"Listen to them, Israel! Follow them carefully so that things will continue to multiply exactly as the LORD, your ancestors' God, promised you, in a land full of milk and honey." (Deuteronomy 6:3-5)
Somewhere along the way we lost the understanding that we are citizens of the Kingdom of God. We were transferred from the kingdom of darkness to the Kingdom of Light. Such a transfer required a new birth, a transformation, and an ongoing transformation.
We grew up understanding how things work in the kingdom of darkness. It is the place where rebellion rules, where everything is deformed and fails to function as God designed it to function. It is governed by the false prince of this world. But the Kingdom of Light works on a different set of principles.
This is why Jesus taught concerning the old wineskin and the new.
Just as Yahweh gave Moses a set of laws that Israel must follow to function properly in the new land, Jesus gave us instructions so that we can function in the Kingdom, allowing for everything to flow in its proper manner, enabling growth.
The Kingdom is about multiplication but it requires us to work within our function as designed by Father. We need to let go of the old ways so that we can walk in the King's ways. Moses prayed that God would teach him God's ways so that Moses could know him. Do we dare pray the same thing?
Showing posts with label design. Show all posts
Showing posts with label design. Show all posts
Thursday, March 15, 2018
Sunday, July 6, 2014
Designed To Be Producers In A Land Of Consumers
On this day of rest let me talk to you about work. Yahweh designed us to do stuff. We were not designed to put our brains in neutral and consume everything in sight. We have been wired to be producers, contributors, givers and we see it from the very beginning of time.
Yahweh didn't just create Adam and set him loose on the earth. He took Adam and gave him something to do, something to contribute:
Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it. (Genesis 2:15)
It's only one verse but it is an important one. We can look at the entire Old Testament and see many things that Yahweh could have done for himself but instead he brought people into it. Many things he could have done on his own but instead he had us partner with him. Is this because he lacked something that only we could bring to the table? Hardly. Yahweh is self-sufficient in all things. He wanted us to have something to do, to contribute something to what he was doing. He wanted us to have something for our hands to do.
In the world that followed, shaped by the Fall, shaped by our sin and selfishness, it is a hard truth for us to perceive. We are bent on consuming everything in sight without contributing anything. Being a producer takes effort, energy and often imagination. In many cases, producers produce for the benefit of others with little benefit for themselves, except for that incredible sense of joy and pleasure that comes from producing. Just ask a writer, painter, dancer, singer, musician, doctor, fireman, pastor.
There are so many things we can do to contribute to Yahweh's plan, a plan he has called us to partner in with him. He told us to be his witnesses, to testify of his goodness, love, of his plan of salvation. He has called us to reflect his glory in the many wonderful facets that it manifests itself through us. But it requires a perspective of giving, producing, contributing to the lives of others. We sometimes call this service and it is at the heart of of life in Christ.
We may not have a garden to tend and keep but Jesus has placed us in another type of garden, one filled with people. As frightening as it is sometimes to realize, we are here to work, to contribute, to have things produced through us. It requires sacrifice and sometimes suffering. The garden has no idea what we are doing and often is hostile to us but we have been told to love regardless, even if they hate us and consider us their enemy. Turn the other cheek and continue to contribute to their lives with love, kindness, patience, determination and sacrifice. Give until there is nothing left to give and soon you will discover that Yahweh never allows the "oil" to run out. Contribute to others as Jesus has contributed to us and you will please the only one who should matter to you. Serve Strong.
Yahweh didn't just create Adam and set him loose on the earth. He took Adam and gave him something to do, something to contribute:
Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it. (Genesis 2:15)
It's only one verse but it is an important one. We can look at the entire Old Testament and see many things that Yahweh could have done for himself but instead he brought people into it. Many things he could have done on his own but instead he had us partner with him. Is this because he lacked something that only we could bring to the table? Hardly. Yahweh is self-sufficient in all things. He wanted us to have something to do, to contribute something to what he was doing. He wanted us to have something for our hands to do.
In the world that followed, shaped by the Fall, shaped by our sin and selfishness, it is a hard truth for us to perceive. We are bent on consuming everything in sight without contributing anything. Being a producer takes effort, energy and often imagination. In many cases, producers produce for the benefit of others with little benefit for themselves, except for that incredible sense of joy and pleasure that comes from producing. Just ask a writer, painter, dancer, singer, musician, doctor, fireman, pastor.
There are so many things we can do to contribute to Yahweh's plan, a plan he has called us to partner in with him. He told us to be his witnesses, to testify of his goodness, love, of his plan of salvation. He has called us to reflect his glory in the many wonderful facets that it manifests itself through us. But it requires a perspective of giving, producing, contributing to the lives of others. We sometimes call this service and it is at the heart of of life in Christ.
We may not have a garden to tend and keep but Jesus has placed us in another type of garden, one filled with people. As frightening as it is sometimes to realize, we are here to work, to contribute, to have things produced through us. It requires sacrifice and sometimes suffering. The garden has no idea what we are doing and often is hostile to us but we have been told to love regardless, even if they hate us and consider us their enemy. Turn the other cheek and continue to contribute to their lives with love, kindness, patience, determination and sacrifice. Give until there is nothing left to give and soon you will discover that Yahweh never allows the "oil" to run out. Contribute to others as Jesus has contributed to us and you will please the only one who should matter to you. Serve Strong.
Sunday, December 9, 2012
A God Who Doesn't Waste Anything
I fell in love with reading when I was in grade five. I remember the book well. I happened upon it by chance. Science fiction that grabbed my imagination and transported me to a realm of endless possibilities. I was hooked. My aspiration as a young teen was to find an easy job that would provide me enough money to pay for a one room apartment, food and a book a day. I wanted to spend my life just reading.
I fell in love with writing the same day I fell in love with a girl. Oh, there was something that always pulled at me to write, since I was very young. I wrote a Gilligan's Island skit when I was in grade five for a class project. I was published by the time I was in grade six; a children's book illustrated by a fellow classmate. But the real love of writing did not take hold until I feel in love with a girl and suddenly the heart became my canvas.
Poetry was my choice of expression and my first poem was about my first love. Love, the light and dark sides, became my constant subject. I remember the thrill of my grade ten teacher reading that first poem and her reaction of asking me if I had really written it. She was amazed that this thing had come from me and I was stocked that she was amazed. She became my biggest support. My need for an audience was born.
All I really every wanted from life was to read and to write; to explore new worlds and to create them; to allow my pen to become a paint brush, to reveal what so many people miss in life. I wanted to contribute to the beauty of this world, the wonder of its imagination. But then something even more magical happened to me.
Jesus met with me and gave me an invitation I could not refuse.
Ever since that time I have explored a realm that is beyond most people's imaginations; even writer's. I realize how man has tried to anchor this realm in something tangible, something explainable, something concrete. But the Kingdom of God is far greater than any of man's attempts to express it, something that can only really be experienced when our spirit dances with God's. It is a place of incredible beauty and endless possibilities. It is a place where love shapes everything and acceptance pours down on us like rain. It is an inspiring place where we swim in the air of God's grace and joy is our constant companion. There are no chains here, no fences, no great walls or tiresome burdens. There is only trust, hope, faith, belief.
But what about my other great loves? What about the creativity that my God knit into my being? What about my great passion for writing and the talent that God gave to me? I got so lost in the corporate thinking of man's idea of the Church, I forgot. I became so pre-occupied as a middle manager of this corporation, I let it slip away. Did I lose the beauty of God's great gift of creativity, the wide open places with endless skies, to be lost in a city of great concrete structures where the sky is rarely seen and there is no place just to run?
These were my thoughts yesterday as I examined how to get back to the place God has called me to, and then I realized something. God is is sovereign. He never let's anything go to waste. As I mulled over these two things that I am certain about God, I realized some other things:
In the last ten years of my life, I have written at least ten books, if not twenty. Every day I meet with my readers to discuss our favorite subject: Jesus. I have written more than would have been possible any other way. Ten to twenty books have been birthed in me.
I get to paint vivid portraits on living canvases every Sunday as I tell stories about our incredible Jesus. As I share with the Body of Christ the wonder of our God and remind them with bright colours who he is and who we are to him, I get to allow my spirit to run in wide open spaces.
As for my love affair with my audience, I am the father of ten mind-blowing children. I am a man blessed beyond this world's comprehension. These are my real audience, the ones I get to share my life with every day, to create wonderful stories that will eventually be passed on to their children and hopefully to the children after them. The subject of these stories has never changed; it is still all about love. Only now, it is a love that goes beyond the limits of the human heart and imagination and explodes in a place of endless possibilities.
Oh, the wonder of our God and the mysteries of his ways! He doesn't waste anything.
I fell in love with writing the same day I fell in love with a girl. Oh, there was something that always pulled at me to write, since I was very young. I wrote a Gilligan's Island skit when I was in grade five for a class project. I was published by the time I was in grade six; a children's book illustrated by a fellow classmate. But the real love of writing did not take hold until I feel in love with a girl and suddenly the heart became my canvas.
Poetry was my choice of expression and my first poem was about my first love. Love, the light and dark sides, became my constant subject. I remember the thrill of my grade ten teacher reading that first poem and her reaction of asking me if I had really written it. She was amazed that this thing had come from me and I was stocked that she was amazed. She became my biggest support. My need for an audience was born.
All I really every wanted from life was to read and to write; to explore new worlds and to create them; to allow my pen to become a paint brush, to reveal what so many people miss in life. I wanted to contribute to the beauty of this world, the wonder of its imagination. But then something even more magical happened to me.
Jesus met with me and gave me an invitation I could not refuse.
Ever since that time I have explored a realm that is beyond most people's imaginations; even writer's. I realize how man has tried to anchor this realm in something tangible, something explainable, something concrete. But the Kingdom of God is far greater than any of man's attempts to express it, something that can only really be experienced when our spirit dances with God's. It is a place of incredible beauty and endless possibilities. It is a place where love shapes everything and acceptance pours down on us like rain. It is an inspiring place where we swim in the air of God's grace and joy is our constant companion. There are no chains here, no fences, no great walls or tiresome burdens. There is only trust, hope, faith, belief.
But what about my other great loves? What about the creativity that my God knit into my being? What about my great passion for writing and the talent that God gave to me? I got so lost in the corporate thinking of man's idea of the Church, I forgot. I became so pre-occupied as a middle manager of this corporation, I let it slip away. Did I lose the beauty of God's great gift of creativity, the wide open places with endless skies, to be lost in a city of great concrete structures where the sky is rarely seen and there is no place just to run?
These were my thoughts yesterday as I examined how to get back to the place God has called me to, and then I realized something. God is is sovereign. He never let's anything go to waste. As I mulled over these two things that I am certain about God, I realized some other things:
In the last ten years of my life, I have written at least ten books, if not twenty. Every day I meet with my readers to discuss our favorite subject: Jesus. I have written more than would have been possible any other way. Ten to twenty books have been birthed in me.
I get to paint vivid portraits on living canvases every Sunday as I tell stories about our incredible Jesus. As I share with the Body of Christ the wonder of our God and remind them with bright colours who he is and who we are to him, I get to allow my spirit to run in wide open spaces.
As for my love affair with my audience, I am the father of ten mind-blowing children. I am a man blessed beyond this world's comprehension. These are my real audience, the ones I get to share my life with every day, to create wonderful stories that will eventually be passed on to their children and hopefully to the children after them. The subject of these stories has never changed; it is still all about love. Only now, it is a love that goes beyond the limits of the human heart and imagination and explodes in a place of endless possibilities.
Oh, the wonder of our God and the mysteries of his ways! He doesn't waste anything.
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