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.   

Your Wish is My Command

Jesus is the Way.  He established a new way of life that pleases God and abolishes the old way.  “Sacrifice and offering You did not desire, but a body You have prepared for Me.  In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin You had no pleasure.  Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come--In the volume of the book it is written of Me--to do Your will, O God."  (Hebrews 10:6-7)   

When we accept Jesus' love for us and His death and resurrection, we are made into a new creation with old things passed away. (2 Corinthians 5:17)  Our old way of trying to do things (sacrifices and offerings) to gain God's approval has been replaced by the gift of salvation, making us whole with a new heart that delights to do God's will.  This new way might be expressed as "your wish is my command," because our heart's desire now is to do what pleases Him.  Paul says whether we live or die, we aim to please Him. 

Knowing the love of God is so awesome and overwhelming that in spite of our flesh seeking its selfish way, the love of Christ "constrains us" to do His will as a cheerful giver.  Romans 8:13 would say it this way, "if by the Spirit of God, we put to death the deeds of the body, we will live."  Our born-again spirit delights to do His will and with the Holy Spirit's power overcomes the fleshly desire to only want selfish goals. 

Knowing God's love makes all the difference.  The conclusion of why we can glory in tribulations in Romans 5:5 is that "hope does not disappoint us because the love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Spirit of God who has been given us."  No wonder the prayer in Ephesians 3 is for God to enable us that we "may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height— to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God."

God continues to reveal Who He is and how great His love is for us. As we grow in receiving and understanding His love, the only honest response is to want to please Him.  When Peter saw the miracle of the nets full of fish, he knelt down and cried, "Depart from me for I am a sinful man" and willingly followed Jesus to become a fisher of men.  When Isaiah saw the Lord high and lifted up, after crying out to be cleansed of his sinful lips, willingly responded. "Here am I, send me."  Likewise, Saul, or now better known as Paul, completely shifted his life purpose from hating and killing Christians to giving his all to bringing men to know Jesus.  

Jesus promises that His burden is light and his yoke is easy.  The way of the transgressor is hard.  So not only does God calls us to delight in doing His will, He makes it a place of ease and rest for our souls.  We literally enjoy knowing His pleasure when our hearts are filled with vehement desire, zeal, and eagerness to joyfully obey His commands.  God loves a cheerful giver.  Therefore, unite with all Christians in this simple prayer from Psalm 143:10. "Teach me to do Your will, for You are my God." 

Life and Godliness

Consider what God has given you, "His divine power has given to us all that pertains to life and godliness through the knowledge of Him."  This is an awesome, almost beyond grasp, reality.  And to ensure that we are able to bring this home, the verse in 2 Peter 1 continues "by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you might become partakers of divine nature...."  Obviously, the more we know Him the more we become like Him, and the more we understand the promises of God, the more we are able to believe and receive them.    

Consider also the truth that runs contrary to our natural mind, namely, everything that we ever need and that changes us into the likeness of God has already been given to us, we already have it.  God's kingdom has come, it is finished, and God waits to be gracious to us.  Instead of trying to get something, we are given God's "exceedingly great and precious promises" so that we will understand how great He is and because of His love, what He has given us.  He is waiting for us to know it is ours and to accept His gift of everything we could ever need for life and for being godly.  

The Greek word for saved, or salvation, is sozo, which is often translated "be made whole."  We have been delivered or saved from all the consequences of sin, old things have passed away, the new creation has come.  Our minds simply have to be renewed to know this truth which sets us free.  As a man thinks, so is he. Notice how Paul told the Ephesians in Acts 20, "So now, brethren, I commend you to God and to the Word of His grace, which is able to build you up and give you an inheritance among all those who are sanctified." 

What inheritance?  Jesus said all that the Father has is mine, and Jesus bestows that power and authority to us to exercise in His name.  Furthermore, scriptures like Ephesians 3 speak of coming to know His love and being filled with the fullness of God.  Christ is our wisdom, our strength, our life is hidden in Him.  

Therefore, it follows that our hearts need to be opened and our minds renewed to know Him.  As He reveals Himself, we have the mind of Christ and can think like God thinks.  The more we let His thoughts "dwell in us richly" (Colossians 3:16), the more we see His goodness and are able to just receive all He has given by faith.  Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.

What would it take for you to have more of this resurrected life that Jesus has freely given you?  Do you desire "that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened..."  Ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find.   Ask the Holy Spirit to give you a fresh desire.  Be like David who refused to sleep and be at ease until there was a place for God.