The breaking of soul strength so we can flow in the fullness of heart union with the Lord,
thus, coming into the closest places with our Lover-Leader Yeshua in charge
Lots of times, I have experienced being “guided by His eye” from Psalm 32:8-9:
“I hear the Lord saying, ‘I will stay close to you, instructing and guiding you along the pathway for your life. I will advise you along the way and lead you forth with My eyes as your guide. So don’t make it difficult; don’t be stubborn when I take you where you have not been before. Don’t make me tug you and pull you along. Just come with Me!’” (TPT)
And yesterday, His eye guided me to something He is trying to get at in us, inclusive certainly of me! I picked up the book Jacob I Have Loved by the late Lance Lambert and began to read right where I had left off a couple of months ago:
Jacob and This Promised Land
“The Lord had confirmed with Jacob the covenant He had made with His grandfather and father in which He had promised the land of Canaan as an everlasting possession to them and to their seed. The problem was not Jacob’s hearing. Jacob had heard the Lord and believed Him. The problem was Jacob!”
“He was a man with such strength of natural character, such fleshly zeal, and such untiring energy that he could not leave anything to the Lord. He had to supervise the Lord’s work and make sure it was fulfilled. Men and women who have this kind of powerful soul energy are unable to wait for the Lord. If the Lord does not work, they will work for Him, with disastrous consequences. We see this clearly in Jacob. In the work that God wanted to do, Jacob was a trial to Him. Spontaneously and unconsciously, he was an obstacle to the fulfillment of God’s purpose. Indeed, it was the abounding grace of God that brought Jacob to that fulfillment, in spite of his own efforts to work in it. We must always remember that working with God is vastly different to working for God. When you work with the Lord, you are under His supervision and empowered by His strength. When you work for the Lord, you ‘do your own thing’ and seek His support.”
There it was: soul strength. Though with three-plus decades now of walking with the Lord as my Lord, resulting in significant understanding and experience of the believer’s cross, albeit the very hard way in certain lessons, I heard Him clearly: “More gentle breakings are needed to get you fully in synch with ME + the Godhead. You are, yet, getting ahead of Me sometimes with your own good ideas. I am the Captain.”
[I reference a few key books for anyone learning the way of the cross: The Normal Christian Life by Watchman Nee; The Breaking of the Outer Man and the Release of the Spirit also by Nee; Dying to Live by Jessie Penn-Lewis; The Cross of Calvary How to understand the work of the cross also by Penn-Lewis; The Cross, and The Unity of Vision and Ministry in The Church, Which Is His Body by T. Austin Sparks; The Glorious Liberty of the Children of God by Stephen Kaung]
This morning, the Lord focused on Romans 7:4-6, with Witness Lee’s keen notes in The Recovery Version of The New Testament. Our Bridegroom-King’s aim in all this: the full love union with His people by way of the successful marriage within in every bridal soul. Romans 7, as we know, addresses failure in the walking out of new creation life. The sin nature is in the ascendancy because self-effort still reigns. [See Romans 7:14-8:2.] As it’s been experienced, whenever a believer is in performance mode in any way, it’s self that is in the driver’s seat, and intimate union as beloved to Beloved, both son to Abba and wife to Yeshua Hamaschiach, is blocked.
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