|
The Lord Teaches Us We begin life with a skewed picture of ourselves and of God. Through rough times and adversity our loving King leads us to view ourselves in the light of reality. We begin with a grand illusion of our own personal greatness and God is nowhere on the radar screen. If we will allow Him to do so, he will make the shift so that He is our all in all and we begin to see ourselves only in the grand light of who He is. We then see ourselves correctly. We are neither great nor insignificant, good nor bad, we are simply His and He is ours and that is good. Unfortunately, we do not come to this conclusion readily, but rather over a process of time and difficulty the precious ore is separated from the dross. This is what is so amazing about our Lord. He is patient, longsuffering endeavoring to see Christ formed in us. What a great God we have! Until we see ourselves in truth, there is ordained for us many problems and those problems are designed (by the Designer) who wishes to accomplish this purpose in us. After this, do the problems go away? No, but they do change there appearance. They become opportunities. The opportunity is this, that we can through problems give others the chance to make the shift from playing God to being loved by Him. The opportunity is that Christ will be seen in us in the problems. This indeed is an opportunity. "We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down but not destroyed; always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our body. For we who live are constantly being delivered over to death for Jesus sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death works in us, but life in you." © Copyright 2002 - D. Arthur
Brown D. Arthur Brown |
|