God’s Confidence
Marnie Piuze Irony: God has complete confidence in me, though I am as predictably changeable as the tide, ---while I refuse to put my complete confidence in Him, who is absolutely and unchangeable trustworthy! Why does He have such confidence in me? Because He knows how He made me and what He made me for—and He knows that HE is IN me to do that which He purposes—even though from every human standpoint it is impossible! The God of the impossible is IN me to bring me from unbelief, rebellion and selfishness into the likeness of His own Son in character and to elevate me to a place of partnership with Him-- the King of kings over the entire universe and beyond! How laughable, how ridiculous a plan! Yet He has determined to do it and it WILL come to pass! Prayer: O God! Thank You for the magnificence of Your plan! Thank You that (like a Dad with child in lap) You place Your mighty hands over mine on the ‘steering wheel of my life’—You enable me to direct my choices so that I am heading in the right direction….I am heading for the fulfillment of Your plan of partnership for eternity! Thank You that it is not up to me—I gladly surrender my will to Yours—You Whose plans exceed my feeble imaginings for myself as much as the space station exceeds my helium balloon! Thank You that You have promised to do it all to bring me to Your end! Thank You that You are faithful to forgive and cleanse me of all unrighteousness = all my thoughts, attitudes and ways that are out of agreement with You! Wash me of the old entrenched patterns of unbelief about who I am and Who You are for me—so that I can fully embrace Your confidence in me and respond with TOTAL confidence in You, Your plan and Your ways! Teach me Your ways, O God! that I might be a joyful participant in Your preparation and training of this child for the incredible future already written in my DNA and on the scroll of my life kept hidden in Your heart! I choose to position myself under You—facing the way You want me to go, directing my efforts in alignment with You so that all that I do is fully submitted and therefore fully enabled!
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“Don’t talk of love, SHOW me!” ~Eliza Doolittle
God did not just talk of Love. He created the universe and the human race in order to SHOW it. The perfect love in the perfection of the Godhead could not display the depths of compassion, mercy and grace that His Love contains. In order for these aspects of God’s nature to be displayed, there had to be an imperfect recipient: someone who needed His compassionate, merciful, abounding Love. Morning Star Journal quotes as orthodox rabbi saying that God created us so He could be good to us, so we can realize His greatness (know it by experience) and so we would merit to be vehicles for His Presence. God created us so that He could be good to us! He did not just tell us He loves us, He came to us in a mighty demonstration of that Love at the Cross. God showed His love to us by sending His Son. 1 John 4.9 God’s actions toward us are impossibly good! While we were yet sinners, God demonstrated His Love to us. Romans 5.8 In making Jews and Gentiles one in Christ, God’s wisdom was made known. Eph 3.10 God’s mercy to Paul displayed Jesus’ unlimited patience. 1 Timothy 1.16 His actions in making us alive and raising us up with Christ show the riches of His grace and clearly express His kindness. Ephesians 2.7 But we only realize the greatness of His nature when we experience the Love demonstrated, when we understand the depth of our need and receive the outpouring of His love personally. Love is experiential. It is demonstrated in relationship—real and personal interaction. All of history is a drama displaying the greatness and goodness of God. We ‘play opposite’ Him. We fit the part by our need of exactly this kind of God! When we take our place in the drama, humbly acknowledging it’s necessity and reality, we not only experience the wonder and joy of being fully loved in our neediness, but we are also changed by that Love. Love experienced is transforming. It touches us in our core and by continued exposure to that Love our very being is changed to be like His glorious Being. As we become like Him, we begin to act like Him, displaying His nature of loving compassion. As we do, we add another part to the great Drama of History through which God proclaims “THIS is the kind of God I AM!” As a ‘picture’ of God on the earth, God’s image, our surrender to His Love allows Him to perfect that image and make Himself more clearly visible. God not only created an image of Himself, He steps into that image, and unites Himself to His image which is the guarantee that His Love will permeate and change us into His likeness. Through continual humble acceptance of our need and dependence on His transforming Love, we ‘merit to be vehicles for His presence.’ That is our calling: carriers of His character whose display of His nature brings praise to Him. We are created ‘for the praise of His glorious grace’ Ephesians 1.12-14 The kindness and goodness that God displayed to men and women throughout history is meant to be seen by all the watching universe through us, His children. That display will bring Him the praise He so richly deserves! God created us to have a people of His own with whom He can be in loving relationship and through whom He can express His nature. Like Him, we are to be in loving relationship with those around us. We are to speak the truth of love and also demonstrate it as God did. John urged, ”let us not love with words...but with actions”. 1 John 3.18 We will be like Him in this world when we love one another. When our lives and words genuinely display His nature, others will come to realize the greatness of His Love. That is our privilege and our responsibility. And that is why there is a battle. Satan came in the Garden to attack the image of God, the man He had created as a spiritual being capable of expressing His nature. Satan acted in hatred to reduce man to soulish living, capable of expressing his nature. At rebirth, our spirits are restored to love relationship with God, freshly implanted with the seed, the DNA, of His nature. We are then given the permanent presence of the Spirit of God to breath life and shed light on that seed, enabling it to grow into the full expression of the nature of God on earth. Together, the Body of Christ, living out of the spirit-nature that is increasingly like God, will awesomely demonstrate His greatness! This can only happen as we, with childlike simplicity, in humble dependence, agree with God’s purpose: to be objects of love, receivers of grace, vehicles to make Him known…so that we can be a public display of the greatness of His love, grace and mercy to the praise of His glory! Clarion, blow your horn, unsheathe your sword. Still the opposing storm and reveal your Lord! The lion roars the trumpet blasts who could but run! The mission set the calling sure who could but go! The Voice of the Trumpet when heard is a compelling force to obey the Word. There’s a GOLDEN HERALDING TRUMPET I want to blow! Look about you; see the angels gathered round. They’re awaiting direction and the trumpets to bring forth their clear sound. Jesus in passion blew hard and long bringing into the hearts of others a new song. A song of deliverance from the firebrands of their enemy was, and is, to be sung before the great company. Strong to labor to bring peace that others might know sweet release. The Spirit of Burning shall burn and yet burn, while the trumpets blow on till My Son, your Jesus does return! We are the fire and make a declarative sound, even as the Voice of the Trumpet to be heard round! As His very own, we become an integral part of the multiple sound that makes up the Voice of God eternal. From Old Testament typology through the New, we do the work of the trumpet until we hear the sound of that Last Trump and meet Him in the air! Martha waited through Lazarus illness....waiting for Jesus to come and change the circumstance. But He didn’t. Martha walked through all the details of the funeral and the burial and watched the door of the tomb close. It was over. In her grief, when Jesus came 4 days late, she still had faith that He could have healed and that resurrection would come, some future day. But not now. Martha thought it was the end when Lazarus died. But when Lazarus’ life was over it wasn’t. God was setting things up to elevate and increase her revelation of Himself, not merely change her painful circumstance. In the middle of pain because our Lazarus is dead and even buried, we can still look for Jesus to come and bring what we really need....,not rescue but encounter with Him at the tomb that confronts our inadequate views. Lazarus’ resurrection was not just relief from grief; it was a radical step into revelation of God that turned Martha’s life upside down. Truly knowing Jesus....this is the goal of our lives and God’s highest blessing for us. All that we most deeply desire flows to us increasingly through increasingly knowing Him. God invites and even compels us to press on towards deeper discovery of Him through every contrary circumstance and evidence. There is an as-yet-unknown joy of the spirit that God is continually seeking to draw us into. It can only be known by the encounters in which He confronts our natural mindsets and expectations. Jesus does not come to simply reverse enemy inroads. He comes to enter our lives and radically shift us from our limited living to His ‘no mind has conceived’ kind of living! His goal in our crisis is for us to see Him as we never have before and walk with Him into places we never imagined before. Like Martha, He wants us to discover that resurrection is not an event in time but a Person Who is here to BE the ongoing miracle of resurrection Life -- the miracle we truly want. Our calling to KNOW Him includes both the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings. To get to the joy, there must be endurance. That means no escape, no quick fix, no giving in to disappointment, no giving up at any point along the way. We are ready to settle for mere natural comforts but He is determined to give us the deepest and most satisfying Life that is possible....full of joy inexpressible because we know Him. Joseph and Daniel had every human love and expectation ripped away, their hearts were broken, their natural hopes destroyed. Yet their lives were not over...rather they were positioned for influence far beyond anything they could have dreamed. The literal ‘suns’ of their day bowed to them BECAUSE in their personal deaths they still trusted in God Who is ABLE to rescue and Who is WORTHY to be trusted even when He doesn’t. |
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