Remember then how far you have fallen;
repent, and do the works you did at first. Otherwise, I will come to you
and remove your lampstand from its place — unless you repent.
---We never stop needing to repent.
Because we never stop needing help.
We never become self-reliant from God to habituate us toward Him and His will.
But how will we know how to rely on God if we do not experience what reliance looks like?
We have one another to practice and to habituate our hearts on what it means to be reliant on another.
Unless we first experience a heart of reliance on others in the Body of Christ, needing help, then how will we know what reliance on God actually is? It will remain a concept, and be just as good as whatever we want it to be according to our fancy. Reliance on another is an experience that teaches us the reality of the concept, it confronts our ideas about it because it is the actual experience of it! This is why Jesus taught us to love one another, and to be united. The more we experience our lives with one another the more we avail ourselves to the experience and truth of what it means to rely on God. We must become precious to one another.---
“Anyone who has an ear
should listen to what the Spirit says
to the churches.
I will give the victor
the right to eat from the tree of life,
which is in God’s paradise.
---Listen to the Spirit's words given for the churches. Given to your church. What is the Spirit saying to the church you attend? Let Him speak truth into the areas of lies, exposing them more specifically, and leading back to life. Every church needs to be listening so long as you have ears.----
Don’t be afraid of what you are about to suffer. Look, the Devil is about to throw some
of you into prison to test you,
and you will have affliction for 10 days.
Be faithful until death,
and I will give you the crown of life.
---we are about to suffer, and some are already suffering. We suffer in whatever we find is hard for us to live with. That could be mental strains, physical pains, relational chasms, or boredom. Suffering is anything that we find difficult, by definition. There is no right or wrong suffering, there is just suffering, a feeling that comes with a situation. But suffering is also the only way to practice faithfulness to God. Suffering proves the genuineness of our faith, much like how loving others confronts our genuine reliance on God, our faith is only as good as our suffering. That's why James exclaimed that we should consider it our joy to suffer in Christ, because it gives our faith a chance to prove itself and confront us with the truth so that we can grow. I suffer and I also fear suffering, but what if we began to welcome suffering? What would that look like? No one needs to search for suffering, you will soon find that it is something of a gift by God given to everyone but not received by everyone when it happens. So it's a matter of our view of suffering, our view of difficulty, to understand what it means to be in pain and in joy at the same time...a very curious state of understanding. I often think in very black and white terms, so this concept is difficult for me to practice, but when I feel the fear of suffering (in forms of my doubting, worrying or anxiety) I have stop and ask the Holy Spirit to remind me what exactly I am trying to resist.
Am I resisting suffering, which is the gift?
Or am I resisting the sin?
In other words, which is more difficult for me to resist? Usually I find that it feels like the sin is more difficult to resist, but in reality it is the suffering of resisting the sin that is the real problem.
So then the two go hand in hand, meaning that I must be at the same time suffering and seeing my sin together. The sin is the carriage that carries the gift, but it is not the gift itself to be received. So that all my sins will be devastating for me to approach, but I must approach them in order to retrieve the gift of suffering that comes from God in the form of resisting the sin so that in every situation I have both what the devil brings and what God brings before me.
It is this very distinction that means either life or death for us. We are practicing our ability to walk in fire and water at the same time. Being both dead and alive. Suffering and joyful. Light and dark. Sinner and saved. Happy and sad. Foolish and wise. Immature and mature. Continually searching while at the same time finding. Weak and strong at the same time. The way that Christ was both man and God, we too have the Holy Spirit of God in us while remaining our individual human selves. Having both God and our humanness in us, the former acting only in contingency on the latter...not apart from one another. But together. ---
“Anyone who has an ear
should listen
to what the Spirit says
to the churches.
The victor will never be harmed
by the second death."
---the first death being our earthly death, literally the first time we die. Haha. The second death is the one that means going to hell forever, which is the culmination of absolute death. The victor, the winner, the one who defeats death : Jesus, will never be harmed by hell. So Jesus is our only hope of being a victor. We have to look to Jesus to carry us, include us, choose us, bless us and affirm us as His fellow brothers and sisters. We do never look to our ability to be a victor. Only Jesus, our brother, is proof that we are family. Relationship with Him is our only hope. And this, too, is a truth that we need to practice with one another, to be confronted by what we believe it means to be a brother, to be family. We have each other to practice this truth with, and the more we practice with each other the more we will be able to know what it is to be in His family. A sinner brought into the family of God. We show what we believe God shows us by being that to others. And when that other, the sinner (like us) does his or her sinful things to us, we get the opportunity and practice to experience how it is for God to receive us in love when we receive their sinner-ness in love.---
"I will kill her children with the plague,
Then all the churches will know
that I am the One
who examines minds and hearts,
and I will give to each of you
according to your works."
---lets realize the "THEN..." And take the killing part as a very helpful reminder and warning of what is to come: God's judgment. It is always this judgment that matters when we consider our actions. God's judgment is not our judgment of what we think or say is God's judgment. It is only God's. So we know only by relationship with Him, and we know relationship with Him by our relationship with one another. Simple as that. We are most confronted by what it looks like to have God and sinner meet, when we interact with one another. Our being like Christ is not just for the sake of being like Christ! The purpose is so that we will actually know Him in doing so. You get to know what mercy feels like when you feel the mercy someone gives you! You get to know what forgiveness looks like when someone forgives you! You get to know what love looks like when someone loves you! We must practice our lives of knowing God with one another, lest we fall into the lie that God's judgment is whatever we want it to be.---
"I will also give him the morning star.
Anyone who has an ear
should listen
to what the Spirit says
to the churches."
-Revelation 2:5, 7, 10-11, 23, 28-29
---listen. Listen to what the Spirit says to the churches. To you. To your church.
The morning star:
So we have the prophetic word
strongly confirmed.
You will do well to pay attention to it,
as to a lamp shining in a dismal place,
until the day dawns
and the morning star rises in your hearts.
-2 Peter 1:19
A lamp.
A dismal place.
We see the lamp in a dismal place because it's so different from where it stands. A light in darkness, but this is what we pay attention to. Both light and dark, joy and suffering, sin and redemption, resistance and surrender...both are together. Pay attention to it, and God says we will do well.
The morning star is mysteriously good. It rises in our hearts, a star rises in our hearts. Glorious. I don't know what it will be like for a morning star to rise in my heart, but I know that what God says will happen...will happen for sure. A morning star will rise in our hearts because He will give it to us. It's quite unfathomable, but I want that star, and I have a very good feeling that when it rises in my heart I will know when it happens.
Until then, we pay attention....what have your thoughts been about? That is where your attention is.
Tune your attention to the Holy Spirit
even if just to pray "hello, Holy Spirit, You're here. Hello." Everyday. Until you are attuned to Him, ready to listen with your ears to what the Spirit says."
Jmegrey
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