Resistance to the furious love of God

Hello, dearly loved one!! How ARE you today? I got your phone message! I should be here most times this week if you can call again.

So I read chapter 2 yesterday, and am just sitting in the middle of a roomfull of wonder at how this is what I need and what I have been not grasping, what's been wrong with me the past month and a half. Part of me is ashamed for having heard the message so much, I should have grasped it; I've held it for a moment at a time; I even remember specific moments at Capernwray... but I let go again. Maybe I should stop trying to hold on to grace and instead start floating in an infinite pool of it.

Have you read any Flannery O'Connor? Do. The short story Manning mentions on pp 43 to 44 stands out in my memory. It's a good one -- cuts to the heart of hypocrisy so violently, shows its ugliness. Tears off the falsely attractive mask of earning one's way to God's heart...

"The struggle itself is exhausting. The legalists can never live up to the expectations they project on God." I haven't thought of myself as a legalist... no, I'm not--for other people. Yet for myself, within myself there is a "resistance to the furious love of God." There is a staring at spiritual heroes and a hearing all words as "YOU SHOULD" and "YOU NEED TO." But you know what? I'm never going to be a spiritual giant by my strength or power or greatness. I'm a broken person.

And oh the greatest biggest most indescribable joy in the world comes over me when I imagine that being all right, me the broken person being given to God and accepted by God, and then even used by God. Not because I'm doing anything right, praying right or fasting right or saying the right words or being impressive. But because HE IS GOD.

I want to give in to that sense of immense relief.

I pray this for you too, my Melanie.

Drinking grace straight is not about us and our drinking abilities. Lord Jesus, move me toward this...