2024-02-02
Good Morning Dear Ones,
The Holy Spirit has been urging me to write about God’s hope that we will have patience and obedient faith, as we wait for our glorification. Remember, to be glorified in this sense is the time at which God decides we are finally transformed into the beings that please Him as covenant partners. This means we show the gifts of the Holy Spirit, as enumerated n GA 5: 22-23. “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness (humility), and self-control. Against such things as these there is no law.” When our transformation by faith in Jesus is sufficiently complete, God will take is to His side in heaven.
My pastor gave a brilliant sermon the other day, the definition of joy which bears repeating here. Most people think of joy as the feeling of getting something they want. But joy in Christ’s mind is joy that can be felt, even in times of sorrow or great challenge. If this doesn’t make sense, let me give an example. A person you care about who has been deeply faithful is diagnosed with a terminal illness. Of course, you are grieving for the anticipated loss of her companionship. Then, she passes away. But the Lord reminds you of 1 COR 15: 56-57, “The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” He goes on to remind us to stand firm in our faith in Christ. That kind of joy can break through grieving and remind us of the hope of the resurrection. When my dear husband, Peter, passed away, I had to grieve my own (hopefully temporary) loss of his companionship. But I know in my heart that he is having his every need meet and is in the best Company he could have in heaven. That kind of inner joy and peace only came to me once I took the time to prayerfully consider what had happened and God’s part in it. God has no evil in Him [1 JN 1: 5]. Of course, God is with us when we have all our challenges, not just a death of a loved one.
His omnipresence is a great demonstration of the love He has for us. We possess what was once a mystery first mentioned in DT 29: 29, “The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law.” My guess is that these things were held back because God was gradually civilizing mankind, preparing them to be able to accept these precious truths. However, God decided the time came for them to be revealed, as we see in COL 1: 26-27 and COL 2: 2-4. “The mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations but is now disclosed to the Lord’s people. To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory…My goal is that they may be encouraged in heart and united in love, so that they may have the full riches of complete understanding, in order that they may know the mystery of God, namely Christ, in Whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. We no longer have to be deceived by fine-sounding arguments.”
Anger at times is a fact of life. It’s the power of God that allows us to discern between constructive anger and destructive anger. It gives us the choice to engage in the former but not engage in the latter—what is sin and what is not. The power of God is Christ in us. Righteous anger as the Colonists of Washington’s time had in going to war against taxation without representation was necessary for them to apply the democracy that established America as it became. Unrighteous anger was what Hitler and his followers had during WW II when they committed the atrocities of the Holocaust. It was truly destructive anger. While I’ve used examples of corporate anger here, the same principles in more individual cases. Slavery is ethically wrong and should have been stopped long before it was in 1865. Yet, the lesson of it didn’t really go forward in our society until the end of the Jim Crow era and other practices against people of color that followed. Still there are people engaged in hate crimes against other minority groups in our present society. The perpetrators don’t recognize the love of Christ, or they see and reject it. Each of us is left with the questions: Do we recognize the love of God, or do we reject it? What are the long-term consequences of our thoughts and behaviors, corporately and individually? What are God’s heartfelt hopes for us?
PRAYER: O Most Holy Lord, we approach You with freedom and confidence [EPH 3: 12], knowing that You love us enough to listen to our every prayer. Because You have given us the gift of Christ in us, we accept the responsibility for our thoughts and actions. There are times when you tell us what is in EPH 4: 26-27, “In your anger, do not sin. Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold.”
There can’t be that inner joy and peace when one holds a grudge. Dearest Lord, teach us to think first and then speak, teach us to guard against grudge-holding, and help us to use the wisdom that our Lord Jesus has given us. We love, praise, and thank You for Your intervention in our lives. In Christ’s holy/mighty name, we pray. Amen.
NEXT WEEK: The process that Christ uses to gradually transform our lives and prepare us for that day of glorification is an individual matter. He knows exactly what each of us needs. Sadly, there are some people who remain resistant to His efforts in this process, and their fate will not end so well as a believer’s. Throughout the Scriptures, our Triune God has made this clear. RO 6: 23, “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” The Holy Spirit commands me to write about transformation and urges me to end with this reminder of what Jesus Christ does for those who believe. RO 3: 23-24, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.” Thanks and praise be to Him!
Grace Be With You Always,
Lynn, JS 24: 15
© Lynn Johnson 2024. All Rights Reserved.
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