No Mack. You are imagining a future without Me and that future does not exist.
~ Wm Paul Young, Jesus, speaking to Mack, in The Shack
For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.
~ paul, The Least of The Apostles, in Ephesians 3
Oh beloved, it is true.
Many of us, actually most of us – though some of us didn’t know it – worked very hard to mess up our lives. We gave into temptations that threatened to crush us. We rebelled in the name of personal freedom. And in our struggle to have our own way, we found ourselves in a bondage far worse than we had been in before we started.
Somehow though, and all of this is Grace, the G_d who we resisted before draws us into His arms. All the while we had been thinking that His embrace would crush us. But, we found that finally dying to our own selves, and allowing Him to have His way, did not extinguish our lives – it actually set them aflame.
And this is where it really begins to happen.
Can we see it?
What is happening to the man who has been set free? Oh, it is not that he might continue down the road he was traveling before – but now without so many failures. No, it is now that he has been thrust out of time and into eternity.
And, while this man is still living in time, the rate at which life and favor and grace and power and hope grows, begins to accelerate. It is as though, without trying to sound too mystical, that G_d is shoving eternity back into time – to the point where time begins to be irrelevant.
Said more simply: He begins to do things in our lives that make no sense in the natural. Things start growing in us, and around in ways that are much too fast, to have happened in our lives. A few short minutes ago, we were dying in our addictions and sin – and now…
Promotions
Health
Insight
Influence
Faith
Hope
And Love
Are growing in us, and happening to us faster than we can keep up with.
So, are you sensing some amazing things beginning to happen in your life? Just wait, beloved. Just wait. Tonight is your night. Time to believe you have only just begun to taste His goodness.
When God calls a man, he does not repent of it. God does not, as many friends do, love one day, and hate another; or as princes, who make their subjects favorites, and afterwards throw them into prison. This is the blessedness of a saint; his condition admits of no alternation. God’s call is founded upon his decree, and his decree is immutable. Acts; of grace cannot be reversed. God blots out his people’s sins, but not their names.
~Thomas Watson (c. 1557-1592)
