Not Escape: Liberation

I almost died again today at my own hand. Is this the cost of liberty? My life?
It's interesting how laying down your life (being killed or pushing off the mortal coil) and taking your life (holding it in a strangle hold and running away with it) are so closely linked. I went from a tighter grasp to a letting go - letting go relinquishes control and illusion, opening you to liberty and favor, and oh, look at that, joy. Holding tighter reinforces stress, the need to maintain performance and uphold illusion - it's all about your ability to create and cultivate a life. It's like paying too much attention to a plant.

There's a struggle in me for life.
I think my life, MY LIFE, should look like [some idea] and when I have finally gotten to [setting, destination, state] I'll be happy and satisfied. This is my soul.
But I have been called to a higher faith, one where my life is forfeit, yet somehow recovered and expanded.
These two things combine in me and create a tumult that I really can't stand. Like rending clothes and gnashing teeth can't stand, and pretty quickly suicide is the only possible solution to putting an end to the contention in me.
But it's the Word that puts an end to all contention. My soul can buck the word, but it cannot win. My soul breaks itself on the word, because satan's seat is based on a twisted understanding of it, and when I get the truth sorted out, that unrighteous throne is righted.

I've said 'my life is forfeit' and meant that it just wasn't mine.
He's asked for my life.
I'm going to Alaska to fucking die.
I'm scared as shit.

This is soul-crunching.
I stare down these giant jaws that are going to take me in and crush me to mash. He spits the bones into the desert and then sings them back together.
And then nothing's ever the same.

I feel like we need different words for the life we live and the life of the flesh-and-bone body; separate these concepts for clarity. My body's living-meat is fodder, and the way I live my life are what I do - I consider that me, and this body an extension of that. What I have to work with, so to speak. Learn to live with, learn to love.
____
I wrote the above in a state of insanity. Rereading it, it's surprisingly lucid and anyone who's dealt with suicide will recognize the glare blinding lights leave in your eyes when everything's silent black. Yet, like our calling in life, it ends with hope, enough energy to propel us into the next act of our story.
Our understanding of God (my understanding of God) has been wack. We've been focused on who we think He is instead of learning who He is. We've gotten to know Him through hearsay .... like Kaiser Soze in The Usual Suspects: you don't know who he is but operations go forward anyway. And it turns out you were beholding a deceiver the whole time; gazing into a dark mirror; forgetting who you are.
God's Sovereign and Just and Love and Peace, and you can't discuss one of them without discussing the others no matter how you focus, much like the Trinity. All that said, there's hope, and it drives us on.

Purging Fire, Burning Pyre

The reason and purpose for this baptism (fire) is to give the power of this pursuit from the zeal and passion of G-d for His house to purge continuously, purify eternally, and be expectant perpetually. It will surely divide rightly with clarity with what fire we are of, for the day will manifest it.  

[[The baptism into fire enables (gives power to) this pursuit (power traded from God’s stock of Zeal and Passion) for us to Purge Continually, Purify Eternally, and Expect Perpetually. It divides rightly and clearly what fire we are of, because the light manifests it]]

We do burn, but with what fire? 

Ischus is the wind for the flame, dunamis is the the ignition. I've received this baptism [to whelm, to cover wholly with fluid] unto fire - the purifying flame; strengthening, powerful, inducing.

Losing myself to the fire doesn't make me any less holy or without God - it makes plain where the Lord is winnowing my flesh. The smoking furnace and burning lamp are a testimony of His faithful pursuit. My temple's been a mess, but he erects a pyre and burns up the junk so there won't be any more money changers in this temple.  

Burn up my idols! 

I was convinced today that I couldn't be faithful - that I must put off those I've known as 'faithful' and be off, lose myself or die. Quick, that. Rather than leave it at this, I look at the rationale that led me to this conclusion: What so moved me that this sovereign King, Son of God, would abdicate his throne and take his own life? 

It was all how I saw; how I did the job, how I relate to those I'm with, how I can earn my place in God. I was lied to, quiet while a snake whispered in my ear. Be active, Man! Zakar! Remember who you are! Stand on the Word, Jesus, and be affirmed. It's never a matter of circumstance; it's a matter of position in relation to the light: are you looking to the light or gazing on your shadow?

I

m just 

here

to watch the fireworks.

I watched my shadow today, when, immediately and without my knowledge, I was talking to God about it.  I was crying out to him that I couldn't complete what I was trying to do - it was brought on by the works of my hands, painting, but the issue was tied to my heart. I saw the pain of my association in an entirely different light, and praised God for being faithful. I moved from the outer court to the inner, and back again, smoothly. A first, I think. 

And all of this, the thoughts, emotions, ties, perceptions, reactions, rejections, false images, all the stuff that makes me a man and a sinner are nothing to God in light of Christ. Because I receive him and the measuring of the depth of my redemption, my heart is turned, uprooted, washed, planted and tended, harvested, separated, burned, made clean. The pure was always there, is always here, but it's the fire that destroys the stuff that can't stand up to the Word. There is more to me than there used to be because I bear witness to active display of God's recreation in me. Ha! He's re-created me, and recreates here too. He likes fireworks, so increasingly, I let his fire work. He's always known his work was Love for me, I just couldn't see it. 

A vessel of light

of honor dishonor

of pain patience and practice

of glory and fruition

judgment and fluidity

of friction and purification

an open demonstration of 

power. 

I am measured and 

not found wanting. 

little lies grab my attention

I give it (to) a-way,

a different way,

my choice.

Until I step into 

the Great Fire of the Lord

where everything around me burns

and I cry out to the Strong One

who reminds me he's with me

and that what I've been hoping in

was dead and dry-

perfect fuel for fire.

His water rushes over me

reviving my lips and eyes

and I see him and speak him

and he's everywhere

and everyone

and I move through the garden again

Thank God for pressure and high heat that shows us what burns and what we're made of.