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Date Nov 1, 2009 Previous
By Pastor Ron WilliamsScripture: “But He knows the way that I take, when He has tested me, I shall come forth as gold.” (Job 23:10)
As I mature spiritually, I must laugh when I think about God and me having a relationship. God must be really lonely and desperate to put up with somebody like me. I am a mess. I have baggage from a past life of sin that would turn me off if I were trying to be in a relationship with me. I have attitudes, dispositions, tendencies and nuances that drive me insane. And yet God still wants me, to be with me, to love me, to provide for me, to care for me, to appreciate me and esteem me.
God knows that I am like Gomer who was a harlot when she first met Hosea and yet he married her with all her issues. God knows that my eyes often turn to lusts of the flesh, arrogance, selfishness, and impatience. He knows I have a smart-mouth, anger management problems, inconsistency, and everything else you can imagine. I often desire, yea want deeply to do better, but my doing better often falls short of 3 hours of not sinning. Let me pray and prayer of consecration and commitment, then get in my car and drive somewhere, and I promise the prayer would have been useless because some driver will do something and I will react inappropriately. God have mercy on me.
Job reminds me this morning, that my transformation is less about me and more about God. God knows the way that I take. He knows my weaknesses, my faults, my deepest and darkest secrets. God knows the way that I take in life and yet He wants me, is patient with me. Why? How?
I guess that's what the Bible means when it says, “God is love.” (1 John 4:8) Paul writes concerning the love of God, the love that only God can have and impart to man, “Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love NEVER fail.” (1 Corinthians 13:4-8, NKJV)
God trusts one day that I will get it. That I will understand just how much He truly loves me. He is hopeful, patient and kind. He can see the day when I finally realize that He would love me regardless of my condition. He can see that day when I want to do right because right is the only option for someone who is loved and wants to love. The best demonstration of my love for God is to respond in love to Him and my fellow man.
When someone cuts me off in traffic it is the love of God that will respond in kindness. When someone is rude to me it must be the love of God that does not react but is proactive in patience and understanding. To love like God means I can’t be provoked to be evil by someone who doesn’t have love. To love like God means I choose not to seek my own pleasure or will but I seek the will of God for others and myself. The truth is that many people speak of love but don’t really have a clue of the demands of real love or true love. God help me.
When I can have a praise party about living each day in truth, I begin to understand love. When I can bear ALL things that people, demons and the devil himself throws at me by the power of God, then I am acquiring love. When I believe in God, self, and others regardless of their present state and I believe that God is working with them just as he is working with me, then I begin to grow in love. When I can endure trials, tribulations and temptations and rejoice that God is working out of me the spiritual impurities necessary for the cancer of sin to be eradicated, then I know love. Help me Jesus!
I am not there yet and I don’t feel that I am even close, but praise God I am moving. The good news is that its not about how I feel or what I know anyway. It’s about what God feels and what He already knows about me. That’s why I resolve like Job, “But He knows the way that I take, when He has tested me, I shall come forth as gold.”
God is testing me, whether I like it or not. God is perfecting me whether its comfortable or not. God is working out salvation in me whether easy or not. And a day is soon coming when He has finished His testing; I will come forth as gold. Amen.
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