Abide with Me

The thing about feelings is they are exactly that: the voice of the flesh (what you feel). They very rarely give voice to truth and when they attempt to it is usually distorted or exaggerated or twisted. Flesh gives birth to flesh but Spirit gives birth to Spirit. Flesh cannot be trusted because it very often speaks to its own perceived needs and gives voice to your sins.

Repent.

But Spirit gives birth to Spirit. And the Holy Spirit prompts us and produces in us things of the Spirit.

As a Christian in the darkness that continues to deepen as we approach the eschaton, we sometimes come face to face with that great chasm of death and life, satan and Jesus, damnation and eternal life. Of course we should come in contact with it on a regular basis with daily contrition and repentance. But sometimes we see it, and feel it on a much deeper level...when flesh AND Spirit collide. We shouldn't be surprised by this, after all we are at all times sinner and saint and the two are in constant warfare.

Recently I spent a couple of very awful days wrestling with this. I asked, "What is the difference between those that fall away and those that don't?" What if I fall away?

During that weekend a friend found me pouring through the Gospels. I was looking for the story of the Good Samaritan. A different friend had texted me encouraging me with the words that when all else leave us for dead, Jesus, our good Samaritan, comes to us...even if we are too half dead to know it.

We are never alone. The Holy Spirit prompts us and produces in us the things of God....and I hunger and thirst for them thanks be to His Word that is living and active since the day of my Baptism. And when all else fails, and when it feels like I have nothing and no one left, and I am staring death in the face, and I feel like I will topple into the darkness of death and damnation...Jesus is the one who carries my beaten and dead in sin body unto healing and life and He is who I cling to, even when I'm angry and thrashing like the most ornery of 3 year olds does against his mama, even then I know, as does the 3 yr old to his mama, that He is the one who cares for me and always will no matter how angry and awful I feel.