"Don't Just Sit There, Stand!"

"God wants to rule over your heart"

Revelation 8:1 says "There was silence in heaven."  If we are going to hear the voice of God, if we are to enter into the abyss where there is nothing but God alone, then we must quiet our souls and cease from all activity.  God desires that our desire be for Him and Him alone.  God wants to purify us so that we can see clearly the way before us.  God's flame of His Spirit wants to melt your heart and cleanse our souls. 

None of us do this willingly or give our consent directly.  We all say we want to do God's will and give God permission to do whatever God wants to do and then God begins to destroy all our earthly inner attachments, obsessions, addictions, and conflicting passions.  God wants our soul to be totally fixed on Him so that we can be as the mystics say in "union with God."

People and churches focus on not being left behind in these last days we all live in.  Here is what God says must be left behind.  Our selfishness, our unrelenting activity and our carnal appetites must all die, be purged, destroyed, purified, done away with and left behind.  We can not go forward with God until we let go of the things holding us back from God.  It is only by leaving the one that we arrive at the other.

Our lives should be like precious paintings revealing the goodness of God.  What I find is we forget about God faithfulness too easily and strive for things that really do not have any lasting value.  We forget that God must destroy in order to build.  God tears apart to heal.  God breaks us so that we can be restored.  We sometimes think we are subjects of God's wrath when in reality we are objects of His love.

Scripture says repeatedly that the only fear we are to fear is God alone.  Why?  We are bound to our fears.  All other fears hold us captive and hostage.  The fear of death, the fear of failure, the fear of rejection, the fear of insignificance haunt all of us at times but they are all rendered impotent to the fear of God. 

God's perfect love takes our fear and transforms us into wounded healers.  And in the midst of God's Spirit holding us in the dark, we can even become fearless as we stand in complete awe and wonder at the One who created us and holds everything together.  Even when the world around us is falling apart, the only way we can stand it or stand at all is in Christ who gives us the strength to stand.  "So don't just sit there, stand!"