Bridal
…and God said, “Let us make man in Our image and after Our likeness. Let them have dominion over all the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth”. So God created man in His own image…
Genesis 1:26-27a
Hi, my name is Benjamin, I am a Christian. This week on process, we walk the journey from the beginning of process. When God in His wisdom had made everything out of nothing (read – had created and put in place systems that needed a steward), He bent down into the dirt and out of it made the stewards He envisaged. In His image, after His likeness. He went further to create the job description for the stewards. Dominion, He called it, over every system that He had already put in place. The system in the vast ocean, the system all the air/space and universe he had called into being and the system on all the earth- yes the creepy crawlies too. This is where we all began.
Fast forward past the fall and redemption of man into the modern times. As created beings, we have free will. Out of this free will, we have found ourselves on the path that leads away from the Creator, the owner of all the earth and its fullness thereof. We have become like those desert sojourners led by Moses, very stiff-necked. It is at this point in our process when we realise that the product is not shaping up into what we had in mind it would be. In other words, there is no glory in the way the product is being.
It may not be stiff-necked at a scale warranting fire from heaven in the days of Elijah (bless the Lord for the blood of Jesus), but still one that distorts the design of who we are meant to be. At this realisation in my life, I felt compelled to have with God what I felt was the biggest confrontation I ever had with Him at the time. I asked why things only worked up to a certain point before the same script started to play out again … frustration, to sum it up. So I dug up a few truths that I will share with us shortly.
After we have to come to that place written in Isaiah 64.8; the place of realisation that I have walked my own path and not the Creators path, or I have not had a diligent walk in my process, I have erred as a steward, we come to the Father and allow Him to be God in us and in our stewardship. To rework us as the clay, the work of His hands so that we can revert to His plan and design in our lives. And that is the moment the fire falls from heaven to refine us (Malachi 3.3).
In Jeremiah 18.5b God replies with a very pertinent question. “…Can I not do with you as this potter does?” He goes on to say that we remain in His hand as the potter’s clay. He does His will with us. Yet He is a gentle God. Allowing our own will to choose the path of being moulded.
When in our process we reach the place of total surrender, then we are refined according to His will so that we go back to the original design and purpose that he had already predestined us into. After the acceptance we begin to walk the path of daily surrender.
I beseech you therefore, brethren by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.
Romans 12:1
In other words, we bring our ultimate worship, cognisant of the price that was paid on the cross, which is the breaking of the body of Christ as a sacrifice to the Father, the propitiation for we whom He formed out of the dirt in the beginning of time (1 John 4.10). If this sacrifice pleased the Father, then our acceptable sacrifice is offering our bodies as a sacrifice daily. Let’s science a little here… that our reasonable sacrifice is the total use of our entire being, mind, body, soul and spirit to propagate the will of God daily. The use of our strength to be the hands and feet of Jesus Christ on earth, our intellectual capacity to be the decipherers of the voice of God in revealed scripture and affirming prophecy, our voices to spread the good news to those that can hear us, etc. When we do this, we get to verse 2 of Romans 12. That we are able to prove what His good, perfect and pleasing will is.
In this day and age, let us be the Christian and stewards that share the journey with one another. The journey to discovering how far gone we were, the journey to the cross, the journey to surrender every single day, and as we share whom we are being made into (process) we will get more and more people to see themselves through the eyes of Jesus. To bring as many to him through the daily offering of our bodies a living sacrifice holy, acceptable to God. That the stewards we should be of His time and creation may be activated, enabled and strengthened.
Dear Reader,
Dare to surrender at the cross of Christ. Then dare to pick up your cross daily and follow Jesus Christ. Then dare to tell someone about your crazy decision to surrender every day and show them where to surrender and pick up theirs. And if somewhere along the way you stopped the practice of daily surrender, get back up on your feet soldier and pick that cross up. For indeed on this journey, that is how we should be with one another, ensuring that each one, as many as we can get, makes it to the end. Hebrews 3.12-14; Hold fast your confidence to the very end.
