“Purpose”

This word is coming to me by the Spirit repeatedly this week. We are beings that were created to live with purpose. Without purpose we become sluggish and our lives seem aimless.

It is important to understand that our purpose is not our own. It belongs entirely to God and can only be revealed through a lifetime of relationship with Him.

“Many are the plans in a person’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails” (Proverbs 19:21).

Our life’s purpose is like a rolled up map that is very slowly unfurling on a tabletop before us. We gradually see more and more of the map until at last we go to be with the Lord who then reveals the entire map to us.

1 Corinthians 13:12  For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

Meanwhile we are required to trust Him with many of the particulars of our life’s purpose. Though we cannot in this life, grasp the entirety of God’s purpose for us; according to His word we can be assured that no matter how bad things may appear to be, in every area of our lives, God has a purposeful plan that is working for our good.

Romans 8:28  And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.

And if we are submitted to God’s will, our purpose is one with God and it is impossible for our purpose to be overcome by evil.

Job 42:2  “I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.

And finally, we can look to the psalms to understand the deep intimacy of God’s love regarding His plans for us.

Psalm 139:13-16  For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.

Best of Wildlife in Hendersonville, NC. (A video montage)

From behind our home on a single acre of Long John mountain. Try viewing in full- screen!

The bottom line: People believe what they want to believe.

Watching even a small amount of the national political conventions on television recently has served to remind me that some people’s minds will never be changed.  The reason their mind will never be changed is because they will not allow their heart to be changed.

These same people may express belief in great moral truths and even be living relatively moral lives. They may testify to heartfelt concern and empathy for others. But neither morality nor empathy are the same as holiness. A moral person may hate sin while also hating grace just as much as sin, because grace reveals that they will never be justified before God based on their own works or merit.

Therefore, they cannot receive the redemptive grace of God which transforms the heart and mind. Instead, they will always believe whatever lines up best with their self-sanctifying delusions. Such are the politics of humanism.

Why can’t they just be themselves?

Why do so many Christians who become popular change their way of speaking to mimic other popular Christians? Why can’t they just be themselves?

They begin to use drawn-out accentuation – God becomes Gawd. And all the ends of their sentences have an extended, over-accentuated flourish. Is this supposed to represent that they have a special anointing from God? Personally, I am immediately wary of any representative of the Lord who is using heavy verbal showmanship in the presentation of his message. I feel as though they are trying to both impress me and manipulate me to believe that they are Holy Spirit-anointed and appointed men and women of God.

I believe that this is frequently an indication of a religious spirit infiltrating christian ministry. What may have begun with all humility and sincerity is slowly replaced by religious performance and theatrical display. The Holy Spirit may very well be moving powerfully through them; even doing miracles. But, I also believe, that in many cases they have chosen to believe that they must place a garment of performance over the cloak of their Holy Spirit anointing in order to be perceived as “anointed” by the people. This is a prideful religious delusion that is more about man’s acceptance than God’s approval.

Matthew 23:5 “Everything they do is done for people to see: They make their phylacteries wide and the tassels on their garments long…

 

 

 

The Divine Transcendence

Far beyond the lofty heights of the soaring eagle, beyond earth and sky and unfathomable space, veiled from the eyes of mortal men by clouds of impenetrable mystery, Here is the dwelling place of the Most High and Exalted One. He is beyond the din of the day the shroud of the night, the winding of the seasons. His boundaries are inscrutable, the sum of His ways, incomprehensible. He is not measured within the confines of creaturely definition. His measure is infinitude. His dimensions are goodness, mercy and love. He is quantity without capacity, for capacity implies a limit. His limitlessness, the garment of His divine transcendence. All power to be, is the power of He who is omnipotent. Life, love, and every energy is formed through the conduit of His Sovereignty. He has no helpmate, For He is sufficient within Himself. Yet from within Himself, He spoke His present company into creation. The bull does not charge, the heron does not fish, but that He has decreed it. His commands order the establishment of cause and effect. His self-existence insures the perpetuation of our own eternity. That He changes not, grants us hope to endure the ravages of time. The High and Exalted One, who is above all else, reduces time and space to a habitation for His omnipresence. …the LORD says: “Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool. Where is the house you will build for me? Where will my resting place be?”

Spirit-inspired imagination to grasp an infinite God!

We need Spirit-inspired imagination to grasp an infinite God.

God is infinite. Whatever God is, and all that God is, will forever be outside the boundaries of a precise finite definition. That God is infinite means that He cannot be measured within the boundaries of natural human comprehension.

Isa 55:8  “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the LORD.

Isa 55:9  “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.

To attempt, within our own capabilities to grasp He who is not a created being, but who is nevertheless universally present and of infinite dimension is to try to imagine the unimaginable. Within our own capabilities we cannot comprehend the revelation of God. We must receive a special gift from God; a key with which to open the door to the mysteries of His infinitude. That key is faith-based imagination through the presence of the Holy Spirit in our daily lives.

Imagination is a necessary requirement for a finite creature to have faith in an infinite God. Faith in God and imagination are inseparable. How can we ever hope to comprehend that which is incomprehensible, without imagination?

Whatever is infinite cannot be comprehended in its entirety because it is without limit. But faith based imagination can open the doorway for us to a personal experience of a certain quantity of this infinitude. By the exercise of faith, God’s children have been allotted the privilege of encountering a measure of the magnitude of God. By the exercise of faith, it is possible for the finite and the infinite to coexist in harmonious union and relational communion. By the exercise of faith, what was impossible is replaced with endless possibilities. By faith we are able to access the inaccessible, overcome the insurmountable, and cast into the ocean the immovable mountain. By faith the people of God marched and shouted and blew their trumpets around the city of Jericho and the walls tumbled to the ground. By faith Moses led his people through the Red Sea and the Egyptians that tried to follow were drowned. By faith Elijah called fire down from Heaven and prevented rain from falling on the land for three and a half years. By faith, the dead have been raised, the blind see and the lame walk. There is nothing that faith cannot accomplish if it is within the will of our infinite God.

What is it then that hinders us from living victorious lives with mountain moving faith? We do not typically live our lives with mountain moving faith because we do not typically possess the imagination necessary to apprehend that faith. We need the Holy Spirit to increase our imagination that we might have the faith to comprehend and believe on God’s will for our lives.

The stimulation of our imagination by the Spirit of God is indispensable to us as Christians. It makes it possible for us to exercise mental faith in a God who is infinite and thus incomprehensible in His entirety. Faith-based imagination is a heavenly fuel that energizes the soul of man that he may have effectual relationship with an infinite God. God-inspired imagination must be cultivated, treasured and protected because it is a bridge to the place where God lives.

 

The Substance of Obedience

True obedience is to obey without knowing why and to believe without visual proof. Instead, our obedience to God and our faith in Him must be based on spiritual truth that we allow our minds to receive and our hearts to accept.

 

John 20:29 Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”