Blog In Audio:
Greetings,
Today I am in Portugal. I started here this weekend and will be here for the next few weeks. We had a wonderful day yesterday in the church of Alverca, near Lisbon. I am looking forward to all that God is going to do here.
In the past couple of blogs, I have been addressing the apostle Paul’s words to the Church of Corinth regarding our works in life. Those works can be self-focused works that are consumed by the fire of God, or they can be God-focused works that are only refined by the fire of God’s presence. As Paul describes these works, they appear to be written in a reverse order to what they should be according to natural logic. I believe that straw represents living for our daily comforts and needs, hay represents a life of personal success, and wood represents some measure of generational inheritance of natural things. Surely the correct order of these would seem to be straw, hay, and wood but Paul writes them as wood, hay, and straw.
This is also true for the works that endure. Gold is a testimony of God’s character, nature, way, power, and authority. Silver is symbolic of the testimony of Christ’s redemption. Precious stones are symbolic of individual identity as God gives life to each of us. Surely it would be logical to say that our individual value leads to our testimony of redemption in Christ and our redemption in Christ leads to our perfected purpose in God.
In Paul’s instruction to them regarding building upon the foundation of Jesus Christ, he addresses them as God’s field, God’s building, and a temple of the Holy Spirit. These also appear to be in a reverse order. A temple denotes a personal connection to God. A building denotes being a testimony of God, something that is being built by Him. A field denotes the purpose of God, as being something that provides life to the world.
Why does Paul write these in a reverse order? Perhaps this reverse order has to do with destiny. God determines the end of a matter before He determines the beginning. How we view something determines how that thing can come to pass. It is only by seeing what God sees that we can embrace the process to become what God sees.
Isaiah 46:10 “Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all My pleasure,”
Isaiah 48:3 “I have declared the former things from the beginning; They went forth from My mouth, and I caused them to hear it. Suddenly I did them, and they came to pass.”
God’s works are determined by what God sees in His heart. He is purposed in doing what He sees to be done. When we know the purpose is God’s field, we will embrace being a temple of the Holy Spirit so that we can become those who are built by God for a testimony that can fulfill the full purpose of God in our lives. When we know the end, we embrace the process to get to the end, but when we are not sure of the end, we don’t know what process to embrace.
Successful people in the world have a generational focus. They plan to create something that will last beyond their lives. Their motive is self-focused, however. They embrace their own comforts and personal desires, but they also live for a full life of success. Because they see success as their goal, they are even generational in their process. They plan to create something that exists because of them and continues beyond their own lives in the hands of successors. This only happens for those who see the end from the beginning, and they are determined to do whatever is necessary to make this process happen. Although they seek to build something lasting, in the presence of God it is consumed by His fire.
God doesn’t want us to live for personal success. He wants us to live to be significant in releasing His divine purpose in our world. When we see what God sees, we will embrace the process to become what He sees. It is shown to us by God’s grace and the process is revealed by God’s grace to those who embrace it. It is a process of precious stones, silver, and gold. It is a process of being a temple of the Holy Spirit, a testimony of the building of Christ, and a fruitfulness as God’s field for our world.
Our story in life, is a story of eternal life – knowing God the Father and Jesus His Son. It reveals that we are each loved by God. We are each an expression of God’s love. We are each sent by His love to be love to our world. The end that was declared by God was that we would be sent to our world to reveal the Father’s love. For that to happen, we must know that we are each an expression of God’s love because we are each loved by Him.
Blessings,
Ted J. Hanson
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