30 Dec Our Part in What God is Working For
Everything God does in our life — everything —
belongs to His concerted effort to draw us into collaboration with Himself, so that He can make Himself real in our life, as we recognize and respond to His initiatives toward us.
Of all those whom The Word of God flowed through, to be recorded in ink on paper, so that we can hold it — not only in our hands, but in our hearts — no writer of Scripture understood the love of God more than John. He beheld Jesus and saw the journey God was making, in order to satisfy the foremost intention of His heart — a relationship in which His Love could find expression to and reciprocation from a race of creatures bearing His image, capable of understanding His heart and mind, knowing Him even as they are known by Him.
1 John 1:2-3
and the life was manifested, and we have seen and testify and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested to us — what we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ.
The prophets and poets who came before John beheld the creation, which bore testimony of Him . . . But John, beholding Jesus and having an intimate relationship with him, understood the unique testimony God’s heart was seeking . . . a race of image-bearers receiving His love and freely loving Him back . . . having fellowship with Him.
We do not exist for no purpose. We are vessels He wants to infuse with with His own life, His own energy, His glory and grace . . . in mirroring His intention back to Him, we glorify Him.
Those of us who have experienced His life, energy, glory and grace know that these are not just words — they belong to a reality whose experience defies description. We experience these spiritually, with their closest approximation in the physical realm being the energy that drenches us, making us feel uniquely “alive” when we experience human love so strong that it makes us physically weak. God’s love possesses you even more. It is even more delicious. You never want your momentary experience of it to end, but your human frame can only bare it in small doses. Like all love, its consummation can only be fulfilled, when the desire for union is reciprocated both ways freely. God cannot have what He longs for . . . apart from our wanting Him.
This is the great paradox: the vulnerability of The Almighty and Invincible God.
God’s love is inextricable from His life, His energy, His glory and grace because they are all aspects of the same reality. . . apart from knowing His love, we cannot know his life, His power, His energy in us, His glory and grace transforming us. Apart from knowing His love, we exist without purpose.
We so little understand or experience the purpose for which we were created. . . the potential relationship for which God has been so long working for.
In light of all,
how do you think our condition, as revealed in this video,
makes God feel?
What does The Almighty, The Invincible God do to change that condition,
so that we are not ruined for His purpose?
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In a matter of hours we will cross the threshold
that distinguishes the year past from the new year unfolding.
What better time to ask yourself what God is working for in you?
Everything God is doing in your life — everything —
belongs to His concerted effort to connect with you and to infuse you with that from Himself, which has the power to make communion with Him real in your life.
- If you are blind, if you are deaf to His motion in your soul . . . pray to be healed.
- If your heart is hardened by distraction and unbelief . . . thank Him for drawing your attention back to Him and ask Him to help you believe.
- If you are slowly realizing how your heart and focus have been consumed by grossly inferior things . . . allow your deep awareness of guilt to crystalize for a moment; seeing your condition accurately, fully is crucial . . . but then take it to Jesus in repentance, so that He can take it away . . . Purging the guilt, he sets you free, creating room in you to hold a new measure of that from Himself which you’ve not been able to receive before.
The simplicity of taking time to think, to feel,
to listen and to be honest with God
is our part in what God is working for.
It is your gift to Him as much as it is His gift to you.