As I stated earlier, I had to find God in order to discover me. At first I did not like the process of finding who I really am. When you find God you can finally see how messed up you truly are. The prophet Isaiah had this experience when he saw God in the temple. He cried: "Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, Jehovah of hosts." Isa. 6:5 NIV. Even if you have been sheltered and in church all your life, you cannot avoid this - we were all born into sin. But the discovery was not all bad. God has a way of shining His Light just a little at time so I had time to take it in and make changes.
The greatest thing I discovered about me while in the pit is that I had within me the power to affect my destiny regardless of my present circumstance. WOW. No matter how many excuses I made about who had hurt me and how I had got into the pit in the first place - God showed me that it did not matter. Because He had given me all the power I would ever need to make a turn around and to have the destiny that I desire.
"But this precious treasure -- this light and power that now shine within us -- is held in perishable containers, that is, in our weak bodies. So everyone can see that our glorious power is from God and is not our own" 2nd Cor. 4-7 NLT.
So here I am wallowing in my self-pity and God comes along and tells me I have the power to change (if I wanted to) the direction my life was heading in. Now this is key - , often we don't want to change. As awful as the pit is, we can get use to it. We can love a dysfunctional mess in a minute and refuse to let go of it. Pitiful, isn't it?
But power is of no use if you are blinded to it or if you refuse to use it. It's like hearing that you have a million dollars in your checking account, ready and available for you to spend and you never check the validity of it because:
1. you don't believe the source that told you so- you think it is a hoax
2. you are too scared to find out if it is true - you are not sure you can handle it
3. you don't want to be obligated to anyone - especially if you think they will now have control over you.
What do you do when you are faced with the truth of your situation that you really don't want to deal with?
You make a decision. Life or Death. Victory or Defeat.
It may sound easy but I can assure it is not. Because when you are in a pit, the obvious is not so obvious; and your vision can be totally obscured.
Stay tuned.
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Friday, December 3, 2010
Knowing God
Knowing God. When I stated that we have to know God, I am not implying that any one person can actually know or understand God and all His God-ness. The prophet Isaiah writes "I don't think the way you think. The way you work isn't the way I work." God's Decree. "For as the sky soars high above earth, so the way I work surpasses the way you work, and the way I think is beyond the way you think" (Isaiah 55:8-9 MSG). So God does not expect us to do something He did not create us to do. So what does it really mean to know God? Let me try to expressit in my limited way.
Knowing God to me is like this:
Imagine being born in a place where they are no mirrors, no way of seeing a reflection. The only facial image you can see is those around you but you have never seen what your face look like. Wierd isn't it? You can analyze your body parts from the shoulders down, so you have some general idea about basic stuff like your skin color and you can feel parts like your nose but you have never seen it. You guess a lot of stuff about yourself. You imagine a lot of stuff about yourself. You assume a lot of stuff about your. Imagine one day, someone comes into your house and brings you a mirror and for the first time you have the reality of what you look like. You see You in the reflection of the mirror and immediately you know if all you had guessed, imagined or assumed about yourself is true.
Now in my analogy, God is the mirror. Here is how a mirror works:
"Light is a form of energy, and when it hits a surface, such as a mirror, it is reflected or bounced from the surface. This is similar to a ball bouncing off a wall. The reflected image is comprised of photons, which are particles of light. When these photons initially hit the mirror they cause electrons to vibrate within atoms, which in turn produces an identical light photon" (Ann Johnson, eHow contributor). I hope that was not too much science...LOL.
Anyway, knowing God takes God. You cannot know Him without Him first showing up. In other words you cannot sneak up on God. Knowing God is when He allows the Light of His Presence to bounce off Himself and you come face to face with His Sovereignty, Divinity and Humanity. It is AWE-some but as at the same time it is involving because right smash in the middle is You.
I share the testimony of Paul
"Yes, all the things I once thought were so important are gone from my life. Compared to the high privilege of knowing Christ Jesus as my Master, firsthand, everything I once thought I had going for me is insignificant - dog dung. I've dumped it all in the trash so that I could embrace Christ and be embraced by him. I didn't want some petty, inferior brand of righteousness that comes from keeping a list of rules when I could get the robust kind that comes from trusting Christ - God's righteousness. I gave up all that inferior stuff so I could know Christ personally, experience his resurrection power, be a partner in his suffering, and go all the way with him to death itself" (Phillipians 3:8-10 MSG).
Stay tuned
Knowing God to me is like this:
Imagine being born in a place where they are no mirrors, no way of seeing a reflection. The only facial image you can see is those around you but you have never seen what your face look like. Wierd isn't it? You can analyze your body parts from the shoulders down, so you have some general idea about basic stuff like your skin color and you can feel parts like your nose but you have never seen it. You guess a lot of stuff about yourself. You imagine a lot of stuff about yourself. You assume a lot of stuff about your. Imagine one day, someone comes into your house and brings you a mirror and for the first time you have the reality of what you look like. You see You in the reflection of the mirror and immediately you know if all you had guessed, imagined or assumed about yourself is true.
Now in my analogy, God is the mirror. Here is how a mirror works:
"Light is a form of energy, and when it hits a surface, such as a mirror, it is reflected or bounced from the surface. This is similar to a ball bouncing off a wall. The reflected image is comprised of photons, which are particles of light. When these photons initially hit the mirror they cause electrons to vibrate within atoms, which in turn produces an identical light photon" (Ann Johnson, eHow contributor). I hope that was not too much science...LOL.
Anyway, knowing God takes God. You cannot know Him without Him first showing up. In other words you cannot sneak up on God. Knowing God is when He allows the Light of His Presence to bounce off Himself and you come face to face with His Sovereignty, Divinity and Humanity. It is AWE-some but as at the same time it is involving because right smash in the middle is You.
I share the testimony of Paul
"Yes, all the things I once thought were so important are gone from my life. Compared to the high privilege of knowing Christ Jesus as my Master, firsthand, everything I once thought I had going for me is insignificant - dog dung. I've dumped it all in the trash so that I could embrace Christ and be embraced by him. I didn't want some petty, inferior brand of righteousness that comes from keeping a list of rules when I could get the robust kind that comes from trusting Christ - God's righteousness. I gave up all that inferior stuff so I could know Christ personally, experience his resurrection power, be a partner in his suffering, and go all the way with him to death itself" (Phillipians 3:8-10 MSG).
Stay tuned
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