He Provides, We Choose

Hear this admonishment from 2 Thessalonians 3:5, "Now may the Lord direct your hearts into the love of God and into the patience of Christ."  God has provided and demonstrated His infinite love for us, and then even directs our hearts to receive and cherish His affection, but we still have the free will to choose.  We can accept it or reject it.  By accepting His infinite love, the power is released to transform us by overcoming all our other thoughts and fears.  

The second part of that challenge, "the patience of Christ," reminds us how He faithfully waits for us to come to the end of ourselves and turn to Him.  Jesus explained this truth as the father in the prodigal son parable who waited and watched for the wayward son to return. Love is patient.  When the love of God controls us, we have that power to sow our words and actions and to wait for the precious fruit to grow.  Do not be weary in well doing for in due time we shall surely reap. 

God has ways of reminding us that He loves us just for who we are and is pleased with every little thing we do to share His love with others.  Last night we had the opportunity to join several hundred people celebrate God's work of bringing the Gospel to over 200 million people through Every Home Crusade.  Most of us weren't on the front lines, just merely small supporters of the ministry.  Yet God's presence assured us that each one was a part of what He is doing to reach the world and let "every knee bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord."  Sometimes we forget that in spite of our daily troubles and human weaknesses, God still uses us to accomplish His purposes. 

My word today for you is to take a moment just to stop and let His love and presence fill your heart.  Then patiently choose to do the things and meet the needs He allows you to see.  Even the proverbial "glass of water to a small child" shall have eternal rewards.  As Psalm 58 concludes, "Surely there is a reward for the righteous; surely He is God who judges in the earth."

We pray that you don't lose heart in your present struggles but continue to pray and do what is in your power to share this all-important Gospel of Jesus' love for every person on earth.  God has provided His love, we choose to receive it and let it control us.  May God plant this fervent desire to spread the love and truth of Jesus into the hearts of each one of us and give us opportunity to speak and to be His light in the darkness.   

Enough

Can you imagine God greeting you, "O mighty man of valor," when you, like Gideon, are cowardly hiding from the enemy and troubled by what is going on in the world?  Does it sound too good to be true, that God sees you as an overcoming, mighty one who is always led in triumph and who crushes the evil one under your feet?  Yet, what He has done is enough to make you more than you could think or imagine.  Let God be true and every man a liar, according to the words of Romans 3:4.  

In Psalm 50 God closes with the words, "to him who orders his conduct aright I will show the salvation of God."  Salvation is the noun describing being saved or delivered from.  When Jesus healed or touched someone, He would say "be made whole."  To be whole is to be completely delivered or saved from sin and all the effects of sin.  However, until God is able to transform our thinking and heart to know our "we are made whole" salvation, we continue to limp between two different opinions. On one hand we are filled with faith that the "Christ is in you" life of God is overcoming all circumstances, and on the other hand, that we are just weak human beings who fail often.  Our verse in Psalm 50 affirms that as we choose to obey God, He begins to show us His salvation, how He has made us whole and overcomers and how totally we are free from the old fallen-nature ways.   Thanks be to God who always leads us in triumph.

Jesus promised the Holy Spirit would lead us and guide us into all truth.  As we let the Word dwell in us richly, the Holy Spirit speaks to our spirit until we "know" what Jesus has given us and are able to walk in it.  In the first letter of John, there are something like 23 "by this we know" statements.  The ultimate definition of eternal life given by Jesus in John 17 is "that they may know the Father and Jesus Christ whom He has sent."   God wants us to know we are whole in Him and has made provision for us to come to that conviction that it is already accomplished.  

Jesus declares He is the first of many brethren, who share His life and nature.  It seems almost unbelievable and too much to grasp that what Jesus has done has literally made us like Him.  We just need to receive it.  Note the words of 1 John 4:17, "as He is, so are we in the world." We are partakers of His divine nature (2 Peter 1:3-4), but the remainder of that section describes how to press in to make it our own, namely to diligently add to your faith, virtue; to virtue, knowledge; to knowledge, self-control; to self-control, perseverance; to perseverance, brotherly kindness love; to brotherly kindness love, love.  Therefore, He can conclude the clincher, that if we do these things we will never fail or be unfruitful.  

The point is Jesus has accomplished what the name Jehovah JIreh declares, God is enough. There is a song, Jireh by Maverick City, that states "You are enough, forever enough, always enough, more than enough."  Our hope of glory, Christ in us, establishes that the overcoming power and love of God lives in us and causes us to always be more than enough for every challenge.  Praise God forever for His glorious salvation!

Touch Other Lives

If you want to touch other lives, it will cost you.  

One of my daughters is having a baby this weekend.  They have prayed for this child and are excited and grateful to be at this point after the challenges of the last 9 months.  However, as we all know, having a baby leads to a new cost beyond pregnancy, whether it is losing sleep, changing diapers, feeding the baby and cleaning up messes, and a multitude of other things which take time, effort, and attention.  Yet God has planted in the hearts of parents a great joy and fulfillment in handling every step of this child's development and growth.  Their greatest joy is seeing him/her become the person God has called and knowing they have given this precious one the foundation to live according to the truth for the Lord (3 John 1:4).  Compared to this joy, the cost is of little concern.  

This is a strong example of how God our Father willing paid the price of sending His Son and seeing Him "bruised" (Isaiah 53:10) to give us life.  The price seemed like nothing because of His love for us and our well-being forever.  Transferring this motivation to our laying down self to serve God, Paul in Romans 8:18 shares "...the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us."

There are times and circumstances which affect our thinking and emotions and may even cause us to get weary in doing good.  David, in both Psalm 42 and 43, asks the question, "Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why are you disquieted within me?" with the following personal instruction, "Hope in God; for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God."  Choosing hope has the power to broaden our attention and help us depend on more than our own thoughts and feelings.  When we set our mind on the "things" of above, we can re-adjust our focus and realize God has given sure promises which go far beyond our present challenges, and we will again praise Him.  However, God also has another reason for us to choose joyful hope over our negative feelings.   

In Colossians 1:24, Paul states that he "rejoices in my sufferings for you and fill up in my flesh what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ, for the sake of His body, which is the church."  We know Jesus declared "It is finished." on the cross and the price for every sin and its consequence was paid in full.  However, there is a cost to be paid if we want to be like-minded to Jesus, willing to lay our life down (Phil 2) to meet the needs of others.  Since God's ultimate goal for each of us is "to be conformed to image of His Son," (Romans 8:29) the needs around us are the sticks on the altar, the opportunity to grow to be like Jesus, as we put others first at the cost of our own life.  God gives us a joy and fulfillment in accomplishing our purpose when we choose to obey Him even at the cost of our convenience, time, and effort.  Count it all joy, as James 1 states, and let this trial process build patience and produce its full work, which is becoming "perfect and lacking nothing."

God wants to grow us up to be able to have true fellowship with Him.  

The Word dwelling in us produces a hopeful, positive attitude and transforms us into His nature.   Be of good cheer as you pay the price of your calling and touch the lives of others.  It will be worth it a million times over and forever.       

To Will and To Work for His Pleasure

"For it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure (Phil 2:13)" is one of the most awesome declarations of the Christian life.  When we get home from this life and our eyes are opened, we will see how much and how many times God influenced our decisions and them provided the power to complete the task.  It always reminds me of when I flip on a light switch and the electric company provides the power which makes the light shine.  I turned on the lights but depended on the power to make it happen. 

The interesting thing is that the beginning of that verse is the call to "work out your salvation with fear and trembling."  When we hit verses that don't seem consistent with what we usually think, (in this case that salvation rests on the fact that Jesus has paid it all), it is an opportunity to ask the Holy Spirit to give understanding.  

The theme of Phil 2 is to have the mind of Christ, which is to "Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves."  Then Paul further suggests that we "have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, namely to humble ourselves by obedience even if it costs us everything.  The obvious question is how can we do that?  

As a born-again Christian, the Holy Spirit gives life to our spirit, and He literally dwells in us.  John 14 would suggest that the Father and Jesus also make their home in us.  So, since God Himself dwells in us, we have the same power that raised Christ from the dead giving life to our mortal bodies.  Ephesians 1 describes this as "the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe." It is by this power of the Holy Spirit, we are able to submit to Jesus as Lord, or owner and boss of our lives. 

However, we are also made in the image and likeness of God which means that we have free will.  There is a reason why Scripture has statements like "Choose this day whom you will serve," or "whosoever will," or "I set before you, life and death, choose life."   God can do in and through us only what we choose.  

Therefore, going back to our Philippians 2:12 verse, we need an attitude of "fear and trembling" or fear of the Lord that we willingly choose to obey the promptings of the Spirit.  When we submit to what He wills, He gives the power to do it, which, of course, give God pleasure.  Jesus clearly paid for it all, and His words "It is finished" establishes His total redemption forever.  However, to let this salvation have its complete work in us, we need to agree with His thoughts and ways by obeying His will. 

Start fresh today in His mercies which are new this morning, and simply obey the Spirit's leadings.  As you yield your will to His will, God's power is released to work and you will accomplish your purpose, which is to give Him pleasure.  All things were created according to Revelation 4 for His pleasure.  It follows that when God wills and works in us, we will "shine as lights in the world" (Phil 2:15).