Dear, beautiful friends, I want you to live.  How I crave to see boldness appear from you.  I have been among you and walked as you walk.  I know you remember this when you look at me.  And now I speak with a bold openness and you are perplexed at how to respond.  While I am still among you, I see that you do not understand what has happened.  “Has his love for us diminished?”  No, it has increased.

Love has come; the Love of God has appeared in a vibrant manner.  I have communed with the Living God, by Jesus, and have been transformed.  This communion is not a passing fad within me.  It remains, and is the very reason for this post.  It is also the very reason you do not understand.

What is of this world no longer holds the same interest in me.  I live to embrace heaven.  “But what of the things we love, admire and need?  Have you no concern for our daily chores?  Where are you?  Why don’t you speak like we do anymore?  We are concerned for your safety, for none of us speak like you do.  We respect the privacy and right to believe as each does regarding God.  But you seem to disrespect such things.  How can we make you return to the man you were?”

You don’t understand.  I cannot return to the love of the things of this world.  What I love and admire cannot be touched or held in this place of testing.  Yes I have concern for the things necessary in this world; those things like working for our earthly provisions.  But while I work I am focused on the provisions the Lord offers.  He provides the strength to accomplish what is earthly necessity.  I know you draw a line between them.  But I can no longer do that.

I am safe.  By the very speech I use I prove that I am safe.  I know it is not your language.  But it is not an evil language.  It is the language of a man who understands the will of God.  You speak of what concerns man.  I speak of what concerns God.  How can my situation possibly be unsafe?  Even you express that safety comes from the Living God.  If I am with Him how can I be in danger?

I know you want to keep the things of God private and respect differing definitions of God.  But there is one God, not many.  Therefore I cannot respect lies.  I know that grates against your perceptions.  How can that be helped?  He calls all His people to such bold proclamations.  And we will receive ridicule and misunderstanding because of it.  So did He.

You cannot make me return.  I have seen what the world offers.  I have lived as you do and found it false.  The question should not be, how can we make you return to the man you were.  The question, my dear beautiful friends, is how can I convince you that life within Him is immeasurably better?  How can I tell you that this boldness is what is proper?  How can I relate what cannot be seen without faith?  Yet I will witness before you, by His Grace.  Perhaps He will succeed in convincing you too.  Then we will hold hands and joyfully encounter the wrath of man.  Then we will ascend the holy hill of God together.

I will not turn back at your pleadings.  I will not turn back simply because you do not understand my “leaving”.  While I remain among you in body, my mind, heart, and soul has left you.  Come with me.  Catch up and dance the dance of death with me; death to the things of this world, death to self, alive before the Living God.

By His Grace.