Creating Thoughts From Words

Creating Thoughts from Words.

Today I was pondering 1John. A dear missionary friend had written me from Israel. We are praying for her to be able to come home for a couple of months to settle her affairs a bit more to begin the true journey of living in a little town next to Bethlehem. She has spent the past year there and the Lord has spoken deeply to her heart. Her studies led her to this one phrase, "do not love the world or anything in the world" and she said “the sentences that hang from that have me wanting to understand what 'love' is there in that exhortation.”

I was meditating those verses around chapter 2: 15-17 appreciating that until we sincerely grasp the complete knowledge that Jesus abides IN us, therefore we are all things in Him and all we do stems from His wisdom, power, authority and love, we will continue living with one foot in the world.

I spent half my life looking for people that would fill the void I carried until I met a dear friend who counseled and delivered me through that need, replacing it with the love of Christ.  But today I feel that the intellectual capacity of Who Christ truly is in my life stopped there and it’s time (again) for growth. This morning I ask for new impartation of how to live fully IN and ABOUT His care. To honestly look at the world from an outsider (with no need for it to give meaning or bring purpose, identity or security) believing for change and hoping for the future of the next generation BECAUSE of Who He is. To know that my marriage and ministry will thrive just for the simple reason that it is HIS and not my own.

The Lord asked me this morning “what would you like to do just for one week.” I thought it would be fun to be only a wife, author and housekeeper. We giggled as we both thought of my to-do list for the ministry, however HE asked. I said “I love to create thoughts from words and never seem to find the time anymore.” I realized from that one simple statement that it was my own doing. If I want to spend a bit of my time writing, reading, cleaning or cooking I certainly can because that is how God wired me. Those things I am passionate for on the home-front are just as important as the appetite I hold for the ministry of missions. I can have it all. I may not be able (or even want) to engage in each thing every day, but when I feel the need to lay down one thing for another, it is OK. I’m allowed.

The busyness of the ‘world’ tends to draw us away from who WE are to make us who THEY want us to be. It’s the little things, the subtleness really, of belittling our morality, integrity, belief system and the need for a Sabbath; wearing us down to further the intent of the enemy. The world would sway us to believe we find our strength within ourselves, twisting truth to make evil sound good and exhorting us to think the same; all the while the Word of God becomes watered down and in jeopardy. And in that we can lose our identity in Christ if we don’t beware.

A bible study I was reading by Trinity Center says, “God will remind us over and over of the emptiness of the world's promises. We will soon or later be very disappointed, be betrayed by them. Our participation in God's work in our lives is to agree with God that our lives and true identities are only to be found in Him and to not place ourselves in temptation's way. And our obedience to what we sense God is calling us to, should come out of a trust that God is the only source of life. God does desire that we trust Him and live as if He is who He reveals Himself to be—our ultimate joy and life. As we struggle to live in this world and not be of it, we can place our hope in God, to finish His work in us and to lovingly continue to show us the emptiness of all other "sources" of life.”

God has so much more in store for us than we can even think of or imagine. He has offered us His Son Who came to give us life and that in abundance. Though we love the people of the world just as Christ does, desiring their presence in eternity, we cannot fall into the pressures or demands society puts on our thinking or behavior.  Today I am grateful that Christ is in me, the true hope of Glory and nothing can sway me from that truth.