Now my battles are within.
I realize now — perhaps for the first time — that nothing I can do can ever “save” me. No amount of ordinances. No service. No sacrifice. No prayers or supplications. No words or secret handshakes. No works.
God saves us. He saves us. By His grace, His efforts, His sacrifice. It’s what He does.
All we do — all we can do — is ask and receive with gratitude, comply in faith, and respond with love. And even the power to do all that comes from Him.
Knowing God, we become loving, like Him. We cannot help it. If we do not love, we know not God. We only kid ourselves.
How do I know?
I knew Him once — really, more than once! — and I tasted of His love. His manifest love was His gift to me. And I can never forget it! And I will always love Him for it!
Have you ever been in love? God’s love surpasses all that.
What can we do if we know not God, are not loving, and consequently have not been saved?
All we can do.
But we must realize — we have to realize — that, in the end, it depends on Him. He provides the healing, the light, the love, the resurrection. He is God, not we.
Those of us who have met Him — who have seen His light and heard His voice and felt His love — know what it means to be filled with light and love unto the consuming of our flesh. It is akin to walking on clouds, being in love, devoid of all ill-will, contention, displeasure or desire to commit sin of any kind. It is to be filled with light. It is euphoria and clarity and peace beyond comprehension — until one experiences it. And, even then, it remains unspeakable.
To be baptized with fire and with the Holy Ghost is to know that God exists, to know the truth for one’s self. To know, not just “believe” anymore. It is to be “born again”. And one who has experienced this “mighty change of heart” knows, indeed, that a transformation has taken place — though he or she might find the whole thing utterly inexplicable, even incomprehensible.
It is the Spirit of God that does His mighty work, not the will or works of men. “God with Us” — God in Us, Emmanuel — is the Mighty One, the only one, who saves.
After all we can do.
I know now, better than ever, my own nothingness, my own powerlessness, my own inability to save myself. Like the man in the temple, beating his chest with regret, I say “Forgive me, Lord, for I am a sinner”. There are no works I can do or look to to comfort me, no “accomplishments” I can take pride in and say “See! That’s why He loves me! That’s why He saved me!”
If I am to be saved at all, it will be by His grace.
As Paul said, I glory in my weakness — not that I might continue in sin, but — that His strength might be made manifest to His glory.
All the glory by Thine, Lord. It certainly isn’t mine.
He must do His work. I can only invite. I can only clear out the refuse, the dreck, the scum, the clutter and distractions. I can repent. But even my “cleanest” isn’t His clean. My “holiest” isn’t His holy. Even in repentance I cannot lay claim to the promises…until He comes, until He grants me His Spirit, until He anoints me and purges me with fire. Until He seals me His.
Until then, I am lost. Without Him, I am lost.
I know this now.
I know He lives, because He has ministered to me before. But I turned away from following Him, from loving Him, unto idols.
I have cast my idols aside now, or rather, I have learned that in them there is no life.
I turn back to God, knowing that all my battles, struggles, impediments and stumbling blocks are not without, but within.
I offer to Him now not just the cleanest hands I can muster, but a contrite heart as well.
