Pondering Promises: A Return to Blogging

Hello blog friends! It has been a while...not quite the 3 years that this blog suggests (I blogged in 2012 at another address), but still longer than it should have been. It's been a season where it's been hard to muster up the inspiration to write. I've felt convicted, as if I'm not using all that I've been given, but also uninspired. As I presented that excuse to The Lord today, He answered by mightier inspiration than I've felt in a while. I'm choosing to update this blog instead of my other as I feel that my best work has been posted here. I hope that continues through His Holy inspiration that I've seen today. 

A.W. Tozer once said "What we think about when we think about God is the most important thing about us." Our perceptions about God vary based on a many different factors...what we have read in His word. been taught at church and by our families, how we were raised, how we feel God has responded (or not) in our circumstances, both past and present.   Each of these creates a layer in our faith, determining how we view not only God but all things in our walk with him. Like an onion, each layer flavors our faith, either with sweetness or bitterness, and determines what we think about God, also determining everything else about us. 

While many of these things are good, Satan uses others to keep us from growing in depth and intimacy with The Lord. Curves life throws at us, our timing being different from God's, God not answering our prayers in the way we think can all impact what we think about God, as well as our walks with Him.

How could focusing on His promises help that? If I truly meditated on His revelation of Himself to us through scripture, how would that impact my walk with Him? How would I grow with him? How could He transform my view of situations? How would it impact what I thought of Him, and therefore everything else in my life? 

So here is my Summer Experiment… taking one promise each week, meditating on it, chewing on it, thinking and praying through it, focusing on it and the quality God reveals through it each week and seeing what He teaches me about Himself and how he transforms us to be more like His Son. As my view of Him is more correct, what else would that impact? So….here goes pondering promises! 

Picture of Purpose

I love art. Monet, Renoir, Van Gogh, Picasso...even modern art, such as Pollock, has a soft spot in my heart. My mother instilled this love in me at an early age. When I was in elementary school, my mom would take me on a mother/daughter date to whatever was on exhibit at the Kimball Art Museum in Fort Worth. I listened with excitement and anticipation as the docent discussed minute details, imperfections and hidings of paintings both old and new. I soaked up symbolism and color like a sponge. We also were fortunate enough to have art docents at our school. One of my favorite works, and one that was most fascinating to me, was "Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte" by Georges-Pierre Seurat. Seurat employs a technique called pointillism, where he painted millions upon billions of tiny dots of very distinct and contrasted colors. The human eye miraculously blends these hundreds of colors together to form a single hue of distinctive color. Each dot was meticulously placed, each color carefully chosen  for a purpose: to blend and manufacture a masterpiece.

Purpose is an interesting concept. To me, it answers the question "why?" it is the reason you're running down the road of life that you've chosen or been placed on. The dictionary defines purpose as "1. the reason for which something exists or is done/made 2. An intended or desired result or aim 3. determination; resoluteness." The bible has many things to say about purpose. I love the way Paul describes it in Ephesians 1:3-10:

Spiritual Blessings in Christ
³  Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, ⁴  even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love ⁵  he predestined us^[a] for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, ⁶  to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. ⁷  In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace,⁸ which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight ⁹  making known^[b] to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ ¹⁰ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.

God's ultimate purpose is salvation, as Christ came to save us all. (Romans 3:23 ESV, Romans 11:32 ESV)

Specifically, too, Christ has given each believer unique gifts to "be His hands and His feet." As Paul writes in Romans 12:4-8:

⁴ For as in one body we have many members,^[a] and the members do not all have the same function, ⁵ so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individuallymembers one of another. ⁶  Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith; ⁷ if service, in our serving; the one who teaches, in his teaching; ⁸ the one who exhorts, in his exhortation; the one who contributes, in generosity; the one who leads,^[b] with zeal; the one who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness.

Verses 5b-6 have really been on my heart recently. The Holy Spirit has been relentlessly revealing to me the importance of us using what's been gifted to us, as the "body" both literally and spiritually speaking, cannot functions properly without each part doing what it's been created to do.

I've been focusing on ways to wrap my human mind around a God-sized purpose. The best way God has shown me is by thinking of life as "Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte." We are each one dot. One minuscule yet undeniably and incredibly important part of this enormous painting was can't yet fully see (1 Corinthians 13:12). Sure, we see those dots around us- we know their colors, if they're changing, what they're doing, but only the Master, the Designer, the omniscient Artist can see, and create, the masterpiece. Each of us dots has a purpose- to be the color He painted us, the color He created us to be. Whether it's red, yellow, green, magenta, cerulean, a color similar or different to those around us, in being this color, we fulfill our place, our purpose, in the Master's Masterpiece. Sure, sometimes we tint ourselves another color, we see others and turn into their color, a color we were never intended to be, but our Master painter is faithful and good to repaint us back to the color we intended. He is the Perfect Painter, which we also were never intended to be. We must surrender our control to Him, as He is flawless and faithful to paint us in the way we were intended. We must continue to have faith when it becomes difficult to not change color, trusting that He can see the whole picture and that, one day, we will see it, too.

I'm thankful to be part of the masterpiece. I pray that I fulfill my purpose in His masterpiece instead of trying to fit Him into my own.