The Special of the Day… From the Orange Moon Cafe
"Dependently Free"
God made human beings as responders.
"We love Him because He first loved us" (I John 4:19).
We would never have trusted the Lord Jesus Christ had God not worked in our hearts to convince, convict, and convert us by revealing His grace, as received through faith. "No man can come to Me, except the Father which hath sent Me draw him" (John 6:44). Nor would we walk with Him after the new birth if He did not continue His initiating power that makes possible our response.
"Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure" (Philippians 2:12-13).
Presently, our Father works in believers "to will and to do" by His Spirit, His Word, His church, and His providential presence and power supplied along the pathways of our lives. Thereby, He makes possible our potential to respond in faith and submission, promising the power for response, but leaving us with the freedom to either avail ourselves of His grace or not. "I will love Thee, o Lord my strength" declared the Psalmist of this real relationship between God's heart and our own (Psalm 18:1). David, in response to the Lord's working, genuinely desired to love Him, recognizing the need for his chosen "I will love Thee." However, he also knew God must enable such devotion... "O Lord my strength."
Much mystery lies in this beautiful union of God and humanity. We are dependently free, as it were, a wonder of relationship and fellowship long pondered by prophets and sages, none of which have come close to full discovery or explanation of how the Lord works and how we respond. As the Lord Jesus said to Nicodemus regarding the new birth…
"The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit" (John 3:8).
How does grace and faith work in our Father's heart and our own? He knows perfectly and completely. We do not, nor do we need full explanation. We rather require realization of our need for God's working in our hearts, His promise of grace, and our privileged responsibility to respond or not. Rather than how it all works, we focus on the truth that it works by our Father's perfectly faithful administration, and our determination to grow in holy and trusting response. Dependently free. Even this simple idiom offers only a glimmer of light regarding the marvel of the divine heart and human hearts united in the love of Christ.
"O send out Thy light and Thy truth: let them lead me; let them bring me unto Thy holy hill, and to Thy tabernacles. Then will I go unto the altar of God, unto God my exceeding joy."
(Psalm 43:3-4)
Weekly Memory Verse
O send out Thy light and Thy truth: let them lead me; let them bring me unto Thy holy hill, and to Thy tabernacles. Then will I go unto the altar of God, unto God my exceeding joy.
(Psalm 43:3-4)
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