God's All-Sufficiency

Conforming to Christ is an impossibility, unless God enables via his transforming power. Quickening from a dead and degenerate state, is also an impossibility, unless God warrants a faith that enlivens.

It is God's all-sufficiency that endues, endows, enriches the hopeful, and the trait of hopefulness too. Against all odds, and with common concerns, we walk about wondering, How will God get us out of this mess? and by what means? It is hard to fathom that he will never forsake us nor leave us, when we see the wickedness rampaging all about, and yet, this is his promise. For the children of God, the spiritual seed of Abraham, we his people, grin, sometimes grimace, watch, and next wait, in eager anticipation, and periodically, knee knocking trepidation. We get a sense of what is to come, and in our unpreparedness, God assures that he goes before us, and that he is our rear guard. 

There are two directions in which we can go: conform to Christ, or conform to the ways of this world. 

The early Christians were referred to as people of The Way. I like this very much. While I go my own way, the wrong way, the opposite way often, I just as frequently, return to The Way. The plank in me pirate eye is inclined to swinging and hitting people that I perceive are not conforming to Christ, and that is when I am most, far away from The Way. When God's all-sufficiency redirects me to the narrow path, I once again, in my newly acquired and familiar state of having been humbled, join the saints that long ago went before me: what a glorious goose-pimply image. Picture in your minds eye, saints in their white robes (washed in the blood of Christ, so that his righteousness becomes ours by virtue of his propitiatory crucifixion) walking side-by side, some linking arms, sharing remember-when accounts of God intervening, God chastening, and next lovingly instructing, Look to my Son, he is my perfect example of obedience. 

I have heard some state: It isn't easy being a Christian. I would counter, it is much harder to be a conformed to the world, non-Christian. Easy isn't the issue at all, since life is not easy to navigate; but is especially difficult, when one gets up each morning without recognizing the impossibility of doing so, without God's sustaining power. How, pray tell, is it that so many cannot see, feel, hear, touch, how magnificent all of creation is, and not attribute these perfect gifts to the One that created all? 

We are walking and talking dead things when we do not have Christ as our giver of life. We are time stamped, this is true, since our bodies last until they no longer function: alas, I declare it a marvellous wonder when dead things are brought to life, when a soul is saved from its treacherous self, and renewed by the awesome power of faith in God as Sovereign. 

It does not matter what the wicked do, for the wicked will continue to do the bidding of their daddy the devil; what matters, is what each person believes, and in whom they place their confident faith. Faith, and hope, do not happen to a person: these are God's to give, and it is his all-sufficiency that we rely upon to strengthen our ability, to conform to Christ. 

It is self-betrayal to deny Christ. It is self-delusional to believe we can make it, as in be our own self-contained success unit, on our own. All the people we see and admire; all of nature that sings his praises and groans too, because of the sin that has soaked the earth, exists from his hand. Nothing from nothing leaves nothing, and dear reader, God is the Someone in all that is good, pure, and right in this world. It is his gift to each believer, when we actually believe in him. God makes plain for us what he has given, and we can be grateful, or attempt to bypass by looking in the opposite direction, but no matter how we approach or walk away from God, he remains magisterial.  

I have often made the mistake of underestimating people, but the very worst sin I have committed, is underestimating God's almighty capabilities to enliven the dead. God can and does, snatch brands from the fire, and he will continue to do this very thing, until his declared in heaven, last day for man on earth, arrives.  

Let us go now to scripture for encouragement and to end our time together.

Jude, verses 17-25 

A Call to Persevere

But you must remember, beloved, the predictions of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ. They said to you, In the last time there will be scoffers, following their own ungodly passions. It is these who cause divisions, worldly people, devoid of the Spirit. But you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life. And have mercy on those who doubt, save others by snatching them out of the fire; to others show mercy with fear hating even the garment stained by the flesh. 

Doxology

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, to the only God, our Saviour, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.