A brother in the fellowship was inspired by the Holy Spirit to share this exhortation following a period of deep despair in his life….
Oh gaze eternal how penetrating are your fires, rushing through my darkest places. With the burning streams of desire leaving me naked, purged and bare…Yet embraced. Refusing all my offers to earn your love, to win your gaze, to deserve your smile. You wrap your heavy love around me, until my anxious arguments subside. You take hold of my weakest places, and kiss them with your mercy. Lifting up my low grounds, with your mighty love so Holy. Burning affections, consuming me and transforming my darkness with light. Jealous ardour refusing to be denied, yet engulfing all that hides in me!
Oh gaze eternal how penetrating are your fires, Oh friend eternal how you win my heart… With unprecedented unmerited desire.
We do not know the depths of our own heart and how our present condition has been shaped and formed by it’s content from past experiences.
Jeremiah: 17 v 9&10 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? I the Lord search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings.
When God penetrates our darkest areas by his refining fire, it is to convict and cleanse us from the things that we have unknowingly been bound by. Things of the past, that we have never considered to be a strong hold of Satan in our lives, because we have never allowed the Spirit of God to do spiritual heart surgery in the deepest parts of our beings…But be encouraged, with spiritual heart surgery the Divine Physician uses divine anaesthetic…His Love. He only ever gently probes the painful areas that bind us in wrong believing to free us into his glorious truth. As we yield and embrace the truth he uncovers and exposes the poison that has kept us from change and removes it enabling us to move into a place of great liberty and freedom.
Do we appreciate the difference between conviction and condemnation? When the Spirit convicts me He never ever condemns me. My heart in it’s unchanged condition will condemn me and the devil will use the lie it holds onto to keep me bound. Condemnation never never never comes from God…
1 John: 3 v 19-21 And hereby we know that we are of the truth, and shall assure our hearts before him. 20 For if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things. 21 Beloved, if our heart condemn us not, then we have confidence toward God.
The old Welsh Revival hymn, Here is Love Vast as the Ocean has a tremendous truth revealed throughout its theme. In the last verse it speaks of a fullness that God wants to pour into us. Of course we all desire this but do we understand that terms and conditions apply? As I yield myself to thee!!
In thy truth thou dost direct me, By Thy Spirit through Thy Word, And Thy grace my need is meeting, As I trust in Thee my Lord, All Thy fullness Thou art pouring, In thy love and power in me, Without measure full and boundless… As I yield myself to Thee!
