Really
Zephaniah 3:11 You’ll no longer have to be ashamed of all those acts of rebellion. I’ll have gotten rid of your arrogant leaders. No more pious strutting on my holy hill!
:12 I’ll leave a core of people among you who are poor in spirit– What’s left of Israel that’s really Israel. They’ll make their home in GOD.
She had actually found God in this place in a wonderful salvation experience, where a huge weight of oppression and fear had been lifted along with her sin and rebellion. There had been an incredible tugging on her heart, an offer of a loving embrace from the Father, to which she had responded with open arms and an embrace of her own. What had impressed her was how very real this was. It had nothing to do with a desire for personal promotion, fame, or riches; this was just her and Jesus in sweet communion and fellowship. She knew that there was nothing she could have given to made this possible, and there was nothing about her that had made her somehow chosen above anyone else. It was just that she had discovered the love of God that was there at all times for anyone and she had let that love become hers.
Now, though, beyond the presentation of Jesus that had so wonderfully opened her eyes to the possibilities in Christ, she was being shown something that was supposed to represent the One she had experienced. There was an attitude of self seeking and self promotion being declared as the Father’s nature and His will and desire for her life. Packaged in a scriptural setting and containing a wealth of truth, there was something about this understanding, however, that arrested her heart, as she failed to recognize this as a description of the One she had come to know. Yet, because of the charisma and a certain pressure to rise with those promoting this thought to a ‘higher’ level of spiritual ascendancy, she had subscribed to this thought, attempting to include it in her relationship with her Father. Every time, though, that the leaders and teachers of this ‘illumination’ would have a ‘pious strutting’ of how great was their earthly promotion, when she attempted to embrace this way, there was a sense of shame. To her heart these ways had been a rebellion against the true nature of her God. This went on for quite an extended period of time- her prolonged feelings of shame over having to embrace something that wasn’t really her. The perceived success of this way seemed to validate it and she, therefore, could not bring herself to part from it. She did, though, find herself frequently longing for every care other than the one she had experienced for her Savior to be completely stripped away- for her passion to be totally focused on Him. This is what she had found to be really her- that though there would be much provision and abundance, all she really cared about was making her home in Him.