Thursday Thoughts

I am thankful for so many spiritual people out there that write great stuff. I am thankful for the internet that gives me the opportunity to be exposed to those writings. Today I got an update email from Metamorpha.com and it had this article in it that I found to be thought provoking for me. I really hope I can see more and more God's purposes for me in His story. I am thankful for the friends and family that are walking with me through this journey and that would include you...my blog readers. May we continue to encourage one another to live out God's purposes for us!

Rob Loane: Sharing God's Life

God is up to something good in this world, in our communities, and in our unique lives. One way of describing Christian maturity is to say that it is the lifelong process by which our lives and our stories become centered in God’s life and God’s good story.

It is a wonderful day when we come to know that God has entered our story. How transforming to recognize such a personal and loving presence within our lives! It changes our whole way of being in the world. Nothing looks the same.

But this is not the only such discovery along the journey. It is perhaps even more momentous when we see that not only is God part of our story, but that we are actually part of God’s story; his unfolding narrative and work in this world. Again, this gracious discovery confronts and deepens our whole way of seeing and being in the world. God is up to something very good. And we are not spectators. We are participants in this work.

Or, put another way, there are two very significant awakenings in our growing up into Christ: (1) When we first realize that God has entered our lives, and (2) sometimes years later, when we realize that we have entered God’s life. For some of us it is not until well down the road that we come to appreciate that God’s concern and commitment extends far beyond simply making our lives better (which he certainly does!). His intentions are much more than an improvement plan for our individual lives. He wants to share his very life and work with us.

Consider for a moment, or perhaps reconsider, the early wisdom we received as children in Sunday school, where we were introduced to God’s life as a sort of family life. As we learned all those years ago, God is introducing us into the way of his family. We come along like orphans, without siblings or parents, without direction, without guidance, but with a desperate need to be “familied.” We are invited to be members of God’s family life. The Father of the Lord Jesus is “re-parenting” us by the Spirit. Jesus is “re-brothering” us by the Spirit. We are learning to be sons and daughters of God.

"God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure."
Ephesians 1:5 New Living Translation

Such is the struggle in many of our lives of faith. We are keenly aware that God has entered our lives, but we are ignorant and even resistant to the reality that we have entered God’s life. We hold onto our individual way of seeing and being in the world. So as we grow up into Christ, we must expect a deep inner struggle between our former life, understood and lived individually, and our new life, shared in Jesus.

It is at this critical juncture that we need help in recognizing this, that we need friends, other brothers and sisters, who will consistently challenge our individual and “orphaned” ways of being in the world; who will remind us, at difficult times, that we have not been abandoned. We need others who will remind and reassure us that God is re-parenting us, converting our whole way in the world, and lovingly shaping us into a more holy and human form. And somehow and somewhere, surrounded by these gracious reminders, we wake again and again to the startling reality that our life and work is found within God’s generous life and work and way.

Prayer
God, giver of life
you alone know
how our life can truly succeed….
Show us how to let go
of whatever hinders us
from meeting you,
from letting ourselves be touched by your Word.
Help us to welcome and accept
whatever in us yearns to come alive
in the image and likeness
you have dreamed for us today
and every day for ever and ever.11
Amen.

This journal is an excerpt from Growing Up: A Lifelong Journey by Rob Loane.