choice

Christians, Let Us Remember

Susan Irene Fox Susan Irene Fox , , , , , , ,

glowing-cross

Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable to you oh Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)

It is finally the day after, and we all woke up this morning as Americans. Yet we are Christians first.

Some voted (or did not vote) as an expression of anger or protest. Many more of us used our vote as an instrument of principle. Whatever the outcome, our call in Christ is for reconciliation.

Many factions have sought to divide us, have sought to have us focus on flaws and sin instead of mercy and grace. The enemy has infiltrated our hearts, our thoughts, and our words.

“It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth; this defiles a person.” (Matthew 15:11)

handsqueezingheartWe have several choices today and over the next four years.

We can let our shock and disappointment grow fear in our hearts. We can continue to brood, letting our anger simmer until it boils over into a rage that we can no longer contain. We can continue to cast blame, point fingers, and feed our resentment. Either of these choices will keep the door open for the enemy to squeeze Christ’s living water, grace and love out of our hearts.

 

On the other hand, we can choose to accept the results with grace. We can pray for our new President, for all the members of our new Senate and House of Representatives. We can pray there will be (or already has been) a gracious concession speech without bitterness or rancor. We can pray for a peaceful transition of power. We can pray for progress over politics. We can work wholeheartedly to unite our country.

In January, the hand of the winner of this hard-fought election will be placed on a Bible. The new President will take the Oath of Office. We can choose to put behind us the animosity we have lived with the last 20 months and instead, take up our cross and the mission of reconciliation. We can choose to be the light and the mouth of Christ.

You see, the controlling force in our lives is the love of Christ; Christ’s love guides us. He died for us so that we will all live, not for ourselves, but for Him who died and rose again on their behalf. Because of all that God has done, we now have a new perspective; we have stopped evaluating others from a human point of view. Whoever is a believer in Christ is a new creation. The old way of living has disappeared. A new way of living has come into existence. All of this is a gift from our Creator, who pursued us and brought us into a restored and healthy relationship with Him through Christ.

And He has given us the same mission – the ministry of reconciliation – to bring others back to Him. He reconciled the world to himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. And He gave us this wonderful mission of reconciliation. We are Christ’s ambassadors; God makes His appeal through us. (2 Corinthians 5:14-20)

His Embrace

Susan Irene Fox Susan Irene Fox , , , , , , , , , , ,

father-holding-newborn

When we search His call, abide in love,

as we open all to God above

in our praise and prayer, we worship and declare

our God none to compare,

we feel His embrace, feel His embrace.

 

If we see neighbors through Father’s eyes

(neighbors – those heirs who we may despise),

it’s not “them” we see, but seeds of Diety

Who made us family.

We feel His embrace, feel His embrace.

 

And He loves without prerequisite

even though we doubt and won’t commit.

There’s plenty of space to make enough mistakes;

He gives mercy and grace.

We feel His embrace, feel His embrace.

 

His command: we are to love bar none

no matter what our likes, says Savior Son.

We have a choice, yet His will remains unmet;

in this will we regret?

We feel His embrace, feel His embrace.

 

Open hearts and heads to Life and Light;

His lavish grace will spread to all in sight.

As we pass kindness along, we become blessed,

have moved to His likeness.

We feel His embrace, feel His embrace.

 

 Luke 10:25-37

The Cost

Susan Irene Fox Susan Irene Fox , , , , , , , , , , ,
Never look down on someone unless you’re helping them up.
Never look down on someone unless you’re helping them up.

What is the cost to us of being redeemed by Christ?

Have you ever wondered what we owe to God?

Well, the true answer is nothing. There is no debt to repay. No obligation or encumbrance upon us.

Yet the closer we come to God, the more vulnerable and intimate we become in our relationship with Him, the more we surrender to the Holy Spirit, the more we delight in taking up the mission of living our lives for Christ.

Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.  And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect. (Romans 12:1-2)

What does this mean exactly?

Eugene Peterson in The Message expresses it this way (emphasis mine):

So here’s what I want you to do [with] God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.

So breaking it down even further, what does being a living sacrifice mean to you and me?

The closer we come to God, the more vulnerable and intimate we become in our relationship with Him, the more we surrender to the Holy Spirit, the more we delight in taking up the mission of living our lives for Christ.

And to go back to the question, what is the cost if we choose to pay it? What is it God wants for (not from) us if we allow Him full and complete access to our hearts and minds? The cost is living in continuous renewal and transformation of our hearts and minds. If we allow God full and complete access, we receive the unrestrained love He bestows freely and unequivocally.

For some of us, this extravagant love is difficult to receive,

which is why it is so difficult to give.

Yet this is the Gospel. It is the cost of following Jesus.

I never look at the masses as my responsibility. I look at the individual. I can love only one person at a time. I can feed only one person at a time. Just one; one; one. You get closer to Christ by coming closer to each other. Mother Teresa.

God’s Voice

Susan Irene Fox Susan Irene Fox , , , ,

WillowTree

The earth melts at the sound of God’s voice

And rejoices as his whisper soothes

Those who pursue his solace

For once we walk the road of choice

Toward God, we can hear him everywhere.

His sparkling sound speaks precious truths;

It matters little the time or place.

The branch hears the Spirit pray;

From the Vine all sustenance conveys

For life is found there.

 

Thank you to Melissa for the inspiration for this post

Angel’s Journal, Entry Five: “A Drama of Choices!”

Little Monk Little Monk, Uncategorized , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Journal Entry:

All is quiet now, all the tumult having died away and The Master laid into His borrowed Tomb. Now… there is… TIME!

“TIME”… that principle difference between human and angelic consciousness and thought. “TIME”… that “tick/tock” thing that people experience between one event and the next, one encounter and the next, one element of a sequence and the next. We don’t have that, we don’t know “delay”. For us, all is “sequence”… one thought follows another, like pages in a book. There is no “space” or “distance”, or “process” or “ponder”. We do not “consider” between “choices”. We CHOSE, we MADE our CHOICE, and now… for us… there is simply “discern-and-do” as to His Majesty’s will.

The other difference, a critical difference, between human and angelic consciousness is “illusion-deceit-falsehood”. We SEE, we truly see. We cannot be deceived or fooled or lied to or misled. Dark Ones cannot paint a false picture before us of specious choices, and tempt us to lean away from His Majesty’s will.

Somehow, all that… both “time” and “falsehood”… are bound up with physical matter. Since we are utterly “spirit”, those subordinate orders of being, those things that depend on material substance and comparison to have meaning, simply don’t. They have no meaning or hold over us.

It was in Eden, in the Garden of Eden, at the beginning of material Creation, when His Majesty and The Master began to weave together the spiritual and the material, the substantive, when both “time” and “falsehood” were realized from the potential to the actual. We angels can “observe” such a state of existence, and we can even “participate in” it from time to time (at His Majesty’s bidding), but we do not… we CANNOT… fully experience or comprehend it.

Facility in both spirit and matter are Divine attributes. His Majesty, The Master, The Radiance… they can all create in both spirit and matter. We cannot. But Man… Man, now… Man is fashioned in His image, can enter fully into Him, and in Him can create in both matter and spirit.

What has all this got to do with the horrendous events that have just passed? Well… EVERYTHING! They have EVERYTHING to do with it!

Because we angels are truly “sons of God” created at His hands… yes. But we are purely spirit, we made ONE and only one “choice” (to embrace Him or to repel Him), and we live apart from material time or illusion, in the Eternal. We are, therefore and fully, “servants” to Him and His will.

Man, on the other hand, lives in the material (though with fully spiritual faculties), is subject to material time (the tick-tock kind), and can be deluded and misled. Therefore, MAN lives in a state of moment-by-moment CHOICE regarding His Majesty and His will. Every moment, man gets to choose to embrace His Majesty and His will, or to repel Him.

And THAT… is EVERYTHING… about these momentous and horrendous events these days…

I wrote last of the exit from the Passover Supper into the Garden of Gethsemane on “Thursday night”. From that exit, and the separation of Judas from the group, The Master knew and tried to prepare His (now) “friends” for what the next 18 hours would bring.

So many things occurred in such a “brief” (humanly speaking) span of time… a person could spend years tracking all the threads of all the drama there. The fears, the ambitions, the delusions, the agendas… The Romans, the Politicians, the Religious Leaders, the Pious, the Exploiters, the Voyeurs, those seeking “Entertainment” (as at a train wreck, a public hanging, or a bloodsport), the confusion.

But we angels saw it all a bit differently. We don’t see all the “bells and whistles”, the “flash and sparkle”. I cannot speak to what others saw, but what *I* saw, with intense clarity, was an astonishing sequence of “choices” made by just a handful of “principal actors”, whose decision sequence summarized what happened throughout the region in those hours.

The Actors?

  • The Master
  • Judas
  • Peter
  • The Disciples/Friends
  • Pontius Pilate
  • The Crowds

I will not go through all of that here right now. The “feelings” are yet too fresh and even (odd to say) “painful”. I’ll get more detail down in entries to follow. But all these entered into a series of “Choice Chains”, sequences of decisions where they could follow their conscience (embrace His Majesty and His will), or they could yield to temptation of fear, pride, or avarice (repel Him).

Judas… his “choice chain” is so short and clear. He is likely to be vilified and condemned for millennia as they iconic “betrayer”. And yes, indeed he was… but look at him, his concerns, his decisions and choices, up alongside Peter… and there are just a couple critical places where they are distinguished.

Anyway, enough for now. More entries later. We yet wait and see what will unfold. At this moment, nearly all are consumed with despair and disappointment. The story seems ended… ended behind a huge stone in a hole in a cliff… and the great Kingdom Story wasn’t supposed to end like this!

More to come…

Journal Entry by — Makarion Nous, Angel 3rd Class, General Duties

Love is…repetition

Susan Irene Fox Susan Irene Fox , , , , ,
©susanirenefox
©susanirenefox

Love heals, love creates the desire to hear and see. Love opens the heart, dissolves fear and distrust. Love opens doors, creates pathways, softens downcast mouths, releases fists. How else will we let those around us know that we are the true followers of Jesus?

John 13:34-35  So I give you a new command: Love each other deeply and fully. Remember the ways that I have loved you, and demonstrate your love for others in those same ways. Everyone will know you as My followers if you demonstrate your love to others.

John 14:15 If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.

Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. (John 15:13-15)

Love conquers fear and hate, solid walls of separation and centuries old dug-in-heels of they-are-evil and we-are-righteous thinking.

Love allows embraces, possibilities and “aha!” moments. Love is responsible for transformation, seismic shifts in understanding, the willingness to explore common ground.

Eugene Peterson renders Jesus’ call to love our enemies so even the most hardened hearts can understand it:

“You’re familiar with the old written law, ‘Love your friend,’ and its unwritten companion, ‘Hate your enemy.’ I’m challenging that. I’m telling you to love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the energies of prayer, for then you are working out of your true selves, your God-created selves. This is what God does. He gives his best—the sun to warm and the rain to nourish—to everyone, regardless: the good and bad, the nice and nasty. If all you do is love the lovable, do you expect a bonus? Anybody can do that. If you simply say hello to those who greet you, do you expect a medal? Any run-of-the-mill sinner does that.

“In a word, what I’m saying is, Grow up. You’re kingdom subjects. Now live like it. Live out your God-created identity. Live generously and graciously toward others, the way God lives toward you.” (Matthew 5:44-48, The Message)

You see, if we don’t believe or subscribe to Jesus’ commands to love, then we won’t choose Love. It’s as simple as that. We’ll hang onto our immature choice to love who we want to love, not who He tells us to love. We’ll love with strings attached, yanking it away when people in our family, circle of friends or church don’t meet our expectations.

This is not the way Jesus tells us to love. Jesus tells us to love compassionately. Deeply. Sincerely. Unfailingly. Unconditionally.

Above all things, have unfailing love for one another, because love covers a multitude of sins. (1 Peter 4:8)

By this the love of God is revealed in us: that God has sent his one and only Son into the world so that we may live through him. Dear friends, if God so loved us, then we also ought to love one another. God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them. We love, because He first loved us. (1 John 4:9,11,16,19)

Rethinking Conspiracy Theories

Susan Irene Fox Susan Irene Fox , , , , , , , , , , ,

RejectStamp

Have we become a society of judgment and rejection? Do we enjoy seeing others on the chopping block of elimination or exclusion? Do we thrill at the prospect of someone being delivered the harsh reality of an extinguished torch?

Are we now translating that recreational tour de force into real world execution through wholesale rejection of anyone who wants to cross our borders because “they” might be terrorists?

“Do not say, ‘Conspiracy,’ every time these people say the word. Don’t be afraid of what scares them; don’t be terrified. You must recognize the authority of the Lord who commands armies. He is the one you must respect; He is the one you must fear.” Isaiah 8:12-13

When will we learn from our own history?

During WWII, we rejected Jewish emigrants escaping the Nazi holocaust while placing our own citizens of Japanese descent in “internment” camps, incarcerating them for up to four years and destroying their lives in the process.

World War II prompted the largest displacement of human beings the world has ever seen—although today’s refugee crisis is starting to approach its unprecedented scale. But even with millions of European Jews displaced from their homes, the United States had a poor track record offering asylum. Most notoriously, in June 1939, the German ocean liner St. Louis and its 937 passengers, almost all Jewish, were turned away from the port of Miami, forcing the ship to return to Europe; more than a quarter died in the Holocaust…Government officials argued that refugees posed a serious threat to national security. Yet today, historians believe the concern about refugee spies was blown far out of proportion. Daniel A. Gross, Smithsonian.com, November 18, 2015 (emphasis mine).

As Christians, we can use all the excuses and rationalizations we want: There simply is no justification for refusing emigrants fleeing for their lives. None. Yet we continue to repeat our mistakes and shake our fist at God, insisting we know better.

Leviticus 19:33-34 “Do not take advantage of foreigners who live among you in your land.  Treat them like native-born, and love them as you love yourself. Remember that you were once foreigners living in the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God.”

Leviticus 24:22 “The same rule applies to every one of you. It makes no difference whether you are a foreigner or a native. I am the Lord your God.”

Malachi 3:5 “I will come to you in judgment. I will be quick to testify against those who … exploit workers, widows, and orphans, who refuse to help the immigrant and in this way show they do not respect me,” says the Lord who rules over all.”

Galatians 3:28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female—for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.

John 3:16-17  For this is the way God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.  For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world should be saved through him.

If Jesus did not come to condemn us, why is it we take liberties to condemn one another? Why do we suppose we are greater than Him, and usurp God’s power and authority to judge, exclude and condemn?

©oneindia.com
©oneindia.com

When we automatically label an entire group of people potential terrorists, we place a wall in front of them. Just as females are not given an opportunity for an education in a country run by a Taliban regime, immigrants who Westerners reject out of hand as “possible terrorists” are not given an opportunity for survival, education or an inroad to the heart of our God.

 

We must rethink our approach to this before our own history repeats itself. We must take a stand. We must either follow Caesar, follow the Pharisees, or follow Jesus.

Who will you follow?