Remnants of Forgiveness: Gold Tried in the Fire

Image Source: Pouring Liquid Gold
by Dan Brown from London, UK / CC BY 2.0 DEED

So, I'm sharing the middle of this journal entry with you after I've gone through the really raw parts, but what's left... well, that's what this entry is all about.

I know that I've got quite a bit of healing left to do - and I will until I leave this earth. But I know where my trust and faith lies, I know who it is in, and in that I have not just contentment but incredible levels of worship-filled joy!

I love God, and I want us to be more good for each other than bad, and I don't want us to get in the way of serving God. Of loving God. Of worshipping Him completely. I wish pray that they could see that the things that we are attempting to work out together is part of the way that we can worship Him more completely - that in our misunderstandings we allow God to give us strength, to give us wisdom, the power to be patient and extra-loving to fill up some of the voids and lacks that we have endured, maybe even suffered, through the years. 

And yet, I choose to see this season of being without the one I have chosen to love with my whole heart as an opportunity to hold that tenderly and dear while leaning on God and drawing closer to Him. So it's bittersweet, which becomes bettersweet - a little bit better than bitter, much like the mochacinnos I dearly love to make. I can taste the bitterness, and I truly desire the sweet, but worship is the cream which causes it all to come together in a wonderful bettersweet concoction that I choose to mix with faith and enjoy everyday. 

I choose to believe that though she can come back to me, healed and whole enough to embrace the challenges of life together with me, she may not. She may not ever be ready enough, or strong enough, or healed enough, or any of the other enoughs that would cause her to see me as enough.

So I hope. And if my heart starts to feel a little sick, I give that to God too, as an act of worship and surrender. And I enter in, using my grief as a key to enter into a place soulful, soul torn, soul surrendered, soul honest worship which I know that God sees and honors. In that moment, in this moment, He becomes so very dear and He is so very close, and He is very here with me. And dozens of scriptures, and poems, and thoughts and angels singing, and heaven opening and the very fountains of heaven break open in my soul. There is grief. There is pain. And there is hope. And I pour all into a cup called faith, and that faith-cup is not made of the integrity of my old soul, but of a soul being re-forged in the fires of re-creation, tempered in the waters of the Word of God. 

That cup is the New Man being born. It is the vessel of Now Faith...

Now faith is being sure of what we hope for, being convinced of what we do not see. For by it the people of old received God’s commendation. By faith we understand that the worlds were set in order at God’s command, so that the visible has its origin in the invisible. By faith Abel offered God a greater sacrifice than Cain, and through his faith he was commended as righteous, because God commended him for his offerings. And through his faith he still speaks, though he is dead. By faith Enoch was taken up so that he did not see death, and he was not to be found because God took him up. For before his removal he had been commended as having pleased God. Now without faith it is impossible to please him, for the one who approaches God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. [Heb 11:1-6 NET]

Faith is the oil. It's the anointing that pours forth in the crushing. It's the refined oil that's left after the fires of God consume our broken life. 

I advise you to buy gold from me—gold made pure in fire. Then you will be rich. I tell you this: Buy clothes that are white. Then you will be able to cover your shameful nakedness. I also tell you to buy medicine to put on your eyes. Then you will be able to see. [Rev 3:18 ERV]