Greetings,
Today I am heading home after some days in Wisconsin to see a very good friend and to enjoy a family reunion with my remaining siblings, nephews, nieces, and various extended realities. It was a great time for relational connections. God was in the journey and divine appointments happened each day.
True God-seekers desire to become like Him. They want to walk in His light. His light will transform their darkness to become a testimony of His light. Eastern mysticism teaches that human darkness becomes light when it is accepted as truth, but God’s way is to bring our darkness to His light, whereby the testimony of our lives changes from darkness to the character, nature, way, power, and authority of His name. God is willing to move into our world to confirm the power of His mercy, but He invites us to move into His world to experience the transforming power of His grace!
Isaiah 2:5 O house of Jacob, come and let us walk in the light of the Lord.
God does not forsake people, but the ways of people can put them in a path that is forsaken by God. The mystic ways of the east are not the same as the ways of our Father in heaven. We cannot expect God to change who He is for the sake of soothsayers and ways that are foreign to who He is.
Isaiah 2:6 For You have forsaken Your people, the house of Jacob, because they are filled with eastern ways; they are soothsayers like the Philistines, and they are pleased with the children of foreigners. 7 Their land is also full of silver and gold, and there is no end to their treasures; their land is also full of horses, and there is no end to their chariots. 8 Their land is also full of idols; they worship the work of their own hands, that which their own fingers have made.
When we expect God to change who He is for the sake of who we think we are, we are embracing a created image of God instead of embracing the One who is creative in all of His ways. He can cause a man who has never seen to finally see. He can cause a man who has never walked to finally walk. This means He also empowers a formerly blind man to now live as a man with sight with all of the responsibilities of sight. He empowers a formerly crippled man to now live as a man who can walk with all the responsibilities of a man who can work. The former treasures have to be exchanged for the new treasures given by God. He transforms an Abram to an Abraham and expects him to live in the boundaries and expectations of a Hebrew and no longer a Chaldean. He transforms a Jacob to an Israel and expects him to be a prince with God and no longer merely a seeker of His blessing.
Jeremiah 18:1 The word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord, saying: 2 “Arise and go down to the potter’s house, and there I will cause you to hear My words.” 3 Then I went down to the potter’s house, and there he was, making something at the wheel. 4 And the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand of the potter; so he made it again into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to make. 5 Then the word of the Lord came to me, saying: 6 “O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter?” says the Lord. “Look, as the clay is in the potter’s hand, so are you in My hand, O house of Israel!”
The clay is different that the Creator and Molder of clay. The one who molds the clay knows the purpose of the clay. The clay can only allow its substance to trust the one who forms it into a vessel of destiny and purpose. What was formerly marred can become something of great beauty in the hands of the Potter. Christ in us is the hope of glory and it is God by the power of His grace in our lives that can reshape us to be as we should be in this world. We cannot shape His image to match our marred testimony. We have to trust who He is to form us as we should be. He does not shame us because we are marred. Our marred inheritance doesn’t change what He sees when He looks at us. He sees that we are the full substance of all that He needs to reveal to us the vision of His love, the touch of His love, and the destiny of His love in all things. This is the power of God’s grace at work in our lives. His mercy justifies us to live, but His grace empowers us to become as we should be.
Blessings,
Ted J. Hanson
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