Monday, January 19, 2009

Future Glory (Romans 8:18)



This is the ideal to which we as believers all cling to..The Future Glory..The New Heaven and Earth that is to be revealed to us..The resurrection of this "body of death" (as Paul puts it)..To be freed from this body which is the Flesh, the carnal, the wickedness spoken all throughout the NT.. This is why we suffer, we endure, we persevere..This is why we surrender ourselves to God and separate ourselves from the world..

Now I said Ideal in the beginning here..That was woefully inadequate in describing eternity..Paul says in Romans 8 beginning is verse 18 that "the sufferings of the present time not worth comparing to the glory that is to be revealed to us". Now since this coming from Paul, who had much to say about suffering since a very large portion of his life was spent suffering for Christ's sake..Can we not try and picture the gloriousness he knew of and spoke of.. I think many times we as believers have no real comprehension as to what is in store for us..I believe we understand there is a Heaven and a hell and heaven is a much "dreamier" place..But what does it really mean to us? What is FUTURE GLORY? Our finite minds try to place some description on this "Place". I believe that we try and paint Heaven as this place of wonderful beauty and submersed with the countenance of God..We envision Gold and Diamonds and purple silk..(at least I do.when I try and describe Heaven to my girls, I have but only a limitless vocabulary to try and help them understand what is not understandable)..Angels with beautiful wings and halo's, harps playing such glorious compositions, millions upon millions (innumerable) angels worshipping our Triune God..The Creator of all things known and unknown..Joy, Peace, Comfort..All these are words I conjure up to try and depict in my mind of what awaits me..But I am left so short of the reality that is stirs a desire inside to search the Truth and try as I might to see what the scriptures unveil to me. To seek God's infinite wisdom in hopes that He would peel back layer after layer of my blind eyes so that I may capture but a glimpse of this FUTURE GLORY..

AW Tozer in his book "The Pursuit of God" says..To most people( and he is speaking of Christians as well) God is an inference, not a reality. He is a deduction from evidence which we consider adequate, but He remains personally unknown to the individual. He must be, they say, therefore we believe He is......They go through life trying to love an ideal and loyal to a mere principle"

Now I will admit to all who care to know, this was me and still is me..I do not yet know this God in the personal way described here by Tozer..I have used my human mind and reasoned well that God is God and that He in fact created me and that I need to be obedient to the Creator..and that if I do, a reward awaits me..But this gets to the heart of the matter..How can I truly thirst for God when I have not the slightest experience with his person..To know him beyond a mere deduction of the evidence..but to actually experience Him.. I believe that when one is availed to experience the Glorious God, the immutable, omnipotent, omniscient One..The view they get of Heaven(our Future Glory) is without words..It will cause an awakening of the Holy Spirit inside us that will fuel our desire to KNOW HIM..not just believe in Him..To awaken our spiritual faculties, that lay dormant inside us because of our un crucified flesh, so that we are able to SEE the One who has made us in His own image..We are in little what He is in large.. We have this capability built inside us..God created us so that we could experience Him in this manner.......Yet many of us, including myself do not thirst for Him enough to ever experience what God so Desires to pour out to us.. We take in God in doses like some kind of spiritual medicine...To inoculate us from the world we reside..Sunday dose, Wednesday dose and that might be it.. NO..NO..NO.God made us so that we could experience Him personally..and it is then that the mind can begin to know what this FUTURE GLORY really is and it is then that we become truly surrendered to GOD and separate from this world and only then that we let go of the last remaining carnal vices that inhibit the flow of Grace the abounds in The Most High God..

So let the journey begin..Let us strive for this kinship with the personal God.. so that we can know the Future Glory that awaits us and be able to share with Passionate Boldness the God we know to those we love, such as our dear children, but also to those we do not yet know and who do not know God in any form..

Tozer says " God is so vastly wonderful, so utterly and completely delightful that He can, without anything other than Himself, meet and overflow the deepest demands or our total nature, mysterious and deep as that nature is......Hearts that are "fit to break" with love for the Godhead are those who have been in the Presence and have looked with opened eye upon the majesty of Deity"

Father, I come trembling, but I come..Please root from my heart all those things which I have cherished so long and which have become a very part of my living self, so that you may enter into my heart and reign there unchallenged and unrivaled. Lord I long to be filled with a desire to thirst for you, a thirst that will never be quenched until you beckon me home. Begin a new work in me and say to my soul rise up and then afford me the grace needed to rise up and follow. In Jesus' name, Amen
Eddie Bailey
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