Wednesday 24 October 2012

The Gift of Righteousness


When I felt particularly to seek God in those early morning sessions in Bible House....and I felt I just had to "wait" upon the Lord...like Psalm 123....Nothing articulable happened. because the Lord was restraining me from praying.
From even reading the Word.
I just had to wait upon His Presence.
Now this is what happened.
I became aware of a peculiar burni

ng inside me.
No one had talked about this really.Maybe John Clarke.
At times it was like agony....almost writhing around.
It really felt like those verses that say
when I tasted your word in my mouth it was like honey, but in my stomach it was exceedingly bitter.

Righteousness, holiness,invading us can feel almost painful. Like heat. It is God Himself taking up more residence in our souls, in our hidden parts, in our hidden programming (Ezekiel 8:10)

But have no fear, this holy fire takes a hold, but it doesn't continue to feel so awful. Who knows what stronholds and generational ties are being gobbled up while this reprogramming is occurring.

There's no textbook for it. It's the same Presence you get in very good meetings....so it's confirmed and witnessed to by every believer wishing to take the Word of God seriously. It's not some bizarre weirdness ore weird spirit entering us causing us to spiral off into erroneous doctrine or worship of spirits.

It's like layers coming off....layers of callous coming off our insides. We become increasingly sensitive to what's going on....to sensing when God is going on....or when God is not in something.

This is all righteousness is....the invasion of Christ in His full Person....not just the bits we want because they give us good feelings....but in fact our steps never change.

True righteousness changes us from within out.
It is no more than Him outworking the full effect of what He already accomplished 2000 years ago. It's the stripping back of us down to the raw person He originally made us to be....ready to be spontaneous and whole
not speaking out hurt or victimhood every sentence we speak
not shortcircuiting to the behaviours that always trapped us
not always fouling up relationships with bits of snipe and bitterness

in short it is the removal of every trace of who we were....children of wrath

a wrath that expressed itself in
alienation
from God
from man
from family
from friends
a wrath that always directed hurt and anger towards a false image of God not being good and gracious
a wrath that always hindered us in our work and creativity because we couldn't then live from a clear and simple heart.

Really it is like the parable of the sower and the seed. it's like having your own personal bulldozer strip back your soil of all hardness,crusts and flinty soil....back down to a beutiful soil that grows big things for God without thinking about it....
just superfertile.....

It's that sort of thing that is holiness and righteousness.
Always a gift.
Always grace,
really nothing more than believing Him as me, in my form, my personality....Him just getting on with His Life as us.

No comments: