It's a new year, and every part of me wants to join the recurring chorus of new opportunities sung by the choir of procrastinators waiting for a new calendar to reinvent themselves, or at least the selves we said we would be at the beginning of last year. However, I can't help but see the need to re-envision this new year as a chance to at least make heartfelt goals to pursue with intentionality. 2016 left me feeling in need due to a chronic discontentedness I built up like some awful callous on my heart; sins of omission eclipsed those of commission as I left many positive things unsaid so that the negative passive aggressive cuts could ring out in a cacophony of excuses and lies.
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Love is a pursuit. It has been since Love created this earth, breathed this universe into existence for the sole purpose of magnifying that love through giving its inhabitants something of essence to pursue. When we look at redemptive history it’s clear that there is coming a moment of eternal clarification, unbridled climax, universal crescendo, a proverbial breaking of the ribbon at the end of this race. Within the realm of monotonous jobs, heartbreak, birth, spring mornings, death, worship, tears, oil changes, dinner parties, hikes, sunsets, school, world hunger, fear, dates, weddings, lectures, road trips, poverty, swimming and public speaking there is always an innate sense of wonder in tomorrow and a longing for more, it’s in our nature, to desire. However obvious this is in our lives, our living lacks acknowledgement of this immanent finish-line in the sense that we don’t prepare ourselves for that day with hopeful eternal security.
"Carpe diem" is etched into the banners of our lives because philosophers, professors, parents, commercials, movies, TV shows, books, magazines, newspapers, computers and peers have shown us that today is real and tangible, beyond that is unknown and to be feared, but right now is at our fingertips and it is a fruitful harvest of temporal pleasure so reach out and grab life and hold on because we’re not sure what happens next! Surrender is a curse that only the weak embrace as they wander about in utter blindness to the enlightenment that is “supposed” to reside within us and selflessness is only for the undetermined soul who hasn’t realized their own potential. Our culture plants such seeds in the new soils of our children with self-perceived godhood being the goal of their toils. We’ve lost the desire to desire what the world labels as undesirable, faith. Happiness is the medium to which we are supposed to catch a glimpse of the bigger picture, the framed in idea of what life should revolve around, ultimately, the self. Joy is what this equation is missing and as all of us have experienced at some point, you can’t always be happy, but joy gives us the opportunity to embrace hardship and still see beyond any picture the world can paint, a picture of grace, ultimately the cross and still “rejoice with those who rejoice” (Romans 12:15). (Joy meaning, the heart ability to overcome trials to achieve perseverance for good, to see past the valleys of life (Psalm 32) and fixate on the mountains of peace waiting for us to stand atop of and look down from in reverence and thanksgiving. And to look ahead with hopeful expectation knowing that this place is not our destination!) Psalm 37:4 reads, “Delight yourself in the LORD and He will give you the desires of your heart.” The first five words of this verse prescribe a joy in something outside of ourselves, and that requires surrender, a relenting of self to the almighty Delighter, ultimately losing nothing and gaining everything. Now at first glance this verse serves to encourage a materialistic reason to “delight in the LORD”, but upon meditation and saturation of this verse I found myself, with the help of a thoughtful sermon, rewording this verse, “Make the LORD your delight and desire and He will give you the desires of your heart.” This new statement is a given, sincerely simple and yet has a new meaning, one that should be seen in the original, but we have neglected delight as a possible outcome of looking AT God instead of looking TO God for things we WANT, now we receive in abundance that which we NEED, more of God, our should-be delight. Possession of something is only as good as the use of it, and not only do we have the opportunity to possess the God of creation, but we are also liable to use Him for His glory to continue seeking Him as our delight, a production of worship, that outward expression of the inward grace. I don’t mean that God is some sort of pawn in our game for power or possessions, but that we should recognize with renown that we are His and He is ours through a moving in us of the Holy Spirit towards Himself. This verse, along with all of Scripture demands an examining of ourselves, our delights, our desires, our hearts with humility and authentic hunger for God’s presence in all four. We must find ourselves second in our own race, our own pursuit of love, knowing that the One ahead of us in first place is providing victory to us vicariously, giving joy freely and offering endless tomorrows in the Kingdom of Heaven with Himself. Making the LORD our delight allows a holy cycle to begin, constantly receiving our delighted desire forever and ever in an overflow of the Spirit within us, pouring out just to pour back in is to be enjoyed. John Piper in his book “Desiring God” encourages us to think about enjoying the ministry of delight (or Love as he puts it) through the words of the great Episcopalian pastor Phillips Brooks. Brooks says, “Therefore, count it not merely a perfectly legitimate pleasure, count it an essential element of your power, if you can feel a simple delight in what you have to do as a minister, in the fervor of writing, in the glow of speaking, in standing before men and moving them, in contact with the young. The more thoroughly you enjoy it, the better you will do it all. This is all true of preaching. Its highest joy is in the great ambition that is set before it, the glorifying of the Lord and saving of the souls of men. No other joy on earth compares with that. The ministry that does not feel that joy is dead. But in behind that highest joy, beating humble unison with it, as the healthy body thrills in sympathy with the deep thoughts and pure desires of the mind and soul, the best ministers have always been conscious of another pleasure which belonged to the very doing of the work itself. As we read the lives of all the most effective preachers of the past, or as we meet the men who are powerful preacher of the Word today, we feel how certainly and how deeply the very exercise of their ministry delights them.” Using this heart of flesh to beat in “humble unison” for something bigger than myself, delighting in what is unknown by the world’s standards and receiving what no one can mass produce, or do themselves, or communicate with mere words, or even tell me doesn’t actually exist is truly a delightful desire! “Holy Father, I make You my delight and You alone! I desire You above all else because You are above all else! Holy Spirit manifest Yourself in my life as the confirmation that You are real and nothing short of gloriously delightful, the desire of my heart, always! I pursue Your love, the very initiation of my existence and the continuation of my desire to love You with my existence. Lord receive glory and honor and praise through my words, that they may be Your words and Your heart, take my heart Lord and delight in my desires as they are You! Thank You for Your provision of abundance of joy, jobs, and Jenny as we seek first Your Kingdom and glory in all of those things! In the delightful and precious name of Jesus I pray, AMEN!” I am in no way an ism-ist, I don’t actively seek out descriptive terms to label or identify whatever thought or idea that has been placed before me. I believe such endeavors would delude the sweet taste of mystery and stiffen the joy of the chase for knowledge, which of course is “vain” in intent unless recognized as unsatisfying in comparison to the beauty of righteous ignorance toward certain matters. I embrace the unknown, as bewildering as it often is, as an opportunity to marvel at the complexity that is ever-present outside of myself. The Spirit is far beyond comprehension in complexity, yet all the more simple for a soul to understand as needed, it’s the divine romance and holiest of mysteries that is always right in front of us, but never tangible. When the Lord is speaking to my heart and mind and trying to expand the two to better suit His will, I often find myself at a loss for what He is trying to say, not surprising as I’ve never breathed a universe into existence nor given life to the entirety of creation by creating a single Word. I do however see Him leading me to a further understanding of what He is attempting to teach me through discernment by prayer and supplication (Philippians 4:6). I know He is working in my heart and mind to see His ways more clearly to better exalt Him in realizing His own heart and mind, it truly blows my mind.
I do however find myself labeling these ideas that are solely the Spirit showing me something new (that I need to know) with catchy profitable titles, and Lord willing, that are glorifying to Him. Such is the case with the mindset that the Lord currently has me chasing after with my whole life, the idea of Intentionalism Theology. I have recently been seeing a decline in desire to be recognizable by the world, a pursuit of pure piety in the form of fleeing the flesh and flash of our current culture. What seemed at first to be a want for monasticism (there’s another one, but that one is not my own!) quickly turned into John 15:19, 1 John 2:15, John 17:14, and countless other passages, being all the more real and true of my image bearing self! I love being a vessel for God, to show that outward expression of the inward grace that is worship in a true and profound way. All glory be to God for shaping me as the clay that I am and the Potter that He is, His majesty and music flow from my very surrendered life to speak to a world lost and deaf to the symphony that was orchestrated and has been flowing from His heart since before…ever! I feel with full confidence that the Spirit has defined in my heart this Intentionalism Theology to be an active, constant positioning of ourselves in the shape of reverence, where worship is the essence of our existence as an outpouring of difference in living. Having had an awestruck eternal experience like no other. Living as though transformation is real and evident as it bursts forth in a life unrecognizable from its former self, a life set apart. We become Spirit obtained and Spirit obsessed, captured and enticed by the eternal allure of the holy fire, burned and scarred, internally maimed and externally marred to show that a mighty work has taken place. The destruction of an old life for the sake of holy reconstruction, to show that the remake to recreate has occurred, and nothing could ever compete with this great change nor this great Source of such change. We are to and will be seen as outsiders and outcasts, of which are true and is our longing to continue to be true as we pursue holiness in a manner that isn’t forced or required of us, but simply inevitable. One in-dwelt with the Holy Spirit is anew, is changed, and can’t help but exude the essence of that change through a new life with new desires, but only One love, re-found. I earnestly pray and seek continued insight from the All-seer as to what all this means and how it should influence my life, God’s Word and it’s impact is our only plumb-line for what truth is and I know that He will provide what I need to know to live as though He is real and worthy of living in the shape of reverence. “Holy Spirit, You are real and really involved in my heart and mind, continue to teach me Your way, Your wisdom and give me understanding as You will. I seek You in comprehending my many thoughts and pray that they would reflect Your truth and glorify You as truth. I love Your words and ideas that You give to me, please use them to show a change in my life that only You could bring about. Use me to be different in this dark world to introduce it to Your marvelous light. Shape my heart and mind and let them shape my actions for Your glory as I pursue Your holiness in a life set apart, in Christ’s name I pray, AMEN.” The Holy Spirit really astonishes me anytime I find myself speechless, whether at circumstances where I’m in awe of beauty, or when I’m saying too much from my own vocabulary. And often times when I’m in a situation where silence is His way of speaking through my actions or lack thereof. All of these and MANY more are pure and clear instances where I know that the Spirit is within me, both deeply and stubbornly on the surface of my “new nature”. I praise the Lord for this divine interruptions that He places within me, the Spirit burdens me in the holiest of ways, the ways that I don’t understand, I just have to rely on and trust in; He’s so creative, in ways I can’t even imagine, but I know are there and true!
In the past few weeks I’ve been in an unintended study of zeal, unity, and the Holy Spirit (primarily His leading) and it has really drawn me nearer to many aspects of God. Through sermons, Spirit led prayers, readings, writings, and just interactions in general I have felt the Lord pressing these 3 subjects heavy onto my heart, and I’m the type of person that once something is on my heart it tends to leak upwards into my mind (which isn’t always a good thing!). God has provided relentless understanding, which is no surprise (Colossians 1:9), but He has also caught me off guard on several occasions with aspects of each subject that I haven’t quite figured out, but I know to keep in prayer and study and He will provide the clarity (Matthew 7:7)! Zeal, unity, and the Holy Spirit are of course a package deal in and with the latter portion. Once the baptism of the Holy Spirit is fully taken in (as being the moment Christ enters into your heart, not a separate interaction with God), and the acceptance of Christ as salvation, redemption, and atonement is embraced, this new creation that is formed by regeneration (or new birth) flourishes (1 Corinthians 12:13, Matthew 3:11, John 20:22), in and through what is known as zeal. This is equatable to a form of worship in my opinion in the sense that it is an outward expression of the inward grace you feel in your heart after Christ gets a hold of it. The Easton Dictionary of the Bible defines it as “an earnest temper; maybe enlightened (Numbers 25:11-13, 2 Corinthians 7:11, 9:2) or ignorant and misdirected (Romans 10:2, Philippians 3:6). As a Christian grace, it must be grounded on right principles and directed to right ends (Galatians 4:18).” I surely hope I’m growing in “enlightenment “as I study this idea of being zealous for the Lord. John Piper quotes on zeal saying, “If we have no zeal for the glory of God our mercy must be superficial, man-centered human improvement with no eternal significance. And if our zeal for the glory of God is not a reveling in his mercy, than our so-called zeal, in spite of all its protests, is out of touch with God and hypocritical.” I pray for the power and means to avoid superficiality and to use my zeal solely for the glory of our great God by showing the world what a relationship with Him really looks like. I yearn to be zealous, in a glorious way to proclaim a mighty Savior who is zealous for our love of the Father and His people (whom is “jealous” for US!!). In this truth about zeal is packed a few constant and necessary questions to ask ourselves, two especially: at any given point in time, is our passion and zeal for the Lord A) glorifying to God and B) a flame or flicker? The incorrect answers to these questions are spoken of as being “lukewarm” and that certainly isn’t spoken well of in Scripture (Revelation 3:16). Simply, we are made in the image of a holy perfect God, and not that we can EVER compare to the God of the universe in glory (Romans 3:23, Isaiah 40:25), but we can strive to represent, as fleshy mirrors, many of God’s attributes. One important one in particular being zeal. Another one of these attributes that we are called to exhibit is unity. A blessed act of coming together, being together, remaining together, all in the name of Christ and in the power of the Holy Spirit. Not many things are a requirement of being an adopted child of God, but unity is one of them. In the words of Christ, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.’” (Matthew 22:37-40). There is a reason these are called commandments, we MUST do them! This love of God points to unity because our Heavenly Father is such a relational God that if we love Him and Him alone our hearts and lives can’t help but unite with His and that is beautiful beyond words…(the Spirit is here, where my words can’t be! :))! And this love for our neighbor unites us a representation of the Kingdom of God as it truly is. Not divided into different religions, races, cultures, denominations, political parties, classes, ages, financial status, or anything else that society tries to fit into specific groups. God sees only one division, saved and unsaved, BUT has provided ONE way to demolish that division and will one day make His name known as ALL will bow before Him, either as Master Messiah or simply a martyr. Regardless of which view you will take on the Day of Judgement, Christ is the commonality between them both, Christ is unity and unification through Him! No where in Scripture is this more clear and beautiful than in Jesus’ longest prayer in John 17. The words of our Savior to our Father should bring us to our knees in humility as He pleads to the Source of perfect unity (the Holy Trinity) to breach our enmity and dissension with ourselves as people and to provide unison as His bride. He prays for unity amongst us, but not just any unity, the same exact unity that joins Him to the Father and to the Spirit. He prays for a zeal in us to speak against and continue to be hated by the world just as He was so that we can be focused on a joy that’s eternal with a purpose and security that “shall not be shaken.” (Psalm 62:1-2). This prayer has been imprinted on our very being since before time began, is now the essence of our song to Lord who loves, and will be the goal of our worship, to lift high our Redeemer, our unifier! Christ be praised, for praying and providing zeal, unity, the Holy Spirit and the BEAUTIFUL burdens among them! Holy Father, perfect Unifier, how great You are to be praised and sought after. Lord may my words be evident to those who read them that You are real and Holy, but allow my actions speak much louder to those whom You have me be a holy reflection of Your righteousness to. Grant me awareness that all of my life is worship to You oh God and that no opportunity is too small to exhibit Your grace, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control! Heavenly Father make me zealous, unite me with Your Spirit and Your Kingdom, and may Your Holy Spirit be my reason and my strength to grow more and more in doing these things all for Your glory and Yours alone! In the unifying name of Christ I pray, amen! It has been a while since I have written and for that I apologize. I am sorry to those whom may follow this little endeavor of mine, but I also apologize to myself. After a conversation with my fiance about self-processing and the differences between personal verbal processing and other forms of working through ideas, thoughts, and dreams I realized that I am an external literary processor. I am overcome with several different ideas of varying importance (mostly just important to me!) and I write them out to make sense of it all, in the form of songs, poems, theological inquiries, confessions, and psalms that I can look over, read through, sing, and weep over sins with. I mainly do this because I can look back at them, read them and use my visual analytic skills to take heart the changes that the Lord has brought about in my life. To read through my past posturings and heartfelt ideas and see how much progress has been made in discerning God’s will for me, and it is truly satisfying when done in the light of the understanding that only the Holy Spirit can provide (Colossians 1:9). Growing in faith through trials and tribulation is a beautiful thing to behold. To know that our Heavenly Father is very much involved in our lives in the most intricate and intimate (most of the times dirty and hurtful) of ways is awe-inspiring to me. Deistic theology astonishes me, how someone could profess Christ as a doctrinal god without actually believing He IS God, intertwining His sovereignty into every fine detail of our existence from the very beginning (Romans 8:28-32). But with this can of worms opened, I have dove head first into a study of the Holy and the source of holiness with the utmost ability (the Spirit inside) to attempt to comprehend God’s will in the light of our struggles specifically and how we often respond to God’s workings.
The Easton Dictionary of the Bible defines “lamentation” as “An elegy or dirge. Prophecy sometimes took the form of lament when it predicted calamity.” (speaking on Old Testament accounts) This idea of mourning, in a sense, before God at our inability to grasp His ultimate plan and/or our fallen-ness in the form of crying out as though He has forsaken us, through literal means or metaphorical, is something else to observe entirely, but is as real as God Himself. This is a falling before the throne as the insufficient and unrighteous beings that we are and landing on our faces to lift up our hearts to The All Sufficient Deity that we worship as Lord of all, the Turner of all tides in our lives, the Potter, Redeemer, Almighty God, whom we trust with proof of eternal worthiness. Lamentation is a healthy and glorifying way to ask God “why” with keeping in mind the knowledge that it is because we are utterly fallen in light of His holiness, for to see yourself rightly you must look at God (not literally, no one has done that!) and it’s then you will see your image, before Christ but most importantly after. This is evident throughout the Old Testament in the lives of the people of Jerusalem (2 Samuel 1:17-27 , Amos 8:10, Ezekiel 27:2, and all of the book of Lamentations). Without embarking too far into territory that I have no historical backing or mapping in I will merely try to speak on the subject that has burdened my (and those I love) life lately, and I use the term burden loosely. One in the sense of a weight that affects our lives in the form of a severe task, or a difficult duty and also in the sense of a holy load blessed and pressed upon our hearts with eternal urgency (I shutter at using words and phrases like these because I know that with my short(?) writings I don’t even come close to presenting concise conclusions on ideas that I have most of the time! I just pray that the Lord uses what I am able to communicate in these to help me process and maybe someone else to find rest in what I put my life into the hands of!) Point being in all of this: sorrow, pain, suffering, and our response to these experiences can ultimately be fuel for glorification if we view them in the light of more than just provision of perseverance (or endurance as most translations use, Romans 5:1-5) but also God making His will known to us through a deep root strengthening, a faith fortifying formula to drawing ever nearer to us through His perfect justice and plan. Psalm 23 rings true with echos of our portion in God’s hard and difficult sharpening and pruning process, especially when we fully comprehend what it means to”not be in want” (Psalm 23:1). This is a difficult thing to understand, how to trigger a change of heart from an unwillingness to know that faith is to be had with perfect reason, to thinking and believing that the reason for faith has been chasing after you the whole time, all the while gently whispering to you amidst your cries for help and guidance to say, “I have been there, I am there, and I will be there. I Am who I Am!” whether you are aware of it or not, for He does not change what has already been set in His heart and with every fiber of our being we should pray for that same heart to beat within us. Scripture speaks no greater truth than that of the very words of our Savior, “I have manifested Your name to the people whom You gave me out of the world. Yours they were, and You gave them to me, and they have kept Your word. Now they know that everything that You have given me is from You. For I have given them the words that You gave me, and they have received them and have come to know in truth that I came from You; and they have believed that You sent me. I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom You have given me, for they are Yours. All mine are Yours, and Yours are mine, and I am glorified in them. And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to You. Holy Father, keep them in Your name, which You have given me, that they may be one, even as We are one. While I was with them, I kept them in Your name, which You have given me. I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled. But now I am coming to You, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. I have given them Your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. I do not ask that You take them out of the world, but that You keep them from the evil one.They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth. As You sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth.I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word,that they may all be one, just as You, Father, are in me, and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You have sent me.The glory that You have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as We are one,I in them and You in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that You sent me and loved them even as You loved me.Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that You have given me because You loved me before the foundation of the world.O righteous Father, even though the world does not know You, I know You, and these know that You have sent me.I made known to them Your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which You have loved me may be in them, and I in them.” (John 17:6-19 ESV Y’s capitalized for emphasis) The amount of “You”‘s in this prayer simply proclaims the intimacy of our God, His perfect involvement in the lives of those He welcomes as His true children (1 John 3:10, Romans 9:8)! This is our Lord, the “Truth”, propitiation, praying for us, to know that there is ALWAYS hope! Through suicide, divorce, job strain or loss, family conflict, school stress, financial strain or loss, death, or any other form of anguish that we find ourselves trapped by He is there, right there, on His face in prayer to our Father. Praying that we keep a cross centered heart, always remain obedient to perfect obedience, humble before humility itself, submitting and living (by studying through selfless expression) His perfect sovereignty, and lament in love. Holy Father, sovereign Lord, be praised for every word, spoken and heard by inspiration of Your Spirit. Be my focus through depth of strain and darkest of valleys, through death and through life, give my heart rejoice that You are working in my life, my mother’s understanding, my father’s faith, my fiance’s heart, Jacob’s health, my job’s goal, and my ministry’s aim. I lift Your Name high in and through this blog, God You sustain me evermore, more than I can ever imagine and I pray for discernment with gradual yet great grace, that only You can provide, to give You the glory in and through it ALL! In the powerful Name of Christ I pray, amen! Colossians 1:9-20 says, “9 For this reason also, since the day we heard this, we haven’t stopped praying for you. We are asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding, 10 so that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to Him, bearing fruit in every good work and growing in the knowledge of God. 11 May you be strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might, for all endurance and patience, with joy 12 giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the saints’ inheritance in the light. 13 He has rescued us from the domain of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son He loves. 14 We have redemption,the forgiveness of sins, in Him. 15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16 For everything was created by Him, in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities— all things have been created through Him and for Him. 17 He is before all things,and by Him all things hold together. 18 He is also the head of the body, the church; He is the beginning,the firstborn from the dead, so that He might come to have first place in everything. 19 For God was pleased to have all His fullness dwell in Him, 20 and through Him to reconcile everything to Himself
by making peace through the blood of His cross-- whether things on earth or things in heaven.” (HCSB) I can’t help but read this with enriching passion for Paul’s eloquent culmination of describing God’s divine and righteously driven knowledge of our need for this “spiritual understanding” (v.9) and how joyful he is and inclined to continue to pray that we grasp this holy gift of discernment for how, when, where, and why God moves so heavily in the lives of His devoted servants, His purchased and adopted family and how great the work of His cross was and will always be. This should rightfully encourage and embolden us to live as those who “understand” His power and utilize His Spirit. Now I’m the type of person that believes that “New Years resolutions” are a pointless way of justifying putting off change in our lives til the first of January, but only 8 days into this new year the Lord has shown absolute resolution and resolve in my heart of hearts as to what it really means to change and when we should make it evident that something has changed. 2 Corinthians 5:16-21 echos the Colossians passage in a way that cannot be mistaken: “16 From now on, then, we do not know anyone in a purely human way. Even if we have knownChrist in a purely human way, yet now we no longer know Him in this way. 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away, and look, new things have come. 18 Everything is from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19 That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed the message of reconciliation to us. 20 Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, certain that God is appealing through us. We plead on Christ’s behalf, ‘Be reconciled to God.’ 21 He made the One who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” (HCSB) Like a quiet and impenetrable fog that covers a river bank just after a heavy cool rain, our sin and lost life, revolving around that which is unsatisfied and unsatisfiable, lingers with dread and dark silence. But we have a holy wind to blow the mist away and we can see the shore much more clearly after the fog passes than we ever did before the rain, and it’s a firm and beautiful soil to root ourselves in and know that nothing will threaten our prosperity if we cling to this hope (Jeremiah 17:8). The blurry knowledge of ourselves before Christ and before our blessed understanding through Him isn’t so much a knowledge as it is a reoccurring acknowledgement that there is someone or something taking up space on this planet, a hopeless void of flesh and bone, a hard-hearted human being searching for significance in a world of deception fueling our fire of ill-begotten worth, but NOT after Christ. This “new creation” cannot help but ring and shake with joyful transpiration from darkness to light, invisibility to clarity of self and a new race to run. A race running from selfish and sinful old reasons to live and to run to a finish line laden with “glorious riches” (not to say that our faith is finish-line based!) that make our past selves seem far from what we thought we were. Now is the time to worship a Creator of things past but even more so of a Creator that makes new things in us whenever we call upon Him (Isaiah 12:1-6). No dwelling can be made a new place or location due to its dweller, but the holy mystery of the Incarnation is that Christ, all of God put on human flesh and came to immerse Himself in our brokenness, to conquer it and demolish it and to rebuild true hope so that we may put Him on and at the same time have Him within us to transform our heart to a new heart of flesh. The ability to become an entirely new creation, a new dwelling place for the most High God so that no longer are we a dwelling place for sin and deceit that encourages us to run and hide from our Heavenly Father but are now a resolute and resolved home for the Holy Spirit of God Himself is the beauty of the Gospel and that is truly transforming. Matthew Henry in his Concise Commentary of the Whole Bible says about Colossians 3:5-11, “the Gospel changes the higher as well as the lower powers of the soul, and supports the rule of right reason and conscience, over appetite and passion. There is now no difference from country, or conditions and circumstances of life. It is the duty of everyone to be holy, because Christ is a Christian’s All, his only Lord and Savior, and all his hope and happiness.” So where I am still against the idea of telling yourself that you will begin to workout, or quit smoking, or eat healthier, or read more and talk less ONCE the new year starts, I have been shown that creating a “New Life Resolution” is a wonderful sign of obedience to the One who made you new to begin with. Sure a new year has come and the old one has gone but that isn’t really going to change anything about yourself but that you have a new calender, so if you KNOW Christ (if you got to know Him as a new year resolution, PRAISE GOD, that means you can start living life RIGHT NOW as transformed and as a new creation and that you don’t have to set limitations to when and where God leads you!) do something about it, to show the world your new self, seek now (NOT tomorrow or the next day or next January 1st) to take hold and own your faith and use your “spiritual understanding” if you are truly IN Christ and He in you to live your life as if you are something anew! Heavenly Father, Provider and Creator of new creations, Your redemptive power and Gospel is truly life changing. Whereas I know that my words are few and finite Yours create universes and breathe life into dead sinners I pray that You and Your Spirit has spoken through me in some way that You receive nothing but endless praise and glory for Your workings in my life. You are holy always and it is Your holiness, proclaimed through your Word and through Your Spirit that I cling and pray to never waver. Yahweh it is you that I seek with honest submission and it is Your will above my own that I pray my life holds firm. I pray for Your empowerment of my life, be my motivation to live anew as Your possession and Your creation and I pray that people’s hearts are softened to Your Truth and Transformation so that they may see and rejoice in their new life that now has purpose. Thank You for Your heart and strength and Your continued conviction to turn from my old sin and praise Your holy name through a life lived for Your glory, in Christ’s transforming name I pray, amen. Leave a comment |
AuthorMy name is Orrie Landen Kyzer ArchivesCategories |