To all on the Circle, I pass on a letter I wrote to someone dear to me today, that I felt might be of benefit to all. May it add strength to you in the hard place.

Be blessed in your continued overcoming pursuit!

                    
May 30, 2016 

  

Dear ________,

A few thoughts to encourage you along the way......

In order to truly live by faith, the power of knowing has to be increasingly crushed. The more we believe, the less we are given to know to depend on.

In the place of yielding up our knowledge, the only knowledge that remains is the knowing of Him by the Spirit. It is the inner knowing of eternal life.

In this life, there will be a greater harvest of questions than there will be of answers. Most answers will await our full glorification. The challenge of faith is to surrender the questions in exchange for the greater knowing of Him. In the end, and at that time, He will give account for all the answers to the "whys" of this life that were never satisfied.

As you know, in the course of believing in Him over each and every thing, we undergo much tribulation because of the many things that do not appear as believed for in answer to our faith. Depending on the matter, the psychological and emotional pain can be very intense. Psychological death is very real. It is the death of the soul---that place past which the faith "confession" can no longer sustain us---the place of being forced to let go, after you were told to hold on for dear life, and that holding on cost you everything you had. It is the death we were told we would have to die if we were to follow Him in faith.

But it is there in that place that we are brought to a resting in an otherworldly peace and hope in knowing of Him alone---of Christ and Him crucified. Entrance into that place becomes the true miracle in every situation. It is the greatest miracle....

...Not the provision. Not the healing. Not the relational restoration. Not the answered prayer. Not the fulfilled prophetic word---or anything else we were expecting or giving our lives to believe for. Those are not the greatest miracle. The greatest miracle is what happens when the soul enters into the unquenchable rest of knowing Him before and without the appearance of the things over which our souls are being tried. 

The eventual provision or healing or restoration are never and never were in doubt, because God is sure and limitless in His abilities. They were never "impossible." What is always in doubt is whether we will enter into His rest out of the torturing paralysis of the inner fears and mental anxieties that stalk us in the face of our wait amidst all those evidences and voices contrary to our expectation in Him.

For it is we who are on trial, never the Lord. Entrance into and abiding in the peace of knowing Him in the absence of all other knowledge---that is the truly "impossible" thing that God does. To see the man that can stand at the end of a life overwhelmingly pockmarked by calamity due to faith who is yet found in the place of the Lord's inner peace---that is the miracle that heaven prizes most. It's what defines the true overcomer.

We can receive of the answered prayers, yet without ever having entered into the deeper rest of knowing Him that our stressful wait was designed to purchase. The answer can come, even that seemingly impossible "resurrection of Lazarus," yet our innate fears may still be left intact, simply awaiting exposure until the next calamity. And in that case, the answered prayer will have finally profited us nothing.

The things of this life over which we believe, though they may be fulfilled under the sun, all finally pass away. But the entrance into the peace of knowing Him over our faith tribulations we keep forever. We cannot take our answered prayers for this life's needs, desires and visions over into the next life. But what we entered into of His rest underneath all crisis will abide with us forever. That rest will form the platform of our station on the other side when we will finally be able to live our eternal life to its unrestricted full.

For this cause, you never want to miss your opportunity to become partaker of the greatest miracle within each crisis situation. Every crisis of faith holds the promise of that singular miracle of rest beyond knowing, if we will commit ourselves to enter it. All other fulfilment of prophetic promise or answered prayer is just the gravy. To Him, they never were the big deal.

Every day, we only need to release the accumulated pain, and receive the miracle of His rest. All else will take care of itself---the answers received here, and those still to come. All the opposing voices within and without will be silenced, and will give account to Him that judges justly at the last day. God will defend your soul in the dock. And the peace you enter will make up for everything that yet appears lacking of His promise until the final day of reckoning.

Remember, in the face of the defeat of your expectation, you are only a failure if you agree that your faith itself has been defeated. You define your own failure by your agreement. You do not have to agree that you "have" failed or to "be" a failure because your expectation failed. (Faith is more than the power of expectation.) This too is part of the greatest miracle available to you. You can agree with your greater knowing of Him and with His unassailable acceptance and approval of you against your defeated expectation. Your life and resurrection are always found there in Him beyond the cross of the defeated expectation.

If you can just remember all that I am telling you this very moment, you will have everything you need to make it safely to the other shore of the Red Sea in every situation as it plays out before you---every relational and situational crisis. You will be led forth in peace. And the trees of the forest will applaud your procession. Most of all, you will realize what was always your greatest desire, which was to become like your true Father and your true Elder Brother in everything, and to enter into their Union!

Receive His peace now.  

 

Love,

 

Chris Anderson
New Meadow Neck, Rhode Island

First Love Ministry
- a ministry of Anglemar Fellowship
http://www.firstloveministry.org

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