SPRING FORTH NOW

You’ll remember, friends, that when I first came to you to let you in on God’s sheer genius, I didn’t try to impress you with polished speeches and the latest philosophy. I deliberately kept it plain and simple: first Jesus and who he is; then Jesus and what he did—Jesus crucified. I was unsure of how to go about this, and felt totally inadequate—I was scared to death, if you want the truth of it—and so nothing I said could have impressed you or anyone else. But the Message came through anyway. God’s Spirit and God’s power did it, which made it clear that your life of faith is a response to God’s power, not to some fancy mental or emotional footwork by me or anyone else. We, of course, have plenty of wisdom to pass on to you once you get your feet on firm spiritual ground, but it’s not popular wisdom, the fashionable wisdom of high-priced experts that will be out-of-date in a year or so. God’s wisdom is something mysterious that goes deep into the interior of his purposes. You don’t find it lying around on the surface. It’s not the latest message, but more like the oldest—what God determined as the way to bring out his best in us, long before we ever arrived on the scene. The experts of our day haven’t a clue about what this eternal plan is. If they had, they wouldn’t have killed the Master of the God-designed life on a cross. That’s why we have this Scripture text: No one’s ever seen or heard anything like this, Never so much as imagined anything quite like it—What God has arranged for those who love him. But you’ve seen and heard it because God by his Spirit has brought it all out into the open before you. The Spirit, not content to flit around on the surface, dives into the depths of God, and brings out what God planned all along.

I Corinthians 2:1-10 (MSG)

All around us are opportunities for our advancement in that which can and should be for our lives but we often miss them. We miss our opportunities usually because we are so consumed with what is now of our circumstances that we cannot see anything else; blinded by life and its challenges. In addition, we can be so focused on getting to our expected end that we can’t see past what is; the normal and/or status quo of achieving what we desire and therefore, miss opportunities, New Opportunities to Breathe: New Life in our experiences. The critical thing we must remember about ourselves and that which we believe can and should be for our lives is that we have both been designed for one another. Therefore, as we allow our Word, our promises, our expected end to live in us, and we live in it; becoming one with our Word, we are not only determined to achieve but also we are watchful, sensitive to what will assist us for our good that may be different from what we are expecting or that of anyone else’s experiences, New Opportunities. The challenge is if we are made for our Word and our Word made for us is for us to be who we are, showing up in our circumstances and leveraging who we are for our good and thus letting go of the rest for God to move. As we let go and let God, we are open and flexible to however the Spirit leads, not constrained but flowing in the Spirit toward our promises, and in so doing we are positioned in whatever we face to Breathe: New Life; overcome and inherit all things!