Thrown open Doors Wide Open Spaces Clear Air What's next?!

 

"But I need something more!  I've tried everything and nothing helps. I'm at the end of my rope!  Is there no one who can do anything for me?  Isn't that the real question? 

The answer, thank God, is that Jesus can and does.  With the arrival of Jesus, the Messiah, that fateful dilemma (Ro. 7) is resolved.  Those who enter into Christ's being-here-for-us no longer have to live under a continuous, low lying black cloud.  A new power is in operation!  The Spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has magnificently cleared the air, freeing you from a fated lifetime of brutal tyranny at the hands of sin and death.  We throw open our doors to God and discover that at the same moment that He has already thrown open his door to us.  We find ourselves standing where we always hoped we might stand--out in the wide open spaces of God's grace and glory, standing tall and shouting our praise!

Those who trust God's action in them find that God's Spirit is in them--living and breathing God!  Obsession with self in these matters is a dead end; attention to God leads us out into the open, spacious, free life.  Focusing on the self is the opposite of focusing on God.  Anyone completely absorbed in self ignores God, ends up thinking more about self than God.  That person ignores who God is and what He is doing.  And God isn't pleased at being ignored. 

But if God himself has taken up residence in your life, you can hardly be thinking more of yourself than him. . . .it stands to reason, doesn't it, that if the alive-and-present God who raised Jesus from the dead moves into your life, he'll do the same thing in you that he did in Jesus, bringing you alive to himself?  When God lives and breathes in you, you are delivered from that dead life.  So don't you see that we don't owe this old do-it-yourself life one red cent.  There's nothing in it for us, nothing at all.  The best thing to do is give it a decent burial and get on with your new life!

God's Spirit beckons.  There are things to do and places to go!  This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life.  It's adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike "what's next, Papa?" God's Spirit touches our spirits and confirms who we really are.  We know who He is, and we know who we are:  Father and children."
                                                                                              selections all from the Message
                                                                                              Romans 5:2-4, 7:17, 24-25, 8:1, 6-16


  You cannot be truly humble until you have a deep sense of being loved---Frances Roberts