Life for me comes in small realizations, These precious moments where I see what a selfish fraud I really am. I say this realizing all of my struggles; I daily battle with lust, laziness, course joking, envy, jealousy, and Pride. Mainly pride, Pride is one that sprouts up anywhere we allow it too. Self-control in the Bible is not the self-control we have come to embrace in our day and age. The self-control spoken of in the Bible is one that realizes that our self is one given over to complete submission, holiness, and obedience to our Maker. The Bible is pleat with scripture to show we are to deny ourselves for His sake by the obedience of our spirit to that of the Holy Spirit. When the word of God speaks of Casting all our cares upon Him, I believe it means to realize our absolute need for Jesus at all times. 1 Peter 5:7 says; "Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you." You see, by refusing to cast our cares upon Christ we are actually affirming our sovereignty. God is a consuming fire, if we labor to build a throne room off of materials we gather outside of Him, they shall be utterly destroyed. Only when we spend our lives building up the Body of Christ and building up the throne room of our hearts using His tools, His materials, and His blueprints. Will we find that the Consuming fire of His Presence finds a Worthy seat in our hearts. Do we really consider it a small doctrinal matter that the Creator of the Universe, not only redeemed our unworthy lives to Himself; He makes our hearts His dwelling place? Sometimes it seems this way.
I was asked today why God does not speak plainly to us, why doesn't he just tell us what everything means? After thinking about the question only shortly I replied; "He does speak to us plainly! I realized at that moment that the Bible is speaking of something so vast and incomprehensible that the only way we can understand is through Allegory and Parable. Jesus employed this method for everyone, in the same way a parent (an honest parent) will use the death of a goldfish to help a small child understand the reality of death. God uses all of creation, all spoken words, and all emotion to express something eternal to us. Great writers understand this well, Dostoyevsky exposed the fraudulence of the humanist philosophies by revealing the sin ridden heart of man in Crime and Punishment. C.S. Lewis explains the Awesomeness of Heaven in the story of a bus ride to it, in the Great Divorce. John Bunyan the depths of Grace in the story of a man on a journey to rid himself of a burden in A Pilgrims Progress. George MacDonald, Madeleine 'L Engle, G.K. Chesterson, are all trying to express the inexpressible through fantasy or mystery. Most of the grand truths these writers attempt to convey are truths revealed to them by the Spirit of God dwelling in there own hearts. Well, I will sleep now hoping to learn more about our glorious Savior in the coming days, weeks, and years. I hope to express the Mysteries of Christ as He makes Himself known to my Awestruck heart according to His will.