music :: worship :: life
And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.
—Romans 8:28-29
You were set apart by God for a special purpose. Your anointing, your unique combination of gifts and talents, your passion for God and for serving his people, make you a special threat to Satan. He will go to great lengths to ensure that you do not fulfill your calling. To this end, he will stop at nothing. He will use every means at his disposal to stop you. If possible, he will turn you away from God and the church altogether.
Why does God allow this? Because God must be foremost in your life. To fulfill God’s purpose for your life, you must love him more than you love anything else. If you love your church more than you love God, you cannot fulfill your purpose. If you love your friends more than God, if you love your ministry more than God, if you love the people you serve more than God, God will allow Satan to take them. And Satan, in his desire to separate you from God and from your destiny, will use the very things you love most as his weapons. He will spread his lies and slanders, and infect and poison the hearts of those you have cared for, and make them into his most lethal weapons.
God wants you to understand that all the love and everything else you have poured out upon the people you served is not lost. All of it came from him. He is the sole provider and source. You have no reason to expect them to return anything to you. They do not have your passion; they do not have your anointing. Their destiny lies elsewhere. But nothing you have given is lost. Nothing you have done through the power given you by the Holy Spirit can ever be undone by Satan. All that you poured out came from God, and he will continue to provide you with everything you will need. He is still your only source, and as you have been learning, his provision is more extravagant in its abundance than your most forlorn hope.
So continue to love the Lord. Continue to wait upon him. Continue to do what is right with what he provides you. Continue to pour out all you are given upon those of his children he places before you. Continue to be faithful in the small things he entrusts you with as he continues to entrust you with larger and more challenging things. This is the way he has been preparing his servants from time immemorial. Look how he prepared Joseph—how he carefully brought him through stages to ready him for his service. But then look how he blessed Joseph and how he used him to bless others. God greatly blesses those he greatly uses, so that his blessings can be greatly spread. But he greatly disciplines those he greatly uses, to transform them into fit instruments for his service.
I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.
—Romans 8:18-21
God has said,
“Never will I leave you;
never will I forsake you.” So we say with confidence,
“The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid.
What can man do to me?”
—Hebrews 13:5-6
His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’
—Matthew 25:21
Then Joseph said to his brothers, “Come close to me.” When they had done so, he said, “I am your brother Joseph, the one you sold into Egypt! And now, do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you. For two years now there has been famine in the land, and for the next five years there will not be plowing and reaping. But God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance.
“So then, it was not you who sent me here, but God. He made me father to Pharaoh, lord of his entire household and ruler of all Egypt.
—Genesis 45:4-8
Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.
—James 1:2-4
Your love is a wildfire burning out of control.
Your love is a red-hot brand searing my heart,
marking me yours forever.
Your love is a seal,
molten and stamped with a cross.
Your love is a gentle hand reaching out to lift the fallen.
Your love is a bright searchlight piercing the darkness,
searching out the lost.
Your love is a glowing hearthstone,
warming your family.
Your love is a fortress of righteousness sheltering the humble.
Your love is a forge shaping rough ore into fine instruments.
Your love is a cool fountain,
a life-giving spring in a parched and barren land.
Your love is a father’s protecting arms.
Your love is a mother’s good-night kiss.
Your love is a friend’s warm hug.
Your love is a gift of unfathomable cost.
Your love is more precious than the finest jewel.
Your love is immeasurable.
Your love is beyond words.
Your love never fails.
Last September I took part in a prison ministry called “One Day with God” that was held at the Leblanc Unit in Beaumont. We were given special t-shirts to to wear so we could be easily identified. I had to go out to my car to exchange shirts.
When you leave the unit, you have to stand in front of a video camera until the guard buzzes you, then you can open the gate. About 20 feet further there’s another gate with another camera, and the process repeats.
When the guard buzzed me, I opened the first gate and walked through. But when I got to the second gate, I stood and stood and stood. Finally I got tired of waiting, and pushed the button to call the guard. She said, “You have to go back and close the gate behind you before I can open the gate in front of you.”
Friends, this is a brand new year. Last year is gone. A lot of good things happened last year; a lot of bad things happened last year. But for better or worse, those are in the past. All those blessings, all those trials—all are in the past. In Lamentations 3:25, Jeremiah says: “The LORD is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him. (ESV) Friends, a lot of us are waiting at the gate for God to buzz us through, but we haven’t shut the gate behind us. And though we stand there for eternity, until we go back and shut the gate behind us, God is not going to buzz us through. God has blessings in store for all of us, but we have to shut the gate behind us first. God has blessings ready and waiting, but he cannot give them to us until we let go of the old stuff. His blessings are like manna from heaven. You cannot store yesterday’s manna; it quickly rots in the basket and becomes worthless. And you cannot collect new manna if your baskets are full of the rotten manna from yesterday.
The same chapter of Lamentations says:
I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall. I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me. Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.
—Lamentations 3:19-22
The word translated as “hope” here means something very different than it does in our ordinary modern usage. When we say “hope” we mean something like “wishful thinking”. When we say we hope it doesn’t rain, it means that we are wishing for clear weather or that we would prefer clear weather. It would be inconvenient if it rained, and it would be nicer if it did not rain. I hope it warms up. I hope the Cowboys win. I hope the economy improves. “Hope” in our everyday usage, simply means that we would like something outside of our control to happen, and that we wish for it, but cannot be sure it will occur.
But in Hebrew, the word translated here connotes a sense of assurance, of expectation, of waiting for something we know will come. Hope, in the Bible, means waiting for what you are sure is going to happen.
The difference between our word “hope” and the Hebrew word for “hope” is like the difference between wishing for a child and expecting a baby. When you wish for a child, you have no assurance of it. But when you are expecting a baby, though there may be nothing yet to see, you know it is on the way. It is only a matter of time.
This moment is pregnant with God’s blessing. We need to prepare a room for it.
When Jeremiah says that reflecting on God’s unfailing love gives him hope, it is because he is expecting him to act. He is saying: “I am waiting patiently with expectancy. I am expecting God’s mercy. I am expecting God’s blessings. For his mercies, just like manna from heaven—his blessings, his gifts—are new every morning. Fresh gifts, fresh mercy, fresh grace, fresh love, fresh blessings, fresh anointing every morning.”
But he cannot give us new blessings until we let go of the old. He cannot fill our hands until we come to him with hands empty. We can wait forever at the gate before us, but until we close the gate behind us, God cannot buzz us through.
The biggest enemy of God is not active evil, but complacency. Satisfaction, complacency, apathy, indifference, self-assuredness—this is passive evil. These are the lukewarm whom God despises:
I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth.
—Revelation 3:15-16
Active evil has momentum. Active evil has energy. And like a martial arts master, God can flip active evil and use its own force to create good. My testimony is living proof of that. The active evil of all the antagonists in my life, the very passion with which they sought to ruin me, provided the energy and momentum God used to produce an explosion of blessings like I have never seen before. The very fire with which they hoped to send me down in flames, God tranformed into a rocket to shoot me into a new level of victory far beyond my expectations.
There is nothing to fear from those whose hearts are bent and whose minds plot evil and destruction.
But, God save us from the satisfied!
The comfortably numb, the placid, the complacent, the dispassionate, the lukewarm—the time to spit them out is now!
If God is the potter and we the clay, and he is continually kneading us, reshaping us into the form he needs us to take, it follows that the process can only succeed as long as we remain malleable, flexible, soft. The moment we harden into some fixed shape, God’s efforts to shape us will fail. We will simply shatter.
That doesn’t mean we cannot be repaired once broken. But it does mean that God will have to soften us up first.
And the softening process is very unpleasant indeed. . . .
For the eyes of the LORD move to and fro throughout the earth that He may strongly support those whose heart is completely His.—2 Chronicles 16:9a
God is not looking for people with small dreams.
Are our dreams such that we could achieve them on our own with just a little help? Are we 98% capable of fulfilling our vision with our natural abilities, and are relying on God for that extra 2% to get us over the top? If so, we are not the sort of people God is searching the earth to strongly support.
God is looking for Kingdom Builders. He is seeking people to build his Kingdom here on earth. And the people his eyes range to and fro throughout the earth searching for are those whose dreams require a miracle—people with visions they cannot possibly accomplish on their own.
Why is this so? He wants people whose lives and accomplishments will glorify Him. God wants to act in their lives in order to reveal himself to others. God is not interested in blessing people for themselves alone. He wants to bless people so that through them many others will be blessed.
Martha was upset that Jesus did not immediately rush to heal her brother Lazarus. But Jesus had greater plans than Martha could imagine. As he told her in John 11:40, “If you believe, you will see the glory of God.” He then demonstrated his power in front of the crowds of people who had gathered from Jerusalem so that all could witness the miracle. Because of this, many came to believe in him and they spread the news wherever they went.
Today, he is still looking for people he can resurrect, whose lives he can transform, who need supernatural power to fulfill their destinies. Only then will all those who see the miracle give glory to God. He wants the worldly to say, “I knew you before. Surely you couldn’t have done this on your own. It had to be the work of God!”
These are the people he is searching the earth for—people who need a miracle, and whose hearts are fully devoted to him. These are the people he will strongly support. These are the lives he wants to bless, and to bless so extravagantly that “all who see will believe and praise God.” (1 Peter 2:12)
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