ASCM Retreat Reflections

Before this I was really down, even had grown to be skeptic of God's goodness to his people. But for weeks of hard-headed resistance of God's love and comfort, I finally prepared myself to the time when I will meet Him--stripped, naked and accountable ...

Evening worship. Holy Spirit moved powerfully in me. I raised up my hands which I have hidden in his sight for so long as if Lord here are my hands--dirty, you alone can wash them clean--in an attitude of deep grief for my sin. I covered my face in shame. Indeed he has promised that our mourning will be turned into shouts of joy. His inexpressible and illogical love envelop me and finally I succumb to his love in honest desparation for the first time in weeks. I want to control my grief but I was shaking, weeping like a child taken away from his father for a very long time.

Indeed, Amazing Love, how can it be???

His Word to me: NEW HEART. I will give you a new heart. I will turn your heart of stone into a heart of flesh. I will write my law in a heart of flesh ... Lord, teach me your ways that I may know you more. Show me your glory.
YOUTH. I sensed that God reassured me of my calling. What he has first called me to do, it's still is until today ... Indeed Lord you are faithful to complete the work you have started in me.
(Isaiah?) I will reveal thigs you haven't yet seen and heard ...
I came that you may have and enjoy life, but don't let your enemy, Satan, steal my life away from you.

Time alone with God ... Time is not the problem my priorities are. I have realized I have set the presence of God as something that is trivial and powerless compared to the work of my hands and the logic of my head ... I'm a stupid idiot. I'm was a brute before you. Indeed your judgments are right so that you stand blameless and correct in your judgments.

God's Word to me Aug 22, 6:30AM - "A soldier does not concern himself with the things ordinary people concern about." Lord I'm afraid to ask what you want me not to concern myself with. Perhaps because I may have to give up this addictive desire to control things. Lord, give me the courage to set you up as my true final authority and finisher of my faith.

Devotion: Aug 21, Exodus 33:12-23 ... God shows his glory to Moses.
God knows me by name, He indeed has a purpose for me. His purpose for me is true. This passage has been spoken to me when I was still a younger man (by Ate Em) "If Your presence does not go with us, do not take us away from here." Lord, I want to be Your friend as Moses was. Give me a holy passion for Your Name ... Draw me in order that I may pursue you and know you more. Forgive me that I thought I have known all of you. I was a fool for thinking that. You are unsearchable and limitless as Your love for me is. Draw me close that I may know You more. Your presence, I need your presence. Without that take me nowhere.

The Power of His Love

"Love is one, and love is changeless.

"For love loves unto purity. Love has ever in view the absolute loveliness of that which it beholds. Where loveliness is incomplete, and love cannot love its fill of loving, it spends itself to make more lovely, that it may love more; it strives for perfection, even that itself may be perfected--not in itself, but in the object. As it was love that first created humanity, so even human love, in proportion to its divinity, will go on creating the beautiful for its own outpouring. There is nothing eternal but that which loves and can be loved, and love is ever climbing towards the consummation when such shall be the universe, imperishable, divine.

"Therefore all that is not beautiful in the beloved, all that comes between and is not love's kind, must be destroyed.

"And our God is a consuming fire."

George McDonald (1824-1905)
Taken from From the Library of CS Lewis (Bell)

I raised you up for this very purpose ...

For he says to Moses, "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion" It does not, therefore depend on man's desire or effort but on od's mercy. For the Scripture says ... "I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth." Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy ... "Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, 'Why did you make me like this?' Does the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for common use? What if God, choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath--prepared for destruction? What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory--even us, whom he also called ...

- Romans 9:16-24

This is the answer to my question why? Why me? In fact I should have been past this vain questioning why me. I should be doing my part now, to fulfill His purpose for me. I need to continually remind myself, as Dr. Scott Rains has bluntly told us in the Spirit: "You are not that good." Indeed it's by the mercies of God that I am where I am, indeed this is unfathomable for my thoughts. But I need to face that, walk past that and do some action. God thank you for raising me up for deep holes of shame and self-pity. Lord as Moses prayed you, Lord show me thy glory. You shall not share your glory with another for Yours is the glory alone. You are my God, I will walk in this truth in confidence!