"...while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal."
2 Corinthians 4:18
God works in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform. How I think of these words as I see the beauty of Gods creation in nature all around us. How His Sovereignty is so masterfully involved in every detail in the universe, in all that He has created. In the rising of the sun to its setting...how He gives us glimpses into His glory...and I am thankful for a faith that can believe that it is His working in all of creation ….a faith that believes that all He does is orchestrated so perfectly for us all and it is the greatest reminder to me this new day that He is on the throne of this universe. How I can trust Him then to be on throne of my life.
There are great mysteries that we will not fully come to understand until we get to heaven. There is a mystery in our suffering and with each new trial we are faced with we have a choice to accept or not accept. To walk by faith or in unbelief. To walk by faith or by sight.
I write as one who desperately needs to cling to the One thing I do know, God, and to walk and believe in the things I cannot see, to walk by faith not sight. How I have learned with each trial more of my will needs to be given to God for His perfect will to be done. Less of me and more of Him. With each trial in our life as a believer comes with a question. We could think as though we are a victim of circumstances and forgotten by God OR we are loved, designed and wonderfully created by a God who is in control of all things? Faith or unbelief? Believing in the visible or the invisible? How our feelings must then be turned to faith as the Psalmist wrote, "Who have in heaven but You O God?" I love the simplicity of Gods Word in that through all things comes the question, we either believe or we don't, and the choice is always ours. How God wants us to choose Him and trust in our Good Good Father whose ways are so perfect for us, despite what we often see or feel. Our Father who delights in us with singing, who knows the very hairs numbered on our head who knows our comings and goings and when we rise and when we sit, who knows the words we are thinking even before we speak them. And how quickly we can forget His Sovereignty. How our fleshly hearts can want to stay stuck in what is visible...and not move on until things appear better...How I choose to believe, to surrender and accept what He allows.
This is dying to self and taking up our cross daily. I wear a cross not just to remind myself of what it symbolizes as a Christian and not just to have it be a witness to others....but recently it has also reminded me greatly of the importance to wear it and remind myself of how I must take up my cross daily for Christ. As I do I am reminded that 'death in us, is life in you (others)'. (2 Cor. 4:11-12)
How throughout the years as we walk with Christ we experience storms and barren times where we carry things in our hearts that only God can understand, how we understand our weakness and human frailty more and more. But through all our 'deaths to self' we give life to others. This is the greatest mystery of our suffering.
How throughout my life as I thought of those words, 'God works in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform', when circumstances threatened to undo my faith and tried causing me to begin believing only in what I could see. His mysterious ways lie in what is unseen, where we are challenged at that crossroad to go deeper yet. This is almost impossible at each new challenge but His word promises us that He keeps us from falling and underneath us are His everlasting arms holding us. We must come to a place of decision where it is "the visible vs the invisible" - "Do I believe"? Throughout my life, in the acceptance of what appeared to be losses and visibly wrong -- pressing on with the LORD was where the treasure and reward was found. God's work displayed. In the invisible and unseen realm, with Gods perspective, is where I had to stay focused on believing in all that was eternal, for a change in me and in the circumstance and then this change would bring a seed of change and hope to others.
We hear the phrase, "the crux of the matter"... or the "heart of the matter" and I love how this word "crux", I have learned, goes back to the word "cross". I looked it up in Latin and I have learned that it means-
1. cross
2. crucifixion
3. hanging tree
4. impaling stake
5. torture/torment/trouble/misery
This is so interesting to me as the crux of the matter or heart of the matter always takes us to the cross to meet our deepest need but it also implies where we find the truth of the matter...and it is not always easy for us to accept but when we do, we find peace in our full surrender at the cross.
Tozier says, "The cross of Jesus Christ is the 'crux' of history. With it there is no history. The cross of Christ defines history. "Excruciating" in Latin means "out of the cross". In English it means "in the throes of indescribable pain". The excruciating pain of Christ on the cross comforts the deepest hurts of the human heart. We live with the deepest hungers of the heart. Truth, love, justice, and forgiveness grip the soul and stir the heart. These four lies at the foot of the cross, God provides for our deepest needs."
I love this because in all things, "the crux of the matter" always goes back to the cross and the Word of God. Where our problems always bring us to Him. We either come to that cross in the road, a crossway that says we either believe or we walk in unbelief, and there is no in between to what God is saying. At the cross we find our answers to all of life and to godliness, regardless, and it always brings us back to the condition of our heart where the crux of the matter is that we need more of Jesus and less of ourselves to walk on.
The Bible says that our trials are working for us, not against us. That we are not to loose heart. That they are light and just for a moment and working for us a far more exceedingly and eternal weight of glory. (2 Cor 4:16-17) As hard as this is at times to accept when we first enter that uncomfortable place, how do we then press on? Verse 18 tells us, "We do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen...for the things that are seen are temporary , but the things which are not seen are eternal." The invisible. The scriptures are filled with men and woman of faith who achieved what they did because they looked at the invisible. (Hebrews 11) They endured.They did not loose sight of the eternal perspective. Our worldly perspectives only cause us to loose sight of what is eternal and that perspective is never God's.
I think how Satan tries to use our trials to keep our eyes off the eternal. How easily our difficulties gain center stage and we loose our focus on the eternal work that is all around us, beginning in our homes, our churches and communities. We can easily become selfish and even self absorbed. I have been guilty of this. How I need that spiritual perspective to give me God's perspective on the eternal vs temporal. For me, often, the temporal often means just striving in my heart to want my will my way...to understand, to want a solution, to have answers for the things I can see, but God says to be still and trust Him and what higher calling could there be....to wait and trust in Him for the eternal purposes He has through it all. My vision brings about only temporal solutions.
How we often strive to get what we want, to always want our worlds to be right and we become so busy trying to fix everything and everyone, and we forget so easily to 'choose the better part' and sit at His feet, to minister to our spouses, our children and the people in our life that God has put in our path. How we need to look beyond our problems to the eternal God and fix our eyes on the eternal rewards and purposes. Souls are what matter most to God and He will do all that He wills to bring His redemptive work to all of our lives. And there is often no better way than through our suffering.
I think of Paul, a bondservant of Jesus Christ. Bondservant = {A slave. In Greek, "one who is subservient to, and entirely at the disposal of, his master} His various trials as a bondservant of Christ led others to see the Lord. I remember the time in my life after I first became a Christian when I realized that God wanted to be Master and Lord over my life....that the 'crux of the matter' in my relationship with Christ, through all things, was that my will had to be brought under the authority of God's. This was the way God works to fulfill His purposes and He chooses to use us as vessels that are empty of ourselves, for His glory. This required many lessons, and still to this day, on emptying myself and waiting on Him and this is hard especially when it conflicts with our own desires and will in the matter. But.....the 'crux of the matter' is always found at the cross, more of Jesus and less of us. Walking with a choice, invisible versus the visible.
Which each new step of faith requires more vulnerability to our flesh as we always want to protect ourselves and do what we think is right in our own eyes, as the children of Israel did. This requires our hearts to bow down before a holy and righteous God who made us to worship and follow Him, He doesn't worship and follow us. As we place ourselves in the hands of our Good Good Father and trust fully in the power of the Holy Spirit to lead us in our helpless state He takes up our defense. When our dependency on ourselves is fully depleted, God is ready to take over and He always shows us He is never finished with us but doing a work far greater than we could ever imagine. Gods work is always done by faith, through the invisible ways of His workings, not through the visibility of what our eyes can see or our hearts may feel. When we see the messes that this world brings into our lives, and our world appears somewhat chaotic as the bottom seems to have dropped out...we pray and we pray more, according to His Word.
The crux of the matter lies in our ability to recognize what God has allowed and ask ourselves "How will I react?".... that is the most important question. This means for me today to offer to God this place where God has called me to walk, and to offer myself as a living sacrifice which is my reasonable service to God. Again, the picture of a bondservant of Christ. How true this is of all of lifes difficulties....the "crucial" {also from the word cross} place of decision is to live according to Gods Word. New in Him, given fully to Him and that means saying YES to Him in all He has allowed in our life, beginning this day.
This comes with great rewards as I have seen a simple yes in obedience to Christ change a life in that very moment. A simply yes to Christ with a heart truly surrendered to Him restores hearts, lives, family's, heals broken relationships, brings salvation to a hopeless life. God is moving as His spirit is here on earth....and John 4:35 says "But I say, wake up and look around. The fields are already ripe for the harvest" -- I love these words, "Wake up, look around", do we see what God is doing and how He desires to use us.
Warren Wiersbe writes, "Ministry takes place when divine resources meet human needs through loving channels to the glory of God". Such a beautiful definition of ministry and a great reminder of our part in it...we are used when we love. Again, through all things, through trials and toils, may we walk in peace and holiness, love and forgiveness....Why?....so God can us as instruments in His hands to meet human needs....we must die to self to bring life to others.
I think of Joseph. I think of his suffering. I think of his forgiveness towards his brothers who did him wrong....and how he was greatly used by God to meet the needs of others. Joseph, born to Jacob, was a man who made the right choices again and again. So many twists and turns in his life. Despised, rejected as a young boy by his brothers. The object of jealously and envy. Sold into slavery. Accused falsely. Imprisoned. Forgotten there by one. His future by what he could see looked hopeless. But his faith endured. Each day he made the right choice despite his circumstance of being imprisoned. In one day everything changed when it was Gods perfect timing. A lesson for us all in waiting and enduring and trusting! He then was placed in one of the highest positions in Egypt and blessings towards him were in abundance. All that was lost was restored. His freedom, his position and purpose, his relationship with his brothers. We read that "the Lord was with Joseph" and we can say the same of God for us . Throughout his life, Gods hand rested upon him and He used all things, all suffering, not for his prosperity in the end but for the deliverance of Gods people and eventually for the coming of Christ. (You can read Genesis 37-45 on the story of Joseph)
God was faithful to Joseph. We read of Gods providence in his life. Genesis 50:20 has always been one of my promises that I have clung to in times of affliction, "You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives" This is our God, through all our suffering that we endure He intends it for good, for the saving of many, such a powerful promise for us all.
Each day I try to remember to feed on the faithfulness of God in our lives. I cannot move forward without always being reminded of Gods faithfulness in the past. God is both faithful and sovereign and I must know this constantly, being certain of His Providence in my life that enables me to move forward even in the darkest and hardest of places.
Throughout our life together, as husband and wife, as parents, and in our service to the Lord...through the many trials and through this past year, God has been there each step of the way. Through each step I take today that God has asked, His presence has carried me even in times when I could not walk. Through each step I have been met with the assurance of His Holy Spirit enabling me...to continue to do the work that God has, as Randy always said, "there is still much to do."
Randy prayed this prayer for me, for us, for our family and for the body of Christ from 1 Samuel 12 and I pray it always for us all as well, "For the Lord will not forsake His people, for His great name sake, because it has pleased the Lord to make you His people. Moreover, as for me, far be it from me that I should cease to pray for you; but I will teach you the good and right way. Only fear the Lord, and serve Him in truth with all your heart; for consider what great things He has done for you."
Consider what great things He has done. Although the visible things we can see can be very hard to accept they are the very things that God has used in our life to draw us closer to Him. Our fear is to not to be founded in our circumstance but only in the Lord Himself. Our merciful God will use all that He has allowed in our life to transform us more and more into His image...and we will look back and remember what He has done....as we share in His sufferings and in His resurrected glory through each step of faith we take in our service to Him and reflect His resurrected power to all those around us.
I thank our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ for the cross. For His greatest example to us all that in His death He brought life to us all. Many could not understand or explain what they had witnessed with their own eyes, but God understood and the purposes did not stop in the moment of what their eyes could see. The purpose of His death God intended for good, for the saving of many, for the invisible, eternal purposes.
"I reckon, that the sufferings we now endure bear no comparison with the splendor, as yet revealed, which is for us...If we hope for something we do not see, then, in the waiting for it, we show our endurance" Romans 8:18, 25
"The maturing process in the Christian is for one purpose: the giving of life" The maturing dandelion has long ago surrendered its golden petals, and has reached its crowning stage of dying. It stands ready, holding up its little life, not knowing when or where the wind will blow where it may waft away. It holds itself no longer for its own keeping, only as something to be shared. The delicate seed-globe must break up now; it gives and gives until it has nothing left! -- Think of those men and women who made the most impact in our lives, giving themselves, lovingly, sacrificially, and in doing so, giving us life? Like the dandelion, to give - until it has nothing left - for itself. BUT it has given life - to new dandelions. So too are we in whom Christ dwells - bearers of both His death and His life. {L. Trotter/E. Elliot}
Our prescription for spiritual vision vs worldly vision = "For we walk by faith, not sight" 2 Corinthians 5:7
The invisible versus the visible...the eternal versus the temporal.
Michelle A. Guerra
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