Revelation 10:8-10
8 Then the voice from heaven called to
me again: "Go and take the unrolled scroll from the angel who is
standing on the sea and on the land." 9 So I approached him and
asked him to give me the little scroll. "Yes, take it and eat
it," he said. "At first it will taste like honey, but when
you swallow it, it will make your stomach sour!" 10 So I took
the little scroll from the hands of the angel, and I ate it! It was
sweet in my mouth, but it made my stomach sour.
***
Sometimes the Lord may plant a seed in
our spirit the likeness of which we're not able to describe. It can
grow if we're submissive to wait on Him and it only begins to take
form as we're patient and faithful to allow it. If we're truly
faithful and submissive to what the Lord is doing, we don't attempt
to give it form. We merely suffer in patience to allow it to be
revealed in His time and take shape by His revelation. Our labor
comes in the impartation - the effort to bring it out whole when He
determines that the time has come ...
"Don't you feel it?" I asked.
"Don't you feel the urgency?" I asked further. I was
directing my questions with a tone that was somewhat incredulous toward a
mentor that had taught me so many truly powerful things during the
time that I spent with him. Things that had propelled me forward in
my walk with the Lord and given me a sense of who I really am in
Christ. He had helped me find the courage to stand in Christ's spirit
and spoke to me about my identity with an authority that resonated
with the spirit inside me. But as I faced him now, I was suddenly
struggling to comprehend how he couldn't identify with what the Holy
Spirit was revealing to my own heart so strongly. It was something
that I assumed was so obvious that he surely had to feel it too.
In my earlier visits with him, he had
shared with me things that had some meaning to me at the time, but
that would only begin to have deeper full meaning in the Lord's time.
On one occasion he told me that the Lord wanted me to understand that
He sees me as Daniel as he falls on his face before the Lord in
chapter 9 of the book of Daniel making confession not only of his own
sin, but of the sins of the people and pleading for the Lord's mercy
on their behalf ... mercy. He had identified me earlier as the Lord
revealed it to him, that I am one who has a heart of mercy. I
immediately recognized some similarities in spirit at the time and
accepted it without fully understanding. But in my Sovereign Lord's
time, I've come to understand so much more what that means...
Has anyone ever told you that "you
should be careful what you ask the Lord for because He may give you
what you ask for"? It might bring a knowing smile of recognition
to the faces of some when I say that I learned the truth of this
earlier in life when I asked the Lord to make me humble before Him.
That request has since been very carefully reworded and much more
thought has been given to my requests since. If you've had similar
experiences, I need not explain further, but if you haven't, in love
just let me suggest that you should make sure that you're prepared to
receive what you ask for ...
There came a point though, even having
had the previous experiences of receiving more than I bargained for,
where in boldness I began to ask for something that I truly and
desperately began to desire: "Lord, grant me your perspective -
give me eyes to see things as you see them, ears to hear things as
you hear them and a heart Lord that is after your own and that is
moved by what moves yours."
Over a period of time, the Lord began
to give me only a glimpse of these things - because my heart could
not even begin to bear the fullness of them. My heart was broken as
He granted my request. I was filled with such passion for every soul
regardless of who they are in the world, each one representing a
being so carefully and awesomely fashioned by the hand of the God for
whom I bear such deep and abiding love. I began to imagine as He
labored to fashion them so creatively, what He saw in them - His hope
for their future - much as a mother looks into the face of her
newborn and imagines all that the future could hold with great hope
and expectation. Each one representing an unspeakable value because
of His choice to love them - and each one being loved with such a
passion that only God Himself is big enough to posses it.
... and then I began to feel a mere
glimpse of His crushing broken heartedness at rejection ...
The pain of it is unspeakable. The mere
thought of it now makes me cry with sadness that I can't even begin
to describe. It breeds in my own heart such a tenderness and broken
heartedness for the pain of His suffering. His capacity to love is so
far beyond anything we can comprehend and His pain for the
unfulfilled hope of those He's lost and losing along the way is no
less awesome. Those who choose to reject the purpose and pathway for
the life that He envisioned with such great hope as He fashioned them
will not only suffer the consequences of their decision, but are
returning His great love with the bitter and aching sting of their
rejection ... and He feels it.
The depth of His urgency for those who
are at risk now, those whose moment to accept the truth of what He's
proclaimed is waning, can only begin to be described as the urgency
one feels watching their child in a life and death struggle. In His
perspective it is a true ongoing struggle with real consequences and
this death ... is eternal.
So as I asked those earlier questions
of my mentor, it was with this sense of urgency in my heart and a
also a sense of disbelief that he couldn't feel it as well. But what
I wasn't thinking about at the time is that I had asked to feel it. I
had asked to share what His heart feels and because He chose to grant
my request, I can never again be the same. I can't forget what I
experienced because of it and it's with the same urgency now that I
make an effort to point out something that I hope my brothers and
sisters in Christ will understand and take action to affect.
The sweetness of our salvation and
relationship with our God is something that can't be matched when
truthfully and wholly embraced. The attractiveness of His character
and nature are so compelling as to become addicting. Relationship
with Him is by design the answer to the longing of our hearts and He
is the fulfilling presence that makes us complete. So much so that
the joy and wholeness we find in that relationship has the ability to
make it easy to forget what lies ahead. We are saved and our
salvation and eternity secure. Our ongoing relationship with Him is
our joy.
The truth of our Lord bears a sweetness
that to us is incomparable. But as we digest it, as John did in his
God given vision on the Isle of Patmos, the bitterness is revealed.
While we revel in our salvation when we have obtained our objective
and are granted our place and reward in the heaven that we have been
promised ... His Word will still be true.
How many brothers, sisters, mothers,
fathers and other loved ones will we watch perish in unquenchable
fire? How many of them will we have the bitter reality to watch with
horror as they are judged, found guilty and condemned to death? How
will we satisfy ourselves then that we did all that we could now to
lead them to salvation while we had the chance? Mothers will watch
their children perish before their eyes. How many of us will have
cause to ask ourselves if we could have been the willing vessel that
God could have used to change their course? Indeed the Word of God is
a double edged sword.
Now is the moment to seize as He
provides, to change the course by our obedience of the lives of those
we love. But as we do, we cannot forget that it is the Spirit of the
Living God who wages this war against the enemy. We have only to
follow His leading and remember who He loves.
Food for thought against a coming
reality ...
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