7”Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who is victorious, I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.”
- Revelation 2:7
Life without war is impossible in the natural or the supernatural realm. It is a fact that there is a continuing struggle in the physical, mental, moral, and spiritual areas of life.
Morally it is the same. Anything that does not strengthen me morally is the enemy of virtue within me. Whether I overcome, thereby producing virtue, depends on the level of moral excellence in my life. But we must fight to be moral. Morality does not happen by accident; moral virtue is acquired.
And spiritually it is also the same. Jesus said, “In the world you will have tribulation…” (John 16:33). This means that anything which is not spiritual leads to my downfall. Jesus went on to say, “…but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” I must learn to fight against and overcome the things that come against me, and in that way produce the balance of holiness. Then it becomes a delight to meet opposition.
Holiness is the balance between my nature and the law of God as expressed in Jesus Christ.
“Jesus Christ can afford to be misunderstood; we cannot. Our weakness lies in always wanting to vindicate ourselves.”
Oswald Chambers, The Place of Help
December 6, 2015
I am a relatively simple guy. My daily routine is nothing out of the ordinary: wake up, do devotionals, go to work, eat, relax, spend time with friends, watch tv, eat more, sleep and repeat. Regardless of my simplicity and the ordinary nature of my daily routine, life is certainly not mundane. When you work with as many different personalities and characters as I do, and with the involvement of a plethora of emotions (my own and others), God tends to use the above to “mix things up.” Every day, my God takes the simple and the ordinary to reveal to me His intricate and exciting plan for me and the world, which ultimately leads me to Him. How? Let me share with you how God has been challenging me to do this.
For my enjoyment, I have been reading “The Pursuit of God” by A.W. Tozer. I highly recommend it. Here is what Tozer says about God:
“God is a person, and in the deep of His mighty nature He thinks, wills, enjoys, feels, loves, desires and suffers as any other person may. In making Himself known to us He stays by the familiar pattern of personality. He communicates with us through the avenues of our minds, our wills and our emotions. The continuous and unembarrassed interchange of love and thought between God and the soul of the redeemed is the throbbing heart of New Testament religion.”
God is near to us. Not only is He the God of the Old and New Testament times, but He is God of the 21st century and is well, aware of the world we live in today. If we are able to fathom the mystery that the God of the universe, who spoke life into being, calls Himself Emmanuel, God with us, we begin to understand that God is a person with personality and not only does He ordain and allow things to happen, He cares about the people that things happen to!
Our relationship with God is no different than any other relationship we have with the people around us. God gently and powerfully invites us to pursue Him. God in His perfection makes Himself available to us, reaches out to us first, and loves and delights in our pursuit of Him. If that would only be our response to His grace! Even more, He brings us and uses the different physical places that we find ourselves, different situations and circumstances, and simple routines, that perhaps we would seek Him and know Him more (Acts 13).
“How tragic that we in this dark day have had our seeking done for us by our teachers. Everything is made to center upon the initial act of “accepting” Christ and we are not expected thereafter to crave any further revelation of God to our souls. We have been snared in the coils of a spurious logic which insists that if we have found Him we need no more to seek Him.”
Where are we in our pursuit of God? Do we recognize that He took that first step through Jesus Christ in reconciling sinners to an amazing, personal relationship with Almighty God? I pray that God would open our eyes to see how He uses the ordinary to draw us closer to an extraordinary God and that we would be driven to radically pursue our Awesome God.
From Pastor Keeyoung’s Heart
October 21, 2012