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This is turning into a longer blog post than I thought it would be when we started with this topic. I haven’t gotten very far into the conversation yet (assuming you’re conversing with me) and we’re already on part four!
I’m
pondering, and I hope you’re pondering with me, over just what God wants US to
do about the condition of the world. Way back in the Old Testament days of the
prophet Habakkuk, he wanted to know the same thing. And the answer is the same
answer God gave Habakkuk.
As today,
the world was in chaos back then, too. Sometimes we’re tempted to shake our
fist at God and ask Him, “What are You going to do about all of this?”
Good news,
He already did His part. He’s watching us do our part.
But I’m just
one person, what can I do?
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In John
15:12 we read it again, “This is my commandment, That you love one
another as I have loved you.”
Earlier in
the Bible we read that Jesus taught His disciples to “love your neighbor as
yourself”. (Matthew 22:39) Now that He has paid the price for our sin and
has risen from the grave to give us new life, He’s given us the ability to love
others the same way He loves us. We can let Him love them THROUGH us. And THAT
– is how we’re going to “fix” the world. The only way we can do this to let God
love them through us. This is where WE need clarification. We need to see and
understand God’s vision of how this works. We need to understand our part in
His vision. We need His vision to become our vision. We need to see what He sees;
the way He sees it.
And THAT, my
friends, is what having vision is all about.
In
Habakkuk’s response to God, he clearly expected God to wave a magic wand and
“fix” everything, which, let’s face it, is something we’d like Him to do, too.
Sometimes we insist, there must be an easier way! Yet, God tells us that His
ways are higher (and better) than our ways. In Isaiah 55:9 (KJV) we
read, “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher
than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
He is, after all, God. We are His creation. We are the works of His hands. He created us. And He created us in HIS image. He created us to be like Him. He is creative, He designed us to be creative. He is love. He created us to hold or contain His love, so that He can love through us. He wants us to live in Him and He wants to live inside of us. He created us to be the temple of the Holy Spirit. His desire is to live and love through us. We're vessels to contain His glory. An empty vessel helps no man.
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Or didn’t
you know? Paul wrote to us in the New Testament, to those of us who have put our
faith and complete trust in Jesus the Christ, our salvation, our redemption –
our liberator. He said, “What? Know ye not that your body is the temple of
the Holy Ghost, which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your
own?” – 1 Corinthians 6:19 KJV
He asked the
Christians of that day the same question He might ask us, “Don’t you know that
you are the house of God? Don’t you know that the Holy Spirit of God lives
inside of you? You are not your own, you’ve surrendered to God and His
ownership and instruction!”
Summing up
part four of this pondering, we need to wrap our minds around what it means to
be “in Christ” and to have Him living in us. Before we can uncover God’s vision
for our lives, and for the lives of all men, we need to be surrendered to Jesus
Christ, body, soul and spirit. Some things are only discerned spiritually (1
Corinthians 2:14, “But the natural man receives not the things of the Spirit of
God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they
are spiritually discerned.”). Our carnal minds (perceived through our
senses) cannot comprehend the things of God. Once we’re born again, redeemed,
or saved – we need to renew our minds with the Word of God (both logos and
rhema) before we can discern the things of God. And that’s what this is about,
discerning God’s vision for us.
Part five is
coming soon! (It’s already written.)
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ReplyDeleteThere’s a lot of us who need vision correction
ReplyDelete