Transparent Freedom

How did you do practicing the presence of God last week?  It is ‘the glorious employment of the Christian’ so please persist and rejoice in this holy habit.

One discipline you might consider as you seek to be always aware of God’s presence is to let God wash your spirit as you wash your body.  What do you do when you ‘get ready’ in the morning?  You clean yourself and analyze your appearance and prepare for the day ahead, right?  How much time do you spend doing this?  Thirty minutes?  An hour?  Every day, right?  How much time do you spend in repentance every day?

They have much in common, don’t they?  When we repent, God cleans us.  In His kindness, He shows us where we have turned away from Him.  He teaches us how we have fallen short of the glory for which we were created.  And, the forgiveness has already been given.  So we can repent of our folly and turn back to God.  We can reorient our lives around Him and become sanctified.  This is the will of God, your sanctification.  (1 Thess. 4).

So I encourage you to look beyond the physical act of cleaning yourself each morning and look to Jesus.  Use that time to think about how He cleanses you and makes you holy.  Try it daily; we don’t wait until we are covered in filth to take a shower, do we?  Spend your thoughts on God and His desire to purify your heart, rather than worrying about the day ahead while trying to get every hair in its perfect place.  Beauty is vain, but those who fear the Lord are to be praised.

Jesus said, “Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me.”

And He said that He, “will ask the Father, and the Father will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth…He will be in you.”  The Helper in you?

And He said, “You will know that I am in my Father, and you in Me, and I in you.”  You are in Jesus?  And Jesus is in you?  And if Jesus is in the Father and you are in Jesus, are you also in the Father?  And if the Father is in Jesus and Jesus is in you, is the Father also in you?

Read John 14 and 15 and see for yourself.  Sometimes we say to ourselves when we read these things, “Wow, that’s incredible!  God is with me!  And in me!  Can you believe that?!”  But we also have to ask, “Do I believe that?”  What would this day look like if I really believed that the Holy Spirit was somehow in me?  What would I do if Jesus walked through the door right now?  Is it different than what I’m doing?…because Jesus says He already did walk through the door, right along with me.

I challenge you this week to try actively believing what Jesus says here.  Try, at all times, to keep in mind the fact that GOD is in you.  Rest assured that you’ll enjoy it because there is nothing greater than His Presence.

If you watched CBS Sunday Morning this week, you saw the story on Ken Feinberg, who has the job title “Special Master” and is tasked with determining how much bailed-out bankers are paid.  He had previously volunteered, after the 9/11 attacks, to decide how much money each family of victims would get from a compensation fund Congress set up.  The narrator explained, “Congress ordered Feinberg to use each victim’s earnings to help establish the value of every life lost. The lives of a banker and busboy were valued differently, even though they both ended the same way.”

So earnings is one standard for determining the value of your life.  What are other standards we use?

What standards do you use?

How much you have in the bank?  How much life insurance you own?  How many people you have working for you?  How many awards or degrees you’ve received?  How many friends you have?  How many kids you have?  How skinny you are?  How smart you are?  How many Bible verses you’ve memorized?  How many people you’ve led to Jesus?  What standards do you use to determine your worth?  And what standard should we use?

Here’s what God showed me today from Acts, spoken by Paul:

I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself…

He goes on:

…if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God. (Acts 20:24).

So Paul does not account his life to be of any value.  Zero dollars.

Then if I account my life to be of no value, does that mean that I consider myself to be worthless?  No, Paul recognizes that his worth is determined by Jesus.  Only Jesus can determine our true worth.  And Jesus already determined that you are worth dying for.  God is saying to you, in the life and death of Jesus, “I want to be reconciled to you so much that I’m willing to die to accomplish just that.”  Think about that as it applies to you for a moment.

So by which standard do you prefer to be measured when answering the question: How much are you worth?  Man’s standards–money, power, beauty? Or God’s standard–His own blood?  It’s not really a question; just an illustration.

In what other areas of life should you start using God’s standards rather than man’s?