He is here...God is here...
I turned on Pastor Joseph Prince’s “Destined to Reign” program this morning, and the sermon I had DVR’d focused on Christ Jesus — the name He became after resurrection. More like a title, denoting the all-important work He did by dying on that cross not only for us, but as our sin.
The way Christ is now in heaven, that’s how we are who believe in Him now…
One verse in the sermon today stood our for me, which I can see is in 1 John 4:
“By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, so also are we in this world.“
Pastor Prince talked about Jesus being seated in heaven — and showed an example of a family photo (representing us) being placed inside a Bible (representing Christ), and how when He died, we died, so when He rose, we are seated right there in heavenly places with Him.
So we are to imagine Christ as He is now — I think of Him as strong and powerful and understanding and handsome in a way that attracts souls to Him.
A counselor and friend.
Anyway, all that immeasurably great stuff that He is, we can claim that for ourselves.
Is He broken-hearted and flipping out right now? Probably not…neither should I be.
One woman who had a lump in her breast wrote on the doctor’s reports: Does Christ have a lump in His body?
No — and neither did she when she returned to the doctor.
The Spirit of Truth within me jumped upon hearing that news as I was falling in and out of sleep, listening.
And as my grief-recovery partner friend talked about focusing on one verse of Scripture each day, I realized that this one was one of the main ones for today, and I asked Christ to show me more of who He is so that it can help me know and truly, deeply, understand and know more of who I am because of His Spirit living in me.
It sure beats that “putting down one and lifting up another” verse that kept tossing around in my brain the other day, waking me with its sadness. An imprecatory type of prayer that had me thinking, like Oprah sang during that one season’s opening: “I believe I will run on,” and see what the end is gonna be…
But no, it’s not true that to win somebody’s got to lose. There are such things as win-win-win situations, and God is still straightening out those crooked paths and healing the hurts and bringing families closer together, fixing marriages, showing us ourselves and improving us all.
For His sake alone.
