O LORD, in your strength the king rejoices,
and in your salvation how greatly he exults!
Psalms 21:1
Lately we’ve been talking a good deal about the strength and the salvation that we have from no less than our Creator. It was something we realized as we jumped into a more in-depth study of the Lord’s Prayer, where Jesus Christ taught us first and foremost to acknowledge and to recognize and appreciate God as more than Creator – Jesus was the first one to tell us by way of His disciples that God is our Father in Heaven.
And I couldn’t move on, actually. I want to stay just a little bit more in celebrating what it means to be saved by Christ.
This salvation we have which is available to the entire world is part and parcel of the will of God, which may not necessarily be as elusive and mysterious as a whole bunch of other people have made us think, through the decades and centuries. We’ve been brought into another variant or strain of paralysis of analysis. A good number of us are still scared to make certain moves or take certain risks, and we’re either excusing ourselves or validating our fear by way of saying that we don’t know if it’s God will for us.
I’m not saying it’s bad for us to stop and to check our surroundings before we proceed to do anything, but I am saying it’s not healthy for us to agonize over ‘grasping’ a feeling which would have us think that what we’re about to do is in line with God’s will.
Maybe the key is to remember that we love as God loves us. We forgive as we have been forgiven. We encourage as we have been encouraged… And coming from this, we see God’s will take its course in our lives as God has imposed His will in our lives – okay, go ahead and chuckle, but I guess my point here is that we know of God’s will in the big and small aspects of our lives as we realize how Christ exercised His will in us through His finished work.
And apparently, one place in Scripture where we can look at God’s will already done in us is, again, in the instances of the Gospel where Christ responded to His disciples, who asked Him to teach them how to pray.
In the past 2 posts where we took a closer look at the Lord’s Prayer, with the lens of Christ and His finished work, we have a more solid understanding of what God’s will is for us, and for the world. I was pleasantly surprised to see how the Lord’s Prayer had its connections to the Communion which we celebrate in Christian circles.
I’m still trying to get a stronger grip on what we established here, hence me writing all about it again. Through Christ, I believe that God’s will in the heavenlies has been established here on earth – or, as we are used to saying, God’s will was done here on earth as it was in heaven.
We talk a whole lot about how we would possibly receive physical healing of our mortal bodies whenever we do Communion, where we remember the body and blood of Christ offered up… but I guess what I’m realizing now is that Christ’s finished work had its infinite and eternal impact, which I think ought to be what we appreciate more than vague promises of our sicknesses being automatically cured, and our poverty almost magically being replaced by earthly provision – and not just provision, but prosperity.
I’m not saying that we aren’t supposed to ask for healing or provision, but I guess what I am saying in all this is, in the light of understanding God’s will, I believe that (1) if we’ve been healed of anything, it’s that we’ve been cured of the ‘ailment’ of sin, and (2) if we’ve been provided anything, it’s literal Righteousness being imparted, and not merely handed over, but passed on to us through our union with Christ Himself.
Or let’s say it this way. When we proclaim that God’s will would be done here on earth as it is in heaven, we are proclaiming that we want the world to come to the understanding that Christ is the Bread of Life superior to our daily bread, the full satisfaction of our entire beings, and we also want the rest of humanity to come to the understanding that they can certainly forgive others of even the deepest of pain inflicted unto them because we have been forgiven of much more ourselves, again, through Christ and His finished work.
I’ve had to stop a little there because see, we’re already celebrating Christ as our daily bread and the forgiveness of our own sin. More than proclaiming it in words, I believe our literal lives are already projections of how Christ has done it all, that we are not so easily led into temptation, and that we are certainly delivered from true evil – that is, sin, death, and fear.
This is the salvation we exult in, folks. This is the will of God fulfilled in the heavenlies, projected here on earth.
I want to take a moment now and talk about a certain event that’s happening in one of our social groups, one that’s been bothering me a little ever since I heard about it. Without going too much into specifics, it involves a long-time employee and her resignation – all this time I thought she parted ways with the company in good terms, and just recently I’m hearing conversations in their board that involve her going as far as mustering legal resources, just so she could secure what is, in her mind, compensation which she expected but never got.
In other words, she’s lawyering up so the company would give her money.
The conversations revolving around this situation are more on the actual amount that she should get. Obviously she wants more and she has the computations to back it up, but the administrative authority of the company isn’t backing down. If people aren’t talking about numbers, the more sensible and mature among those in the board are saying that this should be settled out of court, because if it does go that far, the reputation of the entire company would be smeared.
Now to the latter I believe that there is a high likelihood that she is aware of the potential shame all this would cause. I would agree that the board shouldn’t be so hasty and dismissive to give her money – I think she has an issue deeper than the actual numbers. Now as to what this issue is, I wouldn’t really know for sure, but I dare say that it’s a problem she’s had for the longest time.
It’s these sorts of deep-seated matters of the heart that we all need to address within ourselves, and in the families and groups we involve ourselves in. I have reason to believe that the man who recently shot Shinzo Abe dead had his own deep-seated resentments against the former Prime Minister.
I guess I’m bringing all of this up only to point out some glaring examples of how humanity lives, and moves, and has its being without owning any semblance of personal will in their own lives. We’re either moving according to the will of stronger people (or, the stronger will of other people), and/or we exist to tear down the will of others.
We shouldn’t have this vulnerability, especially if we believe in Jesus Christ. And the more we allow the Holy Spirit to tutor us in the truth of Christ and His finished work, the more we would understand that this really is so much more than just prayers and worship songs. It’s so much more than a collective movement of people around the world – it’s a literal Life. Yes, as Christ Himself says that He is the Way, and He is the Truth… the more we take in His Gospel, the more we realize that Christ truly is the literal Life that we have.
It’s around this time that I remember, earlier this year I spoke on how we are living, breathing love songs sung by God to this fallen world, to the tune of Christ and all He has done for us. Now I may still be playing catch-up with my thousand-word a day quota, but if I was writing this as was expected of me, I would be writing this smack-dab in the middle of the year – Day 183 of 365. I don’t think it’s an accident that this, of all topics, is what we’re talking about – that we aren’t just God’s love songs to the world – rather, that’s apparently one facet of the greater truth: That because of Christ and all He has done for us, we are living and breathing representations of the will of God in this reality.
Because of what Christ has done, we are the literal will of God done here on earth as it has been done for us in the heavenlies.
We celebrate the fact that though we starve, we will always be satisfied, for Christ is our daily bread, our Bread of Life.
We celebrate the truth that though we may stumble, we are always secure – for Christ has not only guaranteed that we are forgiven of ALL our sin – past, present, and future; No, much more than this, His blood has fully and absolutely separated sin from our entire being. It’s because we have been forgiven that we are able to forgive.
We celebrate the will of God done for us through Christ and His finished work. We have been given our daily bread, and we have been forgiven of our sins, and therefore enabled to forgive others as we have been forgiven. And it doesn’t stop there.
Because we are always satisfied by Christ, who is our Bread of Life, we are naturally led away from temptation. Because we find full and complete satisfaction, contentment and bliss from Christ and His finished work, we see the promises of this world only secondary to the fulfilled promised of God in our lives. We see the deceptive pleasures of this world for what they are – that is, a far second to the infinite and eternal pleasures we have in Christ. We do not give catastrophe more than its fair share of recognition, because we understand that our minds are held in place by Christ, who is infinitely superior to anything and everything in this world that would try to drag us down.
Christ went as far as becoming literal sin, so we would become His literal righteousness… and this gives us a more solid picture of what it means to be delivered from evil. Christ became all our sin and took all the death that all sin deserved, so we have all the reason to be confident, and no lasting reason to fear. Since we understand that it was Christ who did it all, we do not give any work more recognition than Christ… no, any and all works that come, would come FROM us united in Christ, not FOR Christ to be united with us – that’s already been done, absolutely!
To simplify things – we aren’t just God’s songs, we’re Christ’s prayers. I mean, look at it – we’re the Father’s love songs to His wayward children. We’re the Son’s supplications to the world, to be reconciled to God. And the more we realize this, the deeper we appreciate how we are the Holy Spirit’s temples – full and complete representations, full and complete celebrations of God’s will done in the heavens, here on earth, for one and all to see…
All, that none would perish, and that all would come to repentance.
What a great, great salvation we have in Christ.
I apologize in advance, because I’ve been doing this in different times in the day. I didn’t really sit down to do all this at one time, but I’ve had to revisit it, trying to refine things, but really just wanting to be that much closer to being back in the black.
All the same, I hope I made some sense here.
God bless us all.
May God’s will be done here on earth as it is in heaven.
JB's Personal Brain Defragmenter 
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