Leadership

There Is One Who Never Forsakes

by Terry Barlow
01/08/15
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    Revisiting the truism that there are such ones as “character casualties” in our lives, who were only present for a limited period of time as a divine instrument to bring to the surface certain of our character defects which were then to be skimmed away like dross in the refiner’s fire. We said that these persons don’t tend to hang around in our lives because of the unpleasantness of the ungodliness they have observed in us, nor do we tend to linger in others’ lives when we have been used in a similar way and observed certain things.

  Not everyone is even meant to stay in our lives throughout, but the ones who do help provide a kind of needed continuity in the fabric, like a thread running through the tapestry of our lives, helping to hold it together The few ones who do “stick it out” are certainly exceptional people, because they offer a glimpse of the faithfulness of Jesus Himself, Who never forsakes us because of what He knows to be true of us, Who also reminds us that He is not finished with us yet! (Hebrews 13 v.5 is a triple negative: (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) He never, never, never forsakes us!) "Don’t despair," He is likely to say, "it’s true you are not yet where you are meant to be, but it’s also true that you are not where and what you once were!"  He remains with and within us for better or for worse.

 A reminder of what we are in ourselves can serve to drive us deeper into the far more encouraging vision of who we are in Christ. And part of what we are in Christ is patient. And part of the meaning of one of the Greek words for patient “hupmone’ is “one who remains behind when others have departed.”  In John 15 remember that it is the one who remains in the Vine who goes on to the  third level of fruit-bearing, that of bearing much fruit.   Once when travelling in the Greek Islands (not far from Patmos where John had been exiled) I had what was probably the most powerful dream of my life.

  I was in a movie theater in the dream reading the credits at the end of the movie and listening to the music. Most of those in the theater were exiting. As they made their way up the aisles there was a tremendous explosion from within the screen which seemed almost nuclear in its size and magnitude as it created a vacuum jerking almost all those in the theater out of their bodies and into itself, those whose backs had been turned to the screen. Even though I was facing the screen and holding the back of the seat in front of me I was sucked out of my seat into mid-air! I gasped and then fell back into my seat as if my soul was returning to my body.  Then I observed that the aijsles were littered with piles of human corpses.

  I’m not sure why this memory surfaces now except possibly to say that many of us are “leaving the theater” to soon in respect to our hopes and expectations for others, and maybe even for ourselves.