In life, we are simply and always are given the opportunity to choose Christ. Not just for salvation from sin but for everything we encounter from sunrise to sunset. Nothing we know or want is to escape this one act of choosing Christ. Not Christ for us or through us but Christ Himself. Everything we ever need is wrapped up in this one Person.
Yes ‘‘. . . faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God'' (Romans 10:17). Faith is always in the Other in the here and now. Faith is our YES to His promise. Is there financial need? Then He is what we embrace. Is it healing we need, and then He is The Health, OUR health. We do not, cannot seek health without losing sight of Him. Seek Him and you have health. Knowing you need a healing should remind you of Christ and nothing more. Mary, the mother of Jesus, was given a promise. She did nothing but say yes. By this she became the receptor and expresser of the promise. The written word and the promises are for us but not expressed all the time. Why? Because we can only have Christ’s immediate expression of Father’s will. If we want health over God’s want for us in the moment then we have missed the Yes to Christ. All we ever need to do after we come to know and want a thing is to turn once again, in that child like faith we had the first time we turned to Him, and there remember the YES that still rings in our soul. Let me this day O Lord
Walk the streets of real And never diverge down The street of reason For the one is Filled with both tears and hugs While the other Filled with doubt and fear Of course this is easy to do If the doing is up to you If I rest in your presence In the here and now But most of all Let me remember To wonder In to your arms Remembering your not afar But simply within Meaning every grin And every good desire Time is............too slow for those who wait; too
swift for those who fear, too long for those who grieve; too short for those who rejoice; but for those who love...... time is eternity.............. Jean-Pierre de Crussade insisted that: Faith is the light of time, it alone recognizes truth without seeing it, touches what it cannot feel, looks upon this world as though it did not exist, sees what is not apparent. It is the key to celestial treasures, the key to the unfathomable mystery and knowledge of God. Faith conquers all the fantasy of falsehood; through faith God reveals and manifests Himself, defying all things. Faith removes the veil and uncovers eternal truth. When souls are given the understanding of faith, God speaks to them through all creation, and the universe becomes for them a living testimony which the finger of God continually traces before their eyes, the record of every passing moment, a sacred scripture. The sacred books which the Holy Spirit has dictated are only the beginnings of divine guidance for us. Everything that happens is a continuation of the scriptures, expounding for us what has not been written. Faith explains the one through the other, in which souls can discover the key to all its mysteries......Faith is only living at its best when sensible appearances contradict and attempt to destroy it.......To find God is good in the trivial and most ordinary events as in the greatest; is to have not an ordinary, but a great and extraordinary faith..............How delightful the peace one enjoys when one has learned by faith to see God in this way through all creatures as through a transparent veil. Darkness becomes light and bitterness sweet...........There is nothing that faith does not penetrate and seek out. It passes beyond darkness, and no matter how deep the shadows, it passes through them to the truth which it always finally embraces, and from which it is never separated. Years back I personalized Ephesians 3:14-21. Then I prayed that prayer for one month. I share it with you in hopes you will make it your prayer as well. I am still reaping the effects of that effort.
I have a reason to bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth derives its named. I pray he would grant me, out from the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man. I ask that Christ may dwell in my heart by faith; and that I, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all you holy ones what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height of his love. And to know this love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that I might be filled with all the fulness of God. Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that I ask or think, according to his ability that is at work in me, unto him be glory in the called out ones by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen. "Earlier I spoke of God on the periphery of my life. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that I was on the periphery of His life. It was I who needed to come into the Center, the Core. It is one thing for God to come into us (and a very necessary thing), but it is quite another for us to come into God. In the first instance we are still the center of attention: in the second God is the focal point. When God comes into us we still have a certain kind of autonomy: . . . when we come into God we have come IN. He is in all and through all and above all. This is no infantile pantheism, as if God could be captured in His creation: it is a marvelous majestic monotheism - one God from whom all life is sustained. It is life out of the Divine Center.
The focus of Christian simplicity becomes more clear when we change the image flow from God coming into us to our coming in to God. "Christ in you" was certainly an important theme in Paul's teaching, but his favorite and more frequent image was of us "in Christ". In the latter case, Christ has become the reference point and we are making the movement into Him. When we are in Christ, our deeds and words are of one piece because they both flow from a single Spring". From: Freedom of Simplicity by Richard J. Foster |