The Lord, the Word and the Sword

The Lord, the Word and the Sword

 

"Without the sword , you take away the choice

Without the Word, there is no Voice

Without the Lord, there is no Purpose"

A Sage on the Quest of Truth

 

 

 

                                                                              I

                                              The Attempt to the Victorious Life

 

 

"Perpetual attempt is the very secret of all success", a well-to-do Nigerian aristocrat

“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you."

Matthew 7:7

 

"Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it."

Matthew 7:13

*

There is an anti- spiritual war right now in the world. Waging itself restlessly. The scoffers, the silencers, the mockers, the persecutors. To speak of War, Spirit and Lordship, our lordship in this war and His Lordship is already a declaration of war. We were warned in Scriptures that the "days are evil". And men are boastful, proud, money lovers, lovers of themselves, HATERS OF SACRED THINGS, THINGS OF ABOVE

 

.

 They want to be entertained, to enjoy the "good things" here and now (as Jim Morrison, so well depicted the urgency of desire, in The Doors' epic song, "When the music's over" : WE WANT THE WORLD, AND WE WANT IT, NOW!!!!), however rotten things might be, in substance, if the appearance gives an expression of enjoyment and personal fulfillment they are taking, consuming, asking of more, beyond ethics and consideration to detriment to themselves nor others , some  prefer it to be nefarious to the most, including self.

In such a nihilistic world, in which the majority believes in nothing but their numerous lusts or the impulses of their senses. 

 

 

To say there is a war is a declaration of War and that is part of the War in which followers & leaders of the Lord, through his Word win the War, fully accepting the choice of being in the front line of an ever going war.

 

In which the most deadliest bombs portray themselves as innocent angels or victims at worse that do not know what's going on in the first place. It is a sea of deception, wherein  the very deceiving are used and abused by deceiving powers making them the most cunning, the most deceptive, the most sleek.

 

And if you are serious about salvation, WAR IS inevitable AND YOU MUST WIN IT. The WORD GIVES YOU A FIRM VOICE, THE SWORD IS YOUR ATTACK AND TOOL OF CONQUEST, the Lord is your defense.

There are many levels to the War.

 

The WAR IS :

 

1- SPIRITUAL

2- MENTAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL

3- CIVILIZATIONAL / CULTURAL

4-EMOTIONAL

5- ECONOMICAL/ MATERIAL

 

As long as one's belief system can be influenced by outside forces other than oneself, and not most especially the Divine Spirit, you are in trouble and we all are in trouble. In the age of airborne viruses, or so claimed so, one must be hyper vigilant, for the war is all around us. Unfortunately for the idealists and the peacekeepers.

 

 

 

There are those who know and those who completely ignore the CREED , either by choice or by real ignorance. There are those who know and try to do something about it to restore Justice, there are those who know and try to ignore it, to no consequent avail. There are those who know and standing still, to their last breath try sincerely to win it. I have my admiration for those latter ones.

 

 

 

Ignorance is anything but  bliss.  It seems bliss until it turns into a blade that will strike the living guts out of one's entrails.

Though , one can say "Wickedness" is a moral judgment, yet, we feel it, regardless of one's upbringing, societal conditioning, we feel as such , for we are wired to discern what feels good and doesn't feel so. Though there might be wedges at times, most times that incorporate a system of discernment of what feels right and good and what is wrong and off, being at times out of the decorum of reality, most of the time , it proves quite right an accountant…

 

Hebrews 4:12, New International Version (NIV)

 

"12 For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to divide soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.”

 

The WORD is a SWORD that breaks any flesh, matter, skin, matter, dispute."

And thus glorified is the LORD.

“Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword."

Through this Word, The Lord declares he came to bring the Sword. I.e. WAR, friction, strife, quarrel, misunderstandings, division in already a divided world- a mystery of the Faith.

Psalm 45:3

"Gird Your sword on Your thigh, O Mighty One,

In Your splendor and Your majesty!"

 

In this verse of the Psalm 45, The Mighty One, the Lord in his splendor and majesty, is said to be girded with a Sword on His thigh.

How could we reconcile the levels of the Word, the Sword, and the Lord?

 

In biblical verses, there is so much evidence, as we have seen it before above.  How does it apply concretely in our Life? Everyday life?

 

As aforementioned, we need the sword to win the war, to stand up. We need the Word to speak up,  we need the Lord's presence to be blessed up and to bless forward and pay due diligence.

But eventually we see that the three levels are merged into one in the Lord. and are interchangeable and permutable.

 

The Lord, embodies the Word and is the Sword and the Lord is the Holy word and the Lord becomes the sword that brought war in the world. More truthfully "intensified".

 

 

                                                                                   II

                                               In being introduced to godly life.....

 

When you are aspiring to lead the godly life, if you don't feel that "intensification", that holy stretching, it means you are not fully leading, exerting, the full potential of the blessed life. Counter-intuitively, the blessed life will often seem like an 'accursed life', in which the believer with all his strenuous efforts, would feel as: " What are all those pains worth? Is that the price of my salvation? Was I not saved already? What is that constant harassment? The deafening noise and the unseemly unshakable disgust that seems to follow me like a shadow?"

 

This is actually where the believer, if firm, being stretched beyond what he/ she thinks can take, is making unprecedented progress in the Walk with the Lord. You are crucified into a greater state of Christic Awareness, however shortly felt, however subtle , however brief, sometimes, unbearable, sometimes, ecstatic, sometimes neuter, but always leaving an everlasting imprint, your understanding of the Cross and wearing your cross as a soldier of the Army of Christ is expanded for ever, and you are irreversibly changed.

 

 

In the "New Thought" Movement, the great scholar Florence Scovel Shinn, in her epic book, The Game of Life, and how to play it , has whispered to us that Life before being a War and a warfare is and stays ultimately a GAME, a game in which a lot of war like dispositions have been implemented by our barbaric lower instincts of grab-and-keep, divide and conquer, "mine"," my", "OURS", and therefore demonstrates that before the demonstration of a great hunch in faith, everything appears dark, gloomy, reversed, seeming to go sideways, then the "Promised Land", the Promise, the Vision is there to be beheld and held into tangibility, intact, amidst the last hazes, that were the Resistance from its beholding and its rightful acquisition.

After Ziph, comes Qarah moments of success. After the wilderness, the Organized Metropolis, after the state of Urgency, the state of grace and bliss, after the thirst and the hunger, the oasis and the plenty.  

 

But in between is the stretching processing of one's faith in unprecedented ways, making one's natural man , dead but trying to come back alive, crucified with Christ but still sentient of the World illusions and deceptions, (in Eastern philosophy and doctrine, it is coined as Maya, the Great Illusion)  that one has lost something, or would lose something in the process. Thus therein are the endless deaths of the ego, to reach deeper, unshakable faith, where Death even is minimal a risk and a cost.

 

 

 

And one declares with the Apostle once persecutor, now persecuted, Paul: "to live is Christ and to die is gain" - because we intimately know in this game, the Believer, though contrary, shabby, not so glorious "appearances" is "more than a conqueror".  IT IS FINISHED, for all OPPOSITION to contest or glorify their wrongful doctrine against the true doctrine of the LORD who has robbed DEATH and its minions of all its powers.

 

 

 

The Believer through, the aches, the disappointments, the doubts, the temptations, the falls, the stumbles, the mishaps, the delusions, knows that the Lord has given him/ her a sword, which is a reminder that He, the Lord came, to "bring Life, and to bring it abundantly " to ALL nations. Even the Nations of the Animal Kingdom.

 

 

 

How could we teach the Gospel to our fellow brothers, the animals?

That would be a great start of how efficiently we can transmit the Christic values to one another, beyond language but by truthfulness, heart, meekness and true zeal in Christ, the Lord.

 

 

The Allegory of the Lambs , and the Lost lamb is nowhere close to an accident. It's a symbol of compassion to all life, not just human life. For every life is priceless to the eye of the Creator.

The Demonstration is the Process. The Promised Land is the Irrefutable Proof of the Demonstration exerted by FAITH UNSHAKABLE. Exerted to the point. Rightfully. Righteously. Right-doing-ly.

 

 

Through Faith, KNOWING,  that the Lord moving in Us can achieve anything, any transformation, any godly desire, by the assertion, the intimate knowledge that I can achieve by him through the exchange of my abilities to His capability is made perfect: "I CAN DO ALL THINGS THROUGH CHRIST WHO STRENGTHENS ME", "THE ONE IN ME IS MIGHTIER THAN THE ONE IN THE WORLD".

 

 

 

Through the "narrow door" in which we seem to "miss out" from all the other conveniences of life, which are merely true distractions that can become true addictions, if let the possibility, we see that when we walk the path through that apparently claustral roadway, all comes in appointed time  and it brings us to the reason why is it is called the "Narrow Path/ Door....". For it involves almost superhuman patience. A godly attitude in the waiting.

Towards self, neighbor, Lord.

 

 

It seems as this path is trodden by the Believer in faith and in sincerity of heart, wholeheartedly , the path is narrowed to essentials to sustain the faith, and to purify the connection, the alignment and the gratitude to the MOST HIGH.  The narrow door narrows down the noises, the distractions, the shadows, the meretricious glam and glit, the make-believes, the temptations, the truly unworthy to sustain the faith, to keep the very core of the substance, the RUACH.

 

 

 

At the beginning of the purgative process, the believer feels the True Spirit of God is suffocating Him/Her, because it is narrowing down in his /her system the sensory incomes of the World, and doubling the vivifying waters of the LIVING WORD. Mistaken on what is good for his own well being , he feels "aggressed", and shell shocked by the new waves of Purity that seem too restrictive....too harsh, too authoritarian, thus discovering God's Government is not a democracy or an anarchy in which everyone, does whatever one pleases but a theocracy, an aristocracy and a Kingdom, in which every organon has a definite function of which the Body of Christ reverberated on Earth is a pale illustration .

 

 

We discover the Monarchic ways of the Lord and the Merciful ways of the King amidst the trials , tribulations and tests to acquire greater authority in the HIERARCHY of the Kingdom. Ancient mantles of new anointing are given to the Arising Leaders of the Kingdom, who not intellectually, but by the heart, seize more clearly, the stages of the Lord (CHRIST), the Word (the Holy Logos) and the Sword (spiritual tools to conquer the spiritual warfares of the World) intertwine, meet, disrupt , separate and still continue, even apparently laid separate, being one as the Trinity is ONE standing strong, inscindibile, irretrievable through the Ages.

 

 

                                                                      III

                               Mercy, Rage, Justice, Ruth & Ruthlessness.

 

 

"My sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me. I give eternal life to them. They will never perish and no one will snatch them o"Therefore Jews took up stones again to stone him"

 

 

 

But of my hand. My Father who has given them to me, is greater than all. No one is able  to snatch them out  of my Father's Hand. I and the Father are ONE" , in John 10 : 27-30.

 

 

 

We see & hear, herein, the promises the Lord has given his children, to not only know that they are His. But to know they shall never perish, and every adversity against them is preposterous and useless, for no One can snatch them out of the Lord's Hand. And further we understand the Oneness of the Lord and the Heavenly Father who are but the same yet distinctly unique.

 

 

 

When we see the next verse we are flabbergasted by the reaction of the people to whom he addresses the promises and the three layers of Word being sword thrown by the Lord in pure action : Then again in John 10:32-33,  : "Jesus answered: I have shown you many good works from my Father. For which of those works do you stone me?". The Jews answered Him: "We don't stone you for a good work, but for Blasphemy, because you being a Man, make yourself GOD"

 

 

We see the reaction of Ruthlessness towards the exertion of Ruth by the Lord. Mercilessness towards Mercy, for these men who stone can't fathom that a Living Man like them could promise all those things, especially, when God, the Father has directly instructed them these truths, and that the Son of Man is by the same token, Lord and God as GOD ALMIGHTY is only to be seen , felt or apprehended.

 

 

 

Their lack of misunderstanding becomes a weapon, a reason, to brutalize the very Messenger of the Kingdom, His Best Representative.

The Marketer of the Kingdom is met with utmost resistance in the Market of life, by the only good that is of strict necessity to the Soul, salvation.

 

 

 

 Those self righteous men, thinking they knew better the ways of God, than God himself, refuse to listen to his Messenger, who like an ambassador embodies his plenipotentiary powers, they limit God's ways, box him, define Him, for their own gains and justification.

It's not only that their lack of understanding is a legitimate one in which radical, unorthodox views clash with traditional structures and paradigms, but that if what is being said is true, what is their gain, where and with whom do they stand in their walk with the Living God? When all they have been doing has been thrown down the drain as a lie, a fraud and peevish hypocrisy?

 

 

 

Instead of listening, then pondering as open minded, courteous , intelligent beings, they closed their hearts and minds before listening. Before being exposed to the Good News, they decided that this was Bad News for them, therefore the World, because it threatened their worldview. A narrow minded, protocol-based, rule-ridden, obsolescence- decayed worldview that they grew comfortable with.

 

 

 

And taking that comfort from them meant they thought the end of their world.

The only thing they did not care to ask:  was this the announcement of a New Word Structure, broader, larger, fairer, greater, purer, with infinite streams of possibilities that would make their apparent loss, the "lie"?

 

 

By self judgment, they did not deem themselves worthy of those promises and the statutes of the old covenant were fine by them because they knew them, they grew accustomed to them and not easily, so who was who to dismiss all these efforts of knowing the Law, the Torah?

 

 

 

To digress, all self-help teachers, tell us that true growth happens in the last stretches of our comfort zone. Those stoning men were no exception to this peculiar rule. They did not want to stretch their worldview, because they knew, these knowledgeable men, that by stretching these limits, an old structure, theirs, would utterly collapse, leaving them with barely nothing, but ashes and ruins.

 

 

 

And that was the PLAN...

Leave the Old, forget it. For I the Lord, am doing a new thing.

If as believers, we could apply this promise, every single day, and hour of our worshiping life, how marvelous wonders of the Most High we grow accustomed to?

 

 

 For to truly follow him, we must diligently and constantly leave our comfort zones, our beliefs, what we think we know, our pride, our ethics, our morality , our sense of justice, our natural talents, the comfort of our family and friends, our sugarcoating lies, our limitations and know that the grace of the Lord is sufficient to stretch out of the Wildernesses we did not even know or comprehend we were locked in previously. That is what carrying our own cross seems to insinuate.

 

 

 

Utter trust and surrender To the Higher Guidance of The Lord, that cuts like a sword in our carnal man and thus strengthens the Inner Man.

 

 

The disciples followed another route. As they saw and beheld the Wonders working through the Messiah, the Anointed One of the Most High, they instantaneously knew that the OLD world came to an end, an abrupt end and they acknowledge despite their confusion, the thorough greatness, the impeccable legitimacy, the noble finesse of the Lord as Son Of Man and Son Of God and GOD himself, and they surrendered to see better , to know better, to be better Sons of God, which they were all this time, they just were reawakened to that knowledge,specifically,  taken away by the World.

 

 

 

Their identity was more restored than bestowed, taken back, than obtained, retrieved than given anew .

Same Message, Same Messenger, different reactions, incredibly multifaceted acceptances or rebukes.

 

 

                                                                                         IV

                                                   Exhortation to strength, Power and Victory

 

 

 

"What if you discovered you couldn't lose? What if you could not think outside of the box but also choose to live outside of it?.............They are very real forces that whisper lying innuendos that assault your mind, your will, and your emotions in the hope of causing you to turn on yourself and then turn on others ......It is hard to escape the messages and messengers that tell us we are not good enough , young enough, smart enough , fast enough and rich enough,.We are  bombarded in the hope, that we will shrink to their expectations. It is only human we would want to deflect this incessant bullying that implies we are never enough. When this harassment reaches a critical  point, some will yield by conforming and copying, while others will rebel as thy sling back accusations of their own",  

 

Without a Rival, Lisa Bevere, Chapter 1, An identity without Rival,  Revell Books, 2016

This passage shows us our true identity in the Lord, it commands that we can not lose . For the very idea of competition is foreign to the divine design for his children. It is a concept of the World and its narrow-view system.  

 

 

As Watchman Nee says in his book "Sit. Stand Walk", the christian relationship with our Maker, starts with a big DONE, instead of a crushing DO. Which can be startling for many of us.

 

 

All has already been done. Victory has already been won.  But as worshipers , Sons and Daughters of Man, and Son and Daughters of God, in our apparently dual identity must maintain the Victory that has been obtained through the Sword, i.e. the Cross of Golgotha, when the Lord declared boldly : 

 

IT IS ALL FINISHED!!!.

 

By reminding ourselves despite the multitudinous distortions and manufactured cognitive dissonances of this world and the Value system of this World, that all has already been won. This does not imply that we are not supposed to do anything, but to live, breathe, be, act as carriers of that Knowledge, and Image Bearers of the Christ, that has redeemed us from all infirmities and afflictions of the human nature that was in a first period , supposed to be made right, by the establishment of the Law.

 

 

 But we failed the Law and the Law failed us, leaving us broken. Be bold in asking for your righteousness, despite of the harsh knowledge, that WE ALL have fallen short of the grace of the Living God, to ask for your divine right to be justified and to be used willingly  by the mysterious ways of the Lord, that manifested in the flesh, and the One who sent him for the salvation of all Nations.

 

For the very concept of a Nation is divisive except in the notion of a Nation of God, who is all inclusive. Led by Grace, Love, Righteousness, Justice, Wisdom, Fairness, a good will to do GOD'S Will as perfectly as possible to one's ability.

 

"Be strong, and have good courage and fortify your hearts." 

 

For the Kingdom of Heaven is nigh but you must be vigilant to see and behold it !!! The Grace of The Most High vivifies your soul, heart, eyes, mind and Hands to maintain the Godly victory.

 

Tuesday, May 12 , 2020