Doing is Believing
John 14:21
Whoever has My commands and keeps them is the one who loves Me, and the one who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and reveal Myself to him.
Remember the movie in the picture above? The Master told the student to wax the cars, and was specific how, paint the fence, sand the floor, and so on. Days of all these “chores” in the mind of Daniel was putting off his training to become an expert in karate. Tedious and mundane, hard, sweaty work, and days later irritation and confusion drive the student to challenge the Masters methods. Everyone in the audience had to pull their jaw up off the floor after the Master showed the student how each task had indeed trained without the mindset of fighting. It was brilliant! The student paid very close attention to do all that was asked of him from that point, realizing that even if it seemed irrelevant, he’d learn later, there is no such thing.
It was a cunning and master stroke of writing – that movie. I know Who was behind it. The Master of all, Adonai, the creator of the Universe. This was the purpose of the movie, not the love story, though it was nice (clean, remember those days?), not the picking on and fighting back of teenagers; but the contrast of two teachers and their students, their method and motive, how like mirrors the students of the bad teacher were, and yet unique, still individual Daniel was under the teaching hand of Miyagi. He taught through life, he taught through patience and peace, first to achieve those things in the student, then to practice it in karate.
The quote above in the picture is exactly what God does. There’s a saying; “man says, ‘show me and I’ll trust you,’ God says, ‘trust Me and I’ll show you.’
A true statement! Horizontally (man to man) this is exactly how we should be. Vertically (man to God) trust comes with much earned credit from God. It should be automatic from us, then He shows us, like Miyagi how the obeying of Him has armed us, humbled us, and transformed us into the people He created us to be when we were not yet a physical reality. His commands are written in the Word, but also given into our daily lives (should we ask and listen) thus His voice leads and guides us as it did Yeshua (Jesus) and we become like our Savior. Yet, Yeshua is Yeshua and we are who we are, I’m Lisa, not Yeshua, but like Him in that I listen to and obey the Father. My believing becoming more and deeper with each action taken upon hearing His instruction. Countlessly my jaw is dropped after doing what He said, and impatiently challenging His ways, He shows me what each task taught without me knowing what was being fortified in my muscle and memory with each obedience. Thus I have a living, breathing, relationship with the Master of the Universe! Like the wind, I never know from whence I came or where I’m going at the onset of doing as He says, but I always come away full of assurance that I’m in His will and being grown into something I couldn’t imagine on my best day I could be. His child! A living Word! His love poured out through me! Like Yeshua, but yet never exactly as His perfection in such obeying far exceeds the human reckoning. God doesn’t want a bunch of ‘saviors’, He sent One, and that was and is all that’s needed. He wants children, children to come home to the real Life that He made for them.
What joy it brings to know my trust will never be ill placed in Him! Adventures follow the task of obeying! Jaw dropping moments, where my “floor sanding, fence painting, car washing” duties prove to be far more the object of the desired result than learning kicks and hits!
May the Lord give you many jaw dropping moments as these last days unfold, and may our trust in Him become solid and steady with each leap to obey! Thanking and praising Him with each action, each word, each thought. Glory to God in the Highest!
♡ Grace and peace in Yeshua the Messiah ♡
The Burning of God
What nature of God should consume as fire a child He so beloves? What is this Holy fire that over-takes a bush, without destroying it and spreading is wrath with it’s surrounding neighbors? Is it possible that inside of me, lays a landscape of tree and brush that builds idols and calls my worship to the created itself; that must be such that the fires of jealousy begin to burn it from the One who made it and me? If so, how do I begin to walk into the flames of His desire to purify me? Ahhh, how we avoid pain! Forgetting so often that it lays within a corrupted and broken part, the relief we seek is not so much the healing of the wound as the ridding of the effect of it (pain). Cause and effect. What so causes us to ignore the greatest feature of our salvation (cleansing)? I love the thought that God sees me as I am complete, growing into this completeness or capable of such that He sees. Each stage of my growth a celestial celebration. Yet, how can I stop this urge to run from how I see myself as ineffective, delinquent in His eyes? I have days, that my feet have put on their running shoes as I move towards His presence, it seems, quite apart from my awareness. I look down and wonder, “how did that happen?”
This house-buying/moving process has been a lesson of burning away the destructible I knew not lay within me. As you know, as my absence of post may indicate, the recovery time from the burns is long. Though not without it unshakeable foundations laid upon the waste of smoldering ruins. Spring rains, and gentle breezes have produced new flowers that could not have grown without the fiery blazes He blew inside to wake me. Most days all I was able to do was will myself to lay still while the flames overtook me. The urge to run and escape, fight or flight, so cemented in my habits and reactions, almost too much to train. My willing heart, a thing only He can move, was His grace. I know something of Yeshua’s (Jesus’) fortitude to walk, though heavy with pain, towards the flame of the Cross. His voice ringing in my ears, “Do as I did, do.”
Before the house-hunting escapade, I thought I was ready to do away with possession and things. Indeed, I was more ready than before, as the desire was the flickering flame to begin the first fire of purity. All great things start small. Our Savior was a seed, embryo, fetus, babe; before He was a man. A mountain was a bubbling cauldron of lava before it became a breathtaking appendage of earth. There is a striking balance now seen, between really receiving the blessed things He gives us, without guilt or wondering if it’s right, and feeling deserving. ..wanting more. Another balance or clearing of perspective; that the wanting of more after a bestowing of blessing in things here on earth, turned inward to see the true desire is the wanting more of Him, not the things.
The startling thought, though still, is that nothing resulting in the process guarantees my fingers shall not hold tightly things again. It’s a controlled burn, all things God does inside, this side of eternity. I think perhaps this is what makes His ways so undesirous to people. We like a ‘start and finish’ kind of life. No dragging out of things. We weary easy of all things that go on for an extended amount of time. If the wind blows for days on end, we pray for stillness. Upon granting that, the sweltering heat with no breeze then compels us to pray for the wind again. Rain upon rain without ceasing drenches the spirit and begs for dry wind. Flooding the senses with moist and mildewy perspectives. Left to us, our ordered climates are always to our comfort, not at all to the growth and strength building, stretching, He has willed for us. The earth must expand and contact, remember it’s in labor; but also that all things that are alive must breathe! So, too, are we who call ourselves the Forgiven Children of a Consuming God. The only cure we know this side of heaven, is the antidote called – waking. The Spirit comes inside to wake us everyday to the Kingdom of heaven, which would rise within us, if we will but let go of the world we see. Grace not only pours out love and faith on the undeserving, it stirs the flames of that which will purge us of all that would fuel a destructive soul. It’s hard, and painful and requires a Holy endurance that can only be found in the fiery presence of God.
One day a finish shall reign, an end to the process of purification. Oh! What what a day that will be! Or…mayhap – not? Perhaps the only difference will be that we will no longer resist it, it will no longer be considered a “pain”. Oh that God is answering my prayer that my comfort won’t call the shots to my living anymore!
I leave you with some ***quotes from George MacDonald*** in his sermon called Consuming Fire. What perspective our Lord bequeathed to him! So great a heritage we have! Where knowledge brings true growth -Life! And that knowledge moves our feet into action. Obeying the laws of God as joy.
***Nothing but the burning love of God can rid sin out of anywhere. It is the law of nature – that is, the law of God – that all that is destructible shall be destroyed. When that which is immortal buries itself in destructible – when it receives all it’s messages from without, through the surrounding region of self, and none from within, from the eternal doors opening inward into God’s presence – it cannot, through immortal still, know it’s own immortality. The destructible must be burned out of it, or begin to be burned out of it, before it can partake of eternal life.
God is against sin: insofar as, and while, they and sin are one, He is against them – against their desires, their aims, their fears and their hopes. And thus He is altogether and always for them.
God thinks and feels against vileness and selfishness, of the unrest of inassuageable repulsion with which He regards such conditions. God thus revealed Himself in such anger so the thoughtless people, fearing somewhat to do as they would, might leave a little room for that grace to grow in them, which would at length make them see that evil, and not fire, is the fearful thing.
A chimney above a huge house indicates the greatness of the building below, as the volcanoes of the world tell us how much fire is necessary to keep the old earth warm. For it is not the sun itself that warms the planet. The earth is like the human heart. The great glowing fire below us is God in the heart of the earth, and the great sun is God in the sky, keeping it warm on the other side. Our gladness and pleasure, our trouble when we do wrong, our love for all about us, that is God inside us. All the beautiful things and loveable people, all the lessons we get from life, and whatever comes to us, is God on the outside.***
– George MacDonald
The God of Shalom (peace – completeness) brought up from the dead the great Shepherd of the sheep, our Lord Yeshua, by the blood of an eternal covenant. May God equip you with every good thing you need to do His will; and may He do in us whatever pleases Him, through Yeshua the Messiah. To Him be the glory forever and ever, amen!
– Hebrews 13:20-21
♡ Grace and peace in Yeshua the Messiah ♡
The Carpenter
O Lord, at Joseph’s humble bench
Thy hands did handle saw and plane;
Thy hammer nails did drive and clench,
Avoiding knot and humouring grain.
That Thou didst seem, Thou wast indeed,
In sport Thy tools Thou didst not use;
Nor, helping hinds or fishers need,
The labourer’s hire, too nice, refuse.
Lord, might I be but as a saw,
A plane, a chisel, in Thy hand!
No, Lord! I take it back in awe,
Such prayer for me is far too grand.
I pray, O Master, let me lie,
As on Thy bench the favored wood;
Thy saw, Thy plane, Thy chisel ply,
And work me into something good.
No, no; ambition, Holy-high,
Urges for more than both to pray:
Come in, O Gracious Force, I cry –
Or workmen, share my shed of clay.
Then I, at bench, or desk, or oar,
With knife or needle, voice or pen,
As Thou in Nazareth of yore,
Shall do the Father’s will again.
This fashioning a workmen rare,
O Master, this shall be Thy fee,
Home to Thy Father Thou shalt bear
Another child made like Thee.
♡ Grace and peace in Yeshua the Messiah ♡
Unfolding My Wings One Day at a Time
hisimagenme 