Love allured me as my barely remaining chance. Nothing else attracted me. My shattering had stamped out any lingering self-effort in me; even the sense of nerves stirring had vanished. Inertia bound me. I became the man under the bed covers on a cold winter morning, paralyzed. I concluded, “The next transpiration of events would take place toward me, but not from me.”
Then God came to me. He found me in my pool of blood, so to speak, and said “live.” Did you hear? God began to talk to me — thoughts of love, reintegration, joining, and joy. Love counterpoised my “death of soul,” percolating the threat and leaving it to seem like a mere concoction of my imagination. Then it set on fire a new beginning. Love’s infiltrating spheroid introduced an orb of extreme well-being in me, a far superior one with warmth and surety. Now, enveloping me was a four-dimensional reality to swop out the old three-d one. True life began.
Have you ever fallen in love? Nothing else matters now, nothing. Arise or stay prostrate, “who cares?” He is glorious, majestic in mercy, tender and caring. He ministers to us on our bed of languishing. His love is simply ‘Him with me;’ His presence. This is total amelioration but also mental elevation, status of approval, intimacy, and free expression heightening; all in a big ball. It stretches out in love and grace awareness, judgment-past tense, sin’s removal and law fulfilled.
In Watchman Nee’s book “Sit, Walk, Stand,” sitting precedes walking, and walking goes before standing. I was learning about what precedes even sitting. In quietness and confidence is our strength; the effect of righteousness is quietness and assurance forever. I was learning about eternal calm, like during the storm at sea. Jesus Himself brought in His awaking presence, and fullness of joy. All became still. Everything’s alright, in our Father’s house, always. I was learning about forever.
A Friendship
The word “friend” kept coming up in my mind. It is amazing how we battle against “threatening” thoughts. We do that sometimes because we feel that we cannot take on the implications of their meaning. This may indicate that we fear the responsibility of knowing a thing, or, we are not equipped to handle its application. An insecure person may not instigate friendship to another for fear of reneging in the follow through. “Can I really love at all times?” “Can I make that variety of commitment?”
I pushed the thought of friendship away but it kept coming back. I rationalized that I was making it up, some trick of the mind, but its intensity diminished not. Finally I focused on it only to realize that it was God Himself making this first move. God was kicking off a friendship with me and it brought tears to my eyes. He raised me to the status of friend? I didn’t know what it meant but I was sure that God was calling me friend.
“Well, what does it take to be a friend of God?” I mused. “Do I have to be a friend back? Am I a companion, comrade, confidant, assistant, helper, colleague, or financier? Do I have to stick closer than a brother and love at all times?” I was afraid.
In relief, I discovered that the friendship demanded nothing of me except to assume the blessed status of being a friend of God. In disbelief, I wondered “why me?” Very humbly and sacredly, I believe that losing my son had something to do with it, in my case. God seemed to want me never to forget that He understood my pain, my deep grief, my suffering. A place of honor was given me, not by men, only by God, and it became evident in my consciousness, though frankly beyond my grasp.
I remembered how God lost His Son. My loss was hardly comparable, but to God it seemed to matter. It was as if He knew that I could identify with Him, and He with me. He insisted. We shared something in common; we both had sons that had died?
In summary, an adorning of love, perhaps liquid waves of it, lifts, equips, and prepares a person as the Word assumes life-giving characteristics. We all have our own experience. Paul was lifted up into heaven, and could not speak of what he saw there. What the world saw however; a man on fire. A man driven, a man sold out, a man who “to live was Christ, and to die was gain.”