Sunday, November 22, 2015

God's Calling of the Chosen

When you set out to buy something (like a car), what are your criteria? Hopefully, color is not the most important thing you consider. Perhaps a stylish, trendy design should not be the first reason for a purchase, either. Something popular for its looks might just be useless for practical purposes. The top factor should always be functionality. Surface appearance and performance are separate
considerations and distinctly set apart in real life value. As the salesman very sagely explained, "You can't see the color of a car while you are driving it.

So it is with our character. You cannot "see" values at all. We cannot perceive the thoughts and emotions which inspire actions, only get visuals of the other person's exterior, not what is motivating or driving those actions. We can come to understand, through that esoteric concept called "knowledge", what is unveiled by their activity over time, and the sense of the actual person that emerges from the conscientiously or artfully constructed facade.

The whole of value is usefulness, of what benefit it can bring. Where our value begins is our being made in the image of God (That is the color or design part of our features). When we are born again as His children, when His Spirit comes to dwell in us, He takes the image, the least valuable part, and adds to it HIS intangible character traits, and increases our value into HIS range of the infinite! He does this through a process called sanctification. There is suffering in rebirth. There is a price to His good in us! When pain and it's companion of sorrow hand us a question, we learn how to answer back with His sufficiency. He becomes our motivation, our reason, our very breath! By this process, we learn how to think His thoughts along with Him. Those activities, how we perform, how we react to suffering, our humility, are showing whose we are! When we know Him, we always acquire gratitude and faith from circumstance! (How do we get to know HIM? By reading the WHOLE of His Word!)

I will forever be overwhelmingly grateful to my loving Lord for my dramatic heartbreak and sorrow! His will is sovereign and my scandalous and beautiful drama is used by Him to create my destiny and awaken me to HIM! I have the unearnable honor of being His vessel, fashioned to His purpose. I am living His story of love and glory, where He becomes my addiction, my passion, and my breath of compassion with which I cannot live without!