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written by Michael McBane

I write today with a determined nakedness to insure that my words do not read with aloofness or with any type of condescending superiority. Though my grammar certainly demolishes that according to some. I pray these words invite you to see and walk with a vision that allows you to renew your will to follow Him on a road that steps into Him in your every step.

In my life I have lived within a fabric of great grace in the length of my Christian life. A grace that has allowed me to partake of seasons of trouble within Christianity on occasion. Trouble that was used to reposition me and then correspondedly transferred me from a place where my understanding of particular applications of Christian culture were misinformed, misdirected and and at times simply incorrect to a renewed pasture.

I have been ashamed of the boast found in my immaturity that my youthful courage carried at times or when I was discovering a validation of expanded understanding that I flung into the face of those that I wanted to give what I had been allowed to see and taste. I am regretful of times when I thought it good to draw people towards ministries that I thought mistakenly held a higher understanding of truth. I still do not condemn these ministries they serve a purpose it was my heart that was misplaced. If I could now have the understanding I am gaining with a youthful ability there would be a merging that would be a sea of tranquility.  I am laughing here.

At times I lived within the applications of these mis steps spiritually and practically but I did not dwell within the devastating reality of the life that was misapplied. This may be hard to understand but reread it. I see that these were crossroads that required me to be still and to wait for the Lord to walk before me so that I could follow Him. To not have the grace to wait and to follow would have been shattering for me. For this I am exceedingly grateful. Though I at times would complain when engulfed by such life. My retrovision sees much differently now. Its as if I was taken through communities and places as an observer that had limited or very predetermined interaction. I was a spiritual prospector searching for gold sifting the grit for the nuggets. These subsequent implosions in these seasons allowed me to see things quite differently at times and to remain still until God said it was time to follow again. I took the gold with me and find each piece to create a picture as if it were a puzzle map to a greater treasure.

We really can’t follow unless we are truly willing to let go of where we have been. We may have reason to think we are following because the herd is stirring up dust but I have found that when God calls us out it often requires a few steps that feel rather  unsecuring or a time of separation from the crowd. Our courage is here tested and each time we step forward the test seems to require more. The more is that we do not misplace our Godly faith for courage. Easy to do when our culture has taken its determination from a belief system that sets goals that are foundationally erected from a greek mindset or corporation set of values. These times test our hearts and minds which is necessary to allow the Lord to be the One who has called us and to demand that our faith be active towards Him and not towards something that resembles Him. There are times that to follow demands that an attachment to any type of idea or vision that even God has birthed be set aside completely and all that remains is Him. Now here is a critical point in our understanding because it is tested ( our understanding) and stripped and we may find that what we have known about Jesus is barren to who we are at that time. It is here that we are drawn to a place that God uncovers dark things in us or we are reduced to a place that has no earthly application. Our hearts search for the tangible essence of a simple Jesus that we can touch and nothing less.

I began to understand that I could not buy the wisdom I was being offered for my instruction within life. It was a tutelage that was from the hand of the potter. I offer that I wrestled at times greatly with misgivings. But I felt I was trapped within divine growing pains. I admit I did not understand things within the life I lived at times. The peace I may have had deep within did not have a present corresponding application in the life I lived or observed. I understood that the ability to live without madness in this difference I tangibly felt was God’s grace and mercy.

I have been able to see at times with a perspective that links the present with an eternal juncture of purpose. I do not see a vast frontier between now and then. I consider the breath of today as a step that closes the gap of my understanding as my spirit is cleansed of the ages of defilement that have encumbered man from the full possibility of who we are meant to be in Christ.

If we see that there as been an assault on the bride from the beginning we can also begin to see our purpose differently. Let us go back to Adam and see how the bride was secluded into a place where her mindset divided her from the holy purpose God intended her to have with Adam. The same contention is brought to us as we seek to find our identity in Christ. Everything seeks to dilute the potential therein. Our relational identity is to be in Christ and through Him. Christ takes us to life, He takes us to His Father and He extends the life of the Holy Spirit to us.

I have always been uncomfortable with any doctrine that establishes an elitist foothold that diminishes others. In fact the Lord had told me early in my Christian walk to take care when I begin to see, smell or hear of the characteristics that would enlarge this behavior. The divine tension here is to understand within a Godly framework the humility that cultivates the ability to be governed by the intent of these words that follow here. Many are called few are chosen. These words are of the same posture as the place John had to lay his head upon the heart of Jesus. This is not a boastful place but a contrite one that has the tears of awe woven upon it.

The desire God gives us to discover the scent that leads us to the places in His heart that few encounter is a place that requires one to live in a humility that is formed by God not a definition that is taken from a spiritual dictionary. That is why arrogance or the toxins that defile men with secretive understandings are suspect of not being fully formed in the contrite halls of His love.

Today I sit within the flow of a great interchange of even greater mercy because I am seeing that when mercy is given to us as we walk in what we think to be maturity in Christ and it is not so and we then are allowed to see the why of where we have been and the need to erase from us certain mindsets that are rooted far deeper then we understand so that we can do one thing without interruption, which would be to drop our intentions and follow Him, this is a mercy rich beyond words. For this mercy is true grace. There are things that will transfer us to places in the eternal perspective of how we will forever relate to Jesus that are determined now. These are established in our response to the doors that confront us that require that we step through them with a faith that exceeds where we live in the present tense or they require us to say no and remain in the absence of life until the time comes and the Lord appears to us again. 

What then is salvation? Does it climax our earthly walk with the Lord or begin God's intent or possibility offered through Christ? It begins the possibility. Redemption and restoration demands a re identification of who we are. We can shrink our potential and limit our relationship to a place of salvation but there is an invitation to come and find an identity in a bride heart and mindset. This begins here as we engage in obedience to the Lord and respond to Him to come away from the containers that the earth offers that bring a confinement that determines our identity.

When we truly know that all our streams of joy are found in Him it both settles us and reforms us. We can find a deep knowing that may to others seem almost complacent but it is desperate in a silence that is creative in a passion that leaps with eternal breath.