HCLM BLOG

"There must enter into your heart whole new attitudes toward your entire life.  If you are to branch out beyond just a time of prayer each day, other parts of your life--and even your whole viewpoint of life--will have to be altered.  This new attitude must come for a very special reason--so that you may go on deeper, still deeper, into another level with your Lord.

To do this, you must have a fresh attitude toward yourself as well as toward the Lord; it is an attitude that must go much deeper than any you have known previously.

To do this, I introduce a new word to you.  The word is abandonment.

To penetrate deeper in the experience of Jesus Christ, it is required that you begin to abandon your whole existence, giving it up to God.  Let us take the daily occurrences of life as an illustration.  You must utterly believe that the circumstances of your life, that is, every minute of your life, as well as the whole course of your life--anything, yes, everything that happens--have all come to you by His will and by His permission.  You must utterly believe that everything that has happened to you is from God and is exactly what you need.

Such an outlook towards your circumstances and such a look of faith towards your Lord will make you content with everything.  Once you believe this, you will then begin to take everything that comes into your life as being from the hand of God, not from the hand of man."

-Madam Guyon

There are so many times in my life where I thought "man, if I could just have _________", or "if I was ________ instead of here, then I'd be happy."  So what did I do?  I tried to change my situation by any means necessary.  I would manipulate people, including myself, in order to change the course of my life to the place where I believed I would be most "happy".  In the end, though, I realized that we act like this because we're afraid that God doesn't know what He's doing.

That's ultimately what it comes down to.  What does it mean that God is sovereign; that He is all-powerful and all-knowing?  Those aren't just $5 words that we throw out when someone asks us to describe God--they mean something.  If God truly is in control, then that means that no matter how you got to where you are right now--whether through truly seeking God or by "mistakes" that you've made along the way--God has at the very least allowed, and at the most actually orchestrated first-hand the events and outcomes in your life to bring you to where you are.  He has you right where you are for a special purpose: to draw you closer to Himself.  Whether there are good times, hard times or a little of both in your life right now, it is exactly what you need.

Can we trust God enough to believe that?  Because once we can, we become free.  How can we worry when we understand that right here, right now is where God is meeting with us, is drawing us closer, is burning away everything in ourselves that is not Him.  God is big enough to work all things for our good.  He's bigger than our mistakes, our insecurities, our confusion.  He doesn't ask for us to understand why we're at where we're at in life, or the grand plan for our existence.  He doesn't give us a list of "to-do's" or "to not do's".  All He wants is for us to turn to Him; to give up on our own efforts to make life comfortable and secure and instead embrace His sufficiency.  

I just looked and it was July 2nd the last time that I blogged. Oh well my grandpa never blogged!!!

I just finished 3 hours of work on this computer to get rid of

8 threats

298 Infections

94 registry irregularities

But the one that was the most annoying was what they call a "Trojan False Alert". Whenever I logged onto my computer there would be a pop up that looks like my AVG security only is says "Security Tool" and it tells me that I have 47 virus and I need to click on "remove" if you do that it wants you to register for a service and give your credit Card information and all kinds of stuff. When you don't respond it keeps coming back. How I got rid of this was a long story, for another time. The point of this blog is this:

In our lives there are people and things that pop up in front of us and demand attention! Most often they are a "false alert". We get all worked up for no good reason. We worry about things we have no control over. We anticipate worse things than will ever happen. All of this, like with my computer, slows down our efficency and sidetracks us from our real purpose. Jesus Himself said not to worry about tomorrow, "sufficent unto the day is the evil thereof" translated into today's language that means that to worry about things that have not yet happened is a waste of time!

For a week I have learned to focus on the background on the computer and ignore the "False Alerts". When you do that for a dertain length of time they go away. In the relationship that we have with our Creator God He wants us to focus on Jesus and everything else will be revealed. In Him we touch the Father. Don't get excited by the false alerts in your life simply focus on the task at hand and follow Him.

"There is a fire of Divine Love.

It is this love which burns the believer and can even cause the believer to suffer.  How?  Sometimes the absence of the Beloved greatly affects the believer.

Sometimes the believer hears the inward voice of the Beloved calling.  It is a gentle whisper and proceeds from out of the believer's inmost depths...where the Lord, the Lover, abides.  It is this whisper which possesses the believer almost to the point of undoing.  The believer realizes how near is his Lord and yet he also realizes how much of the soul has not yet been possessed by Him.

This intoxicates the believer and puts an insatiable longing within him to be changed into the likeness of his Lord.  Therefore it can be said of love: Divine love is as strong as death, for it kills just as surely as death kills."

-Michael Molinos

When we begin to dive deeper in our relationship with the Lord, we very quickly come to realize that His love is unlike any love we've yet experienced.  I like how Molinos said "there is a fire of Divine Love", because that is such a fantastic picture.  Fire warms.  Fire gives comfort, strength and peace.  Fire also burns, consumes and destroys.  God's love is the same way.  We can find a constant and ever-present refuge in God's love for us; we can hide away in Him, and find shelter in Him.  He is our confidence, our strength, our peace.  And yet at the same time, behind the scenes--or, sometimes, not so behind the scenes--God's love is doing something else...it is consuming you!  God's love sets ablaze and burns away every part of your soul that stands against Him.  

So often in the Bible, the illustration of purifying gold is used for what God does in our lives.  Only in extremely high and excruciating heat will the impurities in gold finally come to the surface to be skimmed off, eventually leaving the remaining metal completely pure.  God will stop at nothing until He fills every part of you with His love; that love which, like a fire, both comforts and consumes, strengthens and burns.  We have a God that is so vast, so powerful, so incredible, that in His presence all that is not Him cannot help but be consumed by Him.

"Therefore it can be said of love: Divine love is as strong as death, for it kills just as surely as death kills."  In God's presence, we die, and He becomes everything.