“…knowing in yourselves that you have in Heaven a better and an enduring substance” (Heb 10:34)

What sort of affirmed confidence within a person joyfully accepts the plundering of one’s goods (vs 34)? What sort of true reality emboldens anew the reach to the angry ones, faces that have been personal sources of wounding and defeat? What sort of worth and value is placed on what is within to step far and wide of comfort? It must be a knowing that what is within is undefeatable, incorruptible, and will last forever.

Oh, how we need to know that IN ourselves is such greatness, not in us, but in a Person!

Dare we believe like this? “Greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world” (1 John 4:4). What a scandalous faith has been granted us from the beginning of Christ’s time on earth! The Father purposely chose the time in which the baby Jesus would lie in a dingy manger under the ominous shadow of King Herod’s magnificent 45-acre hilltop palace. Jesus’ birthplace, Bethlehem, with the surrounding countryside, all loomed in its shadow. All human activities in the reach of Herod’s shadow were done under its reminder, its oppression. Yet “Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king…” (Mt 2:1). What is God saying?

Dare we believe as the shepherds and wisemen and risk all in the face of the tyrant king to worship a tiny baby who is the true King? Since the beginning, God has chosen that our believing must be this way: a dare. Can we?

“I am able to do all things through Christ who gives me strength” (Phil 4:13). “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Col 1:27). Dare we then rise up knowing all the world’s evil thrown our way is not new to our day; it overshadowed the very birth of Jesus. Let us have that same “knowing in ourselves” we can and will overcome the challenges of our own evil day and that to come.

In our tiny heart is the One who causes such confidence. Today. Dare. We must.—————

“For where there is remission of sins…” (Heb 10:18)

Summers would bring it out: I realized the role of young mothering was becoming more binding upon me than even my own child status before God. The demeanor of scolding and correcting was overshadowing my whole countenance. Sternness was becoming the environment I was living within. I asked my husband if he would take our sons for a few hours.

In those hours, I came across the word “remit”: to forgive, dismiss, release from. I became aware this was exactly what I was seeking from God: a release, a flight even temporarily from a full-fledged identity of mothering, an inner reshuffling that would re-allow the awakening of a right order of me being the child. Even though it was not exactly an issue of sin’s remission, how real it was to me such a touch of reordering was solely dependent upon God.

Isn’t this the desired end of all true vacations? The stockbroker, the lawyer, the secretary, teacher all could long to emerge from their two weeks at the beach having experienced a “dismissal” from their binding identity and perhaps return as father to their children, winner of board games, comedian, etc. What is a human scheduled attempt to experience existing away at a different spot, a young mother was seeking to find in a few hours. If I could only be touched by Him, I would have the same refreshment as one vacationed.

The Pharisees suspiciously asked Jesus, “Who can remit (forgive) sins but God alone?” Apparently, they realized something. A remitting, a trapdoor of escape swinging away into another realm is only possible through Divinity. Only One Divine can dismiss and forgive.

Therefore, a soul knowing dismissal, remittance and release, with or without the beach, is the most vacationed person there is!———————

“Having…boldness to enter into the holiest…new and living way…consecrated for us through the curtain, that is to say, His flesh…” (Heb 10:19-23)

How human we are to try to keep many options open! By that we can resist putting it all, our faith upon that one line. But God in His wild desire for us to come through that “curtain” will orchestrate circumstances that will cause us to put it all on the line. It isn’t natural to continually demand a pinpointing from God, there are those times so obvious that we must: a rising child’s temperature in the middle of the night, a diagnosis, the news from a phone call and no one to shoulder it, the suddenness of a calamity. He is either going to move expediently or He won’t. We are brought to the crux of that entryway to the Holiest.

Many of us are finding as we go on in life how often such incidences can seem to come at us daily!

Life has taught us such things are orchestrated that we might penetrate IN! The tear for penetration has already occurred!! The Son of God has let His flesh become that curtain that separated the most Separated place from us.
Even without the force of crisis, the Father beckons us in many ways from behind that curtain, and if we will hear, it will be irresistible not to bring all of us through it.

“having boldness” – means (all + speech) all speech, freedom, unreservedness of utterance, cheerful courage. He wants our every unhindered word.

“new and living way.” The way is in place, dedicated, perfected. “New” – originally meaning freshly slain. “Living” – preserved, alive, to come to be, to become. It has become for us. The Way is now there to walk upon.

“true heart” – unconcealed, manifest (negating to forget, to escape notice), actual, true-to-the-fact. He wants all us our heart facing Him behind the curtain.

Can we see? He wants all of us BEHIND THE CURTAIN and has pulled out all the stops that withhold us. Come! Plant yourself. Full frontage, centered. Come to be fully viewed.

The setting is established. The excellent timeliness of putting it all on the line has come.——————–