As I did with the Hearing His Voice pieces, I’ll be trying to tie what I write to the lections for each Sunday. I find that this helps discipline me, keeps me from ranging too far into my own thinking, and keeps me listening more carefully for the Father’s word to me/us each week.
This week, though, instead of writing about this coming Sundays lections, I’m really captured by the Gospel text for last Sunday, the one that closes, “So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, `We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!'” It ties in closely with what I’ve been hearing as I prayed about the task of writing about Receiving Your Inheritance.
As I’ve prayed over this series, and wondered what it was I was supposed to write, I had some preconceptions that have (as usual) proven to be wrong. I thought I was supposed to write about receiving spiritual gifts, gifts that would make us feel sufficiently rich that we’d be willing to risk letting go and being found by others as those who “hate father and mother, wife and children” etc. I may yet get to all that, but there was something I was compelled to place before everything else.
What I have discovered is the first thing in Receiving Our Inheritance is receiving Him. Receiving the Father, Receiving the Son, Receiving the Spirit. Receiving specific gifts is all secondary to discovering in ourselves (We don’t create this hunger, it’s already in us.) an insatiable hunger for His Presence. Before I can receive His riches, I have to allow myself to desire Him and nothing but Him.
Now, the way this ties into last Sunday’s lesson about the “worthless slaves” is this: I find that statement about being a worthless slave, and doing only what I ought to have done intolerable except for one condition. I can joyfully say that I am a worthless slave, that I deserve nothing for what I do if, and only if, I am speaking to a Master whose beauty and grace and majesty are so great that simply to be in His presence is gift enough, that doing what I do is nothing but an inevitable result of the blessedness of being with Him.
This is the same Lord whose presence I hunger for, whose very Being I desire to have instead of my own. Unfortunately, the Lord I find in the church most of the time is not One whose being so overwhelms me that I can joyfully serve. The Lord that I find in the church most of the time is a taskmaster, who expects me to do what I have to do, and be quiet about it. I know that we sing “Joyful, joyful we adore Thee,” and “How sweet the Name of Jesus sounds,” and a lot of other songs about how desirable He is, but the way we live it out in the church speaks quite differently.
In order to receive our inheritance both as individuals and as a Church, we can only do one thing, risk looking into the Face so beautiful that it burns away everything in us that separates us from Him. In that moment we will discover our hearts’ center, our hearts’ home. We need to become a church and individuals whose cry is “O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you;my soul thirsts for you;my flesh faints for you,as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. ” (Psalm 63:1) Only then will be begin to discover the wealth and the joy that make it possible to follow, to risk, to serve joyfully.
There’s something missing, though, if I stop here. Yes, He is beautiful, and worthy of being desired above all things, but there are many “gods” who make that claim. There is only one God though, whose beauty lies in His Love. What makes the Father of Jesus beautiful is not His might, or His majesty, but His love, His compassion. The gods of many religions, even the demonic powers of the world can boast of physical beauty, of considerable power, but only the God Isaiah knew as the Suffering Servant has a power that is expressed in surrender to the Cross, a beauty that is manifest in One who was marred beyond human semblance.
This is the One we seek to Receive, whose riches will become available to us, manifest in us when we have received the One whose very being is Love. Receiving Him will then give us His heart for all His children, all of His creation. The inheritance that will make us secure enough to reach out in His name, to reach out in love, will come first from receiving Him, receiving His inexpressible love.
Recently, I’ve bumped up against a deep place in myself where I have been unwilling/unable to receive that love. There were/are some old wounds that have made it hard for me to move further into His arms, to receive Him as I would like to. I am constantly reassured that His love persists in spite of my weakness here, and that this old stuff has come to the surface only because I am now ready to have it healed, but I do understand more deeply how difficult can be for all of us to receive Him in His fullness. I wish I could write to you about the way through this place, but I can’t yet. What I can tell you is that He’s leading me, and He will be with you, too, if you will come to Him in all your resistance and your frustration, and hold that up as your offering. I’m sure I’ll be sharing my celebration with you when the time comes that I have discovered how it is that He overcomes this stronghold in my own heart, but for the time being, I hope that it’s sufficient to say that, if you will look for the places in your own heart where you have not yet received Him, you too will discover Him, waiting to lead you through.
In Him,
Jeff
