Emails With Reggie

Hello, I am just dropping a note to say hello. Yesterday I actually had to wear a long sleeve t-shirt outside...it was distressing, but today we are back to wearing t-shirts and still being warm outside : ) so we're okay now. I think about you guys often...and though my prayers don't "feel'' like much, I do pray mercy and rest for you. Maybe it isnt about getting to that christian nirvana state while we're here...maybe it is about being wounded in the struggle until you learn to hide yourself in Him and find all you need in Him. At any rate...i'm still whining that things are hard...but trusting more boldly still : ) There is still a bit of a riff between Jed and I. I have been thinking lately just about how we respond when we finally realize that we really can't push any more and that these fad-spiritual-diets aren't working (because at the end of the day we still love our pleasures no matter how much we tell ourselves ''no''). Some people muster up more strength to give it another go, others get angry and start grappling for something self-justifying to get them sleeping at night...and then others cling to God and cry out for mercy believing that God gives grace to the humble. I have gone through all these approaches to find that only one leaves such a sweet savor in your soul. There is nothing more pleasant than the saint who has been humbled out of their self-righteousness only to FINALLY receive the unconquerable grace that is in Jesus...the kind that teaches you to deny ungodliness and to wait on God. I hope that experience and maturity...and of course the very love of God will take me there and sustain me as I go on in Him. Somedays I feel like such a failure...so confused at what it should look like to be a believer -and terrified sometimes. Other times I am unshakably confident that He is faithful and will see me through to completion. But what is that ringing in my ears ''I will not strive with you forever''...torture to my soul. Anyway, God help me, sometimes I am falling apart. Sorry for the journal-like email....sometimes I just need to talk to someone...


Much love to you and your family and the community in the one who keeps it all together,
Em


Dear Emily, it's actually a blessing to hear you talk like this. Welcome to the realities of the faith. You are working through these things towards a balance that will bring a measure of stability over time, yet not without those occasional upsets and afflictions that are no less a part of the Christian life as of all life. It's just that in the case of the Christian, there is a sovereign God working 'all' for a perfect good. I would even say, a perfectly tailored good in each individual believer's life. That though there is a common salvation, the Lord's intention and work in each individual believer is so necessarily unique and distinctive that each receive a stone that can only be read by that individual. This speaks to me of a uniquely distinct pilgrimage and formation in God that is distinctive to each one of God's dear children, His elect. It is eminently personal and distinctive. No one in all the history of souls will know and experience our common salvation in quite the same way, though, of course, there is also a certain same-ness. This is why the apostle could say that we are each to work out our "own" salvation, but with fear and trembling, BECAUSE (all the more because), we know it is God that is 'working', both to will and do of His good pleasure (and that good pleasure is distinctive to that child). I often say that perhaps the safest evidence that it is the Lord doing and willing is the presence of a God quickened fear and trembling. I don't have to tell you that to "work out" our salvation is world removed from "working for" that salvation, as some poor souls have read that passage, and even now quote it to me to remind me that our salvation is not a 'workless' proposition. I pity that naturalistic reading of scripture and pray that God will give them repentance to the acknowledgment of the truth, as God knows that in their sincerity, they oppose themselves. Sadly, I speak of some of our Hutterite brothers and sisters. Talk to you more soon, Reggie