A Little Problem

I am, by inclination, a night owl.  I like the dark & the quiet & the emptiness, not being a people person.  I like to read & potter & think in the quiet & the dark.  When the kiddies were little I always did my housework @ night because my days were so busy with little people & when you have little people nothing done ever stays done & I am academic enough that  I really like to complete a task, know it's completed & receive my *mark* ~ something not possible with housework in general & most definitely not with small children.

However, a number of those small children were very early risers.  Four a.m was not uncommon, especially in summer, & so I learnt to rise early & muddle through my days half asleep because my body clock did not change.  It still informed me that it was time to rage once the clock ticked past 10pm.

Over the years the body has just got muddled.  It wakes @ 3 or 4 am & I get several lovely early morning hours before crashing to finish the sleep I should have had last night.  Of course that leaves me raging into the wee sma's ~ & so the cycle continues...with brief pauses for normality.

The nice part of this circus is that I am usually up early enough to be blessed by our wildlife.  This morning, as I opened the verandah door for my cats, I heard a loud sloshing through the mangroves & very shortly a small, dark wallaby hopped through the shallows to glean the mangrove seeds from the low growing grey mangroves.

Too early to get a really good shot but he wasn't fazed by both cats & me lined up along the verandah staring @ him intently & eventually moved off unhurriedly.

 A little later there was a commotion on the verandah.  A family of Butcher Birds had arrived for their morning bath ~ & then there was Kirby, trying so hard to be good but wanting very badly to hunt.

And then there is this:

Hmmm. I was alerted to this teaching on a FB group I am a part of. My spirit immediately quickened to the concept because my understanding is very much that Heaven operates in legalities.  That is the big picture: Fall = breaking a covenant; Cross=restoring a workable covenant: Epistles=walking out the covenant.

Now my O.T understanding could be a whole lot better.  I am not, by any means, the sort of scholarly academic who can nit~pick theology & word meanings & break down entire concepts BUT I do well with big picture concepts where you can see the whole picture @ a glance so I do think Henderson is on to something here.  I am less sure about some of how he gets there.

Why I think he is onto something is the very simple fact that satan is the accuser of the brethren [Revelation 12:12] & he accuses us day & night before God.  So he can ~ because we were born into sin as the sparks fly upward. Now, Jesus has dealt with our legal standing with His blood but as so often I find there is something God does & then there is stuff he wants us to do & together He works out the details of our salvation. That the bible is, in many ways, a legal document just makes common sense to me.  It is other things as well but one of the things it is is a legal document.

Now satan accuses us ~ so we must not agree with him either for ourselves or for those we are praying for. That gives him legal ground for his accusations. We must agree with what God says. That is what I believe.  That is what I teach.  Guard your mouth for out of it flow the issues of life ~ because out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. [Luke6:45]

Where it gets dodgy is between revelation & literal interpretation ~ mind you I'm not even a third of the way into this book yet! Are there literal courts in heaven? I believe so. There is a judgement seat; there are judgements rendered & that is a legal process & there are books: the Book of Remembrance [Malachai]; the Book of Life[Revelation]; the Book of Truth [Daniel] ~ & numerous scrolls... Are there legal processes for dealing with stuff on earth?  I suspect so ~ hence why I picked up this book.  Does that invalidate our standing with Christ?  Our authority in Christ? Our salvation?  Grace?  I don't think so.  It's just another aspect of the jig~saw & once you understand that you can put it in it's proper place & access it if you need it.

Now, having said that, without having read anything @ all, before I got the book, I worked with what little understanding I did have interceding for a friend in a matter that was causing her difficulties because there is no point in any of it if it is ineffective.  I did point out to Abba I was operating in a lot of ignorance & to forgive me if I was being presumptuous, but as I prayed the entire atmosphere around us changed!  It was really, really quick. It was a massive change ~ one my friend immediately noticed & she is not normally the most spiritually discerning of people. So I am proceeding with caution because there are some really big, really difficult things that we have been praying for & as they haven't shifted it is time to reassess what we are doing & how we are praying because Einstein nailed it: Insanity is doing the same thing over & over & expecting different results. Yeppity~yep.