In His Likeness w/ AntTBri

I do not consider, brethren, that I have captured and made it my own [yet]; but one thing I do [it is my one aspiration]: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead (Philippians 3:13 AMPC) 

I no longer talk to her, and she no longer has welcomed access to speak into my life or love but today I wanted to call her so bad.  Not to rekindle the relationship, or to regurgitate truth she’s unable to hear but to revisit an on going discussion that began some time ago when I allowed her opinion to convince me my expectation of relationship (life and love) was that of a fairytale and fantasy. 

He told me a many things about life and love in the real world outside the bubble of my spiritual grooming and reality that made sense in the natural but registered disturbing on many other levels.  I feel the need to speak to him as well,  but I won’t because his reality is the fantasy and fairy tale opposing what God says I can have and help reproduce in my future. 

Who was I to buck against her, against him or her, against them…they were willing to invest the time to school me…teach me all things pertinent life and love? They met a need, was there for me when nobody else choose spending time with me was worth it. They liked me, wanted me around and didn’t mind my peculiarities or so I was lead to believe.  They kept me company, convinced me (both she and he) that they saw, supported and shared in my struggle, strength and success. She was loyal to our friendship. He was loyal to his need of me.  They liked how my dependence on them made them feel.  We valued and validated each others crazy.  

They visibly loved me, appeared to be my road dogs up front, out front and in the open.  They understood my being estranged from a mother otherwise preoccupied and a father unable to love beyond the perimeters of his own pain. They looked and saw the me struggling to breathe and just desiring to belong  and authentically be me.   They listened to all my horror stories, the  instances of sexual abuse, family dysfunction, divorce, excommunication from the church etc…understanding my private pain and public passion without judgment or so I choose to think (believe)at the time.  

What concrete evidence or experience could I offer as a rebuttal to the truth the Word ascribes without cowering to the scorn and shame attached to the contradiction of my personal experience and expression?  They’d use that against me, both he and her… those things I still struggled with, my fears, insecurities and dashed hopes and dreams, and even my desire (what I told them about me)…what they know about me to bully and badger me into submission when I should have spoke up,  took a stand and severed the dysfunction of relationships manifesting or materializing wrong. 

I own my choice of them and their rationale I’m just explaining where my head and heart was when I choose to consider them a friend and claimed them as family.  Agreement,  attachment and assimilation to negativity is the downfall of many trusting  hearts. Ingesting evil communication, consistently spending time,  sitting and standing in scornful and wicked versions of truth corrupts good manners and creates antithetical practices in the believing. 

Ms. and Mr. Wrong (on all accounts righteous)in the aftermath of their destruction, (prior to discovering  confessing the same God does not mean sisterhood, solidarity or synchronicity) taught me the art of compromise, complacency and cynicism. Before learning how to biblically guard my heart and deny the enemy access to speak life and death into my thought process.their counsel was my constant.  Before realizing her and his advice was bias to their pain,  negative outlook on all things life and love…the perpetual misery of their normal and functional chaos I absorbed a great portion of what spilt over or out of them. Wickedness appears right because like Jezebel it manipulates our weaknesses.Wrong and wayward people are a force to be reckoned with because we choose to believe (think) we need them and focus on what they have done for us,  the need they fulfill and we can’t even see or fathom life and love without their presence,  perspective and pressure.

But  through the complete work of the Holy Spirit scales fall off,  our vision becomes clear and we no longer see men or women (ourselves)as trees or are ignorant of the devils devices. Through the work of the Holy Spirit we’re able to see the roots of bitterness flowing out of the bile of discourse, we can see their (our) choice to think and talk negative,  their (our) insolence against God in practice not necessarily their (our) proclamations. Subtleties maginify and separation identify heart postures before God. It becomes crystal clear how off the mark,  schizophrenic their (our)assertions and actions are. 

Denying them access to my person, perception and passion in this season is best for everyones well being.  Toxic relationships are the breeding grounds for emotional blackmail,  bondage and serve as the greatest barrier to manifestation/fruition in the future. They distract,  discourage and discount our relationship  and reliance on God and keep us thinking, talking and treading antithetical.  The pressure to forget frees us from the weight of it’s bearings, burden and bondage.  Can’t you hear the Spirit prompting us to Forget? 

In this season of life and love there’s this intense pressure to forget those things which are behind. This pressure to forget mindsets,  mannerisms and make shift attempts used to develop or grow us wrong or in the handicap of well or not so well intentioned humanity. It’s an undoing, spiritual engrafting … transplanting type of motion taking place in our mind, body and soul because life and love is becoming what God desires for us.  The Holy Spirit is severing ties,  breaking strong holds and causing us to get up and out of places of complacency, compromise and cynicism. Behind us is the past.  Everything  before us is our future.   You and I must succumb to the pressure to forget if there’s to be further progression as we continue to live and love in God’s likeness. 

Life and love is being reconfigured in such a way that the old is being riped away and new viable skin is being put in its place. The God kind of healing (complete) is taking place in our metaphoric for and wineskin.  The future can’t be covered or overshadowed with useless,  needing to be discarded pieces or portions of flesh serving no purpose, preventing productivity,  progression and the free flow of present passion, purpose and power  for coming forth today. God needs us pliable, producing and pleasing to His palate.  His presence to heal us physically, mentally and emotionally is in the intensity of this pressure to forget. We need only  surrender those things needing to be forgotten.  Let’s agree to leave the past in the capable hands of He that restores, revives and renews us in the present. While heeding the Spirit’s plea to forget those things that are behind us… mindsets, mannerisms, mistakes and mess ups.we are given  opportunities to press forward and a mandate to proceed into our future.  

The awesome thing about the God kind of love is it considers not only what we did/do but why we did/do what we do. He knows, sees and searches our hearts, hurts and history. His Spirit helps us resolve our why  and nurtures our growth into living and loving Gods way (leads and directs us) into God’s TRUTH.  His love of and for us absolves our human frailty and ushers us into spiritual freedom.  

Forget what had you bound,  broken and borrowing false hope from other sources.  Grab on (hold) to faith’s reality.   You are more wonderful and beautiful than the negative imagery of human imperfections.  You are more courageous,  confident,  capable and conquering than any and everything that desires you cower in shame.  You’re precious, peculiar,  purpose full,  passionate, perceptive and powerful. You had the sense,  where withal to connect and concede your will and way to God’s.  His love reaches you with the pressure, and while your under pressure. What an awesome God we serve and image. You are a gift,  a treasure valued and validated by the very heart of God.  What took others out, strengthens your resolve and adds to your splendor.  You attract the very best in others and are representing love remarkably. You my dearest one are the embodiment of the perfection of the GOD kind of love. His assessment and assertion about you is the truth in which we are to build life and love upon.  Every complexity,  complication and concern is covered under His blood and thrown into the sea of forgetfulness.  Wide is it‘s expanse and deep is it depths.  IF THAT’S WHAT God requires who are we to expect or impose harsher penalties on others or ourselves? I Got it right with God is all a loving heart really wants to hear.  God‘s heart towards you celebrates the  care, consideration and confession of wrong because it‘s in desperate need of reconciliation. God‘s heart really is to be with you.  How sobering,  soothing and settling this basic concept is to the heart of the believing! 

I felt the need to call those voices of influence in this moment who told me this kind of love didn’t exist, and wasn’t applicable or accessible to me.  To tell them this type of love does exist is worth living in.  It is not a fantasy the contrivings of my mind or a fairy tale.  I wanted to tell them they we’re wrong.   I wanted to speak life to both of them sentencing themselves to death ridden lives and loves of misery,mundane and monotony. It would have been an attempt to correct a many wrongs, disconnecting them from and severing those ties of acceptance, agreement and acclimatization that cause us to choose to cave and concede to those things that control, constrict and confront the frailty of our humanity. Through the power of the Holy Spirit I want to speak the Word that would silence, stop and still the entity working to choke and cut off our hope, trust and faith in God (the concretness of his Word) and our belief in what His Spirit produces in us. To finally boldly proclaim No, I don’t agree with the lie of the enemy’s truth.  Nor do I prescribe to his way of living and loving,  thinking or talking. I am a new creature in Christ Jesus and so are you. We’re getting and gifting a new. 

In retrospect and while sitting in this moment I’m so grateful and blessed that there remains in us a seed of  faith (not always audibly spoken or shared) that through the Holy Spirit could maintain and believe in and under life and loves varied pressures. Hallelujah! It grows opposite the influence of angry, agitated and aggressive attackers of all things lively, loving and lasting (even and especially) when it’s our choice of outside influences.   Whatever it was or is It has not neutralized and stopped us from reaching for, expecting and becoming a conduit of the God kind of love. That is praise worthy,  it humbles us to reverent worship.  Only God could,  only He would.  I’m so appreciative of His grace and mercy towards us.  As a matter of fact,  this current thing is most influential in our feeling the pressure to forget what’s behind us… Of course our choice is to let go of all the bad teaching, thinking and talking that threatens to perpetuate much of the same in the future.We can and will release it.  I’m devoted to creating with God something wonderfully new while the old me,  mindset and mannerism is passing away. How about you?  Becoming someone to love liken to God’s heart is the direct derivative of the pressure to forget our and other people’s choice of foolishness,  the stuff of life and love that don’t matter or register of importance in light of the future before us or so I choose to remember about this current PRESS.  I hope this testimony encourages you to do the same. Best wishes~AntTBri