FIRST LOVE MINISTRY : Fearlessly Helpless

To be emptied is to be brought to the place of personal helplessness—of no strength, no power, no wisdom. It is at the point of emptied helplessness that the Lord arrives to demonstrate His superiority—oft exceeding any prior comprehension of what He might have done concerning us. Bible story after story after story reveals the pattern of being led to helplessness ahead of the Lord's arousal to the deliverance.

To be emptied unto helplessness is to be led through a path of inward death punctuated by perpetual surrender and yielding. This surrender of strength and wisdom dooms one's very power of expectation in the Lord—that is, his own power of hope.^[2] Yet ironically, such is the objective of the process of real faith. For this cause we are exhorted to be “faithful unto death.”^[3] We believe for life, not death, yet must pass through the valley of death's shadow to win the life crown that finally vindicates the faith. In many, perhaps even most life events, our crowns are told they must await a trans-veil revelation from underneath the altar,^[4] assuming we did not earlier cast them away.^[5]

Faith's path of death takes us through warfare with one particular mortal enemy. It is the giant named fear. Faith first elicits and must directly overcome this enemy en route to the helplessness on which the Lord openly performs His victory. The path is awkward because it is contrary to our first expectation in Him. We immediately believe faith will straightway yield God's strength, power and wisdom, bridging us to the deliverance and the answer. But that is only true where faith has already previously overcome this foe. It is not true at life’s never confronted thresholds.

At new untested thresholds, a contrary cycle leading to deeper helplessness ensues. Faith requires us to give up our faculties' control over the matter, to obey a deeper convictional Voice. The Voice bids us do the unnatural and the unwise that risks our safety. In giving up the control, we next feel vulnerable, unprotected—completely exposed to certain disaster.

Out of this vortex of vulnerability, fear's fiery black specter arises to challenge—to yell, to scream, to threaten,

“No, you fool! Turn back! Don't go this way. You will surely die. You will surely lose it all. God will not be there for you.

Go back and be a good slave to your previous wisdom and that of your relatives—your doctor, your bank, your attorney, your government—if you hope to survive this at all.”

It is here, in this one critical blazing moment of fear’s provocation, that the Lord's still small inner Voice whispers, offering the path to victorious, fearless helplessness on which His saving power and wisdom manifestly arise. All He says is,

“Fear not. Look at Me.^[6] Only believe.”^[7]

In the instant the inner heart turns from the scream to look only unto Him,^[8] fear’s yoke is broken^[9] and faith emerges into fearless helplessness—that calm repose where “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come”^[10] any longer matters. And that is the moment it's over. And that is the moment the Lord’s salvation appears.

This meditation is written in view of the new portal of global shaking we have reached. As the Lord makes finally ready to appear to the earnestly waiting, only one thing is of issue. It is not “What’s going to happen to the nation?” or “Will we still have any freedoms left?” or “How is God going to take care of us if everything collapses?” Nor is it over how we will exit mortality—whether we translate out, or are martyred, or simply expire.

The only thing that matters is whether our love leads via breakthrough faith into fearless helplessness at each and every remaining life crisis point. For once we have penetrated through fear’s veil unto Jesus to where no consequence of faith matters, we have there accomplished the necessary death from which God arises again to answer us, to deliver us and to finally appear to us—from the inside out.

The road to the Lord's appearing is paved ahead with life-point hurdle after hurdle leading to deeper fearless helplessness. Those strongest in faith as His appearing nears are those who, for the sake of tirelessly pursuing Him within, have become the most helpless to save and plan for themselves without in face of the new threatening unknowns. “For when I am weak, then am I strong.”^[11] The new global shaking is designed to perfect and finish that very faith in those waiting for Him.

Let us diligently labor day by day under the new duress to cross all remaining doorways into the helpless rest necessary to being swallowed up of His Glorified Immortality.

Chris Anderson
New Meadow Neck, R.I.

[1] Jas. 3:17

[2] II Cor. 1:8

[3] Rev. 2:10

[4] Rev. 6:9-11

[5] Heb. 10:35; Rev. 3:11; II Jn. 8

[6] (Ac. 3:4)

[7] Mk. 5:36

[8] Heb. 12:2

[9] Isa. 10:27

[10] Rom. 8:38

[11] II Cor. 12:10