Fullness

I’ve been trying to write this for several weeks now but the time of reflection and gluing together of a thousand instances was impossible to do except for now.

So I apologize but I believe these reflections come in their perfect timing!

…

I’m working currently 6 days a week with an international relief non-profit and love love my job!

In this job, I have faced and seen more spiritual warfare in these past few weeks than I ever have encountered. And in dealing with it, I could go into the thousand reasons and speculations but what I have come to realize is unexpected; but is the more proper response the greater question, the greatest question, “who is God?” And in that question finding an answer and implications that I was empty until I found.

Christ and what He did on the cross is what I’m seeing: the intermingling of the cross and my world and the implications of it.

Here it is:

“The fullness of God was pleased to dwell” in Jesus and so rests in us if we choose to believe. The one who is able to conquer death is in us.

Do you get that, what that means? I don’t even scratch the surface of the implications and am still amazed!

That has been the great mark I have seen these past few weeks between the believers and the non-believers I work with. Those non-believers who are helping us out that are in the job for money or helping out mankind are plagued by outright demonic attacks. Three tires blowing out, a house burning down, hands needing to be amputated etc. And that is only 3 days mind you.

For the believer Satan is a defeated foe by what Jesus accomplished on the cross. For the unbeliever he is still allowed to terrorize them in blatant and obvious ways because again the fullness of God does not reside in the unbeliever they are empty and open for counterfeits that will never bring them the fullness of what life was meant to bring. That may seem harsh but it is true and I stand by it. A non-believer will never step into the fullness of anything without accepting Christ.

But this thought does not end here it explodes with something not easily noted. If we have the fullness of God in us and have the victory over Satan there is no limit to who we can become in Christ as we bury the deeds of darkness and reach for the world under Christ reaching the potential and fullness that Satan bitterly opposes.

This is the beauty in fullness and what Christ death on the cross and resurrection after means.

I’ve seen fashion and ad executives join this job from Manhattan and join part in this endeavor. I have seen volunteers from 2 countries so far and 23 states join hands in helping kids. There is something to following Christ and his commands to love and the morality he taught but without Christ these people will never experience the fullness of joy that Christ promises because of Satan’s deception of them. And that breaks my heart

And I believe in this God has led me to the grand lesson of this time that as I step into my interview in NYC on the 13th of December. I was buried with Christ in baptism and am made alive in Him I suffer and love others in stark contrast to the culture I step into. I must allow Christianity to critique every culture that I step into; and it will not destroy it but will make it reach its fullness. And that is why I am sent because there is some beautiful potential that God sees for the world and for this country and for that city and for His joy as well as my own. And he is pleased to allow my wife and I to step into co laboring with Him in His victory.

We as believers are still in a war with Satan and the forces of darkness. Never forget that or be unmindful of his ways. I am going to war soon, I can feel it coming. The outer lying battles here have trained me; but they are nothing compared to what is coming…but the beauty of it is Christ is already Victor over all “ he has overcome the world”. And we have power and authority through Him alone to cast out demons and help this world grow in justice in love grace and in the glorifying of God. Calling leaders and authorities to the responsibility of keeping this great world in order because God demands it so that his gospel may go forth and making light shine in immense darkness and by dying becoming alive to the greater things in their fullness.

What a great God we serve and love!

-JG

A Cross of Joy

The cross cannot be separated from the resurrection. They are they linked. The death of Christ cannot be seperated from his resurrected life. It is importantly so with our lives in Christ. We cannot experience joy and the better life here on Earth without the cross in our lives.

…

I could contentedly close my conclusions there because there is so much depth to that thought; but for me that thought is shaping me in more profound ways than I can possibly write in this time.

But nonetheless God is brilliantly working in me and I desire deeply to write. God has deeply impressed that upon my heart tonight. So I will illuminate further some recent thoughts etc.

…

I have always been one to do things immensely well at nearly everything I set my mind to…except a recent endeavor of shooting hoops with my wife and brother in law ( I thank God for such reminders that I am frail and human). But, to Most they interpret that quality and character of my work to be from God .

I’ve been asking myself as of late though how much of it is me and how much is from God.

And upon reflection I think that God does play a pivotal part but I am finding the source more applicably is myself choosing to die to myself and my desires and deciding to take up my cross.

As this time of stillness and sober reflection is showing me choosing to follow Christ’s voice and call in bigger and quicker ways shows me this truth clearer than I have ever seen it. I think the saying goes “the greater the risk the greater the reward”. It is true with Christianity too. The greater the honoring of the voice of the Lord the greater the joy..

Tonight God led me to Romans 12…but be transformed by the renewing of your mind so that you may prove what the will of God is.

Coupled with last night’s reading from Exodus 16 I am convinced that God wanted the Israelites after He took them out of Egypt to completely and utterly to get Egypt out of their minds. He wanted them to walk think eat etc. differently. He wanted them to be completely new.

In this time I am thinking differently. I recognized it tonight. I am thinking newly and in it I am finding the good will of God Himself his love beyond anything I can fathom or take in without being moved.

God wanted me to die and in order for that to have happened I had to take up my cross. Stepping out in faith in pursuing New York when we could so easily be comfortable someplace else. We could have stayed in California and had every comfort and luxury society tells us to have. But it is my current cross that is making me die. And in dying I am finding life and finding a deep deep joy.

And I will gladly take up the next cross when it comes because there is joy in the cross.

I had the pleasure of going to dinner with Elise’s spiritual mama this evening. I was listening to them be women and converse back and forth when something hit me. She trusts God so deeply.

She told me that was part of her renewing. I find myself trusting God in deeper ways than ever before. I find the questions lacking. I use to think that so ignorant!

I trust and know God to be a good God. That is enough

It doesn’t mean I don’t wander what each day will hold or how I am to play a part in it. But I trust him at his word and by His remarkable love and I need nothing else. And that is so deeply pressed upon my heart.

I know deeper than my head
Inside my heart

Love is here
I trust so deeply
I can’t deny

Faith deeper than my head
…is here

There are no more questions
This night and forevermore!

JG