Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Imperfections Are Leading Us to Perfection

Last night I was praying fervently for God’s help with regards to our human frailties and failures and how they affect the people who are a daily part of our lives. My heart was broken and sorrowful over some things that currently stare so ugly in my face.

This morning, I casually picked up a few weeks old Intercessor newsletter that has been lying around my house. As I flipped through the pages, some words caught my attention and led me to go to the first page of the article those words belonged to. As I began to read, God began to speak through the words and reassure me that He had been listening to my every word last night and that, of course, He was still in control of all and would work things out according to His will and purpose.

[Before I go on, I would like to give credit where credit is due regarding the article from the newsletter. The Intercessor is published by Zerubbabel Press and the article I quote from was written by Norman Grubb. The article is called “Imperfection Points to Perfection” and is printed in The Intercessor newsletter Volume 25, No. 1. Zerubbabel Press has some of the newsletters online, but I don’t see this one on there yet. All Scriptures quoted are from the Concordant Translation.]

The article begins:

“Looking from heaven downwards rather than earth upwards, and realizing that God has always been nothing but the God of perfection, working all things after the counsel of His own will, we can see the whole problem of our chaotic world from a totally different point of view. The fact that God foreknew Satan’s and man’s disobedience and the resulting chaos, and had prepared the perfect remedy for it before it ever happened, gives us our key…but He only ever predestined One to feel the full weight of His wrath, His only begotten Son. For all mankind He had only one purpose, to restore them in His Son… and with them the whole fallen creation.”

Most definitely, God is operating all in accord with the counsel of His will. Let us not forget that

“In Him Whom our lot was cast also, being designated beforehand according to the purpose of the One Who is operating all in accord with the counsel of His will.” (Ephesians 1:11)

Neither this world nor our lives are out of the control of God’s hands and plans. No matter that it may seem that way to us.

“All, therefore, that happens to man in his present fallen condition has its own definite purpose—not of judgment, but of restoration…Imperfection in all forms is God’s finger pointing to perfection. It makes a tremendous difference to our outlook and actions when we realize this, for we learn to recognize that weakness, shortages, failures, disappointments, all that is short of the ideal, which are in God’s order for this age, are for one purpose only: as parables, as figures, as signposts, pointing to the hidden sufficiency…”

Every human situation of need with which we are faced is a voice from God saying to us: ‘That points to My fullness: that imperfection to My perfection: that need to My supply: that perplexity to My solution.’” The whole of life in its fallen state is a great finger-post pointing the way from the imperfect human to the perfect divine…Jesus incarnate, crucified, resurrected and ascended…has bridged the gulf: from heaven to earth and back from earth to heaven. The result is that God permits needs in our lives that He may now supply them in Christ…Needs, shortages, problems are summonses to faith. That is why they are God’s will. They are His necessary way of compelling us flesh-bound humans to recognize our earthly limitations, to be dissatisfied with them, to seek the way to transcend them, and to become agents of redemptive faith. There He stands just the other side of the barrier, beckoning us and saying, ‘I am the answer, I am the supply. I have come to you in Christ. Receive me in this situation’. For need is a shadow…”

on which the light of God shines upon.

Grubb goes on to say that the situation may or may not be changed, but that we must look at all situations with God’s eyesight. Of course, only God can grant us that sight. When He does,

“We see that in reality they are His situations, into which He has deliberately put us that He might be glorified in them. Therefore before we call, He is already answering, because HE Himself has instigated this actual situation with His answer all prepared. Our calling is His stirring of us to feel the need and recognize that here is a situation in which God is going to do something.”

Yes, He has already made the plans to do something way before we ever called upon Him to help us in our need.

“Our action then is to call on Him, in other words, to take the attitude of faith. Faith means that we turn our attention from the need to the Supplier who is already supplying that need, and who allowed the need because He intends to supply it to His glory. Therefore our calling on Him is our seeing Him and praising Him and confessing Him before men, and awaiting the manifestation of the supply.”

“Our trials are God’s trials, given us for a purpose, exactly suited to us. Our lacks are God’s lacks, our perplexities are God’s perplexities. Before the trials, God has already prepared the deliverance and sends us the trials that He may manifest Himself through them.”

“No trial has taken you except what is human. Now, faithful is God, Who will not be leaving you to be tried above what you are able, but, together with the trial, will be making the sequel also, to enable you to undergo it.” (1 Corinthians 10:13)

“The trial is to stimulate faith, and faith is seeing Him who is invisible. As we do this, in praise and expectation, He gives the answer. It may or may not be the kind of deliverance (or answer) we anticipate. But it will be what we can recognize and receive with joy as His answer, and to which we can testify. There need will have been wholly met by His supply in His way…”

Our faith is not about seeking the answer we desire and getting it. It is about trusting His answer even when it doesn’t make sense to us.

Towards the end of this very lengthy article Grubb summarizes with the following:

“Long before there was a condition of need God had completed His work of perfect creation. The fall and its consequences have been an apparently tragic interlude, but that was foreseen and provided for…”

“…with the precious blood of Christ, as of a flawless and unspotted lamb, foreknown, indeed, before the disruption of the world…” (1 Peter 1:19-20)

“Therefore; as we have already said, God has always had His fullness in readiness to replace our emptiness, His perfection our imperfections, His light our darkness, His life our death. He has always intended, planned and provided totally supply for every human need, and the supply has always been there. It is not that our need initiates the demand for its supply and must somehow call the attention of the Father to it and persuade Him to supply. No indeed HE initiated the needs so that we might find all our supply already there in His and our Christ!”

“Now my God shall be filling your every need in accord with His riches in glory in Christ Jesus. Now to our God and Father be glory for the eons! Amen!” (Philippians 4:19-20)

As I thought about my heart’s cry last night and God reassuringly speaking today, the following song came to mind that appropriately goes along with God speaking to us in all our circumstances.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZI2gOBvBHk

He’ll get our attention and He will prove He is enough…

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