"Ready To Believe"

(a repeat from 2010)

 

    "Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life... my expectation is from Him... Thou art with me" (Psalm 23:6; 62:5; 23:4).

 

    Born again believers in the Lord Jesus Christ glance behind with eyes of faith and sees our Lord ever in pursuit.  We look ahead, and the future promises that God will be waiting for us at every destination.  Most of all, we believe that the present is filled with the Lord Jesus Christ who promised, "I am with you always" (Matthew 28:20).

 

    Such confidence notwithstanding, the spiritual perception of even the most godly among us is presently veiled in even the best moments.  "In Him we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28).  If we could fully see for just a moment how God-saturated our lives are, we would be blinded by the glory.  If we could hear His voice as it sounds and resounds, "upholding all things by the Word of His power," the holy reverberation would deafen us (Hebrews 1:8).  And if we could tangibly feel the pressing upon us of the omnipresent One in whom we exist, the sense of His being and power would overwhelm us.  We are not yet ready for more than a limited awareness of God's infinite being in its unlimited variety of glory, majesty, and wonder.

 

    We are ready, however, for an experience of our Lord so pervasive that we will affirm with David, "my cup runneth over" (Psalm 23:5).  We are ready to be so filled that the Lord Jesus declared, "he that believeth on Me, as the Scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water" (John 7:38).  We are ready to look behind and see goodness and mercy.  We are ready to expect that God is our destination.  We are ready to know that this moment is "of Him, and through Him, and to Him" (Romans 11:36).  And we are ready to believe because by definition, this is what believers do.  The presence of the Holy Spirit in our spirits has made us ready, and as we respond to His moving within us, we shall know in greater measure the joyous truth of our existence...

 

"If I ascend up into heaven, Thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, Thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall Thy hand lead me, and Thy right hand shall hold me. If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night shall be light about me."

(Psalm 139:8-11)