19 And now, my beloved brethren, after ye have gotten into this strait and narrow apath, I would ask if all is bdone? Behold, I say unto you, Nay; for ye have not come thus far save it were by the word of Christ with unshaken cfaith in him, drelying wholly upon the merits of him who is mighty to esave.
20 Wherefore, ye must press forward with a asteadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of bhope, and a clove of God and of all men. Wherefore, if ye shall press forward, feasting upon the word of Christ, and dendure to the end, behold, thus saith the Father: Ye shall have eeternal life.
Pressing forward with a steadfastness in Christ is moving toward sanctification. Not with Christ or by Christ. Steadfastness IN Christ means becoming inseparable from Christ. All our unfinished ends finish in His flesh and blood. Our mortal and immortal stuff made complete and eternal through the resurrection and atonement. He is all light, truth and intelligence and when we open our hearts we allow Him to fill our understanding, to weave in truth and light, to complete us. To receive a fullness of truth is to receive all of Him. What does that look like? I am yours, save me. Who are we at that moment? We take His name, we replace our blood and body with His. He is in us: with each sacrament we exchange death for life, but not just ‘life’ in a generic sense. It is His life. We are purified with the hope to be pure as He is pure, to know as He knows. We are in Him: our individual pains are His muscle memories. All together, those who chose to be the sons and daughters of Christ will constitute His whole being. We begin the performance, doing, thinking, learning, but embodiment is required in a seemingly contradictory way; allowance of this transformation means freeing ourselves to morph into our true identity. We embody Him in movements toward the center of light and truth and in a flash pass through, born gleaming and breathing for the first time, finally free.
Joy is found in feasting upon that which brings the possibility of a perfect brightness of hope. This is a true expansive vision of things as they are and as they will be, given as a pearl of great price through revelation.
James 5: 7-11 defines what it means to endure to the end.
7 Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain.
8 Be ye also apatient; bstablish your hearts: for the ccoming of the Lord draweth nigh.
9 aGrudge not one against another, brethren, lest ye be condemned: behold, the judge standeth before the door.
10 Take, my brethren, the prophets, who have spoken in the name of the Lord, for an aexample of bsuffering affliction, and of patience.
11 Behold, we count them ahappy which bendure. Ye have heard of the patience of cJob, and have seen the end of the Lord; that the Lord is very dpitiful, and of tender emercy.
Established hearts are built on light which can never fail. To establish our hearts is to live with a mind undivided, to know whose side we are on. Beyond any doubt we know what the heart truly loves and seeks. Christ is the law by which we continually abide.
“We count them happy which endure” (which are steadfast). To be true to God means continuously receiving a greater portion of light. Endure does not mean baring down to break the fall of darkness on your back. And what of the darkness in our own hearts? Open and soft as a child, as Christ we see. We look out in love and mercy, a heart willing to return, to uproot all the thorns planted in moments of holding still in one attitude of beliefs and mindsets that stifle the tree of life, our ladder to God.
Blurred Habitation 