Restore Rebuild Revive - Week Seven : 09 Mar 2011

On a recent business trip with my husband, I had the chance to visit two friends from my past - I anticipated that my life would be considered worldly with one, freaky out of this world to the other. (We think people think about us far more than they do.)

The danger in my over-thinking, besides making unfair judgments about them judging me, is the assumption that if my life in Christ seems odd to both, I must have it right. -but still looking to man –me-, to determine what it means to be alive in Christ 

God’s Word alone determines what it means to be alive in Christ. Looking to anyone or anything else causes me to miss abundant life. If I do not look to the Word to define life, I will look to others and eventually be enslaved to the cultures around me. Even “churchy” cultures can enslave if they do not line up with His Word. Thankfully, when I, by God’ grace, experience the presence of God through the Word of God I am exposed-like this weekend. I am challenged once again…

John Piper, "Will I find spiritual communion with God sweet enough, and hope in his promises deep enough, not just to cope, but to flourish and rejoice in him?" 

This is the kind of communion with God we see in Neh 9. The communion with God in the midst of their choice foods, sweets and the celebration of the feast of booths must have been so beautiful that it caused them to recount the life had lost-many times- and are still, in some ways, still missing.

It must have been deep enough and sweet enough to cause them to dare to hope that they could be flourish once again. Looking to the Word of God, once again, for life, they knew repentance comes before flourishing.