We should look like Him.

"Our image reflected in the jacinth tiles of heaven's throne room needs to look just like Jesus."

WE SHOULD BE LIKE HIM. That is what the cleansing of the blood and the power of the Resurrection is supposed to do in us. We should be as loving as He is, as gentle and kind. We should never give condemnation because He never does. We should do everything on our part to not be offensive. Were men offended at Him? Yes, and they hung Him on the cross. But He died for their salvation anyway.

He still grieves for Judas. He had to reassure Himself in saying “that the Scripture might be fulfilled (John 17:12).” He didn’t want that part to be fulfilled. He argued it with His Father. “Yet not my will but thine be done (Luke 22:42).” We should look at the most repulsive human being and find the same regret. Why did you, O man, have to be like you are?

“While I was with them in the world, I kept them in thy name: those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition; that the scripture might be fulfilled.” (John 17:12)

Psalm 119:165 says because we love His Word, we should never be offended. It makes it a confession of belief. Philippians 1:10 in the Passion Translation echoes this. “This will enable you to choose the most excellent way of all—becoming pure and without offense until the unveiling of Christ.” We can live without taking offense or giving offense, so much as lies in us to do it, and need I remind you we have the HOLY Spirit.

We have taken upon ourselves God’s correction instead. It seems to be what we, Christ’s body, the church, are here for. No, we are here to show the love of God, to smile and laugh in the face of danger, to walk across the difficulties with confidence in God to take us to the other side. We are here to GO YE INTO ALL THE WORLD, not huddle inside the church. We GATHER TOGETHER for encouragement, for instruction, then we GO OUT and become salt and light upon the earth. Where there is darkness, we enter and shine truth. In our actions, with our words when Spirit directed, but never out of our mind and self-will. In ourselves, we are nothing.

In Himself, Jesus was nothing. If He had relied upon His flesh, He wouldn’t have gone to the cross. But He knew who He was. He knew it when questioned by Satan. He quoted the Word because He is the Word. He turned Satan’s eyes toward God as Ruler of the earth, because He is God, Ruler of the earth. Satan stood Him on the temple in a vision (and Satan gave the vision), and Jesus knew He was the temple, the sacrifice on the altar, the glory of God within it, and the One who’d come to fulfill it.

“Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?” (1 Corinthians 3:16)

We must know who we are in Him and what He has given us to do. The church MUST MUST MUST give an altar call, and I’m talking the old-fashioned kind. We must ask people to come forward and have hands laid upon them. We must speak to them in that moment about being filled with the Spirit and being equipped for their new life. We must lay hands on the sick and speak faith. Whether we “feel something” or not is immaterial. The Word says when we lay hands on the sick, they will recover.

Signs and wonders, miracles ARE PEOPLE, not events. We are praying for people to be rescued and delivered. We must be willing to slug the devil fathead in the face and not whisper a prayer via text and evaporate on those seeking deliverance. Jesus healed them all. Thousands huddled around Him in the middle of nowhere, and He fed them all with leftovers. They crowded around Him at the seaside, and He preached to them from a fisherman’s boat. He crossed the lake during a terrific storm in order to deliver a demon-possessed man who the devil couldn’t kill. The demons killed the pigs. They wanted to kill the man, but seeing Christ, he fell at His feet.

Our image reflected in the jacinth tiles of heaven’s throne room needs to look just like Jesus, the Alpha and Omega whose presence occupies us all, and when it does, then He will return. There is the light we’ve been looking for. It’s within us, and when it’s shining fully from us, He will claim His bride. There will be no spot or wrinkle left among her, not from the least of us to the greatest, who only got to that position by their own sacrifice.

Less of me, Lord, and more of you. Less of this old flesh and this selfish mind, and all of who you are, so that this world will no longer be at the whim of the devil but held captive, safe, in the wind of the church.

“All that he does in us is designed to make us a mature church for his pleasure, until we become a source of praise to him—glorious and radiant, beautiful and holy, without fault or flaw.” (Ephesians 5:27)

“He told us that you love all God’s people because God’s Spirit has empowered you to love God and others.” (Colossians 1:8 UDB)

Image by Betidraws from Pixabay


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Suzanne D. Williams, Author
www.suzannedwilliams.com
www.feelgoodromance.com