CassieI am a flower quickly fading,
Here today and gone tomorrow,
A wave tossed in the ocean,
Vapour in the wind
Still you hear me when I’m calling,
Lord, You catch me when I’m falling,
And You’ve told me who I am
–I AM YOURS.
I read something in the Word today that has not left me all day.
[Jesus], whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. ROMANS 3:25-26
In His divine forbearance– therefore, in being HIM, who Is patience– He tolerating and refrained from judging a plethora of former sins, directly against Him, or His children, but ultimately evils completely outside of Him.
For 32 years, He gave the evil queen Jezebel and King Ahab space to repent of their false prophecies, murders, and selfishness. He “forebode” in love this deed for those years, that space of time of which I have not even been alive for, on top of a multitude of other sins of people He continued to simply love, while being outside of time and knowing what would be to come. So, in a sense, because measure of time is of man and God’s understanding is truthfully “beyond measure” (Psalm 147:5).
And fathom this: His greatness dwells in those who accept Him for our benefit, because He loves us.
While God does not depend on our faith to work– He created our ability to have faith in the first place, so to say that He depends on it wouldn’t make much sense, seeing as He is “the creator of the ends of the earth” (Isaiah 40:27), “the work of God is this: that you should believe in the One He has sent” (John 6:29). If believing in Jesus is the very of work of God itself, then believing in Jesus is both worked by God through us, and ultimately inspires the work of God, the living out of His Spirit.
Still, God requires “mercy, not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings” (Hosea 6:6). One acknowledgement of the true and living Lord Jesus, and we will never be the same.
“Faith expects God to be God.” –Eric Ludy
This is what God desires of our humanness; the expectancy of Him to work. Does he depend on it? Ha! Not a chance.
What does this expectancy mean?
As a Christian, I am not just going to esteem Truths and speak Truths in church services as True– about the work of the devil and that I will turn away from him, about God’s grace through faith, about Jesus’ coming again and judging the world, about the fact that I am NEW in Christ Jesus– I am going to live them. Not me, though. To live these Truths, the beauty is that my God, by His Spirit, lives them through me. I am never alone.
You are never alone.
But no longer can that be a crutch or a selfish comfort, but rather a Truth that we know to be so good, the only way, if only for the chance at His name being fulfilled and glorified.
God, I believe that You’re working. I believe that You’ve overcome evil and the enemy. I know that You are working all things for Your good. I submit myself to You.
