Month: May 2024

Where I work, there is a television in the break room. It’s on all the time. Consequently, I get to see bits and pieces of the many home shows that are popular now. I enjoy the glimpses I get of the planning, the demolition and construction phases of the renovation, and especially the unveiling of the final product. After all the expense, the difficult decisions, the waiting and anticipation, it’s a joy to see the homeowner thrilled with the outcome. Imagine the joy that God feels when He transforms a child of His!

In this metaphor, we are the home. But unlike an ordinary home, we have agency in the process. God, the designer and builder, respects our choices. Any designer can impose his or her own vision on a home. A good designer will bend that vision to what we need and what we want. A great designer will impart his or her vision to us. And in a flash of insight, that vision turns out to be what we really needed and wanted all along but didn’t know it. That’s our Lord.

In Eden, our original parents rejected His vision for them. The Children of Israel, whom God delivered from Egypt with a mighty hand, rejected His vision for them. For us, it’s a matter of exchanging the vision we have for ourselves with the vision He has for us. Only He can conduct us from where we are, just as we are, to His vision of what He would have us to be. He has the master plan. He has the wisdom and skill for its implementation. The sooner I get in step with Him, the sooner we will have the thrilling masterpiece He has in mind: conformity with the image of His Son, Jesus Christ.

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My wife and I were walking on the beach at sunrise this morning. Clouds on the horizon blocked our view of the sun. My camera remained at my side. A fellow beach-walker, also armed with a camera, turned back. “Let’s hope that tomorrow is better,” she said in passing. About half an hour later, the sun rose above the cloud bank in a glorious display. It made me think about all the times I, too, missed out on God-given opportunities because I gave up too soon. 

Also this morning, I read an excerpt from an essay entitled “Rooted and Grounded,” by T. Austin-Sparks: 

We are in the Lord’s hands, and being in His hands we are in the hands of a Potter Who knows what He is after… first of all, the vessel is in the potter, and then eventually the potter is in the vessel. What we mean is this, that before ever the potter starts, the vessel is in his mind, in his heart very clearly. The pattern is not something objective, the vessel is already a complete thing in him; and then he gets to work upon it and when he is finished, he is in the vessel he has wrought. What was in Him has come out in it. We say of people’s work: “I can see who made that, it is just like them.” “That is just like So-and-so to make a thing like that.” Yes, He is in His work, He is in the vessel that He makes, and that is just what He is doing. Sometimes that clay has to be pressed down to a shapeless mass, broken. It is not showing all that He intended it to show, there are defects and flaws, and so He crushes it down to shapelessness. A mass without shape. But it is to start again to get something more perfect than has been before, in which He Himself is.

Currently, I’m also re-reading Frank Viola’s book, “Hang On, Let Go.” This book, in my opinion, is pure gold for those who are objects of God’s perfecting work. Here are a few quotes from the chapter I reached today:

A large part of the kingdom message [that is, the kingdom of God] is that Jesus wants to conquer every inch of our beings for Himself.
The kingdom, where God accomplishes His will in and through us, is available to everyone. But it requires surrender.
It also requires that we “go though many hardships” (Acts 14:22)….
Often, the Lord will bring us through a great trial to discipline and train us so that we will learn righteousness in the closed off areas of our hearts….
The purpose of suffering, sorrow, and tribulation is not punishment. Jesus paid for our sins on the cross. The punishment is complete. Suffering, sorrow, and tribulation are for discipline—for child training. They are not without purpose.

Maybe you, like me, are a sincere follower of Jesus Christ who is going through a rough time. It is to do us good in the end. Perhaps we feel that we are being crushed to shapelessness. We should not blame it on forces of evil—although we are not blind to their involvement—or on a vengeful God—this is not His character. Here are voices encouraging us to resist the urge to turn back. To keep the faith. To patiently endure the adversity that our Lord is using to transform us. We will see the light again one day, and the glory will belong to Him.

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Jesus invites us to devote ourselves to him. “Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need” (Matthew 6:33). Where the Kingdom is, there also is the King. “If you love me, obey my commandments…. All who love me will do what I say. My Father will love them, and we will come and make our home with each of them” (John 14:15, 23). We who have received his life are learning to live by his love, becoming a home to the very God.

We know from personal experience that human nature tends toward devotion to other things. Things that captivate and enslave us. “Do not love this world, nor the things it offers you, for when you love the world, you do not have the love of the Father in you” (1 John 2:15). Recall the account of Ananias and Sapphira as recorded in Acts 5:1-11. They wanted to create the appearance of devotion, but without the reality of it (2 Timothy 3:5). There was precedent for this kind of duplicity. Consider, for example, Saul, king of Israel, when he failed to destroy the Amalekites (1 Samuel 15). 

They exemplify the teaching of Jesus, that our hearts will follow our treasure—the things that we value the most (Matthew 6:21). The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ liberates us from all other objects of devotion, and allows us to devote ourselves to him, as we keep turning to him. “We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith. Because of the joy awaiting him, he endured the cross, disregarding its shame. Now he is seated in the place of honor beside God’s throne” (Hebrews 12:2).

He gave us our faith in the first place, and he intends to perfect it. He shows us the joy that he has set before us. This joy comes through a revelation of the Father’s plan for creation, which will cause us to fall in love with His Son and place all our hope in His Kingdom. Joy, in turn, helps us to endure the cross—the experiences that God sends to transform us. Because our Father is so faithful to us, He raises us along with His Son and seats us beside His throne (Ephesians 2:4-7).

Jesus, thou joy of loving hearts,
Thou fount of life, thou light of men,
From the best bliss that earth imparts
We turn unfilled to thee again.
–Bernard de Clairvaux

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