Intended ...

Infinite recursion.  To understand our destiny with respect to returning to what God intended for each of us, imagine being so filled with joy that you could not imagine ever feeling better than you do right now.  Then despite your certainty that this is the most joy one is capable of experiencing, a day passes, and there is even more joy than before.  And despite your certainty growing that today is surely the day that the most joy possible is within you, tomorrow brings even more; an infinite process that covers not only joy, but fulfillment, peace, hope, love, faith, and wisdom.  No matter how much you experience, there is always even more on the horizon you are constantly encountering.  It is like memorizing every page of every book contained in the library of congress.  The task seems overwhelming (particularly for those absent eidetic memories), but despite your fears, you accomplish it anyway a few pages at a time each day.  It might take what seems like forever, but when the timeline loses meaning, the task might appear to get accomplished “quickly”.  Now imagine that the library of congress is only the first volume in many libraries you will memorize.  This is the kind of life you were intended for; a life without limits, a life without boundaries, a life of absolute freedom to experience love more and more each day.  In the constant accumulation of wisdom, is the fuel to constantly find new ways to love others.  This is the death of mediocrity.  This is the death of compromise.  This is the death of the status quo, and with it, the birth of the destiny for which you were intended.

We were meant to live lives that are so much deeper than what we see today.  Our minds were meant to retain so much more than they do.  Our bodies designed to experience so much more than they can at the moment.  To contemplate what God intends for each of us, is to begin to think without the self-inflicted boundaries that have so long made us content with the meager expectations we set for ourselves.  This is not about raising the expectations for humanity as a species; but it is about achieving a destiny marked by a power outside of ourselves to re-create us.  Imagine what it would mean to the world to see Christians who are not merely “readers” of the Word, but “do-ers” of the Word instead.  What if instead of recounting the stories in the Bible, Christians were accomplishing even greater feats for the glory of God?  Atheists often contend that the Bible must be false, because they themselves have never witnessed any such miracles first hand.  That argument might have to disappear in the face of the power of love that could not be denied.  But then returning to the destiny God has in mind for us, is not simply what we begin to accomplish in this life, but for eternity as well.

People search for the secrets to life.  They want to know why they are here, what will make them happy, what is the point to their particular existence?  These answers are available to us, but only from the source of our creation.  Strictly speaking, evolution as an ideology, offers no answers to questions regarding the meaning of existence.  Under that line of thinking, random chance is responsible for it all, therefore meaning is absent from everything.  The idea of a God however, that takes a personal interest in you, and wishes to develop a relationship just with you, who wants to see you end the pain in your life and begin to experience what you formerly believed was impossible; now that offers a wealth of meaning.  An acceptance of God translates to the knowledge there is a unique purpose for just you, that you alone were intended for.

God creates snow, but each flake is unique.  God created man, but each man has been unique from Adam to you.  There is commonality in our destiny.  Like snow that covers the earth, humanity was created to love.  The blanket of snow is created by the accumulation of each individual snowflake, remove even one and snow is diminished.  Man is even more important.  Each of us was designed not only be unique in our appearance, but to serve a unique purpose in the overall fabric of humanity that God intended.  What we have in common is unbridled joy, unbounded love, and an eternity to experience it.  What we do not share is our unique perspectives and unique contributions to the whole.  This secret can only be discovered in our God.  To experience the re-creation of who we are through surrender to Christ puts us on the road of discovery to what our purpose in His kingdom truly is.  Our greatest hope, our greatest aspiration becomes one of being His servant, doing His will.  We begin to define ourselves, not by our jobs, or by our accomplishments, even by our relationships with others – instead we begin to see our value only in how we might serve Him, accomplish His goals, helping Him any way we can.  Christianity shares the commonality of testifying about our Lord, yet each unique perspective must be heard in order to see a better picture of the whole of Christ.  Each voice is critically important, each testimony critical to seeing the entirety of God, not just one view of Him.

While evil continues to exist, whether within us, or around us, it will constrain our ability to achieve what God intended.  But it will not prevent us from beginning our journey home, back towards His intentions.  Evil may slow our rate of success, but it cannot stop it altogether.  The process of redemption that leads to perfection has immediate, and near term results.  Where a treasured sin used to occupy so much of our time, or stunt our ability to truly love another, the removal of that sin through surrender of our will to Christ brings nothing but freedom in its place.  Our time is returned to us.  Our ability to reflect His love, is instilled within us, and the mediocrity of our existence begins to fade in favor of the destiny of His intentions for us.  This is where the source of our exhilaration comes from.  It is the very process of re-creation and redemption that adds a quantum level of joy and fulfillment to our everyday lives.  When this process has been adopted into the life of a Christian, the evidence begins to show up on their faces.  A Christian undergoing the process of liberation from sins, just seems to be happier so much of the time.  They cannot help it.  They cannot stop it.  They cannot deny it.  It is because they are becoming someone new, someone different than they were before, and it shows.

The world around you would have you believe that love is defined in a feeling of pleasure you get from the relationship with someone else.  But that is really focusing only on what “love” is bringing to you.  Christ offers you His example of love that is wholly consumed in redeeming you to Himself, ending the pain of your life, and always finding new ways to express itself in bringing you joy.  The kind of love Christ demonstrates is one where the infinite God of the universe is constantly expressing love in action to make your life better every second of every day.  You do not see Christ focused on what He can get out of loving you.  Instead you see Him focused on “how” He can find yet another way to show you what it means for Him to love you.  This example of “how” to love another is something that the process of re-creation brings.  It is part of the restoration to the ideals and intentions of our God.  And the transition is something we share in common, even if the expression is unique to each of us.

Our mistake within current Christian thinking, is to believe this process can only begin in a perfect environment of heaven.  We consequently defer our hopes for something more, or something better, to a far off proposition that we will likely see only after a long time in the tomb.  But this is in error.  Christ came to break our bonds in the here and now, to see us experience His kingdom in the here and now.  Surrender of the will to our Lord, begins the journey right now.  While the transition may not be completed instantaneously, it does occur.  The transition back to the intentions of God for each of us, back to the purpose He intended, back to the fulfillment only He can bring; starts right now and produces immediate results.  It may take a lifetime to complete, it may take less than that, but the journey is sure, and the results are cumulative.  To discover the true meaning to one’s personal existence, and then to being to fulfill this destiny, is no longer beyond the hopes and dreams of those who call themselves by His name.  This is what He saved us for.  This is what happens as we allow Him to really begin saving us from ourselves, as we surrender the will to Him.  Our destiny is not merely the removal of imperfection; it is the journey towards purpose and fulfillment.

Complete Renovation

What is the end game?  We know the healing process is about removing the pain we inflict on ourselves, others and God when we embrace evil.  But what does it look like when there is nothing left to heal?  No more infection.  No more addiction.  No more pain from what we choose and then what we do.  Make no mistake; the end game has always been about complete and total perfection.  The scariest text in the Bible uttered by the disciple prophet John during his revelation of the end of our world … “let he who is holy, be holy still” becomes words of hope, rather than a curse of doom.  You might call it “Destination Enoch”.  You might also call it the most nerve racking phenomenon a Christian will ever expect to experience.

We have already discussed how difficult it is to measure progress in our journey to perfection.  But to have arrived at it presents the greatest fundamental danger – believing you are perfect when you are not.  The most dangerous condition any Christian can find themselves in is to believe they are not doing wrong, when scripture points out otherwise.  Almost every Christian can name you a few examples of friends they have that meet this condition.  And almost never does their own name make the list.  It is one thing to struggle to submit to Christ in order that He give us the victory over something we once struggled against.  It is another not to ask for victory because we feel there is no need to.  Our entire journey to perfection is one of Christ fixing one flaw after another.  Sometimes along the way we have discovered that the sin we longed so much to get rid of, was merely the tip of the iceberg in our lives.  What we formerly thought as mountainous requires a new definition when we truly see what must be altered in our characters.

So how do we bridge the gap of asking God to change what must be changed, when often we may not be sure what that is – to finally arriving at His work being done in us?  It is much easier for those who die in Christ.  They will arise from the grave absent all defects.  In the twinkling of an eye their entire characters will finally see perfection.  But for those who are alive and remain – we stand before the throne of God – without a mediator.  There was always a veil of Christ between us and the Most High until He journeys to earth to bring us home.  It is then that the fateful prophet’s words echo so loudly.  It is then that the work of Christ to save us is ended once and for all.  No more are prayers of forgiveness to be offered, as forgiveness has been granted.  No more the desire to embrace evil as now all those remnant of the Lord long only to do and love as He would.  It is a great day.  And it precedes His second coming.

Enoch saw this fulfilled in his own life.  Some modern Christians belittle Enoch’s accomplishments because he was able to live 360+ years before translation.  They argue he had more time to perfect himself than we do living only a third or less as long.  They argue that pre-flood the people did not face nearly the temptations of our modern world.  After all we don’t believe they had radio, TV, films, the internet, cheap access to crime of all types, and the affluence and time to abuse these things.  But these assumptions are based on the premise that man is evolving to a higher state and simply because knowledge will increase before His coming, it must by comparison be greater than in times of old.  But Christ Himself counters this argument by comparing the end of the world to the days before the flood.

One must remember Christ lived in the times of the Roman Empire when Jewish life was hardly worth the effort of a roman cross.  Forests of crosses decorated Judea as the people continued to rebel against the oppression of Rome.  It was a common form of a torturous death.  Life had little meaning in the time of Christ, and yet He points to the age of Noah as being worse.  How much more evil would Hitler have been, if he had access to the other 90 percent of his brain?  How much more evil would scientists be if they had similar abilities?  Would men who could easily gather gold from the ground, and had easy access to any raw materials find themselves affluent in a short period of time?  Would they indulge in all manner of perversions, perhaps even seeking to blend life forms mixing and splicing DNA until they “created” dinosaurs, centaurs, cavemen, and other such mixtures that God had nothing to do with?  Yes it is only speculation, but speculation based on logic and the demonstrated attempts of modern man since beginning to understand DNA.  In short, Enoch lived in a world far worse than our own.

Environment is not an excuse.  Christ lived a perfect life despite the conditions of His birth, oppression of a foreign government, persecution of the established religion, and ignorance of His chief disciples.  Enoch walked with God so closely, He found himself translated to heaven – as did Elijah some years later.  It is possible, as scripture tells us, it was done.  In order for Enoch or Elijah to reach heaven and pick up where Lucifer left off, something in them had to reach perfection itself.  Their characters had to have been made into total harmony with the government, principles, and values of our God.  They could not see this city and still harbor evil in any form.  Even the slightest evil would have precluded them from reaching this goal we all seek.

Sometimes our compromises blind us.  We follow the commandment not to bear false witness, by trying hard never to tell a lie under direct examination.  However, we shade the truth through omission, or carefully selected language chosen so as not to offend.  Little white lies as they commonly known are often embraced even by Christians in the “greater” effort of not hurting the feelings of another soul.  Enoch had no such moral dilemma.  God requires no such dishonesty on our parts, nor does He offer us any.  The truth is the only language God speaks.  He does not hide the truth from us.  But He does not use the truth to kill us either.  God speaks His truth in love and only love.  His motivation is never to inflict pain, but actually to remove it from us.  His truth may at first seem harsh to us, but as we come to embrace it, we are liberated and made free by it.  This is the beauty of His truth.

No, both Enoch and Elijah were perfect before they walked through the pearly gates.  As we will be, and those who die in Christ will be.  Our journey then has a destination.  We are not on an endless road that never arrives anywhere due to the exceptional size of our evil.  No matter how much work Christ has to do in us, it is a work He is able to complete.  Herein comes another test of trust.  Do we trust Christ enough to believe He will complete His work in us in the allotted time?  We may not doubt His ability, rather doubt our steadfast willingness to submit and see it done.  Regardless of our fears, can we still trust Him to save us?  This was the same dilemma Adam faced.  He loved God.  He loved Eve.  He could not imagine how love could be greater than justice.  Adam failed to trust God to find a way and sin was born into the world.

It is now, here in our world, that we are faced with the same issue that plagued Adam so long ago.  Can we trust God enough to find a way to make perfect in us, what we have never been able to affect?  Can we trust the love will find a way, even when we cannot imagine what that way could be?  I love my wife and my family – can I trust God to save them?  Can I risk losing them eternally to remain faithful to God no matter what choice my spouse, my parents, my children, or any that I love make?  This is where Adam failed, and I must succeed.  Christ Himself risked eternal separation from God while hanging on that cross.  The weight of sins he carried that he had never committed was so great, he thought the stain may be enough to eternally separate Him from His father.  He could not see past the grave.  He did not know what would happen.  It was nothing close to a done deal.  And He submitted to the will of His Father anyway.  He died NOT knowing.  He risked it all, on a level we will never understand.  And the magnitude of love was so defined.

Yet as our world grows more wicked and our memories more acute, we will remember keenly the past and our sins in it.  Satan will not simply give up on us, write us off as being too late to plague.  He will attack those who submit even more fiercely than those under His sway.  We will be public enemy number one in his doomed kingdom.  And of course even though he lies, he has the truth of our past on his side.  He will torment us with sins we have committed, suggesting that we are not really sorry.  That we are only afraid of the consequences of our actions, not beyond the desire to do them again if we could get away with it.  He will suggest that lack of opportunity to sin is not the same thing as lack of desire to sin.  He will suggest that the pain we have caused others in our past is TOO great to be truly forgiven by them, nor should it be let go by us.  He wants us to have eternal guilt.  He wants us to focus only on our sin, not on its cure.  Our minds will search for sins we thought we might have buried even from our conscience mind.  It will be an agony of looking under every rock in our soul to ferret out anything that still needs Christ to fix.  It will be the time of Jacob’s trouble for us.

Environment will matter for nothing.  The fact that this mental anguish comes at a time when the plagues are falling, Satan is loosed and running amuck in the world, men are out to persecute and kill those who will not yield their morality to the edicts of the majority – these things that would normally paralyze a man with fear mean nothing to those marked as saved.  It remains the mental agony of knowing we come from a life of sin, and being unable to detect any further sin in our lives.  This agony is a product of our history.  It can be reduced if we can remember it is our Christ who is faithful in His work in us.  It is He who saves us and not ourselves.  We can put our faith, our trust, and our anguish in Him and His mercy to us.  Our actions will reflect His motives.  And the world will be blessed by what we do, even as they attempt to kill us for doing it.

We do not really know when this work will be completed in us.  We only know it will be complete before the Lord returns.  However this does not preclude it happening significantly earlier than that.  It begs the question, will we know it when we see it, and are we the thing preventing it from reaching completion now?  I pray it is not my stubborn desire to hold on to sin, that keeps the Lord from completing His work in me today.  I pray it is not my lack of steadfastness in surrendering to Him each day and each evening that delays His work in me.  I pray that He ends the evil in the world, and the evil in me completely.  There is nothing here worth holding on to.

The trust we build in Christ to save us here in our world of sin is the trust that keeps us from stumbling into sin for the rest of eternity.  Lucifer became Satan over a dispute regarding ideas.  He had no prior knowledge of sin, and had only the wisdom of God’s counsel to trust that his new ideas would lead where they did.  Lucifer did not trust God more than his own wisdom, and sin was born into the universe.  We who must learn to rely on Christ to save us in this world, can safely rely on Him to keep us from evil for the rest of eternity.  We who have discovered that His only motives are to show us what love means on a one-to-one basis, can be trusted to continue His love for us forever.  The work He does in us here will echo for all eternity.  It will bear ceaseless fruit for the ages.  It is not just a never ending process – it is one that will reach maturity and our lives will never be same because of it.