Another year has quickly passed and with that, my amazement at the revelation that seems to be suddenly unfolding in my life grows daily. Seriously, each day as I look into God’s Word, it’s as if I had never read it before. Making no assumptions about book or chapter, I can hardly move forward with any rhythm or volume apart from the unfolding of some obvious but seemingly unknown aha!
Could I have read His Word for almost 40 years and missed so much? Could youthful ambitions and cultural bias so have blinded me to this point that the Word now seems brand new? Yet, its not exactly new, as much of this is what had entered my mind at times but I resisted because it did not fit the mold cast by those speaking into my life. Wow, even as I write I think of the danger of allowing anyone to speak into my life with a louder voice than His!
This morning, Luke 17:20 vibrated through my spirit as I read, “The Kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation,” though much of what we do in our religious life is about watching and waiting for His kingdom? Worshiping at times, we use language that implies that church is a place where you go and await His arrival, or leave with the excitement that “God showed up.”
“…nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the Kingdom of God is within you.” Lk 17:21
“Don’t’ you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you?” I Cor. 3:16 (NIV). This is more than me splitting biblical hairs, for living oblivious to this reality robs a person of precious moments, Kingdom moments so desperately needed by those around us.
Yet, until our lives are sufficiently surrendered (which is what may be finally occurring in my own), we live life apart from the reality of the kingdom within. Again, I quote Oswald Chambers, “The Sermon on the Mount is not an ideal, it is a statement of what will happen in me when Jesus Christ has altered my disposition and put in a disposition like his own.” “Poor in Spirit” is not a goal to be achieved or a gift to be received; it is a work in progress that time, alone, with Him affords.
All this conjugating of my Spirit, may be the excitement of preparation for a forthcoming men’s retreat. I am being led to examine “Who God is” (all this under the canopy of the great outdoors); “Who I am?” (Created in His image); and “Who We Am in Him” (Christ in us, the hope of glory).
Could this battered frame be nearing the finish line or am I just beginning to know life in Christ?
Life is good.
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