Answer: “You want me to enter into the feeling of
worship that is expressed by the emblems of creation and the church.[2]
Both creation, and the sons of God, groan for their day of redemption.[3]
Why? Because we long to know you the way we are known.[4] We
long for the day that we will know clearly, and without limits.”
To help me
with this, I spent some time meditating on things that are true of the church as
we wait in this foreign land of planet earth:
1.
We see things dimly, and incompletely, and with
poor comprehension, and with bad memories hindering us from appropriating the
little we do know and comprehend. At the same time, the twenty-eight worshipers
see things clearly, as they are, without personal baggage to restrict them from
enjoying the Triune. Since they know God better than myself, I must renew my
mind with their testimonies.
2.
The church is the worshipers God is looking for,
those who worship in spirit and in truth.[5]
This means that I can know a growing experience of worshiping God in spirit and
truth, even though it will always feel less than what I see of the worshipers
in heaven.
3.
The Church is presently being transformed from one
degree of glory to another,[6]
which gives us hope that longing will replaced with satisfaction even from one
day to the next.[7]
New understanding of the word brings new longings to know God, which leads us
to new experiences of God that satisfy those longings in a
one-degree-of-glory-to-another kind of way.
4.
Both creation and the church are groaning
because we do not yet have what we see in heaven. We are adopted sons living in
earth’s orphanage, waiting for our forever home to be finished so we can go and
live with our Father, Brother, and Helper, for days without end.[8]
5.
When we hunger and thirst for God’s will to be
done on earth as it is in heaven,[9] we
are longing to have what we see in Revelation 4 and 5. Our hearts long to have
the unadulterated affection for God that we see in these representatives of
creation and the church.
6.
The certainty that we will one day be glorified
in God’s very presence as those who are then fully conformed to the image and
likeness of Jesus Christ our Lord[10]
keeps us built up with hope that all our heartaches and sorrows, all our shame,
guilt and fear, will one day be so fully left behind that eternity will never
end our joy in being like Jesus.[11]
7.
While I am not what I should be, since I can
only be satisfied with complete likeness to Christ in heaven, my life is not
without hope. Even now, in its own way of instilling worship and praise in our
hearts, we have the experience of, “To
them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the
glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.”[12]
This unfathomable thing of Christ himself dwelling in a people made of dirt,
living in a people who still entertain and fall into sin, is not a
guilt-bearing reminder of how scummy we are, but a grace-bearing affirmation of
the completeness of Jesus’ redemptive work. Our justification by faith is so
complete that Jesus can live in us who are still known to sin,[13]
while he never experiences contamination from our sin. Jesus can dwell within
us, and we can live in him, with his imputed righteousness so covering us, and
cleansing us, that he can bear with us as righteous even while dealing with the
obvious unrighteousness that is still not in his image and likeness.
There is a
biblical principle that, “everyone who
exalts himself will be humbled,
and he who humbles himself will
be exalted.”[14]
For people like me, representing the many religious church-goers who have tried
to be good Christians, humbling ourselves requires a look into the true condition
of our souls that comes later in our walk with God than those who have had
their sins staring them in the face from their younger years, or from their
first considerations of God.
Living by the
law of “Good Boy/Good Girl” Christianity, combined with a childhood that taught
me to protect myself from pain through the strategic use of good behavior, made
it difficult to get through so many layers of self-protection to discover my
true soul-condition.[15]
Over the years, I have discovered the gracious love of God persistently working
to bring me to the place of being real, so I could discover the realities of
his gifts of grace in the treasures of salvation.
All this to
say that, the more I face my poverty, the more I hunger to know God better, and
the more this humbling of my soul opens me up to the very experiences of
knowing God I have been thirsting for longer than I had known. Today God led me
to a fresh awareness of how much I need him every day, and a fresh experience
of knowing him better than I have ever known him before.
From my heart,
Monte
© 2013 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517,
Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8 ~ in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted,
Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English
Standard Version Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good
News Publishers.)
[1]
“9 And they sang a new song, saying, ‘Worthy
are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by
your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people
and nation, 10 and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and
they shall reign on the earth.’” (Revelation 5)
[2]
The four living creatures and twenty-four elders of Revelation 4 and 5.
[3]
Romans 8:18-30
[4]
“For now we see in a mirror dimly, but
then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have
been fully known.” (I Corinthians 13:12)
[5]
“But the hour is coming, and is now here,
when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the
Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who
worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” (John 4:23-24)
[6]
“And we all, with unveiled face,
beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from
one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.”
(II Corinthians 3:18)
[7]
The Beatitudes also bear this out (Matthew 5:1-12) as they show that we can
constantly move from poverty of spirit through to a hunger and thirst for
righteousness that is daily satisfied in Christ, while promising eternal
satisfaction when Christ returns.
[8]
“Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe
in God; believe also in me. 2 In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were
not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? 3 And if I
go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself,
that where I am you may be also.” (John 14)
[9]
Matthew 6:10
[10]
“29 For those whom he foreknew he also
predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be
the firstborn among many brothers. 30 And those whom he predestined he also
called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified
he also glorified.” (Romans 8); “24 Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling
and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy,
25 to the only God, our
Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and
authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.” (Jude 1)
[11]
“Beloved, we are God's
children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when
he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.” I John 3:2
[12]
Colossian 1:27
[13]
“My little children, I
am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin,
we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” (I John 2:1)
[14]
Luke 14:11
[15]
My philosophy of ministry is: “Bringing the Soul-Condition of the people to the
Soul-Provision of Christ through the Soul-Care of the body of Christ.”
Obviously, dealing with my own soul-condition is absolutely necessary to my growth.
And sharing my soul-condition with my church family is necessary to us growing
in our ministry.
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