Hope of Glory

I sit here tonight at my desk, finally understanding a little more clearly the questions that have plagued my soul over the past couple days. Architecture done and put aside I can focus finally upon to answering these questions.

But enough about me I have a question for you?

What happened to those people that were willing to give their all, like Paul for instance? I was reading my journal tonight and I came across a funny verse in colossians" Now I rejoice in my suffering for your sake, and in my flesh I do my share on behalf of His body, which is the church, in filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions.( 1:24) I was struck and kinda awe struck at the fact that I had never really picked up this characteristic within Paul before that he was carrying out what was lacking in Christ's afflictions. I forgot somehow that Christ's job was to set us free, not to carry out the "great commision." That is our job!

I've been realizing as of late that as verse 29 says" for this purpose I labor striving according to His power, which mightily works within me" that we have greater works than Jesus because Jesus was not even trying because that was not his purpose. He did amazingly for not even trying. I think we try to gain perspective on our lives and understand purpose so much that we forget the simple fact that we have one purpose as christians just as Christ did. Christ came to die, so that we might live, and we might live abundantly, and spread the gospel!

We have His Spirit a mystery and a wonderful thing! He is the hope of glory as Paul says. We never call God that but I think that it is funny because Paul does, we can't be selective, we must present the whole gospel. I believe it to be because we don't like to think that we have a part to play. We do! We are called to live it out with joy and peace because it is the Spirit that guides us, the hope that lies within us. God will be glorified in the end but we have the hope of glory within us. We must realize we have a responsibility to carry the hope that lies within us to every person on this Earth. What happened to those people that did that? I think this past 70 years or so has done a far better job than all the other centuries by far except the first but we are still so far from the man who exemplified missionary work. Paul suffered and he wrote to the church in Colossae saying to be colaborers of christ what happened to those people that were willing to become uncomfortable for what lacked in Christ's affliction?

All that matters is Christ's glory, I want the hope that lies within me to become a reality!!! I know I am here at school for arch to build some character. Here I will stay till God tells me otherwise. Until then I remain giving my all towards not the hope but the reality that God will use the things in my past and present to influence what is to come. I am pretty excited about all that! I am also excited to see the continuance of blessing that God continues to shower on me it is so good now I don't know how I can handle the joy that is to continue on to maturity.

I love the fact that the revival that broke out in the moravian church in England was characterized by a joy that they said" they did not know if they had died and gone to heaven." I think I have a glimpse of that right now and let me tell you it is good. May the spirit fall and the hope of glory become a reality. It is our choice, and that is a scary thing, may we choose what is contrary to what is flesh!

JG