Possession Rights

Why are we creatures so in need of assurance that we can take from our Master’s hand what He is offering?

Part of the answer may lie in Proverbs 30:8, where the prayer recognizes the integral elements to partaking of what God would give:
“Keep deceptions and lies far from me…
Feed me with the food that is my portion…”
It would seem that the lies which are nearest are often what hinder our receiving the most dramatically, until the ‘food’ He has furnished is what we most question as our right to take.

As 1 Timothy 4 explains, deceptions undermine a healthy receiving of His gifts: “…paying attention to deceitful spirits… men… advocate abstaining from foods which God has created to be gratefully shared in by those who believe in and know the truth” (v. 1-3). Becoming entangled in the lie that we “cannot” receive the portion He has imparted, we deny ourselves what is by “right” ours to eat and drink (1 Corinthians 9:4). We recoil in distrust of the One who ‘gives food to all flesh’ (Psalm 136:25) because, in a deceived state, we believe that our own worthiness is the determining factor in whether we are ‘fed.’ And, in time, we reach the point of relinquishing our legitimate claims; of surrendering the gifts and vocation He has carefully selected for us.

For Moses, the concession of his rightful position came when he looked at his own skills (see Exodus 4:1, 10). Somewhere along the way, his own abilities spoke more loudly than his calling. His concession, “Please, Lord, now send the message by whomever You will” (Ex. 4:13), exhibited his greater mindfulness of himself than of his Maker’s power through him.

Is it not when we are “downward looking,” when our eyes are focused on ourselves, that we most easily believe those deceptions that our hands were not fashioned to receive; that we are not capable of accepting, whether blessing or responsibility, what God would place upon us?

And yet, He is unceasing in leading us to take hold of what is ours, for ‘the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable’ (Romans 11:29). He comes to us, beckoning us to heed the truth, that we might - stepping out against the lies - seize that which He’d already made our own.

For the gifts we are given, tailored personally to us, are nothing short of divinely crafted, based not upon our needs even, but upon His desire to give. Indeed, anything we receive is from the God in whom ‘every good and perfect gift’ originates (James 1:17); whose intentions toward us are for our wholeness and wellbeing (Jeremiah 29:11); who works even evil to our good (Genesis 50:20). He pleads with us, presses in on us, until we come into agreement with the truth of 1 Timothy 4:4 – “For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with gratitude…”

It is when we align ourselves with holy will that we are separated from the lie that we are ‘unable’ to receive the food which is our ‘portion;’ and it is also then that we discover how, because He so passionately wants us able to receive, what we had hesitated to take remains ours to accept ~

For, however much we would hasten to see our own unworthiness, however much we would question why He would bestow upon us any good, forfeiture was never necessary. Indeed, what He has allotted us is ours to take. He would speak to us, as He did to Jeremiah (32:7-8), over our rightful ownership claims, until the lies are shattered by His reassurance: “‘…for you have the right of possession and the redemption is yours…’”

Unreachable

Have many times known the handiwork of my having severed myself from God by letting fear or distrust creep in. Have all too often experienced a sadness which could have been averted had I only been staying closely beside Him --

“Deep is the soul, is the space I control
Is the one thing I can call as mine
Deeper the cold when He's far from my soul…”
~ “Under the Floor”/Switchfoot

Yet what makes me marvel, in those moments of chill, is not the vacuum which seems to yawn between my soul and His presence, but the way there is still within a pressing hunger. When nothing in me could bridge that span, there swells, in a desperate waiting, the hopeful anticipation that I will be “reached” by Him:

“You will call, and I will answer You;
You will long for the work of Your hands” (Job 14:15).

The gracious moment is in the wait, when we discover that He is unreachable to us, and we must bow down in utter helplessness. The purest gift is in His letting us see ourselves as we truly are: vulnerable, and entirely dependent, because it is only then that we understand what it is to be the ‘work of His hands…’

…that we are fashioned by His will (Revelation 4:11),
…that we belong to Him (Ephesians 2:10), and
…that we are never to be forsaken (Psalm 138:8).

It is in that introspective moment, when we see ourselves without our blinding pretenses, that we recognize ourselves to be weak, in need; ‘wholly incomplete’ apart from Him. Only then can we appreciate that the void we know is a fuller definition of who we are without Him.

And yet, the even greater grace is that He hasn't left us ambivalently wandering in the darkness we’d chosen, but instead, has poured into us a reciprocal longing. Rather than letting the desire for our restoration reside exclusively in His Being, He has let us also partake of that will, lending our clinging souls the avenue by which we permit Him to inhabit us again: an insatiable hunger to be called by Him, and to see His presence returned to us.

Holy God, who will not relinquish ‘the work of His hands,’ has granted us a restlessness which drives us to Him, a longing from which our souls cannot escape. When we are incapable of bringing Him back to us, still He has left within us the deeply-rooted utterance which, renewed in His coming, cries out most passionately to Him, “We have waited for You eagerly; Your Name, even Your memory, is the desire of our souls” (Isaiah 26:8)!

Tools to Prove

Nothing in the world seeks anything but to satisfy “self.” Am struck by how odd the phrase then sounds to hear it said that Christ purified us ‘for Himself’ (Titus 2:4). For one, there’s something implicitly strange to think that supreme Divinity could be beneficiary of our salvation; for another, it goes against the grain to think that His motive was for anything but us.

For whom was salvation then?

Clearly, we become recipients of His immortality (‘…he who believes has eternal life’ ~ John 6:47); we are reconnected to the Source of Life. We are also shown the grace of being returned to His presence (we have the ‘hope’ which enters ‘within the veil’ ~ Hebrews 6:19); we are able to come before God, Perfect Righteousness, because covered with His merciful Blood. And we are granted His righteous favor (Christ ‘became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption’ ~ 1 Corinthians 1:30).

So why does the passage from Titus denote that something of our salvation is “for Him?” Why does Isaiah 59:16 say that, “His own arm brought salvation to Him…” (NASB), or “His own arm worked salvation for Him” (NIV)? Why has the psalmist worded it that, “His right hand and His holy arm have gained the victory [accomplished salvation] for Him” (Ps. 98:1)? What is there of any value to Him in His having brought us rescue, deliverance?

The only good which seems to square with His love [1 Corinthians 13] is that, somehow in His redeeming us, in working us out of sin’s death-like grip and into a saving knowledge of who He is, He is meeting our needs. It’s as though His greatest intent toward us is to see that we’re re-fitted to communion with Him – not to restore victory to His design of these finite creatures, but to address our deepest hungers, and the core of our brokenness. When man seeks to acquire for himself, it is God's desire to offer Himself entirely which, so contrary to our understanding, strikes discordant.

And yet, what Jesus’ heart, bared and bleeding on that cross, shows most lavishly, is that what He counts His benefit, “the joy set before Him” (Hebrews 12:2), is not that He receives communion, or even reciprocation, but that He can give His utmost for His Beloved.

Somehow the greatest joy to Him was never in retaining any temporal good (which all too often defines our driving goals), but specifically to use those “possessions” as tools to convey His true motivations toward us. Somehow His purpose, His foremost intent, was always to take that which was in His hands – His power, His glory, His very Life – and deliberately lay all down, for us.

As proof. Proof of how genuine His love; proof that He would seek not His own (1 Corinthians 13:5), but give preference to us (Philippians 2:3-4). Evidence through which He could demonstrate His desire toward us. For He laid aside self-will and took up deprivation; He set down glory and took on degradation; He cast aside honor and accepted the mantle of scorn. How our Savior sought to empty His hands of all He possessed, if only we would be returned to them.

It would seem that more pleasing was it to Him to forfeit heaven’s riches than the clay and breath He’d given being; more desirable to Him to relinquish His rights than to leave our frail spirits ‘in the dust.’

And somewhere in His forfeiture of all He should have held dear, He speaks in resounding tones which cause us to understand that, in His accepting their void, in being stripped of all He could have claimed by right, still He desired us more ~