There is a saying that our eyes are the windows into our souls. They are the most transparent part of our bodies, and science has even found that our pupils reveal a lot of what we have in our minds.
Scripture tells us in 1 Corinthians 6:19 that we are the temple of the Holy Spirit. When God steps into our life therefore, He steps into our world. It speaks about our position. Whenever a person feels the presence of God, He is present. Christ does not just reside in our hearts, He covers our whole being. Consequently, this is something that should be apparent when people look into our eyes.
At times however we do not fully comprehend what it means to have Christ in our whole being. Very often, we may even have questions. In a message shared by Pr Greg French at C3 Subang, he conveyed that some of the greatest breakthroughs in God’s Kingdom are contained within some of its simplest truths.
He shared that once he prayed for a man’s healing and that man did not get healed. Despite all the prayers from the man’s loved ones, that man passed on. Pr Greg was very upset with God. With all the prayers, why was the man not healed? God asked him a plain question; whose hand was it that was laid on the sick man?
Like many of us would have replied, Pr Greg replied that it was his. He was then reminded that when Christ stepped into his life, He stepped into his whole being. That hand belonged to God. The way we view God dwelling in our lives changes the way we view His power and sovereignty. It was a mark on his road to maturity.
Even in the Gospels, Jesus asked many questions and answered few. Pr Greg imparted that Jesus wants us to realize that He dwells in us. Instead of waiting for the next great healer to come, Christ wants us to recognize His power in our lives. When we were reconciled with Him, He arrived, and because He has arrived, we have everything we need. We are able to exercise our full authority in Him.
When we pray for others however, we need to remember that the One who is doing the work is the Lord. When we prophecy, we need to remember that the word is from the Lord. What is the secret to always remembering this detail about our God’s complete presence in our daily lives?
In Isaiah 54, we read of a barren woman. While the passage speaks about the future glory of Zion, it was still in a time yet to come. To understand the whole context of this, we can look at the cultural implications for this woman. A barren woman in her society was viewed from two perspectives; either a sign of sin or a sign of a curse from God. The natural tendency for her was to withdraw from society. Yet instead of withdrawing she chose to rejoice in the Lord.
Society and religion can label us and sometimes the effect can be deep. But this woman knew a secret of the Kingdom. She had not given up and let herself be overwhelmed by how the mainstream culture defined her. She had the ability and knowledge to believe in her position, and she held on to the key to a great truth; that of a thankful life irrespective of circumstances.
In Phillipians 4:10-13, Paul thanked the Phillipian church for their gifts and in Phillipians 4:13, we find one of the best-loved verses in the Bible:
I can do all this through him who gives me strength.
Earlier in the passage, before he had come to this conclusion, Paul had also spoken repeatedly about learning. Learning is a process that takes time and purposeful application in life. It meant repeatedly believing and standing on the promise that all things are possible with God. This is the key to our position and within it is contained an element of both faith and assurance.
This ability is also about the power to make a decision; to choose to be thankful and to look beyond the immediate. Pr Greg imparted that the way forward in life is not what we see below our feet but what is beyond us. Lift our eyes up and we’ll see. Believe and we’ll experience.
Because we have become ingrained in a certain way of life we have shaped ourselves to be thankful when we receive what we want. Often we desire for immediate, quantifiable, tangible things, the sort that the material world can give us. But we are not of this world. We forget that God has already given us everything, far beyond what we can get from the world.
He has given all of us stations to be intercessors and the heart to stand in the gap. This is God’s will for every Christian and it is not so much to do with actions or direction in life but with the issues of the heart. Very often we think that the Kingdom’s road is narrow and we walk it like we’re walking on tightropes. We slip and then we start all over again from the beginning.
Pr Greg expressed that the Kingdom of God is defined not by a straight narrow line but by boundaries. Whether we are within God’s will is defined by how we walk within those boundaries. It is in how we manage our lives. Repentance is therefore God drawing us back to Him.
When things that we know are not of God has taken the place of God and drawing us away from Him, He wants to restore us and draw us back so that we can return back to Him. This is where a true heart of repentance comes from and how we walk in the will of God. Pr Greg shared that when God occupies all the space in our life, we will not have space for all the other things.
In 1 Corinthians 13 Paul wrote about maturity. When we were a child, we behaved and acted like a child and everything was about our demands. When we grew up, we learned about responsibility and to start taking accountability for our walk in life.
Abraham believed and gave thanks for God’s promises regardless of whether he saw them during his lifetime. The mark of the Disciples was the same; they were witnesses of the promises that God has given to them regardless of their earthly circumstances.
In Philippians 4, there is an enjoining to not be anxious (Philippians 4:6). Not just getting by but joining Godliness with contentment. If we are thankful, we will always see the goodness of the Lord. Thankfulness prepares our heart to face the storms of life and lives are transformed.
Like Abraham and the Disciples, we were called foremost to be believers and witnesses. This believing requires an act of seeing actively and to make a decision in what we see. Nothing changes when we look only at our circumstances. A part in our discipleship journey is in making thankfulness to Christ for coming into our lives part of our whole being’s equation. We need to hold this daily and within it is a key to great breakthroughs.
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Jason Law
NOTE: All photos kindly contributed by C3 Subang.
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