This is one radical upside of living fully to the specification of our Design. A believer can, upon full surrender to the Grace of G_d, simply quit being a consumer of the filth of the world, and begin being a dispenser of His Light.
~ Makala B. Doulos
But thank God! He has made us his captives and continues to lead us along in Christ’s triumphal procession. Now he uses us to spread the knowledge of Christ everywhere, like a sweet perfume. Our lives are a Christ-like fragrance rising up to God. But this fragrance is perceived differently by those who are being saved and by those who are perishing. To those who are perishing, we are a dreadful smell of death and doom. But to those who are being saved, we are a life-giving perfume. And who is adequate for such a task as this?
You see, we are not like the many hucksters who preach for personal profit. We preach the word of God with sincerity and with Christ’s authority, knowing that God is watching us.
~ 2 Corinthians 2:14-17
Oh beloved, it is true. We live in a world system that exists for one, and one purpose only. It is a fallen system that is diabolically designed to get us to take our eyes off of the only One who can and will and does take us out of this same morass.
We are so deluged in the filth, that we are not even aware we are dirty. It is, as the character Morpheus says in the movie, The Matrix, “It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth… That you are a slave.” We are swimming in the slime of our death-bound cultures.
We see sometimes see some things that are not quite as dirty as everything else, and we say amongst ourselves that something like this is not so bad. But there is something in us that knows we have it all wrong. The stench of the air around us even breaks through our burned nostrils. We know something is backwards.
And then it happens. He catches us.
He crushes the wind out of our lungs, and refills them with the wind of His Spirit.
He sweeps our spiritual throats with His cleansing fingers, and gives us a new song to sing.
He clears the giant timbers from our eyes, that we might see and help others with splinters in theirs’.
He smashes the dark stone of our hearts, and replaces it with one of flesh, that it might beat for – and in rhythm with – Him.
He balms the wounds of our seared consciences and makes us feel the pain of the world around us once again.
He unstops our ears that we might hear His call – and the call of others who are perishing in the dark around us.
He causes our hands to stop grasping, that they may receive His blessing instead.
Said more simply, He changes everything. He changes everything in us so radically that we simply cannot live the life we used to live before. That life is dead and gone. And in that old life’s place is a beautiful being who can now do something completely different than before.
That difference being, that instead of laying around like some chick in a nest, with our mouths open – just waiting to be filled by something; and finding that this way of living only filled us with stuff we never really wanted – we are now full of Him. We are so full of Him that we begin to actually spill out His Light and Life and goodness on others. Oh yeah, we are just beginning, and the flow is often choked by our incredulity and our old habits of existence.
But, the difference we find, even in finding that we are not perfect in our dispensing, is that the flow of Him in us and through us is but a cleansing and enabling process. We no longer become poisoned by the filth that used to flow into us, and the imperfect light that pours from us is made to grow a bit brighter all the time – for it is Him finishing the work He has begun in us. And we sense that He will surely make us fully well and able to shine forth just like Him one day.
Can we see it?
He captures us, kills us, makes us new, and enables us to do things we have never done before. However, instead of feeling like we have had some sort of human home invasion done to us, it is more like we have been rescued out of some trap we never fully realized we were in.
This is very good news friends!
