Mark Cowper-Smith
The kingdom of God starts with a spiritual reality. Whether you believe in Him or not, He is present around you. He is in this world waiting for you to interact with Him, here and now. When you enter into the kingdom of God a spiritual change happens and you begin to comprehend things that were impossible for you to comprehend previously. You begin to see life through His perspective. You begin to value what He values. This is possible because He has entered our world but more than that, His essence now lives inside you. Prior to the union of His world and what you thought of as “yours” you were living in a state of distortion. The real you was distorted.
Life’s wounds, corruption and disappointments have come upon us all and so we live with a lessened expectation of what life is supposed to be. The truly wonderful news is that overtime He lifts off of us and flushes from us the calcium deposits, rust and sediment of all those things that were marring the image and beauty of His design. His original design for each of us is far beyond our capacity to imagine. This is why much of the time we are certain we can achieve our potential without Him. We lack the ability to perceive the wonder of what He has created each of us to be. Despite our whole hearted cooperation He sets out to return us to the beauty of His original design. This is what is being restored. He is in the restoration business and so, every day you know Him, you were becoming more yourself.
Yes, each day with Him, as He cleans and removed all that mars, you are being restored to you!
And that means we are not all the same. We are not clones of some perfect human. We have no need to compare ourselves to others. Envy is not necessary. Neither pride nor false humility is appropriate. All we need for Godly self-acceptance is a glimpse of His grand design. People that says all Christians are all alike have not been to church!
So true! I’m still coming to terms with being completely OK with the woman I was made to be – nearly 40 years after saying YES! to God! Thanks Mark!
Summer
One of the few advantages of growing older is the self-acceptance that comes with age. I am not talking about tolerating sin in myself. I am referring to the knowledge that even the things I don’t like about myself were a part of God’s design. I have come to realize that changing many of those things is an attempt to change my nature and so it is bound to fail. There is freedom in being able to say, “what you see is what you get” and meaning it. At some point we need to hear God say to each of us, “What you see is what I made” and then rest in that.
Mark