“Now may the God of peace —
who brought up from the dead our Lord Jesus,
The great Shepherd of the sheep,
and ratified an eternal covenant with his blood—
may he equip you with all you need for doing his will.
May he produce in you,
through the power of Jesus Christ,
every good thing that is pleasing to him.
All glory to him forever and ever! Amen.” – Hebrews 13:20-21
God reconciled mankind to Himself through Jesus’ blood, shed on the cross; paying the ransom for all the sin of everyone who would believe in Him and receive Him as their Life-Giver. This was God’s plan to bring us back to wholeness, through His Spirit... to draw us back to Him.
God is continually at work in us – redeeming and restoring us from all that the enemy means to harm us with. Since He’s at work, so are we… or should I say, so we should be. We must make the choice to join Him in what He’s up to. Will we trust Him with what we have to face each day?
On this faith journey, God desires to peel back the layers that have been blocking the Spirit from penetrating our heart – revealing to us what needs to be cut away, in order for His Spirit to fully operate in and through us. This is the work of a great Shepherd who leads His sheep to abundant life. Not just our life in eternity, but sacred living for the here-and-now. I think for many of us, we would agree that this process can be painful and unpleasant, but He knows that we need to walk through it to be fully dependant on Him. To trust Him fully with our entire lives – heart, soul, body. We often buck at the heart surgery He is wanting to perform on us…waiting for us to surrender to His ways…but this pathway is the mandate for equipping us to do His will. This is where our work comes into play. We have work to do as the Holy Spirit reveals to us what needs to go from our lives. This requires us listening, wrestling-out our questions with Him, and surrendering to His ways - letting go of our own. It’s a life-long process to becoming more and more like Christ.
Jesus commands our destiny - nothing can change that! But satan’s schemes don’t stop when our salvation is secured, and he works all power of hell and schemes through humanity to hinder us from doing God’s will. While we know in the end Jesus wins – we are currently in the battle. We have Kingdom work to do, and it begins with our time alone with God.
Let’s choose today to let God peel away another layer, trusting Him to equip us and produce in us all we need to do His will, every good thing that is pleasing to Him. Let’s bring glory to Him today!
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