His Bride's Mind and Heart

"What then is the nature of the discipline that love provides?  In the first place, it is something that I must quite deliberately want to do.  For many of us this is the first great roadblock.  In our relations with each other there is often so much that alienates, that is distasteful; there seems to be every ground for refraining from the kind of concern that love demands.  It is curious how we feel the other person must demonstrate a worthiness that commends itself to us before we are willing to want to move in outflow, in the self-giving that love demands.  We want to be accepted just as we are, but at the same time we want the other person to win the right to our acceptance of him.  This is an important part of the sin of pride.  There must be genuine repentance for such an attitude.  Forgiveness for this sin is the work of the grace of God in the human heart.  A man seeks it before God and becomes aware of forgiveness only when, in his attitude toward his fellows, he comes to want to make available to them the consciousness of what God shares with him.  God enables him to want to love."

~Howard Thurman, Disciplines of the Spirit

I acknowledge that there are many splendid intricacies that I will not know of God until I meet the Most High face to face.  Yet I also acknowledge that it does not quicken my relationship with Christ to choose to acquiesce, to settle myself in that reality.

"My soul followeth hard after thee..." 

When we love someone, we are in the continual process of knowing them.  There is no end to learning another unless we choose to end.  Submitting oneself to being taught, to learning what moves another to speak as they do, walk as they do, laugh as they do, and cry as they do is a part of the perfecting process of Love.

I ask questions and seek to know not because I am attempting to have all knowledge.  It is not within my capacity as a human woman to contain the full height nor the full depth of the all in All.  Yet it is within my capacity to come into not the fullness, but a fullness of Christ.  I question and seek because to love is to open my heart each day to engage understanding my beloved.  The day that we cease to desire to understand another, is the day that we've chosen to engage death...not a physical death but rather a death of relationship.  It is a decision to end abundance and life between us.   

What is the exercise and practice of intimacy?

In marriage, it is my aim to ask questions and seek to know my Groom.  Each day I desire to understand Him.  Truly this human form, in all of its fetters, does not allow for a perfect, all encompassing understanding of what moves my Groom to speak, walk, laugh, and cry.  It is not possible for me to know all of the subtle nuances that culminate His being.  Yet that reality does not justify an unwillingness to question and seek The Knowledge of my Groom's mind and heart.  I ask of Him...

Why do you speak of truth with such unfolding grace?
What leads you to take a walk in the cool of the day?
Where is the well from which the joy in your laughter springs?
When you cry, do your tears prelude a mindful heart?

The day we choose to cease to desire to understand our beloved, is the day that we choose to allow the spirit of communion that is matrimony to expire, to be left bereft of good. 

For me, to seek to understand is to love.  I ask questions about the bible, even while experiencing being significantly misunderstood in my pursuit, becasue I love the Most High.  Those whom I love I ask questions of them and seek to know them. With tender intention, I quite deliberately want to understand those whom I love and those who love me.  I've learned and I am learning that inclining unto one another is the exercise, the practice of those who fellowship...the discipline of those who love.

Of mind and heart, my love is the intellectual and spiritual acting as one in hard pursuit of my Beloved.  For me, "in the name of Christ" means "in the name of Love."  And so, the desire to know the living word and the desire to know you, my brother and sister is the desire to question and seek in the name of Love.  After all, how can we claim, in spirit and in truth, to love those whom we do not affectionately desire to understand each day?  God forbid.  How dare I claim to love someone I do not thoughtfully care to ask of, to seek of?

Selah.

 "Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus."

~Philippians 3:12

  



    

The Fullness of Love

Below is the first homework assignment, the first written response that I wrote in my journey to seek and obtain a deeper understanding of The Greatest Love Story Ever Told also known as The Bible...

New Testament: The Gospels and Acts

October 19, 2015

Question #6

Explain Matthew 5:17 in your own words

“Do not think that I came to do away with or undo the ^[f]Law [of Moses] or the [writings of the] Prophets; I did not come to destroy but to fulfill."

In Matthew 5:17, I believe Christ is expressing his intent.  I believe he is revealing the purpose of his life - to remove the layers of tradition that have ultimately hidden the core meaning of our religious undertaking.  As it stands in Romans 13:10, love is "the law" in all its completeness. 

What is the fundamental quality of Moses' Law?  What are the Ten Commandments attempting to protect and further?  Christ, in all his glory, took Moses' Law, all of the commandments and reduced them to their purest element - love.  Love is the fundamental qualifier of our call and ministry.  Love is the elemental nature of God.

Christ did not walk the earth and ascend to lay to waste the call and ministry of his direct ancestors and men of clairvoyant faith.  I believe it was Christ intentions to illuminate, to "make it plain" so that all who see and hear in the flesh or experience him in the spirit "may run with it" in the course (the process) known as life - "to have life and have it to the full." 

I believe his aim was to bring wholeness of understanding unto "the law" that was only known and applied in parts.  Each commandment can serve to stand as a part, a part that attempts to reflect the whole truth.  But what is the whole truth?  I believe the core truth hidden within layers of writings and rituals is community.  Love is a body of many expressions.  Love is host.  The body of Christ is multitudinous.  Love is communal - to love God and, in God, to love one another.  As it is foretold in Isaiah 7:14, Christ is God with us.  Together in Christ (in love) we live the fullness of the law, "the power and the glory" of The Most High.     

~Selah~

To Live in the Reality of a Miracle

 

~Trent Shelton

In bible study or Sunday service (I can't remember which one lol) I heard my pastor express, "Truth is not always easy, but it's always simple."  Even though the road less traveled is the simplest route, it is most often not the easiest route especially when there are so many other avenues (wants) competing for our allegiance.  Over a course of years, in prayer and meditation, some simple phrases were placed in my spirit...

let go

remember the lesson

walk forward in peace

Those phrases have spiraled in and out of my consciousness over the course of time.  Yet a few months ago, in prayer and meditation, a question was posed to me...

What do you need to do to heal?

And the answer was simple..."take up your mat and walk."  The answer was simple yet the unfolding of that truth in the reality of my life took a bit of struggle...many tears...many sleepless nights...a few panic attacks...the loss of hair...frequent migraines...stress induced "fasting"...and many days of wrestling with myself.  Yet that simple question raised my gaze a bit more...changed my life for good.

How so?

Simply put...it shifted my perspective.  I went from waiting on another person to cease behavior that I experienced as emotionally-spiritually hurtful and harmful to standing resolute in the reality that the responsibility of my healing and well-being is mine.  As a woman, I stopped waiting on the man in my life to change, to cease behavior that left me broken-hearted.   And I, in the power and agency that Christ afforded me...I decided to cease choosing behavior that left me broken-hearted.

I stopped blame-shifting.  Make no mistake about it, it was not easy.  But it was definitely simple.  The ego is indeed a lofty tower, a "wall of Jericho" lol that only falls under the sovereign might of the Most High.  And well, like with the wall of Jericho, the Most High's purposes are manifested through people.  I am eternally grateful for the many beautiful spirits who spoke life into my brokenness (my error-ridden perspective rooted in childhood wounds).  Because there came a day, in the reality of my life, when a miracle happened...

My ego crumbled and folded.   

You see...choosing to remain in a relationship with someone whose willful behavior/choices creates harm in my heart and my spirit is a choice...it is a choice to break my own heart over and over again.  But a miracle happened!  I learned to allow the power of Christ within me to urge me to free myself from my own pattern.

You see...I was an emotional-spiritual paralytic and I did not know it.  Go figure lol!  I had been rendered lame by my pattern of complaining, expressing my hurt...believing the illusion of change to be the reality of change...then staying.  Repeat...complaining, expressing my hurt...believing the illusion of change to be the reality of change...then staying.  And repeat.  

You see...the man in my life was not breaking my heart.  I was.  I chose to believe the illusion (his words) when the reality of his actions consistently revealed the truth.  My ego had paralyzed me.  Ah, but with the fall of my ego came the fall of the illusion.  Hmm, and how sweet it is to live in the reality of a miracle!

¹¹ “I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home.” ¹² He got up, took his mat and walked out in full view of them all. This amazed everyone and they praised God, saying, “We have never seen anything like this!”

~Mark 2:11-12 

You see...I chose to let go of a relationship that I experienced as hurtful and harmful.  I stopped waiting on Christ to come to save me from my circumstance (an unhealthy relationship) when He had already done so thousands of years ago.  But how did one question save me?  It allowed the synapses in my mind to spark, to light-up and bend toward the Holy Spirit's leading just enough for me to see...to really see that, in reality, Christ was waiting on me...waiting on me to recognize that I was already healed.  "Take up your mat and walk!"

   

I changed. 

All the simple phrases that the Most High spoke into my spirit over the years have reached a level of fullness.  Yet I am always, we are always, in the perfecting process.  From glory to Glory...

        

For knowledge and application...

"5 Ways to Know Your Spouse Has Truly Changed" is linked below.

http://www.crosswalk.com/family/marriage/doctor-david/5-ways-to-know-your-spouse-has-truly-changed.html