“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.” (John 16:12)
Jesus tells His disciples they are not ready to bear many things He wants to tell them. His words have weight. They are heavy and they are not able to “carry” them. You cannot carry what you will not receive. So let’s take a look at Truth that you may not be receiving because until you accept and receive and begin to carry foundational Truth, how will you carry what is built upon it?
For example, when you sin, do you withdraw from God or run to Him? Most of us withdraw. We feel guilty and condemned and unworthy, blah, blah, blah. While we should not treat sin in a permissive way, neither should we be weighed down by it. When sin abounds, grace does much more abound. You will not exhaust the grace of God anymore than you will ever drain the ocean with a thimble.
If you will not forgive yourself you are saying that your standards are some how higher than God’s. When you sin, repent and move on. 1 John 3:21 says that “if our heart condemns us not, then have we confidence toward God.” The opposite is also true that if our heart does condemn us, which happens so often when we fall short, then we lack confidence toward God. When we lack confidence toward God, we shy away. We avoid His presence just like Adam did in the garden. We might not be naked, but we feel naked.
But God seeks us out. He clothes us with righteousness. He welcomes us into His presence. The times we live in remind me of Habakkuk; as one reader pointed out on our blog, “justice is perverted.” Calamity stands at the door (Isn’t that what Barack Obama keeps telling us?) and God is saying to us what He said to Habakkuk… “Behold you among the nations, and regard, and wonder and be astonished: for I will work a work in your days, which you will not believe, though it be told you.” (Habakkuk 1:5) This is essentially what the Lord spoke to me some time ago when He asked me if I would believe Him if He told me what was coming.
We read in Habakkuk’s day, God was warning the wicked. He spoke specifically to those who increase what is not theirs. That is a reference to taking more and more of what does not belong to you. “Woe to him that loads himself up with promissory notes for usury.” Hmmm. Know of any institutions that have loaded themselves up with promissory notes for usury? Can you say sub-prime mortgage? Think it’s not usury? You don’t understand finance or God’s Word on the matter.
So what does God say will happen? “Will not your creditors rise up suddenly? Will they not awaken who oppress you? And you will become their booty.” This is actually happening on two levels. Personal home foreclosures are at an epic scale and about to increase dramatically. Secondly, now that we borrow money from China and they are becoming disenchanted with the strength of the almighty dollar, I wonder how they might extract leverage. But I digress.
The Lord has some mighty important things to say to this generation. Who will be like Habakkuk who said he would “stand upon his post of observation and station myself on the tower and watch to see what He will say within me…” I will stand on my post, but I beg you to stand on yours and watch and see what the Lord will say.
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