The new year is upon us and like most evangelicals, we look for God to speak to us personally in a fresh new way. We love to have a "new" word from the Lord, direction and vision, something that will bring about purpose and fulfillment...and boy do I have a word for you! Seriously, I don't have any new revelation, but I do have something that I feel that Lord was pressing upon my heart before the year even started...but is very much for this year.
I think we all want to live a life that matters and to have a reason to get up in the morning...other than just to go to work. We know that we have been created for something more and search and search for it, but I can't think of anything more precious, more valuable, more rewarding than a life lived for Christ. Nothing beats a life of holiness! Nothing compares to a life that is ordered by Jesus.
So that brings me to the verse that the Holy Spirit was ministering to me about before the holidays:
He has shown you, O man, what is good;
and what the Lord requires of you but to do justly,
to love mercy,
and to walk humbly with your God? --Micah 6:8
I am encouraged that God is not revealing something new...this not a "new word for 2015", but rather it is His heart. He is the same yesterday, today and forever...the first and the last...and what He desires of you and I is made really clear! What He has for us is good or His desires for us are of pleasant things. After all, He is the loving father that wants to give good gifts to His children and to refine us more and more into His image. That day by day we resemble Him more and more.
So, as all loving Fathers do, He has requirements for His children. He expects those of us that bear His name to act like Him...to accurately represent Him to those around us. As heirs we are to operate in His authority. We as His children have been brought into the family business of reconciliation and restoration...and that can only be done through forgiveness!
This starts with you and I living justly or living lives of righteousness. To be holy as He is holy...to be set apart, and this starts with us being obedient to I John 1:9
If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins
and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
We are far from perfect and full of sin. The first thing here comes with us agreeing with God on His terms about our sin. Not making excuses, not ignoring it, not calling it by another name...but simply agreeing with Him that we are wrong. To repent, in the Biblical sense, to think about our thinking again...to reconsider what or why we did what we did. After that we just need to accept His grace and forgiveness and allow Him to do that cleansing work by the Holy Spirit. Because of what Jesus already did for you and I on the cross, God already views us as righteous...not because we did anything. There is nothing more freeing than accepting His forgiveness and then allowing Him to clean house!
Forgiveness is a pleasant and good thing that He desires of us. Both to accept it for ourselves and to give it freely to others. He has shown us and desires us to be a people that love mercy! We are to be someone who seeks reconciliation and restoration of people and that can only be done through forgiveness. What would it look like if all the people who profess Jesus as Lord...loved to forgive? We have seen this modeled to us by what Jesus did us on the cross. It is because our sin separated us from being in a relationship with Him (because a holy and sinless God cannot be in relationship with unholy and sinful people). It was Him who called us back to Him at the cross, back into a relationship...it was there that we accepted His offer of forgiveness. Because He did this for me, I am compelled and expected to do this for others.
Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved,
put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, long-suffering;
bearing with one another, and forgiving one another,
if anyone has a complaint against another;
even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do. --Colossians 3:12-13
In the cases of helping those with deep spiritual wounds, I have found that the lack of freedom and spiritual healing, they are experiencing, comes from harboring bitterness due to unforgiveness. This poison not only will affect you but those that come in contact with you. Now, you might be saying that you can't forgive because of the tremendous hurt and pain that was done to you, and that is true. However, it is amazing when we can't do it in our own strength, Jesus is able to forgive them. He invites us to give Him our heavy burden of unforgiveness and bitterness and to allow Him to "replace the years the locus have eaten". He is the Great Physician who came to bring deep spiritual healing...if you'll let Him. The heart of the Father is that His children be free to forgive and generous with their forgiveness. Bitterness and unforgiveness allow the enemy to gain strong holds in our lives...making us captives. Jesus came to set the captives free! Freely you have received, so freely give!
This lifestyle is not something I chose in bits and pieces but accept the whole thing. The term "walk humbly" can be said "bent over". Not "bend over" because that would imply that you chose to be in that position and you can choose to not be in that position. However, "bent over" implies that it was done to you with your acceptance. I watched a documentary on Russia's Toughest Prisons and when they move a prisoner from one place to another He is bent over in a "submissive posture". There is not pride in that posture, and it makes it difficult to run out ahead. The prisoner simply has to accept it and follow his leader. Now, don't misunderstand me, I'm not saying that we are prisoners or that we are forced into submission, but in order to walk with God we need to let Him lead. We need to accept a posture of humility before Him...because we know ourselves and what we have done, as well as what He has done for us. We accept His way of doing things because it is a far better and healthier way. We need to be someone who accepts and desire forgiveness, reconciliation and restoration.
What would this new year look like with this old word implemented in your life?
1 comment :
Amen and amen. I liked that last apology of being bent over representing a posture of humility. I think of naaman refusing to humble himself in the waters of the Jordan and how his leprosy remained until he humbled himself. Pride kept him from the cleansing and so many times bitter resentful christians follow in the path of Naaman. Standing near the source but holding on to pride. So close yet so far from blessings. Eventually Naaman was convinced to humble himself but for a minute he went away furious and almost missed the blessing. As long as we have a Naaman mentality of "no I will not do that" we will continue to stand at the edge of all that God has for us.
Keep them coming brotha.
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