Heart Tracks - Living In The "Nevertheless"

     For the last month or so, I've been meditating a great deal on what the word "nevertheless" means when used, as it so often is, in the Word.  There's likely no place where the word is more familiar to us than when Jesus spoke it to the Father in the Garden of Gethsemane. "Nevertheless, not My will, but Yours be done."  If I can truly use that word with Him, especially in the context of how Jesus spoke it in the Garden, then what does it mean to "live" in that word, to live in the "nevertheless?"  I won't claim to have the full answer to that, or anything else, but I do think the Lord has shown me what, if for no one else, it means to and for me.

    One of the things I believe that was happening in the Garden was that Jesus, in spite of His dread over what was to come upon Him, and the suffering that would come with it, was that even in the midst of the dread, He was able to see it all from His Father's perspective.  He was able to see sin in all its horror.  He was able to see the hand of the devil in what was happening, and that it was he, not the people he was using, who were the real enemy.  He was able to see as well the victory that was sure in spite of the darkness of the hour.  He knew death could not hold Him.  As a result, He could say "nevertheless" in the midst of it all.  So too, are you and I called to that same nevertheless, to living in that same place that He did.  To live, seeing what is happening around us, and to us, with His eyes, and His viewpoint.  When we live that way, we can say, even in the midst of the deepest darkness we could imagine, and more than we could imagine, to the Father and the enemy, "Nevertheless, I will trust Him."
    Another aspect I'm seeing is that living in the nevertheless can mean that never-the-less may well mean the appearance of less rather than more so far as how the flesh and the world measure things.  Living here can be particularly difficult for those of who tend to measure everything, count everything, and assign success or failure to how much has been visibly gained or added on to us, as opposed to how much has been lost, or never gained at all.  We've all heard the saying "less is more," but few of us want to really experience that.  We also have a very hard time believing that "more" really is "less."  We're very resistant to the idea of surrendering the measurement of our lives and what is attached to them to Him.  We tend to think our measuring weights are a lot more accurate than His.  I speak from experience.  The flesh cannot live in this place. 
    These are just two of the aspects of living in the nevertheless, and I know there are many more, yet how can we live in such an impossible place?  The answer is simple, yet so hard to receive.  It's by our abiding, truly living in Him, where He is the Vine, and we are the branches, and we have really come to the place of knowing we can do nothing, absolutely nothing, apart from Him.  With that, He who lives in us, is allowed to fully live through us.  Then we begin to see things with His eyes and understanding.  Then we begin to rest in His measurements and not our own.  He, and not us, defines what is more, and what is less.  When we live here, we begin to understand what the true riches of heaven are.  We begin to know what real riches and poverty, are, because we are abiding in Him, and living in the nevertheless.  When we live in this life, we no longer insist that God, and everyone else, accommodate themselves to us, but we're instead absorbed fully into His life.  The life and land of "nevertheless."  The doorway to that land lies before each of us, but it will go through our own garden.  May we not hold back from entering into it.

Blessings,

Pastor O