The Passion Well: Chapter 13

Note: If you've not had the opportunity to read the foreword or previous chapters and would like to, please look for the title of this writing under the "Blog Pages" tab above and click on it. You'll find what's available to date under that tab. jbh

The Passion Well

Chapter 13

A Heart Eternally Branded


"I would go to the deeps a hundred times to cheer a downcast spirit. It is good for me to have been afflicted, that I might know how to speak a word in season to one that is weary.” Charles Spurgeon

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Hosea 6:3 (NLT)
"Oh, that we might know the LORD ! Let us press on to know him. He will respond to us as surely as the arrival of dawn or the coming of rains in early spring.”
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In thinking about the divine nature and person of Christ Jesus, He may seem distant or otherworldly. He, with the Father and the Holy Spirit are one God, an amazing and mysterious, omnipotently powerful God that created everything that we know and far beyond that. He is and always has been the supreme power and royalty, residing in glory far beyond our capacity to imagine... 

But He's never been distant...

...The retracing of my own life's memories from a perspective beyond those of mere human struggles and sufferings have made that a certain, knowing reality. There are so many stories from the pages of my own life that I've not shared in this long winded discourse and I willingly confess that in those pages live the memories of other critical failures of my own past sinful nature that have left potholes in the pathway of my life. But they're not in themselves purposeful to the driving message so permanently branded on my heart.

Hear my heart...

Our God becomes very personally involved with each and every one of us that willingly and honestly responds to the intimacy that He offers. He's personally involved in the lives of every person that has the courage to shamelessly submit to Him on His terms. But finding the depth of passion inspiring intimacy with Him may take some time and a persevering intention beyond a light hearted, self serving effort and a face saving kind of submission. 

Our God's been honest with us in all that He's related and made known to us regarding Himself. Everything that He's made available for our knowledge has been related with the purpose of making Himself and His ways known to beings that He lovingly created with a desire to share life with. But He's also the ultimate, most high gentleman and won't force Himself on those who refuse to accept His advances. 

By His very nature our God cannot compromise His standards or His character to condone the wickedness of man's sin, but He doesn't expect us to suddenly have it all perfectly together. Knowing the predicament of failure that we would face in advance, He made a way for us to submit to approach Him through His Son Jesus. That initial submission may open the door to our salvation, but if we're serious about coming into the joy and the indescribable wholeness that can only be found in a true living relationship with Him, the submission has only just begun.  

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John 4:23 "But the time is coming—indeed it’s here now—when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. The Father is looking for those who will worship him that way".
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We're the absolute best salesmen we've ever known when it comes to our own compromising, making bad decisions, accepting false information or getting into trouble. We have the powerful and uncanny ability to convince ourselves of almost anything when we really want to. Think about it, most of the trouble and the bad decisions that we encounter in our own lives, we most likely talked ourselves into somewhere along the way if we're being completely honest. Some of the rest, we've encountered when we've intersected with the fallout from the self-salesmanship of others. But thankfully, our Father God doesn't operate that way - He never has and never will. 

So, in all of the swirling mass of human knowledge and intellect, propagated from the beginning of time with a bent toward satisfying the likes of these soon perishing bodies, ...what can we trust?

You can unerringly trust this -

Our Father God has told us the unmolested truth and if we want to know Him, He's told us how. He's given us the whole of His word to guide us, the sacrifice of His Son as the only gateway, the path of a life to follow ... and an unrelenting desire. 

As I've mentioned earlier that desire has only one true and satisfying resolution. We're divinely created spiritual beings, incomplete and in search of the missing component that would make us whole. Human beings guided by the physical likes of their bodies of flesh will search high and low for purposeful something that has the unfailing ability to escape them because that "it'" isn't physical. It's the spirits within our physical present, created to be eternal, that suffer from deprivation that drives our desire. 

If you've trusted God and had the faith to accept Christ, but not moved beyond that place into an intimate and living relationship with the God that created you, I have to ask in tender compassion: What have you done to yourself by continuing to search while still denying yourself the fullness and wholeness that Father God's promised you? If you truly trusted Him to save your life eternally, then continue to trust Him in all that He desires to share with you as well. Don't short change yourself and Him by refusing to engage now in the very purpose that He created you for - relationship.

The rightful and divine King of Kings was not ashamed to knowingly offer Himself up to be spitefully shamed, humiliated and tortured to death in a love driven and successful effort to save us as His own. Do we now as the object of His desire turn away from the fullness of what His desire has bought for us? Or do we press in to make both His desire and our own resolved and find ourselves made whole by bonded relationship with Him and find ourselves willingly branded by a love that only continues to grow and fulfill?

You may not find that your life is suddenly without trouble as you walk through life, but you will have confidence, knowing that you don't walk it alone as you walk with the God who has the power to take you through any trouble you may encounter. As He works to raise us up with eternal intention for our good, we know with complete confidence that whatever we encounter must conform to His intention for us. And while we may not understand in the moment the specific goal of His intention in a particular thing, we know with trusting hearts that He does and we can take comfort in the fact that our Father God is raising us up as His own children.

“O God, I have tasted Thy goodness, and it has both satisfied me and made me thirsty for more. I am painfully conscious of my need for further grace. I am ashamed of my lack of desire. O God, the Triune God, I want to want Thee; I long to be filled with longing; I thirst to be made more thirsty still. Show me Thy glory, I pray Thee, so that I may know Thee indeed. Begin in mercy a new work of love within me. Say to my soul, ‘Rise up my love, my fair one, and come away.’ Then give me grace to rise and follow Thee up from this misty lowland where I have wandered so long.”  A.W. Tozer

Though I am not yet perfected, I not only know the end destination of my journey, but I know who it is that I will find there with intimate knowledge, because I'm walking with Him now - sharing life. Enter in, honestly submissive to whatever He asks of you with a determined heart  to know Him and I assure you that you'll eventually find yourself swimming gratefully, joyfully and eternally contented in the Passion Well.  jbh








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