Crown College

I bought a sweatshirt at Goodwill the other day.  I have been wanting another grey hoodie, but I'm frugal, so I usually shop secondhand.  It often seems like the luck of the draw when you have something specific in mind and you're looking for it in a secondhand clothing store.  So when I ran across this one the other day, the right size, right color, with the words "Crown College" on it, I was a happy girl.  I don't know if other people read messages written on my clothing, but I like to carry a message just in case, and this one had potential.  I didn't know anything about Crown College, but I decided this was a prophetic sweatshirt anyway.
When I got home I did a search and discovered Crown College is in Minnesota (presumably where the sweatshirt was originally sold).  I'm sure it's a fine school, but when I saw this shirt my thoughts were that "Crown College" is very much a spiritual journey.  Think of it as another name for "School of the Holy Spirit."  It's the training grounds for the crown of life awaiting those who are approved after persevering under trial (James 1:12).
The other morning I was helping with a task I do not particularly enjoy.  It was a task of service, and although in general I find joy in serving people, I am not yet spiritually mature enough to enjoy every type of service apparently!  I am getting better I suppose, because at least soon after the fact I realized I could liken this to Jesus washing his disciples' feet (the difference was that he likely felt no chagrin in the midst of his washing and serving).  Growing in humility, developing character, giving sacrificially, loving unconditionally...these are some of the subjects covered in Crown College.
But how can we know whether we'll graduate with honors...or even graduate period?  Well, here is what I'm learning:  It's about relationship.  It's the relationship with us that Jesus and the Father desire so deeply.  Jesus is the Bridegroom, and he wants to marry us!  The Bible shows over and over again that God longs to be not only the King, but the Husband of His people.  Paul says that what God designed the human marriage of a husband and wife to be was a representation (as a shadow and type) of the relationship between Jesus and his Church.  The pure, simple truth is that God loves you and me.  No matter what we have done, who we have hurt or let down, how many times we have messed up.  It's not been enough to make Him give up on you.  He is waiting for every one of His children to return to Him, waiting for us to let Him save us.  How great is the love He has lavished upon us, that we should be called sons and daughters of God?  But is being a child of God the same as being the Bride of Christ?  Is He looking for something special in the ones He calls His Bride?
Revelation 19:7-8 has this to say about the marriage supper of the Lamb:  "'Let us rejoice and be glad and give the glory to Him, for the marriage of the Lamb has come and His bride has made herself ready.' It was given to her to clothe herself in fine linen, bright and clean; for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints."
The Bride has made herself ready... If this wording is any indication, I have a role to play in experiencing the fullness of what Jesus is offering me.  Yes, He is my Savior, the one who forgave me, who wiped my slate clean, and remembers my sin no more.  But I also have the opportunity to prepare myself--to clothe myself in righteousness--for my infinitely worthy Bridegroom, who has offered His heart to me!  If we as human beings have high standards for character qualities we look for in a mate, does it not stand to reason that the King of Kings would have pretty high standards Himself?  Yes, His mercy is new every morning...perhaps with the hope that each day the Bride-to-be will grow in the understanding of what makes His heart beat...
When you look at your relationship with God in the context of a marriage, does it not change what you want to do for Him and why?  Who would feel loved if your husband or wife spent time with you out of guilt, or gave you a gift because it's just something they're supposed to do or they thought you'd be angry if they didn't, or if they begrudgingly helped one of your family members in need?  No!  We desire gifts of the heart, do we not?  We desire acts of love for love's sake.  And so, I believe, does God.
But before you start thinking that God's not gonna be pleased with you unless you're perfect (although He does say "Be perfect (complete), even as I am perfect!), consider this... Before God changed Abram's name to Abraham, He made a promise to him.  A promise that looked somewhat impossible at the time, considering his childless state.  Yet Abram "believed the LORD, and He credited it to him as righteousness."  Abraham, the friend of God, perhaps donned his bright and clean fine linen garments of Bridal righteousness simply by believing what the Lord said.  I have to think Abraham graduated with honors!

Exposed and Forgotten

One day this winter after going to bed pretty late I woke up to a fully awake state pretty early, maybe around 5.  That is pretty unusual for me, so I tried to pray for a bit, then thought I would read in the Bible, and felt like Psalms would be a good place to go.  108 was the number that came to mind.  So I read it.  Not a whole lot jumped out at me.  I finished reading and went back to sleep I guess.  A morning or two later, I opened the Bible to read again in the Psalms, hoping a random turn to the page would, through the Holy Spirit, be some kind of spiritual food I needed.  I opened to Psalm 60, and started reading.  A few verses in, it started to seem very familiar.  I was trying to remember why that would be...had I read Psalm 60 recently?  But no, when I thought about it, these familiar words were in another place on the page when I had read them before.  Suddenly it clicked...several of the verses in Psalm 60 were nearly identical to Psalm 108.  And they weren't just any words you might expect, say, declaring God's praises or asking for deliverance.  Read for yourself from Psalm 108:

7 God has spoken in His holiness: "I will exult, I will portion out Shechem And measure out the valley of Succoth.
8 "Gilead is Mine, Manasseh is Mine; Ephraim also is the helmet of My head; Judah is My scepter.
9 "Moab is My washbowl; Over Edom I shall throw My shoe; Over Philistia I will shout aloud."

Needless to say, I was more than a little bit curious about why I had "randomly" read these two passages.  Was God inviting me to search out a mystery?  Maybe.  So I decided to study these three verses in Hebrew (to the best of my ability--I'm still pretty much a novice).  I wouldn't say it felt like there were any hallelujah choruses ringing to accompany whatever revelations I might have had as a result of this, but there were some really good things He showed me.  One of these was in the phrase, "Gilead is Mine, Manasseh is Mine."  Every word in Hebrew can be traced back to a three-letter root word.  So when you look a word up in the lexicon, there may be insights to discover from the definitions of its root.  
The root for Gilead is spelled gimmel lamed ayin.  It means expose, lay bare; disclose, make known.
The root for Manasseh is spelled nun shin hey.  It means forget; forgottenness.

Yes, these are geographical places that existed, and God was declaring His possession of them when you look at the literal meaning.  But He is so deep.  He can say a few words or letters and be telling us so many things at once we could learn something new every time we read it!  I think He may have also been saying, "It's Mine to expose, it's Mine to forget."  I believe God pursues us and woos us with His love, inviting us into relationship with Him so that He can teach us who He created us to be...people who walk and talk in fellowship with the Living God of all creation!  When we invite Him to come into our hearts and change us from the inside out, that is the process of transformation that makes us more and more like Him.  But it seems to usually be a process, at least in my experience!  There are things we hold on to inside that are decidedly not like Him or from Him.  At the root they're all lies from the enemy of our souls.  Wounds from the past that may have warped our hearts somehow.  Maybe resulting in bad habits or dysfunction, or even physical ailments.  Maybe hatred or bitterness or depression or lust, or maybe even cancer.  One thing I am confident of is that God is willing to show us those things that He wants to heal in us and deliver us from.  HE is the One who does that.  He exposes what needs to be brought to light (sometimes gently, sometimes by ripping the band-aid off if 'gently' isn't loud enough), so that you and He can deal with it together.  But you know what else?  After it is dealt with, He FORGETS it!  The wrongs we've done, the times we've messed up, the lies we've believed and wrapped our lives around...it was all taken care of through the life, death, and resurrection of  His son Jesus Christ.  In God's judicial system, it disappears from your record!  So go ahead.  Ask the Lover of your soul what He wants to expose and bring into the light of His mercy and love, so you can both forget about it and move closer to the ultimate joy of becoming one with Him.

May He bless you on the journey.