Be energetic in your life of salvation, reverent and sensitive before God. That energy is God’s energy deep with you, God Himself willing and working at what will give Him the most pleasure. Philippians 2:12-13 THE MESSAGE.
“I know the plans I have for you,” says the LORD. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.” Jeremiah 29:11.
And continuing our 351 Old Testament prophecies, promises of God, fulfilled in Jesus Christ, we come to number 156: To come while Temple standing. Psalm 118:26b: We have blessed you from the house of the LORD. And, Matthew 21:12-15: And Jesus entered the temple and drove out all those who were buying and selling in the temple, and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who were selling doves. And He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer’; but you are making it a robbers’ den.” And the blind and the lame came to Him in the temple, and He healed them. But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that He had done, and the children who were shouting in the temple, “Hosanna to the Son of David,” they became indignant.
I loved this today in Hearing God by Dallas Willard: “Our identification with the natural (fleshly) life or with the spiritual Christ-life in us is a set of the will. It is not to be discovered by examining theological treatises or even a state of mind. Is it my will to be in the old, dead life of sin? Or is it my will to be in the resurrection life of Christ, which has entered into me through the impact of God’s word? If you choose the latter, you will “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for His good pleasure” (Philippians 2:12013 NRSV). It is I. Yet it is not I, but Christ. We move beyond communication and communion toward union with Him, and we have the opportunity of progressively unifying all aspects of our personalities with Him so that, literally, “to me, living is Christ and dying is gain” (Philippians 1:21 NRSV).”
Do we ever stop to consider how misled we are in this life? Jesus, the Son, Creator God, came to live with us in the flesh. He saw what was happening in His Father’s temple and He drove out the money changers and sellers so that it would be restored for that little while as a place of worship for us for our Father. They thought what was being done was okay and were even indignant that children understood something they could not see, that the blind and the lame were being healed by the One who loves, Hosanna, the Son of David, in the very place where people should be able to come to God and worship. And we are so fearful of dying and yet even there, Jesus underwent death so He could show us that death and sin do not have sway over us because He overcame both, and so He finished the work He was given while He lived among us. Be energetic in your life of salvation, reverent and sensitive before God. That energy is God’s energy, an energy deep within you, God Himself willing and working at what will give Him the most pleasure…His will for our good…to give us a future and a hope. Can we see that choosing to live with God’s help now becomes “to me – living is Christ” because He is actively helping us truly live. And “dying is gain” is the natural spiritual progression of our continued life with Him with us. He showed us that also in His resurrection – and He is the resurrection of the dead – to life with Him.
***HAVE THINE OWN WAY – Have Thine own way, LORD! Have Thine own way! Thou art the Potter; I am the clay. Mold me and make me after Thy will while I am waiting, yielded and still. Have Thine own way, LORD! Have Thine own way! Search me and try me, Master, today! Whiter than snow, LORD, wash me just now as in Thy presence humbly I bow. Have Thine own way, LORD! Have Thine own way! Hold o’er my being absolute sway! Fill with Thy Spirit till all shall see Christ only, always, living in me! Adelaide Pollard, “Have Thine Own Way, LORD,” 1906.***
