Tuesday, December 7, 2010

You've Never Felt More Alive



Ever visited a place so beautiful that you were in awe? The Island of Bora Bora in Tahiti does that. It’s devastating when you find out that you can’t live there unless you were born there.
If you’ve ever found yourself speechless at the beauty of creation, you’ve experienced an amazing aspect of the capacity for worship which God placed in every person.

It is because of our fallen nature that only the most magnificent things in creation manage to break through and touch us in that way. We should experience that awe in even the smallest things we see in creation because everything was designed to do that.

We may be partly deaf, but all of creation screams God’s glory! God’s eternal power and divine nature are clear in the things which He created ever since the creation of the world (Romans 1:20), the heavens declare His glory (Psalm 19:1 & 8:1) and specifically the gospel has been proclaimed in all creation (Col 1:23). Even in the New Jerusalem, the glory of God is the light and the Lamb (Jesus) is the lamp (Rev 21:23). That is awesome!

There is something God put inside the heart of man (Eccl 3:11) that leads us to discover a strange and counter-cultural reality. We experience the greatest sense of fulfilment when we encounter something so amazing that it makes us feel insignificant. Our world says we find this in ourselves, but the very design of our being in those moments when we are in awe of something far greater than we are shows us this is not true.

When we lose ourselves we find ourselves, and God designed you to lose yourself in Him, and in His wondrous plan of redemption. God’s ultimate purpose for all of creation is His own glory, and God is most glorified in you when you are lost within His love, displayed in the giving of His precious Son for you.

Before the foundation of the world, before you were born or took your first breath, the Father chose to give to His Son a bride - to love the Son forever, to serve the Son forever, to praise the Son forever, to glorify the Son forever. His bride would be a redeemed humanity who will fill eternal heavens with praise and honour as they gather around the throne of God crying out forever and ever, "Worthy is the Lamb." (Rev 4&5)

Redemptive history ends when the last name is redeemed and the Father will have gathered and presented the bride to His Son and everything will be in subjection to Him. When everything is done, and all the redeemed are gathered and the Father has given the Son His bride, the Son in an act of reciprocal love gives the bride and Himself back to the Father so that God is all in all. (1 Cor 15:28)

We are saved, because we are caught up in a glorious divine expression of love between the Father and the Son that is way beyond us. The price for His bride was His own blood. We were redeemed with the precious blood of Christ like a lamb spotless and unblemished.

Lose yourself now, as you meditate on Jesus, your Saviour. His sweetness is without measure. His mercy in saving you is without bounds. He is the radiance of the glory of God… (Heb 1:3)