God’s relentless display of beauty… You (part one)

I mentioned a week ago that I would write about my experience with trusting God. The prophet Isaiah wrote prophetically that God’s people were planted by God for the display of God’s splendor. (Isaiah 60-61) Over time they would become “oaks of righteousness”.

We need to pay attention to what the Holy Spirit is saying to us. Under the title, “God’s relentless display of beauty… You” I want to share my experience in trusting Jesus with my life. So, you will be seeing a series of posts under that heading. From my earliest memories, I have heard that I am indeed “God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” (Ephesians 2:10) Knowing that and then trusting the process has become a lifelong project for me.
I was blessed to be raised in a pastor’s home. I don’t want to leave you with the wrong impression about what I was “blessed” with. The gift of being the fourth of five children in a pastor’s household was not a life of ease. The term “pastor” is taken from a latin word meaning “shepherd”.

My parents were shepherds to the families in our innercity church. So, in a sense, I was raised as a hired hand of a couple of shepherds. That meant that I lived and breathed the good, bad, and ugly about how people can behave. It wasn’t always pretty. But, it provided me with a front row seat to the human experience of trusting that God would cause his will to be done “on earth as it is in heaven”.

Thanks for your patience as I search through my memories for the keys of the kingdom God left for me to find. Yes, he does that. The Lord hides things from us. But, it’s not because he wants you to lack any good thing. It is because he wants to bless you in your searching. When you put your faith in Jesus as a living presence with you and you allow his words to infiltrate your mind, keys of heaven get stored away for you to discover along your journey.

You and I have been entrusted with life. Congrats! That is a big deal. Don’t miss the truth that you weren’t given the gift of life because you deserve it. God has taught me that his gift of existence to me makes me worthy of showing up each day for his glory. I get to do this!

To live with Jesus means that we possess eternal life in him. That amazing, transcendent, life of God was made available to me through living as a pastor’s son. By loving and bearing with humans that were under our care, I was driven deep in the ground so that like a seed, I could die and then begin to grow into something amazing.

I resisted that process most of the time as a kid and then as a teenager. But, God was relentless in his pursuit of my heart. Take courage today in knowing that in every moment of every day there is a spiritual dimension to your life. The Spirit of God will meet you there. Holy Spirit brings the living presence of Jesus to you. He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life in every moment and the door is always unlocked to you by faith. Young or old, rich or poor, success or failure, the One who designed you for his splendor is available.

You are a blessing!