Now that we believe Jesus is Lord, we don’t fit in the world anymore, so where do we fit?
In the last many months, on and off, i’ve been in a discussion of being indifferent versus having excessive compassion? Many times i was pegging the meter because I was indifferent, and felt guilty about being indifferent, and wondered why I didn’t feel bad because I didn’t feel bad about being indifferent? Other times i was pegging the meter in destructive compassion because I knew God was compassionate and I should be compassionate also, but I couldn’t help but become a real mush brain, getting sucked into the downward vortex of being sympathetic instead of empathetic.
Finding the middle ground on that was completely a work of the Lord. Not being indifferent, while not being angry, and not being excessively compassionate at the same time is all entirely a God thing. When I brought up the initial topic of indifference versus being compassionate to my own deprivation, I think the, metaphorical wheels on my airplane were clipping the tops of the trees, with the wingtips occasionally scraping the ground. If i wasn’t flying too high nearly passing out from lack of oxygen, i was flying too low nearing a crash moment, but thank you Jesus it didn’t happen and the Lord leveled me out soon enough.
I guess the parachute in that whole dilemma was me coming to grips with… Where am I in all of this, not where are other people in all of this, but where am i? …and learning to not be angry or indifferent with the rest of the world because of all the things their relationship with God is Not. The Lord reminded me again, after reminding me again, after reminding me again that there will always be a long line of irritating people with the wrong view of just about everything, but I don’t have to keep standing there agonizing with them over the torment and woe they’ve generated for themselves, or unwittingly bought into.
I am reminded of the story a friend of mine named Wilson told me about when he was in prison many years ago. He said he gave his life to the Lord and suddenly woke up to see the long line of people always wanting to either get him in trouble, getting him into fights, or wanted to sell him drugs. He said he cried out to God and asked over and over, Lord please remove from in front of me the long line of difficult people. He said one especially distressful day, the Lord said to him very plainly, Wilson, there will always be a long line of those kind of people, but you don’t have to keep standing there. Oh.
If we don’t fit with the world, and the Lord has called us out of religion and church-ianity, where do we fit? In the past, i’ve been burdened day and night in weeping prayer asking the Lord where I fit? His reply to me was simple… “You fit with me and I will make you fit where you need to be fitted.”
Consider the time after the Lord came to heal the sick and made salvation available to all who would believe. At the end of things, God will have given plenty of time for the world to prove to itself we will never possess righteousness through evolution and that God is the only One who decides when the end of a season is over and a new one starts. We are right on the tipping point of a big transition as written about in the Bible. Isaiah61 and in Rev19 are two passages which run parallel to each other, both referring to the bride who is making herself ready.
Imagine, right now we are in God´s fitting room trying on our wedding garments, and we’re starting to get the idea, this is no ordinary fitting room.
We don’t get to choose our own wedding apparel, that is the Lord’s doing. Isaiah61:10, “For He has clothed me with garments of salvation, He has wrapped me with a robe of righteousness”. The world’s way of fitting the wedding attire is to cut or let out some material to fit the body of the bride. The Lord´s way is to fit the body of the bride to the one and only wedding garment, the righteousness of Jesus as opposed to the self-righteousness of man. Some of us are too fat, so He dresses us down, adding frailty, and some of us are too thin, so He builds us up, adding strength, so that we all come to the right size, personally and collectively, as a body. Righteousness is the size of the wedding apparel, and it only comes in one size.
This refers to one purpose, among many, concerning sanctification as steps to maturity. Look at this from another direction …in Revelation the Lord is both Lion of Judah and the Lamb without stain who is the only one able to open the scroll. Some of us are lions transformed into lambs like Peter, and others, are like Gideon, lambs who God transforms into lions. The Lord knows exactly how to fit us into righteousness, He knows exactly what we need that He might present the church to Himself in majestic brightness, without spot, wrinkle or even a smudge, that we would be holy and without blemish, just as it’s written in Eph5:27. There is how we fit.
Along with other references to God’s party and marriage invitation in the Gospels, the Lord also has something to say to the guests trying to crash the party without the proper attire…. the door is shut to them because of the refusal to submit to His will and values.
What do you think?