Train of Thought

Week of February 11-17, 2013

The Gospel comes to us unto something, something more than just the subjective satisfaction of deep spiritual needs and aspirations.

The Gospel of the Kingdom is unto something more than merely inward feelings and hopes. It is unto life, life full and abundant, and that grows up through the righteousness of Jesus Christ into that righteousness in every aspect of life.

Where the Gospel takes root, the fear of God and love for Him co-exist and are mutually fortifying and enriching. The heart submissive to the Gospel is also submissive to its neighbors, and inclines toward them in loving service. Those who know the Gospel, and in whom the Gospel is growing, seek the kind of instruction and equipping that actually fits them for such service, teaching that shapes their souls after the heart, mind, and conscience of the Lord. They know their God truly, and not because He is confirmed for them by science or reason. No, they have experienced Him, and know Him in His glory, and this knowledge changes everything in their lives. They long to see His goodness, wisdom, justice, and love manifest throughout their society, and they take the everyday steps of faith – whether impossible, unlikely, or seemingly insignificant – that contribute to the progress of the Kingdom in and through their lives.

Their lives are not free of trials or hassles. The live in a fallen world where the law of sin looms and the devil continues to prowl. Yet they know themselves to be called by God to some task, some endeavor, by which He will receive glory and others will know His blessing, and they flee to Him and cling to Him day by day for the grace they need to run their course and pursue their journey with joy.

Are you going around in your Christian life only seeing like the blind man, half-way healed? Is it all just trees walking, with little clarity or beauty or transforming power in evidence? Then examine yourself (2 Cor. 13.5). If there’s little there there in your walk with the Lord, it may time for some serious rethinking about you faith, your calling, and your condition with respect to the salvation of the Lord.

Because, as Jesus and Paul and all the Apostles explained, unless our faith is actually unto such fruit as this, we may not have any real faith at all.

Faith
Faith bores into my soul’s hard ground
and digs an ever deepening well
to mysteries I can’t fully sound. 

Or, like a clapper, faith will pound
against my soul, a waiting bell.
It bores into my soul’s hard ground

and rings my soul in rich, profound,
transforming ways. It chimes the spell
of mysteries I can’t fully sound.

Faith parts the veil where things abound
unseen, which life’s true framework tell.
Faith bores into my soul’s hard ground

or strikes soul’s mettle to resound
in peals and chimes of heavenly knell, 
in mysteries I can’t fully sound.

As lines within a villanelle
return, and with new meaning swell,
faith bores into my soul’s hard ground
to mysteries I can’t fully sound.