“I lower you into the depths of despair to lift you into the heights of joy. The way up is the way down. There is no other way. You will not hear My song of love until you hear no other music.”
There is no shortcut to a deep encounter with My Son.
The beginning of the gospel is bad news, not only that you are a sinner but that your sin has left you empty and alone, desperate to feel fulfilled and connected, willing to do whatever provides an escape (albeit most temporary and illusive) from boredom, pain and futility.
Until you stop running from real darkness into artificial light, until you hear the bad news that life is empty, that you are empty. Until you are listening only to the silence of the heavens being shut up as brass when you persist in your own way forward and become tuned only to your own desperate cry for a Savior…
Until you are nurturing silence you will not hear the good news MY Son came to bring.
“Is the road really this narrow? Must we sink into the misery of silence and emptiness before we find footing on the rock of hope?” Hear Me well!
Until you fall into the dignity of despair where words about Me mean nothing to you and where service for Me seems futile;
Until the wisdom that comes easily fails to stir you with hope;
Until available pleasures, legitimate and illegitimate, moral and immoral, no longer satisfy or even bring more than temporary relief to your empty soul;
Until whatever wealth you have accumulated, whatever possessions litter your life, whatever achievements decorate your resume, until all of it leaves you with the realization that more will not fill the emptiness in your heart;
Until time with friends doesn’t energize you as it once did;
Until sacrificial deeds of kindness that win the applause of many no longer have the power to help you feel worthwhile;
Until the drama, passion, and activities of church become lifeless and dull;
Until you have nowhere to turn for the satisfaction of your souls desire, not to the Bible, not to prayer, not to music, not to friends, not to church;
Until all this happens, you will never dance to heaven’s music as I designed you to dance. You will not hear My song of love as clearly and as beautifully as I sing it. You will not know that every moment of your life is a perfectly tuned note in the eternal harmony.
You will continue to settle for less than…
“God, I’m hearing You, I think as never before, and I’m crying out to You from my heart: may only Your grace be sufficient for me! When the narrow road crushes every hope that I’ve clung to for life, convince me that I can stay the course, that I am not justified in finding a bypath into a pleasant meadow, whether it’s an entertaining church where smiles replace tears and excitement relieves boredom or whether it’s sinful pleasures that obscure my need for hope beyond what I can see.
God, lower me as deep into emptiness as it is necessary to hear nothing but silence, to wait for You in the darkness of solitude. Let me hear the call of no seductive siren but only the voice of Your Son. And please, let me recognize His voice when He speaks.”
No voice is stronger. No voice is sweeter. No other voice can fill you with the hope of full and lasting satisfaction. You are ready to hear the voice of true love, not the counterfeit that disguises self-interest in the clothing of passion.
I am arousing (in you-through all of the aforementioned) the desire I put in every human heart to experience satisfaction in an undeserved relationship of love.
To arouse desire without providing hope is cruel. To feel desire without hope of satisfaction is hell. Dante’s words written over the door into Satan’s world were apt: ‘Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.’ But desire with hope is sweet. It is the abundant life…for now. It is what the true gospel heard provides for the authentic journeyer.
Desire with satisfaction that excites more desire, which is then fully satisfied the moment it is felt—that’s the party. That’s the banquet. That’s heaven.
For now, I want you to nibble on the appetizers. But to do so requires wisdom:
The wisdom of repentance: Identify and repent of the sin of demanding satisfaction, then looking for it from sources you can control. Crucify your flesh.
The wisdom of worship: Relate authentically with Me. Hurt and celebrate, lament and praise, weep and laugh. Be all that you are without pretense, in My presence.
The wisdom of discernment: Ask Me to show you both the broad and narrow roads, in every moment of life. Trust that My Spirit has given you the desire to walk the narrow road, through life to life. Take one step at a time.
The wisdom of emptiness: Face the futility of life. Feel it. Sink into its depths. Then seize the opportunity your emptiness provides to release the power of hope. Hope only in Me.
And now the peak after the valley, the dawn after the long night. The Song of Songs after the cry of despair:
The wisdom of communion: I know your affliction. You are mine and I am yours. I have won your heart and am now claiming its every corner, crushing every lingering hope of satisfaction apart from Me. In moments of communion, you taste Me. When those moments fade, you hurt deeply. But even then you yearn for more, not less, than relief from your suffering. You legitimately yearn for happiness, for relief from your suffering, but you are all the while learning to yearn for Me, for the deeper, fuller, more lasting enjoyment of Me. You are sustained by hope in Me, that I AM with you now and will make everything right forever. You are walking the narrow road. You are living the abundant life of aroused desire with sweet hope. You are resting in the truth that the abundant life of satisfied desire comes later. Our communion now suffices in the ‘nasty now and now’ until the ‘sweet by and by’ is forevermore!
“Alive, I’m Christ’s messenger; dead, I’m his bounty. Life versus even more life! I can’t lose.” Philippians 1: 21 (The Message)
In the grip of the true gospel! Ron Ross
(Most of this devotional inspired, quoted and adapted from 66 Love Letters-Job through Song of Songs, by Dr. Larry Crabb)
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