“4 Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world. 2 By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, 3 and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already. 4 Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. 5 They are from the world; therefore they speak from the world, and the world listens to them. 6 We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us; whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error. God Is Love 7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. 13 By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15 Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. 16 So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. 17 By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. 18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. 19 We love because he first loved us. 20 If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. 21 And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.” (1 John 4:1-21 ESV)

Life affirming, daring to Believe: in all manners the enemy has tried to blunt the soldier within, to cut down the Ambitions most holy, to Crucify the sense of Ownership, Progress, our strange Perch of getting-down-to-it Amazement. We are amazed, because only yesterday we were down on ourselves in some recollection of that Final Judgment that plagues the young adult, the Becoming Man, Woman soul. We felt at that juncture, or was it us? Was it a peer? Nonetheless we well know that adulthood has only cubbyholed our Insecurities and Frustrations at the things we Lack.

We lack the schadenfreude personability? We lack the Progressive getting-along? We seem to lack so much, or, alternately, we seem Rich. But either way, Christ is teaching a Third Way, to square up to the Challenge known as Facing our Demons. We face things we’ve said, not navel-gazing at the Ennui or Malaise, rather, squarely Accepting He has created us for Community, and such community… we have Broken it. More, we are haunted by a flimsy Permanent Sliding Scale of righteousness: all our deeds, can come under the light of Infamy; all our deeds, can come under the light of Progress. We can somehow seem to lack the Center that Holds. Hence to the pulpit, O troubled one! To the church office, O receptive one! We are Receptive because our own Plight in this life has gone Ghost, gone Absent, because our Plight has led to strange morning-after squinting at the light of day, a light Reliable to assuage and Heal our infamous transgressions and shock-factor at what Embarrassment, or Excess, or simply Humility at the image we strike, our sense of discomfort to have Anyone see us in our element.

Or we are those rich in Personal Presence: we love to get out in the community, to know in strange certain Whispers: this one or that one, you O soldier have made the good Impression! You have operated under the Banner of first judgments, of first impressions, of “My kind of man, of woman!”. So the soldier is strangely Heartened: there is Ample space to roam and contemplate and pray for our friends and family, nieces and nephews, cousins and aunts and uncles, neighbors… all these in some perfect world are working together, in all Respect and Proper Delineation of what are the Key Important Facts. Stop getting obsessed on the fallout dealings, O soldier! There is ample space thus to roam in prayer, until suddenly our calendar is full, our social life bleary-eyed for yet another Encounter. However, existential we are, we dive right in, making hay while the sun shines. Suddenly we are pinched, and feel we only gave it our fifty percent, not our All.

Aging, it is perhaps the flipside to adolescent bleary-eyed self-hatred, jealousy or more astutely, simply wishing we could contribute More. And to the strange Affection of said family or neighbor or friend: an affection that Promises, even though yada yada yada our sins are forgiven Now, we also Hope that time will heal all things. If we’ve undone years of applying to the study program of life, by Bombing ourselves back to the stone-age, we only create the need to Do it All Again. And do it we shall, but curiously Educated, curiously self-aware of those capricious spirits that—pat on the back—we literally have been voided of and healed from. Oh, so to some this is an occasion for Resentment? Strange, I only remember my own discovered mercy seat, and the resentment goes Ghost, Absent, No More a sin. Right? It really is amazing, to walk with the Savior of our souls, Christ, and to know He is Creating a pulpit for Experiential, Existential, Ennui-Healing preaching ministry. To Create that now-healing. To minister that Listening Ear. To be the One Christ has chosen to bear His wounds and His war and His trials. So we do speak, but only in cautious output, not to boast in our own sanctimonious efforts, but to Acknowledge: His presence, His allotment of Righteous Call to our meek station in life. Our outpost, our place to Testify Into, our Witness lectern and pulpit and community gathering, where this time around we might actually Get it Right. Not shoot ourselves in the foot. Coping with the ample headroom that suddenly goes Constricting. Our evocation of Space is our Faith in Him.