to whom are you married

The days have heated up to a swell of consistent 90's, even flirting with 100, and so many days have been shut inside or along bodies of water.

It's been almost 10 years since I had a real, intentional tan. I've preferred a lighter complexion and avoided my past pleasure of feeling the vitamin K absorbing in my skin.

But this year, I've regressed, in a good way. And feel more youthful, as I have the pleasure of enjoying these leisure times, while it also proves to be productive times for my kids to practice their swimming and for me to have creative times of reading and thinking.

Once again, thinking provides a clutter of thoughts, so I come here to pick them out one by one and remove the debris in my head.

And this is where I've been rotating: to whom do we give honor? Where's our time and attention spent most? To what do we place so high a value as to forsake all for it?

Who is willing to be an Isaac and walk up to the altar of sacrifice for his Father? Who's willing to lay down their lives so fully in love with Him that they're willing to risk the dagger? Humble themselves in bondage as a lowly servant to Christ even if a ram be absent to save them?

We work our own salvation. We extend our own earthly hands to preserve our decency and goodness. Our works are frenzied in an effort to prove our worthiness and yet, they fall on flesh and not by the Spirit.

"What then can works, done in such a state of impiety, profit us, were they even angelic or apostolic works? Rightly hath God shut up all, not in wrath nor in lust, but in unbelief, in order that those who pretend that they are fulfilling the law by works of purity and benevolence (which are social and human virtues) may not presume that they will therefore be saved, but, being included in the sin of unbelief, may either seek mercy or be justly condemned." Martin Luther's "Christian Liberty" volume 36 

Oh my God, it's this mercy seat I must seek on every occasion.

Works are as unbelief, not truly believing Grace can save. How many times have we've been guilty of working our own goodness, of trying to save ourself, of not seeking mercy but instead working out our own justification?

It's not the outward things He seeks, not the traditions of men, not the doctrinal arguments, not our goodness (of which there is no good thing apart from Christ) but it's the inward things. We must humble ourselves in our hearts and let Him examine all our ways.

When we fall at His feet because of our own wretched state, not as victims but as perpatraitors, do we become Grace disciples. When we forgive, Love floods in; but when we recgonize our true condition, we are cloaked in this miracle-working Grace.

It's not those outward things that a person does but those of the heart, of my very own corrupted one which needs rending. "Rend your heart and not your garments." Joel 2:13

And to what do we defend? Our own honor. Our status. Our reputation. Our perception of how we're seen because we don't want to be rejected so we frantically grasp at every slippery word and try to restrain it.

But this is what I desire.....my heart be rended to One and Only, so utterly abandoned to my first Love of which all my life is married and say "no matter if words crucify me, my honor is my Husband's alone!"

"The third incomparable grace of faith is this: that it unites the soul to Christ, as the wife to the husband, by which mystery, as the Apostle teaches, Christ and the soul are made one flesh....Who then can value highly enough these royal nuptials? Who can comprehend the riches of the glory of this grace? Christ, that rich and pious Husband, takes as a wife a needy and impious harlot, redeeming her from all her evils and supplying her with all His good things." Martin Luther's "Christian Liberty" volume 36

But if I marry the world or have an affair with it, I will love it more and also my resident value in it's fleshy state. We need a deep revelation of our Husband and allow that graceful Love to grow so strong as to bury all our worldly cares in a deep, mass grave.

And let the headstone read "Here lies the most vile of sinners who joined her Maker, but as of today, her earthly body has NOT yet expired."

May His hold be so strong on our hearts that we only focus on the beating of it's lifeblood perched on those nail-scarred Hands, so as not to save our lives (while we wait on the ram) but to gladly lose it for Love.

At Ann's.