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.
