When we understand
the scope and breath of God’s sovereignty, we will know beyond any doubt it is
impossible for saints to be a victim of their circumstances. Our Father, has
placed a protective hedge... think Job, about each of His children preventing
all attacks of the enemy except those, which in His great wisdom, He allows for
our conformation. “Shall we indeed accept good from God, and shall we not
accept adversity”? The Hebrew indicates these actions, “good” and “adversity”,
are a unity and cannot be disconnected. Longfellow had it right, “Into every
life a little rain must fall.”
All of God’s
children are predestined to be conformed into the image, the very nature, of
Jesus. The biblical phrases new creation, new man, new nature, inward man,
renewed mind, etc., speak to this transformation process. This lifelong molding
and shaping of our heart takes, at times, great motivating pressures. In a very
real sense we are clay on the potting wheel of life being molded and shaped by
our Heavenly Potter’s hands, the circumstances of life the pressure of His
fingers.
God, the great architect,
engineers our circumstances so that we can partake of His divine nature through
obedience. Our Savior learned obedience through the things He suffered. Likewise
our obedience must be tempered in the fire of perseverance. Our Lord never said
our life would be easy, but he did say He would never leave us alone. “Yet in all these things (i.e., adversity and affliction) we are
more than conquerors through Him who loved us.” What the enemy means for evil
God turns into His purposeful good, as He brings forth the nature of Christ in
us... birthed in our adversity. Obedience, even in the smallest detail
of our life, has all the omnipotent power of the grace of God behind it. Far
from victims, life’s hurdles are Grace-Builders, in disguise, enabling us to
shuck-off all the false loves and allure of life in this world, enabling us to
become truly Christlike...
GRACE-BUILDERS
(Job 1:10-12, 2:10; Is. 64:8;
Rom. 8:29; Heb. 5:8; 1 Peter 4:1, 12-13;James
1:2-4; Rom. 5:3-5; Rom. 8:37)
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