Heart Tracks - Living At The Lost And Found

     A great deal of my prayer life, of my life in Him, has been spent trying to get from Him that which He has already given.  I expect you have as well.  Though throughout His Word we are repeatedly told that we have been given "all things in Christ," we somehow think there must be some kind of disclaimer attached to that, and that our part is to seek to pry from His hand and heart, things that He is basically very reluctant to part with.  Instead of living as sons and daughters of the King through a living faith in Christ, we live as orphans, who must keep after a God who really doesn't want us around.  To paraphrase A.W. Tozer, we speak the language of power, but our lives are lives of weakness.  He says in his book, Born After Midnight, "In our private prayers and public services we are forever asking God to do things He has either already done or cannot do because of our unbelief.  We plead for Him to speak when He has already spoken and is at that moment speaking.  We ask Him to come when He is already present and waiting for us to recognize Him.  We beg the Holy Spirit to fill us while all the time we are preventing Him by our doubts."  We're like people "living" at the Lost and Found window, hoping that what we so desperately need will somehow "turn up," never understanding that that which was lost in the fall of Adam, life in and with the Father, is found and restored to us in Christ.  On the cross, Christ's last words were, "It is finished."  Yet we live as if the life He gives to those who will follow Him has yet to begin.  Jesus said "Freely I have given, now freely receive."  Somehow, we just can't believe He means that.

     In Acts, a group of believers was asked, "Have you received the Spirit since you first believed?"  I heard a friend say that what they were being asked was, "Have you entered into the life of Jesus, to the place where Jesus is?"  Christ lived in the fullness of His Father's presence and it is where those who are His are to live as well.  He will meet us where we are, but then He seeks to take us where He is.  We're good at defining what it means to be filled with the Spirit, living out the definition is another matter entirely.  As Tozer points out, we excel at speaking the language of the Kingdom.  Christ gives us, has given us, the life of the Kingdom.  Which are we walking in right now?

     In John 5, Jesus said to the Pharisee's, "You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life, and it is they that testify on my behalf, yet you refuse to come to Me to have life."  Few of us are anxious to be identified with a Pharisee, yet how many Bible studies, memorization exercises, and sharing of scripture take place on a daily basis, yet we continue to know much about the Word, yet continue to be unaware of the power of Him who is the Word of Life.  So, we continue to see everything as an exercise in trying to wear down God, so that, in exhaustion, He will finally give in, and do what we ask.  We want the fullness of the Promised Land, but like the Israelite's, we keep standing on its border, refusing to enter in.  Like them, God asks us, "How much longer will you delay entering into what I have (already) given you?"

How much longer for you, for me?  How much more time will we spend in the lost and found department, looking for what we already have?

Blessings,
Pastor O