capacity

It's the fourth Sunday in Advent ... the Love Sunday. Our pastor began his sermon bragging on his wife  and talking about the early stages of their dating relationship ... it was cute but I kept waiting for the God part - for him to transition and tie everything together and bring it back to Jesus. He did ... and it was a great sermon. He tied the beginning stages of dating - that fluttery feeling of crazy excitement of seeing that one you have fallen for - back to us needing to love Jesus like that.

He quoted Revelation 2: 2-5

I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance, and how you cannot bear with those who are evil, but have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not, and found them to be false. I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my name's sake, and you have not grown weary. But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first. Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent.


All the works they had done were good ... but their failing was that they did not love Jesus as they had once loved Him in the beginning. It's supposed to be that giddy enamored love - so full - so rich - so all consuming. And when it is not - the church at Ephesus got rebuked ... and in the midst of that sermon so did I.

How do you conjure up love in your heart when you feel like every emotion is so dull? The grave is quiet, the grave does not have feelings ... the grave strips, the grave is death. If this wonderment love is what I am being called back to - how do I get out of the grave? Has the grave even accomplished it's purpose in me yet? No ... I don't think it has... not fully yet.

What is it's purpose? Andrew Murray help me out again...


Children of God, we must go down deeper into the grave of Jesus. We must cultivate the sense of impotence, and dependence, and nothingness, until our souls walk before God every day in a deep and holy trembling. God keep us from being anything. God teach us to wait on Him, that He may work in us all He wrought in His Son, till Christ Jesus may live out His life in us! For this, may God help us!

Christ had a perfect life, given by God. The Father said: “Will you give up that life to me? Will you part with it at my command?” And He parted with it, but God gave it back to Him in a second life ten thousand times more glorious than that earthly life. So God will do to every one of us who willingly consents to part with his life.  - The Master's Indwelling

IMPOTENCE, DEPENDENCE, NOTHINGNESS.

I have to say I feel all of these things daily. I wake up every morning barely even able to pray - just screaming out in my mind - JESUS!!! I need you! I can't do any of this without YOU! Please come, please come!
BUT... the deep and holy trembling has not yet come ... and I have been avoiding the waiting and instead have been drowning myself in TV to escape the war in my mind. The battle has been exhausting, frustrating, and long. And for the last 10 days I was in retreat.

I realized as my pastor was speaking today that the grave, and the stripping - the purge has been to expand my capacity.

The grave is for the dying of self ... and let me tell you I feel dead ... nothing in life feels joyful, fun, happy, exciting, comforting, or like home. All has been stripped... and I feel like my life is nothing like it once was ... and I don't even know what it is for now.... it just feels empty. And if I am empty then ... I am finally ready to be filled - right? That at least seems logical to me.

So the Lord has stripped - to stretch me - to make room - to clean me out ... to make me ready for something new - something bigger - something better that would not fit in me where I was before. I will now have the capacity to receive something beyond what I can think or imagine.

this verse came to mind as I was writing ... Matthew 9:17

Neither is new wine put into old wineskins. If it is, the skins burst and the wine is spilled and the skins are destroyed. But new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved.

capacity.