Madness/Foolishness – My Beloved is Mine

Our appetites are fickle things

mybelovedismine — Sun, 05 Jun 2022 15:23:00 +0000

Our appetites cannot contain beauty. Our appetites are fickle things that sway with the prevailing wave, never satisfied and as gaunt as the grave. They harbor selfishness and petty squabbling. They incite us to hate. In our pursuit of our loves, we become the very things we hate, and our left to languish in our fate. When we are the rulers of our world, we are lost, though we are certain of our cause. Pride cannot contain beauty, for the mind is closed and eye refuses light. We build our own worlds, elaborate schemes and arguments to protect us, keeping others’ ideas out, and hating truth, we become def. We are safe, though. Why hear words that shatter who you are? Why be destroyed by love? Yet beauty is not safe. Love is not safe. Not to a world of our own making. We have abandoned the true and beautiful world, to hold on to deciding for ourselves what is beautiful Desiring our autonomy, we frantically fight and scramble for mud pies, being enslaved by our passions, when a banquet is set before us, if only we would only look up from our mire. We our consumed by our appetites and cannot look up to see the hand reaching out to us to help us out of our darkness. We cannot hear the voice, the word that speaks gently and offers us life. It is only in a world that is holy other that we find beauty. Beauty is beheld by the broken who are crushed by truth and smell the foul stench of their own desires. They lift up their heads to the one who is ready to lift them out. They look into his eyes of love and call on his name. And they, though still smelly and dirty, are held in his embrace. Life has only now begun. And in their journey to love, as they dance to the music, and are satisfied by the banquet, their mud begins to fall away . . .

Our foolishness will be exposed

mybelovedismine — Fri, 20 May 2022 14:50:00 +0000

When we stand before God our foolishness will be exposed. What we held on to as wise will shrivel away. We will see it for the foolishness it is. Many of us want to do what is right in our own eyes. We define love in our own way and excuse our hate. We will murder and call it love, for pride is our god. When our hearts are exposed in judgement, our mouths will be shut as our rebellion and pride are exposed. We will understand that we chose in our pride to believe a lie.

Yet for those who will hear God’s call there is hope, those who chose to not rest in their own wisdom, but instead to trust in Jesus making our lot in the wisdom of Jesus. As we rest in him our foolishness is exposed as well and our foolishness becomes evident to all, but not to condemn. Our foolishness is exposed as Jesus works to heal our hearts.

While it is called Today, be exposed as a fool, so that you may know true Wisdom and Love.

Monsters

mybelovedismine — Fri, 01 Oct 2021 19:45:00 +0000

We become monsters when we lean on our understanding; it is in the vulnerability of being broken through the fear of the Lord that we are healed.

Our narratives

mybelovedismine — Sun, 27 Jun 2021 18:24:00 +0000

We are very good at creating consistent narratives that fit our experiences of the world, but we are not very good at interpreting the world.

Stubbornness vs conviction

mybelovedismine — Wed, 25 Sep 2013 20:42:00 +0000

Stubbornness is blinding and unwilling to be corrected or to listen, restrictive, in-compassionate, and destructive, it does not understand its standing with with God. Conviction is open minded, willing to be corrected and to listen, is compassionate, and brings freedom and healing, and understands the glories of the Gospel.

Madness

mybelovedismine — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 01:08:00 +0000

We don’t believe that God can satisfy us and so we find our satisfaction in other things. “My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water” (Jeremiah 2:13). Spurgeon wrote about this spiritual madness,

“Men are in a restless pursuit after satisfaction in earthly things. They will exhaust themselves in the deceitful delights of sin, and, finding them all to be vanity and emptiness; they will become very perplexed and disappointed. But they will still continue their fruitless search. Though wearied, they still stagger forward under the influence of spiritual madness, and though there is no result to be reached except that of everlasting disappointment, yet they press forward. They have no forethought for their eternal state; the present hour absorbs them. They turn to another and another of earth’s broken cisterns, hoping to find water where not a drop was ever discovered yet.”

Men have no forethought of their eternal state. They are madly, desperately, like ravaged animals, trying to find satisfaction, not full satisfaction, only satisfaction for the moment. They abandon all for the momentary delight, but do not find it, not even a drop. Oh! What madness that they even teach others, ‘This is the way of satisfaction and delight.’ Christ calls to this world, mad and blinded in their pursuit, and says, “I am the way, the truth, and the Life. I am more than satisfaction. Come to me all those who are weary. Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good and delight yourselves in rich food.” And so we must abandon all things and all things and come to Him, “the author and finisher of our faith”. And though we may not see the full fulfillment of the promises as did Abraham, we still believe.