I know a place where death is nothing more than a distant memory that is forever conquered. A place with no more tears, but only of truth and light and peace and of the most intense beauty. Fight for it. Fight for truth. Fight for the lost.
~ Christian Morrison
Paul and Timothy, slaves of Christ Jesus, To all the saints in Christ Jesus at Philippi, together with the overseers and deacons: Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I thank my God every time I remember you. In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. It is right for me to feel this way about all of you, since I have you in my heart; for whether I am in chains or defending and confirming the gospel, all of you share in God’s grace with me. God can testify how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus. And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God.
~ from Philippians 1
Oh beloved, there is this terrible saying in our modern christo-banter, “Be patient with me, God isn’t finished with me yet.” And we say it with some sort of wink-and-a-nod smile that each of us understand. So many of us in the room are actually holding back something from Him – but somehow we sop our consciences on this careless little ditty. And we keep going our own way.
Please stop.
Read the whole passage. Read the whole book. Read both of the Testaments and listen to Him as He instructs us to its meaning. Grace is the power to actually start to live the Life He has given us. Grace is not a license to keep living the death we once lived.
And Grace is not about us trying to live above our sins. It is about actually abandoning our own power to live – and finally allowing G_d to bring forth fruit in our lives.
And this is the place of the last battle in our lives. Hope in a future beyond our imaginations makes us begin to long for that place now. It drives us to our knees and makes us want to have others experience that same hope.
But to become truly useful, someone has to die: we have to die.
Every lust.
Every self-motivated desire.
Every wish.
Every hope in our own plans.
Every belief that we have some sort of right to our own comforts and rights.
Everything.
And it is this battle that G_d is waging on our behalf. He is not working to polish us up. He is demolishing our old lives. He is bringing about the victory of the new creation He has created in us. He started the work, and He will most surely finish it. Kinda puts a different spin on the nut, doesn’t it?!?!
We have a Blessed Hope, who within Himself contains a deep eternity of eternities of only the most profound righteousness and peace and joy and clarity and fulfillment and power and peace. And we actually, by His Grace, have the opportunity to start living that Life right here and right now. And even better, we have the opportunity to tell the entire world of this Blessed Hope who Lives in us and through us right now.
Can we see it yet? Who do we think we are to be so gratuitous about true grace like this? The Gospel is GOOD NEWS… it is not a cover-up for the bad news still percolating in the back rooms of our lives. Would that we might, like young Mr. Christian says above, “Fight for it. Fight for truth. Fight for the lost.”
