The Path to holiness, righteousness, purity and maturity as Christians, may have plateaus but possesses no destinations.  It is not a mathematically similar, linear-learning paradigm that produces a verifiable, end result.  The end result, the final destination are beyond this world.  In fact the learning, work and growth doesn’t even stop there but appears to continue throughout eternity with the Lord.  Praise Him for His incomprehensible plan and thank Him for its revealing glimpses He has provided in His Word.

SELF RIGHTEOUSNESS is the failure or conscious refusal to understand that Christianity is a LIFETIME, continuous-growth process.  The Bible is a living document and will continue to produce new insight, discernment and wisdom to the seeking observer.  This world will continue to provide us the same lessons allowing a live platform to test our growth in the Holy Spirit.  This is the job from which we should never want to retire, because to do so is to become stagnant in our walk with the Lord.  Yes we become more like Jesus but that only prepares us for the more difficult work and circumstances remaining before us.  I have come full circle and find myself remembering where my conscious walk with the Lord began.

When I began this journey it was out of the excruciating pain brought on by my charade of victories.  That moment when a man falsely believes that this world possesses the silver lining, the gold at the end of the rainbow.  Yes, i had achieved.  The small script is appropriate in describing the tainted shadow of my real self, bloated, stinking, puffed up, being all that it could ever become in the confinement of this dimensional plane.  My misery was complete, thankfully so, as i realized there were no heights to obtain only greater depths in which to descend.  Without God’s understanding and response to my desperate cry I would have become liken to the beast which I unwittingly served.

Thanks be to the Lord of Lords, the Ancient of Days for answering the morbid tears of this worthless character with compassion, something akin to the first visions of a blind man.  i had a conceptual knowledge that somewhere out there other people had experiences with God and ignorantly called myself a Christian.  How can a man believe what he does not understand?  And although i prayed that God would save me i barely understood His precepts, history or nature.  Thank the Lord that He understood me.

i used to look upon the road to my salvation with shame.  However, now i am grateful for the tragedy and the hopelessness of my lost state, because like the woman who wept at the Lord’s feet wiping her tears with her hair, the Lord forgave my enormous sin-debt.  i used to envy those who had lived pure lives and now I just admire them.  my salvation is precious to me because i have been to the depths of depravity and know from whence i have been rescued.

i revisit those moments not because i have not accepted forgiveness and continue to listen the enemy’s condemnation, but rather because humility is rooted in the roots of my salvation.  Christian maturity is not a destination but an ever expanding circle of growth where previous experiences are observed with each increasing orbital pass.

This time I only need reflect upon the depths and remember the associative pain.  I am no longer that man and cannot join him in his pain but I can understand it.  I see his mistakes and also delight in that moment of glorifying epiphany when his cries to Jesus were answered.

The greatest moments of our lives are often those times we would have wished to forget.  That is the glorious God that we serve.  When this world abandons us at our worthless worst He meets us there in tragedy with love and forgiveness.  That is worth revisiting, each time I see it for the miracle that it truly was.  No tears this time around only awe of the Lord and thanks.  Praise you my Awesome God, to You be all the glory, honor and worship.  In Jesus’ name, Amen.

http://youtu.be/DtX6Ois9zVw   Commentary Joy trumps happiness 11/19/11