Sharing God's Life

As I am moving through these first days and weeks of 2018, my prayer is that God will direct my thoughts and prayers in ways that will lead to the accomplishment of His purposes and the fulfillment of His will. I thank Him that He makes Himself available to us as the wisdom of God. I invite all of you to join with me in setting our minds and hearts to live these days to His honor and glory. Hour by hour may we treasure this time, worshiping Him, and seeking the revelations that He so freely gives. C.S. Elliot wrote, “In these days, may I not cease from exploration, for the end of all my exploring will be to arrive where I started, and know the place for the first time.”

Dallas Willard has written that it is worship that is the consumation of our love affair with God. Worship should fill our beings with joy and with awe of God. It takes us into intimacy with Him, into oneness of soul and spirit. God is everything we seek in one another, for we are created in His image. Earthly love is always incomplete. When we come face to face with God, our incompleteness will be healed forever.

John Eldredge wrote in his book, The Journey of Desire, that God has created a kingdom that is so rich in love that He should not be our all, but that others should be precious to us as well. He gives us the joy of community, of family and friends. George MacDonald his written that in heaven, the complete knowing, “the naked intimacy” that we enjoy with God, we shall enjoy with each other. It has been suggested that this is what is meant by “the communion of the saints.” The Grand Affair awaits us in the sea of God's love; joy, multiplied over and over.

Dallas Willard has written that, "God is simply one great inexhaustible and eternal experience of all that is good and true and beautiful and right." God lives a very interesting life, and He is the most joyous being in the universe! It is this life that He wants to share with us today.

James and I had three little children the summer that Mother became ill and was taken to the hospital. We had gone to Sunday School and church, and I had prepared Sunday dinner . After we had eaten, James said, “Honey, you go on down to the hospital and see about your mother. I'll clean up the kitchen and stay with the children.” I climbed into the car and started down McCart Street, thinking about how much I appreciated James' help; and I said aloud, “I'm so glad James Jackson chose me to share his life.”

Immediately, a thought came to me as clearly as if it had been spoken aloud, and I had no doubt as to the One Who had spoken it. “And I chose you to share MY LIFE!” I burst into tears of awe, of wonder, of joy, and of thanksgiving. The message I received that day is still relevant to my life and it is relevant to yours as well. God chose us to share His life!

As we share His life we express our deepest gifts, our creative nature; for in sharing His life we are released to be who we are. We all yearn to be fruitful, to do something of meaning and value. I know that I am happiest when I am doing what is me; and I think God blesses each of us with that opportunity now. In Romans 8, Paul writes of “God's glory being revealed in us.” (Romans 8:21).

No life will reach its full potential here. “The glorious freedom of the children of God” (Romans 8:21) is the freedom to one day be all that we are meant to be.