as clerks. I happened to befriend a gorgeous but shy six foot brunette from Siberia named Regina. She is twenty and by far the quietest of all the Baltic girls. So when ever I entered the store, if I saw Regina working, with hand against forehead, I would pretend to scan the horizon. I then would croon loudly in a sad Italian accent, "Regina! Regina! Has anyone seen my Regina from Russia? Where is my dear little Siberian Sweetheart!" It embarrassed shy Regina to no end, as everyone would turn to see who exactly was the object of love, this loud lecherous old man was calling out for. LOL
Well, with summer passed, the Baltic girls have all gone home and I was telling Joian that I found a new way to pass my time. After I get my groceries I sit on the bench outside the store and I talk to all the children and dogs that pass by. I told Joian, I was thinking of getting a cane and a little fedora so as to better portray the new profile I seem to be slipping into.
Life for me has also been a tad bit hard for some years, but most in Jackson, that understand my walk, know I carry the joy of the Lord in it's appointed seasons of each day. I can be going through a horrendously dark day, however when I walk into that little grocery store there is a supernatural joy that comes over me as I make my appointed visitations. I have found that I also am able to entertain the rare visitor that comes to my home with a relaxed, joyous and peaceful hospitality. No longer do I have to put on a face or a front. Instead, I need only rest in Jesus, Who is all things to all men. How do you explain such except to say, His rest is multi-faceted and easily entreated. On SONSHINE we talk much about the cross and the crucified life but do we know that as we embrace the same, we also find joy, humor and laughter in the appointed places of our walk. When we get our minds off ourselves and stayed on Him, our emotions are perfectly matched to the diverse occasions and varied seasons we enter into. With His rest it just happens. What a tremendous and amazing walk, eh!
Before going on to share a couple of anointed testimonies by Joian and Eliyah, I want to lastly give an account of something neat that took place in my life today. It will be seven years in which, I almost daily have prayed for a man that did me much physical hurt. To God's glory, also with this painful crime, Christ Jesus has conversely given me tremendous spiritual healing. This man and perpetrator of evil, exceedingly above anyone in my life, has been the subject of one of God's hardest lessons. I speak of, "learning to love those, whose hands are used to nail you to the cross."
It seemed this morning as I read from my Bible, the Holy Spirit took me once again to a seven year old promise concerning the resolution and culmination of this evil I have suffered for the same seven years. Even before I opened my Bible, I knew in my spirit this familiar scriptural promise would appear. I am sure many of you have experienced this same phenomenon. Later as I took my daily walkabout and ran errands I did what I normally do. As I walk I often stop along the way and with a quiet tenderness, pray as the Spirit leads. As I stood in front of the post office under a shade tree praying for this same perpetrator that had cause me so much grief, I was approached by a woman that knew me. Out of nowhere this gal asked me, about this very situation I was praying about at that very moment. It seems she had read a few months ago, a front page article in the local newspaper giving an account of the above mentioned crime and my current situation. This news article in itself was totally miraculous as I never solicited the newspaper's interest or help in anyway. So, knowing this woman was not a Christian, I responded to her query with a paraphrased version of the scriptural promise God had me revisit earlier in the morning.
With all that, I have to believe God is about to do something soon in this area. The very best part of that seven year old promise is found in the last two verses, sharing the results of the injustice made right. I believe the "all men" of this scripture quoted below, speaks to my friends and brethren, along with the great cloud of eternal witnesses that have accompanied and encouraged me all these many years. I thrill to see this approaching day.
"And all men shall fear, and shall declare the work of God; for they shall wisely consider of his doing. The righteous shall be glad in the LORD, and shall trust in him; and all the upright in heart shall glory." Ps 64:9,10
Moving on and in keeping with the theme of our last few blogs, which have been enlarged beautifully with the many great comments, I thought to share once again on the "surrendered life." I'm going to make use of a couple of posts borrowed from a little forum where some of us on occasion gather.
How very few in all of Christendom find this precious and rare place, Joian and Eliyah discourse of here. I so pray these short testimonies bless and encourage you, for they speak sensitively to the path of our resurrection by way of the Cross. This walk is all about "surrender" and as Joian has said before, "it's His life for ours. We die, He lives, and then the mystery is that we live again." Should you dear reader, today be camped out beneath His glorious Cross, you might find your eyes a little moist with the reading of these two testimonies describing an "abandonment to God."
"Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit" Luke 23:46
....the past four years have been a myriad of revelations coming so fast at times I can hardly breathe. All has changed and yet the foundation built upon is still Jesus, my rock......
The last few weeks I keep seeing this picture over and over of a seed in the ground and the pressure of the earth around it is melting and corrupting the outer shell that encases it in order for the seed to go free.....(and the seed falls into the ground and dies, to bring forth life).....when you prayed Eli, it felt like a blast came from your prayers and I agreed.....come in Oh King of glory, into this corrupt half peeled shell and finish the work....amen............
Saturday at breakfast this phrase of a song I used to sing kept floating around in my head....
If you would give your life away
For nothing in return..........
I finally stopped my reading and realized it was the Lord....and I asked him......what he meant.....
As he shared what he was asking, I truly grieved.......All those years of being taught sow a seed and reap a harvest........and now I understood I, was the seed and I knew all my old wants, desires, hopes for the future and anything for myself....was to go on the altar.....I grieved all day as he dealt in specifics, in my inward parts.....he showed me more in one day than I had seen in years......and the odd part was how he was showing me to rise up as part of dying to the old.....I wondered how many more times I would be on the altar and then I didn't care.....I just said do it Lord.....burn it up....
I have shared the unusual physical manifestations happening with me, they are a constant within me.....the way it used to feel when you carried your babies in the womb...... I rarely share these things as I am already way out there with my family.......lol.......So you have become my family without which my journey would be so much more difficult......
Joian
My heart was so touched by these words of yours. I remember of uttering those FINAL WORDS too...BURN IT UP..CONSUME ME ever consuming FIRE of God. He was doing an intense work alright..for He was having me PURGE everything...down to christian books, cd's, old journals, and finally saying good bye to the old woman. I felt sorry for the old woman...b/c I felt like she had messed things up for so long and now that she was finally getting it right I was now having to GRIEVE her..and let her die. I remember actually talking out loud to her...telling her good bye...through tears....and embracing WHO HE IS in me. It was during this time that before the actual death that for almost a year when I would cry...my cry sounded strange...sounded old and TIRED, like there was barely any strength in my cry...and honestly it was PAINFUL to listen to...I know when others heard me like this it was painful for them too...for it was so a very UNIQUE cry.
The Lord revealed to me what this cry was...and how it was manifesting in the natural. This was the DEATH CRY.
I remember watching the movie "Little Women" and there is a scene where one of the sisters is near death...from a pro-longed WEAKENED HEART illness...and as she is talking through her tears I could hear MY VOICE...the same CRY...and that is when the Lord revealed to me that I had been dying and finally the night came when I too DIED. And since then I no longer have had the sound of the DEATH CRY. I still cry but not from the soul...from the NEW CREATION SPIRIT.
There is real pain in saying good-bye...a real grief...and real DEATH...and only those that truly have gotten REAL AND RAW in this place with our Father can understand what you are speaking about.
I rejoice that you have said YES! BURN IT UP!
Oh! My sister the angels shouted for JOY on that day! I really do believe that. I really do believe that the word is true regarding 'how precious in the sight of the Lord are the death of His saints'.
Will a company who so desire to do the Father's will, that they willing remain in the fire until they are "purged" thoroughly. Are these, those who who shall not sleep, but are changed into the image of the new man?
Eliyah
Yes and Amen Eliyah! How very precious in the sight of the Lord are the death of His saints! What a rare and sweet savor yours and Joian's testimonies must be to our Father God as you trade the ashes of your lives for the beauty of Christ. Earlier this week I was thinking of some of the well know Christian writers of generations past and the Lord spoke to my heart that some that visit, write and comment on this little blog, see much deeper into the Kingdom than even these blessed authors and theologians of years past. Such is the time in which we live. At the end of this passing age and the dawning of the new, it is rarely the well know, talented or wise of this world, but the sons hidden in Him that behold the deepest reality of His coming Kingdom.
With that said, surely we must be at the threshold of God's full glory being manifest once again in man. I know of many that, from deep within are hearing the groaning expectation of creation(Rom 8) reach almost an unbearable crescendo. Even so, come Sweet Lord Jesus. Come fully glorified in your saints, to free this pained and fallen creation. Oh, Come!
In closing please allow me to share a couple of inspired quotes that I believe succinctly summarize that which has been shared in this blog of late.
"We have left all, and have followed You" (Mark 10:28)
Here is a golden truth: if He possesses all that YOU have, then you will possess all that HE has. Allow that truth to sink into your heart. Breathe it in and out. Let the Holy Spirit soak it into the pores of your soul and you will not be able to contain His joy and peace emanating from you. You will start giving things up that before you would have never let go. You will gladly relinquish everything.
Chip Brogden
"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose."
Jim Elliot
Lord Jesus, open our eyes to your presence, our ears to your voice, and our hearts to your love. And with such, we pray You add to the Kingdom more precious souls that have been given an unbound desire to "surrender all."
Jack
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