Category Archives: personal

Hypocritical Honor

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If I speak to receive the praise of men, can those words be words of God?  Yet if I am to speak words of any value, they must belong to the One who is eternally valuable.

I have seen how men praise one another for gallant and faithful action.  As if what is good can be borne among men.  If I join them in this praise where is my allegiance?  For anything that is truly good is born and borne of God.

Let the world praise their heroes.  I will honor, with worship, God’s hero: Jesus The Christ.

I say the following, knowing there will be misunderstanding: ‘I have come to despise the honor of men”. 

Men honor the ones who do good to and for them.  As a man may lay down his life (to whatever portion) for his fellow brother, he is honored. 

All the while, it is easy for them to despise the One who made them.  The One who truly loves them.  The One whom they have murdered.  The One who is shunned among them, even to this day.

Such honor of man is important among men, but only if it teaches us to treat The Living God with severe honor.  But this is not the definition used by men.

Men are paid to do what is good.  They are paid with money or fame; a type of immortality is placed on the mantle.  By this, men purchase honor.  Is it then truly honor?  Or does man hold one another hostage for the sake of reward?

But there is one who came, that he may do the will of the One who is forever Good.  Laying aside all possible human reward, he gave of himself without quarter.  What honor of man can compare?  Yet what distinct lack of honor men give him.

Every man knows this!  It is willing ignorance which keeps it hidden.  Willfully they are led to the pageantry of honor for those who are less than He.

They gladly stand at parades and wave their national flag.  Even a tear or two may be seen.  But mention the Living God’s Christ in a crowd of men and you will see them quietly disperse.  So man’s definition of Honor is defined.

This will not change until the Holy One is revealed.  But I am allowed to despise this hypocrisy of man.

By His Grace

Flying Free

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There can be no shame within me, to expose my lack before the Living God.  For by such exposition, both I and His people are strengthened to what is “more”.

I cannot boast in my weakness.  But I can address openly, the things the Lord exposes.  And how His Holy expectation deserves an answer.

He is just and righteous among us all.  His patience is for an accounting.  He teaches with diligent intent.  His desire is cast abroad.

If we listen, He is rewarded for His excellent Love.  Yet if we balk, His desire is subjected to frustration.

Now we look to His patient love.  With open heart, and eyes of the Holy Spirit, we turn to face Him.  Approach with confidence, for this is the promise which He wrote in His Holy Blood.

What is His Holy Covenant, what value is it to us?  The answer is dictated from our willingness to obey.

What provokes our lack?  Isn’t it our unwillingness to believe?  Is it not, then, our tiny faith that keeps us bound?

Come with me.  Let us enter into His Covenant.  Let us fan the flames of gifting, so that our faith might prosper.  Race on before me, if you can!  Then call back to speak of the beauties you perceive.  Let us drive one another as far as we can.  By our limit, we have tested the Lord.  If we have found Him to be Good, why not break another link that our faith might fly free?

Thus there is no shame in exposing what lacks.  For as one we enter in to He who is One.

The Perplexing Question

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My God, you are so sweet.  You bring me a perplexing question, to which I have no answer.  But now I strive to provide an accounting to your tender truth.

“Why do you pay attention to these things of the flesh, and come to Me for wisdom?”

You do not ask without expectation of answer.  Draw up my will to answer.  Summon my soul to answer.  Seek what is faultless and true.  Condemnation is perceived.  But growth is offered.

Why do I listen with my eyes of flesh?  Why do I allow perception to appear from my fleshly ears?  Why do I allow division to exist, when fullness is offered so freely?

For surely, there is a place where I do not allow these things to divide.  There is a place where Your wisdom abides, as freely as it is offered.

Shall I blame the condition of limit, in which man is forced to live?  That is no answer to Your earnest question.  That is to seek an excuse.

I shall ponder this with willing heart.  For You call me to “All”.  And there is “All” for the taking.  Holiness beckons.  The fullness of Stephen awaits.

I stand between fullness and want.  I stand at the door of “becoming”.  Why hesitate?  For now, I can’t answer.  What a shame to me that I should not be able to give an immediate answer.  What a shame to me that You should have to ask.

Yet what possibilities for Your Glory are present!  What service remains undone.  What rekindling of flame demands too much time.  What a raging story is yet to be written.

By Your Grace we prosper, and that for Your Glory’s sake.  Direct my mind.  Direct my will to hear.  Regardless the surroundings, Your people should endure with great vigor.  This is so.  This is true!  Show me how to endure, according to the power of You, O Christ of God.

The Strong Onslaught

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My apologies.  I know my writings often only amount to ramblings.   I know they are often hard to follow.  One comes away as if having received a stiff upper hook to the jaw.

But they are product of a driving hurricane of inspiration.  As if a relentless storm forces its power filled wind through a constricting tunnel.  By this, it’s amazing that anything coherent comes out at all.

May the mercy of God attend those who dare to read the writings of hiwaychristian.  Yet, inspite my limit, may He grant understanding; raising up salvation in the fearless.

By His Grace

The Aberrant Me

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The wisdom of God, now attends my days.  If someone must place a percentage, I confess that the Lord Jesus rules, well over, 90% of my thoughts.  Personally I think that is a conservative percentage.  But the opinion of man cannot be trusted.

He has done all this!  The entirety of the gospel belongs to him.  And from the message of the gospel the ascension from sin has become.

I am not saying I am sinless.  Rather I am saying there is placed a brutal guard over all my thoughts and actions.  And if one escapes, he is captured and brought back for examination.  Execution belongs to the culprit.

Yet more credit belongs to the power of God to transform.  For God instructs, moment by moment, according to His perfect righteous ways.  According to my willing ability to obey.

These things are marvelous, and a very welcome life!  But something “other”, even more amazing, comes to visit from time to time.  And this “other”, is the provocation for this writing.

I am often reminded, by some familiarity, of the man I used to be.  And with stunning clarity,, and regularity, I find no righteousness in my past.  The word “no” has a definitive meaning.

Let any memory come to mind, and my response is shocking revulsion.  At first I am shocked that I would do such things for such reasons.  And then quickly comes the shocking revelation that I am not dead.

We have all heard it said, in one fashion or another, “If it were not for Christ Jesus I would have no life at all”.

If confession were made, most Christians would confess, their nod is without full understanding.  By what they know of Christianity, that saying must be true.  Though they embrace it, spiritual fruit in their life displays their lack.

In this the saying of the Lord is true, he who is forgiven much loves much.  Conversely, he who finds little need for forgiveness, is likely to rely on his own ability.  This one’s love is likely to be split between the Sovereign God and himself.

I do not mean to say this with judgment.  It is simply a fact of life.

But the longer and farther I walk with Jesus, the more alien and repulsive my past becomes.  It can be likened to a virus, which has attached itself to every memory; this lack which provokes amazement.

I pray this has some value to my brothers and sisters, and to those who desire to become Christians.  May every child of God come to abhor who he was.

It occurs to me, that there may be an oddball or two out there like me.  A few who actually desire this place the Lord has brought me to stand.

How can such a one hope to arrive?  The answer is rather simple.  However the journey is anything but.

Give yourself permission to examine every action and every motive you have ever had.  Hold it up as one would a transparency into the light.  Examine it before the righteousness of God.  The comparison will be stunning.

Such a life is not for the faint of heart.  But wasn’t it said, “From the days of John the Baptist until now, the Kingdom of Heaven is forcefully advancing and forceful men lay hold of it”?

By His Grace

Happy

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“What makes you happy what do you want to do?”  I have no idea how many hundreds of times that’s been asked of me.

I’ve tried a few times to answer with what’s true.  But that’s not the expected reply.  I assume the questioner thinks I am either arrogant, evasive, a complete social misfit, or just playing stupid.

I. want.  one.   thing!

I want to stop being in trouble!

I say the wrong thing at the wrong time.  Or I don’t speak up when I should.

I’m too overbearing, they say.  I’m too much of a pushover, leaving far too much on the table.

I leave my pen in my pocket when I do her laundry.  So I get in trouble when I try to do something right.

I am completely satisfied to eat a cold can of beans.  So why do people keep asking me what I want for dinner?

No, I don’t want to go out dancing.  Dancing requires a certain measure of joy.  I don’t have it!

On and on the list goes.  Apparently, a never-ending separation from humanity.  And other than the moments of lucid desire for friendship, I’m perfectly happy to remain this way.

What makes me happy?  Let me give the answer that is never understood.  I want to go home.

I want to have the peace of God on me 24 /7.  I want to understand his will so well that I do it without the slightest hesitation, and correctly.  Something I have yet to come close to attaining.

I want to overcome sin in every respect.  That would make me exceedingly happy.  I want to know just what to say to everyone I meet, so that all my speech is seasoned with salt.  That would make me happy.

Am I really such an anomaly?  Is there anyone else out there who feels the same?

I understand why they don’t understand.  I got it.  Let them live as they do.  They will receive no condemnation from me.  May the holy Lord Jesus happily embrace them on that great and horrible day.

All the while I will be, in some measure, unhappy.  I am not who I want to be.  I am not where I want to be.  And this world offers nothing to change my mind.

By His Grace