Trusted With Creation

You, O Lord, have given people dominion over the works of Your hands; You have put all things under their feet.

Psalm 8: 6

 

Wow! Do you get a sense of the power that is granted to us by God? We humans are granted total authority and absolute rule over the rest of His creation. This seems to suggest that God trusts us greatly; yet, based upon the way that we have behaved in regards to taking care of this planet and upon the lack of success that many of us have had in handling even the smallest details of ruling our immediate worlds, I am left wondering about how God could have come to the conclusion that any of us are worthy of His trust.

 

I believe that the answer is found in the fact that God sees beyond past performance, and He anticipates the potential that He formed in each of us. This potential for godly understanding, for great wisdom, and for the courage to utilize these qualities in our daily lives is accessed only through a committed relationship with the Lord. As we allow Him to change our priorities to match His, and we seek to understand His heart so that we can follow His will, we are transformed. He changes us from being self-directed and focused individuals into the God-image bearing members of the Body of Christ that the Lord intends for us to be.

 

It is in this state of renewal that we become truly trustworthy stewards of the great and the wonderful gift of rule over God’s creative work. This involves an enormous responsibility, for the Lord tells us that we are charged with the continual work of defeating the effects of evil and decay in our world. We are to take every opportunity that we have to show people the light of God’s grace and redemption, and we need to seek to do this through every word that we say, each action that we do, and by the way that we live our lives. The Lord trusts you and He trusts me with all of His Creation, and He knows that, through and in Him, we are absolutely worthy of that trust.

 

 

The Gift of Righteousness

For if, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.

Romans 5: 17

 

As I sit here and look at these words of Paul, I am taken aback by just how differently I seem to operate. It is not that I don’t believe in the concept of grace or that I don’t even think that I accept it and embrace it. However, I do tend to want to take control over the way that it connects to righteousness in my life. Things that simply are, especially ones that are by virtue of what another has done in a manner that eliminates all of my management, make me uncomfortable. My comfort zone is found in the world of plans, actions that develop from those plans, and of check marks after the items are accomplished. The idea of something as significant as my righteousness being received as a gift is troubling.

 

Yet, Paul has expressed it correctly. I might prefer to be able to look carefully at the text and to determine that some great translation error has been made so that God actually intended for us to own this process, at least to take over its completion. But that is not the case. We do not have the ability or the capacity to plan, devise or implement our own righteousness, for we do not have any of it on our own. We are fallen and broken creatures who started out our existence as the pinnacle of God’s creation plan, but we chose to grasp after a form of god-likeness that we could control rather than resting in the assurance of our God-image creation and in the impartation of righteousness that God granted to us as an aspect of an undiminished relationship with Him. We are a lot like the small child who wriggles and struggles to get free of the parent’s hand as they are heading out across a busy street. We desperately want our freedom despite the fact that safety and training in safe living are found in that loving grasp.

 

Christ grants us life. That is the gift of all life. It is not just one aspect or period of living; rather, it is life that spans all of our existence from this moment through eternity. This gift of life includes each and every aspect of who we are and of what we do. There is nothing that is outside of its boundaries. As I accept this gift, I am forced to recognize that it comes to me as a result of God’s grace which, through Christ, bridges the great chasm of division that my sinfulness caused to exist between my depraved self and God’s absolutely righteous being. Christ grants to me a righteousness that is real and that works within me to transform my heart and to restore my mind to that original God-image design. My part in this process is one of surrender, and it requires me to open my deepest places to God’s revealing light of truth. Here the sin that tries to continue to possess my soul is exposed, and here Christ takes my struggling hand and leads me into His peace and victorious rest.

 

Who Do You Trust

Behold, the hand of the Lord is not so short that it can not save;

Neither is His ear so dull that it can not hear.

Isaiah 59:1

 

In these few words lies an essential aspect of my life and of the lives of everyone who I will encounter in my day. There are situations, circumstances, and times when I get a feeling of being utterly lost; I start to dwell on my failures and shortcomings and send myself down a trail of depressive sadness. Others that I know and that I encounter are doing the same thing, and the existence of a relationship with God doesn’t prevent this sort of unhealthy thinking; yet, at the same time, it is the answer to it.

 

It seems that this sort of thinking and the dysfunctional living that is its result are often caused by becoming overly self focused, blame oriented, and failing to trust God to be true to His promises. As I become focused on myself, I tend to look only at the old, pre Christ, person, and I start to listen to the lies that Satan is continually telling me about who I am and what I am worth. The truth is that the Spirit of God has taken up residence in me; He has transformed me into a new person who is now conformed to the God-image that is the Lord’s intent for all people; and I live inside of God’s kingdom where His grace permits me to fall down and get up to try again.

 

In order to prevent this disabling condition, I need to keep my ears attuned to God’s words of truth which are the perfect expression of love, grace, mercy, and encouragement. When I allow His words to soak into my soul, the presence of the Lord in my life becomes more tangible. Then joy and peace will fill my heart as I trust God to the level that I grant Him the exclusive right to speak to my heart and to provide me with direction for life.