I sat there on my Army tuff box drinking whiskey, and
enjoying the warm, sunny fall afternoon.
It was October 12 and I had made it.
As I sat reflecting on my journey and life a phrase entered my ear as if
in a whisper, “Friend of God.” God was pleased with me. I started to feel a closeness to him that I
had never felt before. I wanted for
nothing. He was my Shepard and we were
buddies to the extent a Man can be Friend of God.
I looked up the phrase on my iPhone. Moses, David, and a few of the prophets were
called Friend of God in the Bible, but the more interestingly I found a group
of Medieval monks that called themselves the Friends of God that nearly became
a separate sect of the Catholic church.
These Men endured war, famine, and bubonic plague, and their trials
helped them to grow spiritually. They
grew in faith until they were complete, and lacking in nothing. (James 1:2-4) They started a renaissance and revival along
the Rhine River. One of their greatest
influences was Meister Eckhart who taught people to surrender all to Christ,
and to detach one’s self from material possessions, to embrace trials. That is basically what I had just done. I left everything I knew behind, and had only
my truck, a broken computer, a phone, some clothes, and a few personal
items.
Detaching yourself from material possessions doesn’t mean
you should live in poverty. God asked
Abraham to sacrifice his only son Isaac, his pride and joy, and when God saw
that Abraham was going to go through with it, God told him to stop. Because of Abraham’s faith and righteousness
God decided to make a covenant with Abraham, and Abraham birthed a nation which
included David and Jesus. If you are
willing to detach yourself from the things you love most for God, and live for
him, he will give you great power and prosperity through Jesus. You can make a personal covenant with
him.
These Friends of God in Germany were the predecessors to
Martin Luther and the Protestant reformation.
They promoted individual Bible reading and taught that the everyday
hardships and labors and trials of the common folk could be used to help
develop faith and patience as explained in the book of James. Jesus
was the son of God, but he was also a man, a man who received his pay as a
laborer, a carpenter, working under the hot sun long hours a day. I image even the Son of God needed to be
conditioned to endure and to faithfully fulfill God’s plan. I suffered long the last four or five
years. I guess God helped me tap into
something in my patience suffering.
In Revelation it talks of those who come out of a great
tribulation, and have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of
the lamb. (Revelation 7:14) Being white means being innocent like a
virgin bride in her white dress on her wedding day. God frequently calls the Israelites
prostitutes, committing adultery as a metaphor for their idolatry against
him. God allows the Israelites to be
enslaved by the Babylonians as a way to punish them for their wickedness, and
condition them to do his work. After
seventy years of captivity God calls them back to their holy land, and says how
beautiful they are, like a virgin bride on her wedding day. Through our trials and tribulations we can be
made pure and innocent. Good deeds do
not make up for sin, but through patient endurance and suffering we learn to
overcome sin, to let go the idols of our heats, to appreciate and have a heart
for those who also suffer, and to build faith and patience becoming complete
and lacking in nothing.
Over the next couple weeks God shared a lot with me through
his spirit. I would read something that
struck a chord with me in my Bible, or remember something I had learned growing
up, and then search for in on the internet or in the library at MTSU. Every day I would have my mind blown and
perceptions challenged by what I was learning.
The enemy’s lies started to melt under my gaze and I started to see the
world as it truly is, and especially my past, and how God had been preparing me
for this.
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