The Special of the Day… From the Orange Moon Cafe…
(Friends, in my mind, a narrow category exists regarding the messages that causes me to think, "If I could only have written one, this might be it." This is one of of those. Glen).
"His Gaze On Our Hearts"
"The Lord looketh on the heart" (I Samuel 16:7).
When God looks into the heart of a born again believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, what does He see? Or rather, who does He see?
"God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying Abba Father" (Galatians 4:6).
God the Father sees His Son in us. He sees the "new creature" we are, as united to the Spirit of the Lord Jesus (II Corinthians 5:17). "He that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit" (I Corinthians 6:17). This primary gaze on who and what we most deeply are in Christ does not preclude our Father's awareness of other facets of our being. He sees all, be it faithful or unfaithful attitudes, thoughts, emotions, and desires, and acts accordingly. However, He directs primary focus to the presence of Christ in us, and of ourselves as united to Him.
How could it not be so? Indeed, to make possible the Holy Spirit's presence in our hearts, our Father smote His Son on the cross of Calvary with untold sorrow, grief, pain, forsakenness, and death. Christ suffered and died that we might live, the primary definition of which involves the indwelling of Christ in our hearts. "To live is Christ… Christ is our life" (Philippians 1:21; Colossians 3:4). When we received the Lord Jesus and His saving grace by faith, He entered our spirits to forevermore serve as the Life of our lives. Again, how could God the Father ever look on His trusting sons and daughters in Christ without first and foremost seeing the wonder of the Gift He gave to us? He knows the price paid to make it possible. He knows "the hope of glory" it brings to all who believe (Colossians 1:27). He knows so much better than do we ourselves how much our spirits are bound eternally to the Spirit of Christ. Thus, we can be sure that when He sees us, He sees into the very epicenter of our being wherein dwells His Son.
We must share our Father's holy focus on the sublime Gift. The Apostle Paul plainly commands such a gaze as a matter of obedience to God and truth: "Reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord" (Romans 6:11). Like our Father, we won't overlook the other aspects of our being or our response to His grace and truth in Christ. In fact, we will become even more grateful for faithfulness in thought, attitude, emotion, and desire, better realizing that our Lord presence in our hearts makes possible such obedience. We will also be more determined to overcome expressions of unfaithfulness (and repent in godly sorrow when we don't overcome). The entrance of Christ's presence into our hearts changed who and what we are when we believed. Knowing and affirming such grace will more and more change and enhance our response of faith and faithfulness. "Beholding as in a glass (mirror) the glory of the Lord, we are changed into the same image, from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord" (II Corinthians 3:18).
May nothing distract us from the enormity of God's gift - "Christ in you" - and the enormity of the price paid to make it possible. When thinking of ourselves and fellow Christians, let us join our Father in His gaze on our hearts. Like Him, how could this not be our focus when considering the Gift and its cost?
"He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him."
(II Corinthians 5:21)
"For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ."
(II Corinthians 4:6)
"God... hath sealed us and given us the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts."
(II Corinthians 1:21-22)
Weekly Memory Verse
The Lord looketh on the heart.
(I Samuel 16:7)
6092
No comments:
Post a Comment