Undiscovered Riches

 By his divine power, God has given us everything we need for living a godly life. We have received all of this by coming to know him, the one who called us to himself by means of his marvelous glory and excellence. 2 Peter 1:3....."We miss the life we have by wishing for another life." Christine Caine

Some years back, I wrote this in my prayer journal; "Father, I thank You, that though You may not have given me everything I ever wanted, You have always given me all of Yourself." I give testimony in this writing that the sum of every unmet desire or asking that I placed before Him, is less than a drop in comparison to what I have been given in Jesus Christ. Scripture calls Him "a gift too wonderful for words." This is infinitely true, as there exist no words that can begin to describe Him.

I have no idea of how much time I have left in this realm, but I know for sure that I'm coming to the end of my journey. As I look back upon my life with Him, I remember so many things that I asked of Him. Desires that at the time I was desperate for Him to fulfill. From the perspective of looking back, I now see how shallow, and even meaningless many of those things were even then. In so many instances, I fell into the very trap that Christine Caine speaks of. I missed the riches in my life at those times by wishing I had another life. Thankfully, that mindset and attitude disappeared years ago. It disappeared when I finally began to discover the depths of all that I did have in Him. The undiscovered riches found in Christ.

This is not to say that having desires is wrong, or wanting certain things added to our lives. What it does mean is that when our longings for them obscure our real longings for Him, we impoverish ourselves. We also open the door for the enemy to come in and convince us that our life is incomplete, lacking without them. What begins to rise in us is frustration, anger, and a deep sense of resentment, because we feel He is holding something back from us. We begin to feel entitled, and that He owes us what we seek. We doubt His promises. We doubt Him. We question His character and His love. We not only no longer believe that He will "set a table before us in the wilderness," we don't believe that He can. When this happens, satan has achieved his purpose. He's ensnared us, and we're blind to the truth that if he can lure us into turning upon our God, we will not be turning on him. So he goes on to wreak ever deeper havoc in our lives.

Here's the beauty and the truth in all of this. All of our temper tantrums over His not responding as we wish will not turn Him away from His pursuit of us. He will discipline us in this, but in the discipline will be His motive of revealing to us not only how much He loves us, but how sufficient, much more sufficient, is His grace to us in the seeming withholding of His blessings. He wants us to know and experience that His greatest blessing for us is found in His giving of Himself. God doesn't give grace, He is grace. This is what I discovered. This is what He revealed. He gave me Himself, and I found He really was a gift too wonderful for words.

I close with this story from Annie Herring, the gifted songwriter and singer of the Jesus music group, the 2nd Chapter of Acts. She tells of her conversion in the midst of her pursuit of a career as a rock star in 60's hippie culture of San Francisco. She and the group she was a part of had been offered a dream contact from a major record label. All she had wanted was before her. That evening, the Lord spoke to her heart, and what she heard was Him saying to her that she could have all that she had ever wanted, the fame and fortune she'd so long sought, or, she could have Him. She said that she answered Him, "Lord, after seeing and experiencing You, I don't want anything else." Friends, that is where you and I must live, because once we've truly "seen" and experienced Him, all other things lose their grip on us. We're now held in His grip. The undiscovered riches have been discovered. Have they been discovered by you?

Blessings,

Pastor O