But the children struggled together within her [kicking and shoving one another]; and she said, “If it is so [that the Lord has heard our prayer], why then am I this way?” So she went to inquire of the Lord [praying for an answer]. The Lord said to her, “[The founders of] two nations are in your womb; And the separation of two nations has begun in your body; The one people shall be stronger than the other; And the older shall serve the younger.”
(Genesis 25:22, 23, AMP)
The Church calls us to enter Lent through the gate of forgiveness,1 that we may fast united with His Body.
The lamentable reality within this Body is that the members strive with one another, kicking and shoving one another, each desiring to be the first, the best, the more perfect; and to do so, the one must press down, trample, oppress, or cancel the other. Separations and schisms—rifts in His body are what exist on every level from personal to corporate to universal. The entire fallen mind is a database of wrongs that one believes he’s suffered at the hands of his brethren. How great is the need for this whole database to be purged in full, to be totally wiped out. How great is the need to be liberated from enslavement to people.
Behold, how good and how pleasant it is
For brothers to dwell together in unity!
It is like the precious oil [of consecration] poured on the head,
Coming down on the beard,
Even the beard of Aaron,
Coming down upon the edge of his [priestly] robes [consecrating the whole body].
It is like the dew of [Mount] Hermon
Coming down on the hills of Zion;
For there the Lord has commanded the blessing: life forevermore.
(Psalm 133, AMP)
Our Christ, the Anointed One, has a viscera teeming with mercies, desiring to pour abundant blessings—honey and fatness—upon His entire Body in the place of its poverty and misery. He desires to command life forevermore upon His entire Body in the place of its mortality and deadness. However, it is the unitedness of His Body which attracts and opens the way for for this precious oil to be poured from the Head (Him) to the whole Body. He greatly longs to feed His Body with heavenly holy honey—the revelations of His heavenly divine mysteries which indeed satiate and give one the ability to trample on anything that would stand in the way of being totally transformed into a new creature. This is the gate at the threshold of Lent.
The pitiable problem is that when the Lord outstretches His hand to feed me with His precious heavenly holy honey, it meets the bitterness of strife—the kicking and shoving—gurgling and welling within me. Any honey given is mixed then with the bitterness, and it becomes in the end either neutral, as really a nothing that vaporizes away, or becomes overtaken by the bitterness and dissolves. I try to attract the honey again, while yet holding onto this bitterness—but it can’t work. It truly cannot work. What a burden and bondage this bitterness is, indeed a heavy yoke. It is what blocks His Most Holy Spirit from entering and dwelling inside me.
“But you shall live by your sword, And serve your brother; However it shall come to pass when you break loose [from your anger and hatred], That you will tear his yoke off your neck [and you will be free of him].” So Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing with which his father blessed him; and Esau said in his heart, “The days of mourning for my father are very near; then I will kill my brother Jacob.”
(Genesis 27:40, 41, AMP)
20 years later . . .
And the messengers returned to Jacob, saying, We came to your brother Esau; and now he is [on the way] to meet you, and four hundred men are with him. Then Jacob was greatly afraid and distressed . . . [He prayed saying,] “Deliver me, I pray You, from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau; for I fear him, lest he come and smite [us all], the mothers with the children.”
(Genesis 32:6, 7, 11, AMP)
Then Jacob crossed over [the stream] ahead of them and bowed himself to the ground seven times [bowing and moving forward each time], until he approached his brother. But Esau ran to meet him and embraced him, and hugged his neck and kissed him, and they wept [for joy].
(Genesis 33:3, 4, AMP)
Am I not as Esau in my anger and hatred, in living by the sword of my ego that slashes at my brethren?! I will remain enslaved under my brother while his blessing shines—for this is the Lord’s economy: for my brother to shine, that I may be pressed down, grow restless from this yoke, and break loose from my anger and hatred. Then I will finally break free from his yoke upon my neck, from being enslaved to him. With all the innumerable blessings the Lord has showered on me, how much more ought I forgive, break free from hatred, and moreover bless my brethren?!
Lord, Your inheritance is heavenly honey and fatness with which You visit me and outstretch Your hand to feed me and satiate me, yet when it enters me when I have the bitterness of the sphere of the atmosphere of the far country inside me, my being inside me churns with violence, just as two nations striving with one another to be birthed (as Jacob and Esau)—the nation of the heavens and the nation of the far country—the latter being Esau who lived in his father’s house and had the birthright and the inheritance but denied it and despised it, and the former being Jacob, the remnant, who sacrificed everything and even his own life for this inheritance—the genuine Church as the beautiful bride and daughter of the heavens, and the full-blown fallen Church of the world which bears the “form of godliness but [denies] its power.” (2 Timothy 3:5, AMP). Isn’t this the problem of Your Church now, Lord? It is teeming with strife and hides under the cloak of sonship to You, but is void of Your power, Your holiness, Your atmosphere. It does not know You, Lord. Please lead me to every bit of my inheritance which I’ve rendered powerless or inactive because of the strife within me. Lead me to know You, Lord.
- Forgiveness Sunday ↩︎
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