The Journey
by Diane Naus, Arizona
• Who are we In Christ?
• We are purchased
• We belong to Him
• We are brand new
• We are adopted into the King's family
• We
are children of the living God
• We
are royalty
• We
are forgiven
• We
are saints
• We
please Him
• We
are holy—set apart for sacred use
• We
are cared for
• We
are protected
• We
are comforted
• We
are dearly loved, adored and cherished
• Beyond
measure
• Beyond
comprehension
But . . . we are not God!
I have always known that in my head, but
not in my heart. I had to go on a journey to learn it, to move it from my head
to my heart.
We all go on a journey. God paints us a
picture of our journey using the Jewish people, His chosen ones of old. They
are taken captive in Egypt just as we are taken captive by the enemy and made
slaves. Then God, at the perfect time, frees the Jews in a mighty way to show
His incomparable great power. Each family kills a lamb and sprinkles its blood
over their doorposts and the Death Angel passes by them. God takes the "Perfect
Lamb" and sprinkles His blood over our hearts and death passes by us. The
Jews cross the Red Sea (the color is no accident) into freedom for the first
time in 400 years! We cross over as they did into complete freedom. Oh, how we
rejoice. But like our spiritual ancestors of old, we have crossed into the
wilderness. Soon after crossing, God gave them the law.
Deut.
8:2, "Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the desert
these forty years, to humble you and to test you, in order to know what was in
your heart, whether or not you would keep His commands."
So
this test in the wilderness was put there by God. He tests us to see whether or
not we will keep His commands. Does God need the test for Himself? Absolutely
not. He knows we cannot keep the commands. The test is for us! He needs to
prove to us we cannot. Just like the Jews could not keep the law, we cannot
live the Christian life. God has to prove it to us using our own failures. We
try and we fail and we try and we fail again and again. We complain and we
build golden calves. We have to die in the desert. That is its purpose. But oh,
how we hang on to our own efforts. Somehow we think it is our responsibility,
our job, our assignment to live the Christian life. We spend hours, days,
weeks, months and years trying to get it right, to please God. After all, we
have great motives. We are so very grateful for our salvation. Somehow,
eventually we think we are going to get it right. We always add "with
God's help." But it is our own effort (my friend calls it
"efforting"). We never arrive. We have to die in the desert.
My
journey was pretty easy for a long time. I grew up in a believing, loving
family. I loved being a good girl. I loved Jesus and I knew He loved me. In
retrospect I realize that I wanted from my peers the same sense of security I
felt at home. I wanted to be popular, to be wanted, desired, and adored. Ultimately
I wanted to be worshiped. I cannot help but think we all do. We just cannot
admit it.
Then
I met Prince Charming. I transferred all that desire for love and acceptance to
him. The first 30 years we did life, our "efforting" looked pretty good:
four kids, a business, Church, and friends. We were a family, partners, lovers.
But flesh is flesh and after 30 years of marriage we lived a year from hell. It
did not happen overnight; it had been years in the making. I was trying so hard
to get it right. That treadmill is exhausting. I needed to die in the desert.
I heard recently a wonderful quote that
rang true for me: "God permits what He hates in order to accomplish what
He loves." That is exactly what He did in our lives. God permitted what He
could have prevented in order to save us from ourselves. He had saved us from
Satan and slavery to sin, and now He would save us from our own
"efforting."
God woke me up one morning and told me that
I didn't have to be God in my life any longer—now it was His turn.
It was time to cross the Jordan!
There is a Promised Land this side of
Heaven. We need only to die to ourselves to cross over. God parts the waters
and we cross. So what is this Promised Land this side of Heaven? It is Christ
in us, the hope of glory. It is no longer our glory we seek. It is His glory
within us to be revealed by Him. Gal 2:20 states: "I have been crucified
with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in
the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for
me." In the Promised Land I no longer live my life. He lives His life in
me and through me. In becoming Christ-like I am not becoming a little Jesus. I
begin to look like Him so that He can express Himself through me. Oh, what a
glorious thought. I rest and He lives. The battles are His, and therefore, the
victories are His. I take no credit for it all belongs to Him. Jesus said in
Matthew that the Kingdom is now.
So what does this Kingdom look like?
• A kingdom where God is God and we are
not.
• A place of total dependence on Him.
• A
place of total abandonment to His will and His will becomes ours.
• A place where we don't have to be seen
or heard or understood because our
Savior sees and hears and
understands us.
• A place where even when we can't see
Him or feel His presence, we know He is there.
• A
place where all responsibility is His.
• A place where all the law of
Scripture becomes insight into His heart and teaches us to know Him better.
• A
place where the lists of rules fade and His very life, His Spirit, leads us in
His
ways,
in His truth, in His life.
• A
place where God uses even our mistakes and mess-ups to accomplish His will.
• A
place where we begin to know who we are in Christ.
• A
place of Sabbath rest every day.
• A
place to sleep in the boat during the storms or even to walk on the waves.
• A
place of revelation that everything comes through His permission.
• A
place where He wants to tell us we are loved and secure and accepted.
• A
place where He will love people through us when we don't love them at all.
• A
place where we can pray, "Father, forgive them because they don't know
what
they
are doing," instead of, "Father, help me to forgive." Then He
changes our
unforgiveness
into His forgiveness.
• A
place where when someone is rude, hurtful, irritating, or even inconvenient,
you
can
say, "Thank You, Jesus, for this appointment. Please love them through
me."
• A
place where when you are tired, grouchy, sarcastic, and downright ugly from all
your
"efforting," you can say to God with great confidence, "Here,
take it all. I'm too
weak and tired
even to give it to you, but I know You want to carry it all." And finally,
you know He takes
it and you keep moving by faith. You don't feel Him take it, but
you know.
Eventually the feelings catch up and you thank Him for all of it.
• Are
there Battles in the Promised Land? Yes.
• He
may ask us to hold our tongues or shout for joy so that He tears down the walls
around
our hearts we have been building for years.
• He
may ask us to give up the devoted thing we hide, and if we refuse we lose and
if
we
surrender it to Him we win.
• He
will ask us to give Him our idols. If we try to give them up with our own
"efforting"
they will grow stronger. If we give them to Him, He will demolish them.
• Every
time we take matters back into our own hands it ends in sin.
• Every
time we give our life to Him to manage it ends in victory.
After God woke me on Friday, February 6, 2004,
and told me I no longer needed to be God, He spoke Gal. 3:3 to me: "Diane,
are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to
attain your goal by human effort?"
I
knew!
• For
the last 11 and a 1/2 years He has been showing me the devoted things I hold
onto
and gently releases my grip and takes them.
• He
has been showing me how intensely He loves me.
• In
the process I have learned Col 3:3, "For you died, and your life is now
hidden
with
Christ in God."
• I
am not my own, I was purchased.
• By
the power of the Spirit, Christ lives in me, and He lives out of me.
• As
I learn how much He loves me and know this love that surpasses knowledge, I
can
be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God (Eph. 3:14 & 21)
instead of
the
fullness of me.
• I
don't have to live in regret of yesterday or fear of tomorrow because I have
Jesus
today,
and He wants to express Himself through me in this moment and every
moment
thereafter.
What a journey. My desert experience was
mine and yours is yours. They look different but in so many ways they are the
same. Nothing is ever wasted in God's economy. He used it all in my life to
reveal Himself to me and He will use it all in your life as well. He uses
EVERYTHING. I must have been so stubborn for it to have taken so long, so full
of pride and my own "efforting." Every painful moment of my death to
self was worth it. To get a glimpse of Him is worth everything. Now I can live
in the Kingdom of God and bask in His love and thank Him for everything in my
life, because my goal is no longer to be comfortable or even to please Him,
because in Christ I do. My goal this side of Heaven is to know Him. I want to
know everything that is humanly possible to know. I want to KNOW JESUS! What a
journey.
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