I listened to a sermon by a guy named Paul Tripp the other day entitled "The Danger of Living With Eternity Amnesia". It was basically about the thought that we can easily feel tempted to detach ourselves from God's history and story of the redemption of all things by separating an event in our lives from the whole of God's plan for us. I think I have actually written about this thought before...maybe...I was probably plaigarizing Paul or someone else though. Either way...what happens when we do this is we forfeit both the faith that comes with a recognition and remembrance of all that God has done for us in the past and we lose our hope for what God will surely do in the future both near and distant, and how he is, has been, and will continue to be ever redeeming every fallen and broken situation in our lives and those around us.
I recently have been trying and praying that I would be more conscience of not living with this amnesia of eternity and the hope held out to me in the Gospel, the hope of glory, both future and right here and now. God is ever wooing and drawing me to himself, and will continue to do so in ways that may prove devastatingly beautiful for my plans and certainly for my flesh. God is pretty relentless and ruthless when it comes to redeeming things and he will not settle for an unfinished job. The thought that God is constantly at work in and around me in ways that I can scarcely imagine is one that truly fills me with hope and wonder. God is always up to something even if I am completely unaware of it, and that fills me with hope. The thought that he has better things in store for me than what I think I want is a beautiful one too.
For awhile now I have been thinking about dreaming, and the idea that there is something very beautiful and Christ exalting about dreaming and taking risks to pursue and believe God for those dreams, knowing and believing that God has given them to you and placed those desires in you to honor himself, and then rather than trying to provide for that dream yourself you believe him for it. A while back I was praying about this thought and I was confessing to the Lord that I felt like all of my dreams were things that I could not pursue or devote myself to because they were not centered around Christ, but rather they were centered around myself. The Lord spoke to me in that moment and asked me, "What dreams of your own are you willing to lay down so that I might give you the dreams that I have for you?" That was a question that he did not want me to answer quickly or rashly, but one that He wanted me to stop and think about and dwell on...to feel the full weight of...to be like Paul and suffer....suffer the loss of all things but then to count them rubbish for the sake of gaining Christ and knowing him and being found in him. Something beautiful about God is that he refuses to give us less than his best. Jesus gives himself, and nothing more, and nothing less. In every situation the desire of God is to give us himself. He is not one for holding out on his children, and he is not one who will give his children a stone when they ask for bread, but he also is not one who will give his child a snake when they ask for it. God will not give to us things that will separate or distance us from him, and often the things that I have desired are things that would have distanced me in my heart from God, and would have lead me into sin and idolatry. Praise God that He didn't give me those things. Thankfully, Jesus wants more for me than what I think or feel like I want. He knows my heart, and he knows my soul's most honest desire is for him and to walk intimately and closely with him and that is a desire that he will ALWAYS fulfill. He will not withhold himself from me, but he will withhold anything and everything from me that will lead me away from him.
The Lord said to me one time that another reason that he will not give me the things that I long for is because he has bigger and greater desires and intentions for those things than I have for them, namely that I would easily settle for less than his best, but he wants my every desire to find its fulfillment in him. Meaning that he wants my desires to draw me to him to where I love and praise and worship the One who gave rather than what has been given, other wise I would simply waste it on myself and the gift would terminate with me and with the thing itself and it would not transcend the physical to point to the spiritual and to point to that which is unseen. It would be only temporary rather than eternal, because the temporary and the physical only finds fulfillment in Christ and Christ alone, and when it doesn't it is blown away like chaff in the wind, or like the things that the Israelites pursued in Haggai that God blew away. Haggai is pretty awesome...and short...I'd encourage anyone reading this to read Haggai.
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