His Love is Enough

2 Timothy 4:2 Preach the word of God. Be prepared, whether the time is favorable or not. Patiently correct, rebuke, and encourage your people with good teaching.

The world is broken. Not just because of the current crisis of employment, finance, politics, energy, but from long ago when our forefather, Adam, gave away what was not really his to give. Adam was not the creator -- only the steward. The authority over creation was in his control, but it was entrusted to him by God.

Through a little extra wording in conversation with Eve, through misdirection by questions which direct the listener to pre-supposed conclusions, through social engineering to indirectly get to one person through another person, Genesis describes how Satan maneuvered to attack God through His handiwork and blight the creation which God had pronounced to be good.

We are a product of the world. We are born into it, we are raised and shaped in it, we are molded and conformed by it. Just as the world has had a flaw put into it, so we have weaknesses and shortcomings that have been stamped into us that we carry around wherever we go.

The saving grace that Jesus achieved through His obedience to the Father in yielding His life for our sin breaks the power that sin held us under, defeats death, and plants eternal life in our spirits at the moment we come to understand the debt we owe and turn to God for rescue. His plan for our redemption accepts each of us with our flaws and misshapen natures and misunderstood identities.

For some, that is enough. Others, though, turn back to worship and seek to express their gratitude to the Giver of life and Rescuer of their souls. Those are the ones who can not only be healed, but also be made whole. As they submit to the King whom they call Lord and God, He accepts them and breaks them.

Just as we inherited the brokenness of the world that we were born into, so to be born of the Spirit of God and bear the image, the likeness, the nature of our true Creator, we need to be reshaped. However, just as the enemy's attack against God did not create a fatal flaw in something God created and declared good, so we are still His creation and we bear His creative individuality in each of our uniquenesses. Rough edges need chipping off, but we do not need to be ground down a powder to start over. We may need to be re-fired in the furnace to burn off the slime that coats us from the world but the fire harms nothing that is essential to the nature and the image that God is bringing out in us.

As we endure the light affliction for the joy set before us of fellowship with God and His Son, Jesus, through the Spirit, we begin to emerge as lively stones, no two alike, yet each one perfectly shaped and sized to form a mosaic that illustrates and demonstrates the handiwork of God and brings Him honor for how He has transformed us from the image of the broken world to the image of His glory and wholeness, wherein He has accepted us in the beloved.

Psalm 32
v.7 You are my hiding place; You will protect me from trouble and surround me with songs of deliverance.
v.10 Many are the woes of the wicked, but the Lord's unfailing love surrounds the man who trusts in Him.
v.11 Rejoice in the Lord and be glad, you righteous; sing, all you who are upright in heart!

Father God, we rejoice in the care and attention You have given to every detail of shaping and forming who we are. You do not make mistakes, and we accept what You have done in our lives and yield our substance and our nature to Your Holy Spirit to move upon as He did upon the waters of the earth when it was formless and void. We strive to obey You as best we understand, and we listen for Your voice as we read and consider and dwell in Your Word. Thank You for accepting us while we were yet tainted and marred, disfigured and leprous from the world; we ask for Your vision, Your sight, Your eyes to see others, who have yet to turn to You, in the same light with which You first saw us. Fashion us and use us as tools for the harvest, workers in the vineyard, laborers in Your hire. We are Yours, Father!

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