"The purpose of these troubles is to test your faith as fire tests how genuine gold is. Your faith is more precious than gold, and by passing the test, it gives praise, glory, and honor to God. This will happen when Jesus Christ appears again." 1 Peter 1:7 GWT
Sometimes I wonder, in the darkness of the night, why the trials I face are presented to me on a platter of unappetizing food when I am starving for nourishment. I never get the answer of "Oh, this is what you must learn" or "This is who is watching you to be bless by your triumph."
Usually, there's just silence.
As if God is tired of giving me the same answer, "In time, all will be revealed." I can look back upon my life and the changes wrought by the power of the Holy Spirit and pinpoint what I gained from the trials and tribulations of my life, what I learned, what I was helped to overcome, and how it brought me closer to the man that God intended me to be. You would figure I would learn, but I don't seem to have that foresight until it becomes hindsight.
People tell me that I am far stronger of a man than I myself believe. One 'giant' that I spent a 'story weekend' with so long ago, it seems, told me that I'm going to be one of those who are at the fore of battle, swinging the sword of God's might and righteousness against the enemy's legions laughing, "Is this all you've got?" He told me that he'd willingly follow me into such battles whenever I called.
My mentor told me that he looks forward to the day when he can come to church and hear the words that God's given me to speak upon that day. He knows that God will bless those who listen and bless me for fulfilling my purpose to which He's called me. I replied that it wouldn't be in a church that exists today, because their judgment isn't God's and they don't like me once they hear my past. I'd have to start my own church and I'm not that eager to do so.
I walk the line between my sinful old nature and the purified nature of God's redemptive birth in righteousness. I fight the daily battle between the two, failing more often that victorious. But always given another day to try again. Always given a clean slate in which to write the story that God's given me to tell.
And it is not the struggles that seem to glare in the morning sun of the daily life I travel in this journey home. Rather, it is my response to it that brings a highlight to the story I've got to tell; of God's redemptive plan, His healing hands, and His ultimate love that endures no matter my failings.
We struggle as a people to tell the 'gospel' story, to fulfill the Great Commission. We struggle, because I think we fail to remember what the Commission passed down through the generations actually is. It is to tell the story; Jesus Christ came to die for our sins, was crucified and buried, and rose again three days later....all according to the Scriptures. If we keep it simple, we are invariably asked how we know......
That is where our story comes into play. Personal, intense, and highly glorifying to the Most High God. As the apostles of old, we can tell of God's redeeming love, glorious Holiness, and powerful Plan.
That is where our faith, our belief, and our affirmation of God becomes clear...in those times where less hopeful people have failed to move, failed to love, and failed to survive. In those storm-tossed seas of our human life when the odds aren't visibly in our favor; our story tells of the peace and comfort, the hope that dwells eternal within all of God's children ......redemption and salvation.
And that is our purpose; to testify to the glory of God.
I wonder when I will ever achieve the level of peace and comfort, that comes often but seems to leave quickly, where it is no longer an awaited state but something I know is a constant awareness of my Father's love. I fight so often against my flesh of the visible, with the voices of the dissenters echoing in my ears. I know this battle will always exist, on this journey, as I draw closer to God and the enemy grows in fear of his lack of purchase upon my soul that he once had. When will this battle end? Of course, I know the answer...when I arrive back home.
For our God keeps His promises, and He's promised to return for us.
To bring us HOME!
Wednesday, June 4
Tuesday, June 3
Will you see the glory or only see the gloom?
"So I have looked for You in the sanctuary, to see Your power and Your glory. Because Your love is better than life, my lips shall praise You. Thus I will bless You while I live; I will lift up my hands in Your name." Psalm 63:2-4
We have all looked for a being greater than us, who can explain to us the reasoning behind our very existence and the purpose to which we should strive. We all, regardless of whether we believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob or some other facmile of Him created by our imaginative minds; we seek something beyond ourselves to explain the errors of the universe.
And we either accept that there is an Intelligence beyond ourselves or we subscribe to a chance that defies our logical world. It is this quest, this journey through the chaos and destruction that is wrought upon our world that consumes us for most of our lives. We either find the purpose of it all or we spend our years wastedly wandering the desert of our own destruction.
Adam and Eve started this journey of re-discovery and rededication, redemption and salvation, that few will acknowledge but everyone pursues with a life-affirming purpose. We live to have meaning and it is what gives us that meaning that causes us to rise to greatness or fall upon the waiting rocks. I doubt it would've made much difference if Adam, and consequently Eve, would have been informed of their purpose; Adam, created outside the Garden was given to upkeep and defend the beauty and order of the Garden from chaos and destruction in as much as Eve was created in the Garden, amist the order and beauty of God's creation to be a side-by-side helper to Adam, helping him stay on purpose to which God had given him. The Bible doesn't tell us of the conversations that God had with the first two humans He created, just that they walked in the Garden with Him often. So often, it was clear when sin, full of destruction and chaos, entered the Garden proper. God's first call was, "Where are you?"
We have been lost ever since, and the journey home is a long, difficult, and affirming pathway that winds through our lives and the lives of those we touch in a multitude of ways. God has interacted with us in visible and defining ways in the history of this world, broken and moaning for humanity's return to created purpose; through the confusing of languages in Bablyon, the worldwide flood of Noah's days, the wilderness journey of the Israelites, and the crucifixtion of Jesus Christ upon a cross of wood. Like warnings of humanity's straying from the path home, glaring and openly God-impacted events course through our history books.
Yet, each time those moments that have changed the course of human history have happened, only a few have seen the impact and love of a Creator that moves upon the earth even to this day. And those few have made a choice between who they would follow, much like the choice that Adam and Eve had in the Garden some six thousand years ago. One choice; to follow the Creator of all or the created who fell from it all. We either vilify those visible individuals who have faced that choice as evil or praise them as geniuses. But we give credit to them more so than those greatest of our history themselves give, and ignore the true source of everything; Almighty God. This Being we either recreate into an acceptable version that subscribes to our view of how things must work or we acknowledge as far beyond our capability to fully comprehend, there is a Being that we have a broken connection to.
And, if we take the last avenue and open the door to the knock that is quietly rapping upon the wooden access to our heartfelt desire, we find a God that has always been and desires a reunion with His created children. A call that we recognize when we look back upon the history of the world. A desire that echoes within our souls from the moment we breath our first breath of sinful, broken air upon a creation that was broken with our own willful disobedience.
And then our world changes, sometimes with an audible click as the pieces of our souls join together in relationship with the Creator. Or, grows with the disconnection and continued disobedience as we deny the Truth we know in our very depth of soul is truth.
Once that threshold is crossed, for our benefit of gaining salvation and redemption or for our destruction because of our willful denial of Truth, it can never be recrossed. We either begin a journey of discovery or a journey of destructive selfishness.
Carolyn Baker, the devotional writer for AllAboutGod.com says, "The closer He comes to you, the more the fire of passion will ignite within you. You will become like the Bride preparing for the Bridegroom, and you will experience first hand the intensity of His brightness shining through your very human heart. You will become that “contagious Christian” who tears down the strongholds by the power of Christ’s love."
You realize the awesome gift that we have gained through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the love of the Father who send Him to this world to be killed, and the majesty of the glory that is our God. The world opens into awesome displays of created wonders, blessed creations, and promised eternity.
Or you continue to make square blocks fit into round holes. Your belief system is constantly in turmoil, being overturned by others and consumed in deception. You believe life is a waste and chance, nothing more than a sludge mix of luck and 'dog-eat-dog' survival.
The further you wander away from Him, the more the fire of deception and destruction, hatred and confusion consume your life and your morality. You continue to die, unable to stop the process that Christ came to stop. The world becomes nothing more than a force arrayed against you, as promised by God when Adam failed to stand his ground against the enemy and allowed him into the created order.
You either walk towards the glory or journey deeper into the gloom......
We have all looked for a being greater than us, who can explain to us the reasoning behind our very existence and the purpose to which we should strive. We all, regardless of whether we believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob or some other facmile of Him created by our imaginative minds; we seek something beyond ourselves to explain the errors of the universe.
And we either accept that there is an Intelligence beyond ourselves or we subscribe to a chance that defies our logical world. It is this quest, this journey through the chaos and destruction that is wrought upon our world that consumes us for most of our lives. We either find the purpose of it all or we spend our years wastedly wandering the desert of our own destruction.
Adam and Eve started this journey of re-discovery and rededication, redemption and salvation, that few will acknowledge but everyone pursues with a life-affirming purpose. We live to have meaning and it is what gives us that meaning that causes us to rise to greatness or fall upon the waiting rocks. I doubt it would've made much difference if Adam, and consequently Eve, would have been informed of their purpose; Adam, created outside the Garden was given to upkeep and defend the beauty and order of the Garden from chaos and destruction in as much as Eve was created in the Garden, amist the order and beauty of God's creation to be a side-by-side helper to Adam, helping him stay on purpose to which God had given him. The Bible doesn't tell us of the conversations that God had with the first two humans He created, just that they walked in the Garden with Him often. So often, it was clear when sin, full of destruction and chaos, entered the Garden proper. God's first call was, "Where are you?"
We have been lost ever since, and the journey home is a long, difficult, and affirming pathway that winds through our lives and the lives of those we touch in a multitude of ways. God has interacted with us in visible and defining ways in the history of this world, broken and moaning for humanity's return to created purpose; through the confusing of languages in Bablyon, the worldwide flood of Noah's days, the wilderness journey of the Israelites, and the crucifixtion of Jesus Christ upon a cross of wood. Like warnings of humanity's straying from the path home, glaring and openly God-impacted events course through our history books.
Yet, each time those moments that have changed the course of human history have happened, only a few have seen the impact and love of a Creator that moves upon the earth even to this day. And those few have made a choice between who they would follow, much like the choice that Adam and Eve had in the Garden some six thousand years ago. One choice; to follow the Creator of all or the created who fell from it all. We either vilify those visible individuals who have faced that choice as evil or praise them as geniuses. But we give credit to them more so than those greatest of our history themselves give, and ignore the true source of everything; Almighty God. This Being we either recreate into an acceptable version that subscribes to our view of how things must work or we acknowledge as far beyond our capability to fully comprehend, there is a Being that we have a broken connection to.
And, if we take the last avenue and open the door to the knock that is quietly rapping upon the wooden access to our heartfelt desire, we find a God that has always been and desires a reunion with His created children. A call that we recognize when we look back upon the history of the world. A desire that echoes within our souls from the moment we breath our first breath of sinful, broken air upon a creation that was broken with our own willful disobedience.
And then our world changes, sometimes with an audible click as the pieces of our souls join together in relationship with the Creator. Or, grows with the disconnection and continued disobedience as we deny the Truth we know in our very depth of soul is truth.
Once that threshold is crossed, for our benefit of gaining salvation and redemption or for our destruction because of our willful denial of Truth, it can never be recrossed. We either begin a journey of discovery or a journey of destructive selfishness.
Carolyn Baker, the devotional writer for AllAboutGod.com says, "The closer He comes to you, the more the fire of passion will ignite within you. You will become like the Bride preparing for the Bridegroom, and you will experience first hand the intensity of His brightness shining through your very human heart. You will become that “contagious Christian” who tears down the strongholds by the power of Christ’s love."
You realize the awesome gift that we have gained through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the love of the Father who send Him to this world to be killed, and the majesty of the glory that is our God. The world opens into awesome displays of created wonders, blessed creations, and promised eternity.
Or you continue to make square blocks fit into round holes. Your belief system is constantly in turmoil, being overturned by others and consumed in deception. You believe life is a waste and chance, nothing more than a sludge mix of luck and 'dog-eat-dog' survival.
The further you wander away from Him, the more the fire of deception and destruction, hatred and confusion consume your life and your morality. You continue to die, unable to stop the process that Christ came to stop. The world becomes nothing more than a force arrayed against you, as promised by God when Adam failed to stand his ground against the enemy and allowed him into the created order.
You either walk towards the glory or journey deeper into the gloom......
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