Make every effort to know and experience Jesus.
Who is God? Whose am I? Who am I? Why am I here - what for? How am I to go about this life (if my life IS IN Christ?)
Becoming like the One I behold, the One (ironically, I am beholden to) the one I follow, the One whose disciple I am; dwelling on the One who indwells me, occupied with the One who occupies me, to be possessed by the One who possesses me, to be like the One I behold, adore, and abide in - it is mine to be like Jesus. Joining God in His working to confirm me to Him - adoring.
My life and its work will reflect the sincerity of my worship - my giving God His worth - proclaiming His value by working to believe, behold, and adore. It is not that good works produce sincere worship, it is that sincere worship, emanating from a humble spirit, will produce more and deeper humility, and in humility, we see God for who He is and what He has done (Matt 5:3).
Having beheld God, being taken with Him, in light of Him, I can now see others as better than myself (Phil 2:3-4) our eyes can now see the plight of the downtrodden, our heart aches for the wounded and marginalized, and our heart reaches out to comfort with the very same comfort we ourselves have received. (2Cor 1:3-4)
Why? Because we have beheld the glory of God in the face of Christ - that is, the Father of compassion, we have seen Him rightly, had our minds and hearts touched, and so we become inclined to go His way, in His manner - humbly, gently, respectfully (Matt 11; 1Pet 3). Not just to do what He did, but say it, do it, the way He did.
The work that God requires: Good works, doing the right thing, can soften the heart, it can open us up to God’s moving, but it is beholding, abiding in, dwelling on, being occupied with, possessed by, being discipled by… Jesus, that will massage the heart to a fervent life (John 1:1-5) and prompt the works that will bring Him glory. (Ro 12)
To behold Jesus is to see Him for who He is and marvel at the truth…
1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2He was with God in the beginning. 3Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. 5The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome a it.
The hard work is to behold, adore, and abide - to enter into the rest of Jesus and the grace of God (Heb 2;3). The ongoing work is to continually remove from the heart everything that my flesh would want to possess and place on that throne, and to put on the One your heart was actually designed to be possessed by and to possess - the One for Whom that seat was actually designed.
The work of the kingdom is not necessarily to do good works - though for those we are being created (Eph 2:8-10) - the work of the kingdom (and to be able to rightly do the good works God’s prepared for us) is to work to believe in Jesus, to behold Him, to adore him, to abide in Him - and to make him Lord. Then the good works come more naturally - our works that are truly born out of our righteousness and that righteousness acting itself out rightly, flowing from this truth: that the good works we do are out of this life of sincere worship. (Gal 5:22-23)
The work is in the believing - John 6:28
The work is in Seeking - Isaiah 55:6; 26:9; Proverbs 1:8; 2:1-5; 3:1,5-7, 9,11, 21
The work, in conjunction with our great and powerful Helper, the Holy Spirit, is fighting the flesh’s desires for the throne of the heart to be occupied by its desires. - Col 3:5-17; Ro 6:6,13; 1Co 6:18
The good works that follow are then an extension of our heart’s desire to please the object of our adoration - not me, but Him. - Isaiah 58
A changed life having beheld - Isaiah 6:1-9 - Isaiah saw God, and can only respond with two things: one Amandum and two here am I send me
1In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the train of his robe filled the temple. 2Above him were seraphim, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. 3And they were calling to one another:
“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.” 4At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke. 5“Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.” 6Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. 7With it he touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.” 8Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”
And God gladly said… 9He said, “Go
A changed heart calling out to other hearts to sincerely behold - So what Isaiah was called to write, and Isaiah 58, would’ve been a natural expression of his experience with God and would have written it from a position of understanding in an attempt to convince his brothers and sisters to be hold God and be changed
Isaiah 58:5 Was this the kind of fasting I have required…
5Is this the kind of fast I have chosen, only a day for people to humble themselves? Is it only for bowing one’s head like a reed and for lying in sackcloth and ashes? Is that what you call a fast, a day acceptable to the Lord?
Isaiah 58:6 Or is this the kind of fasting…
6“Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke,
Tell me what to do! We are so desirous to be told what good things we are to do, that we think it strange when we are told that the thing we must do first and foremost is not “to do”, but to believe, behold, adore, and make Lord. That the true work of God is to believe, behold, adore, and abide - granting Jesus access and authority in and over our heart (which, btw, IS the most difficult work of all - and even in this, we are not left alone - as Jesus has overcome this world and its trouble and granted us that victory - John 14:18; 16:33; 1Cor 15:50-58) and everything we are to do becomes more and more obvious and natural.
Here are some statements we have heard over the past couple of months:
what is in or on the heart will come out
we will say and do what we become who we behold,
we will be indwelled by the one we dwell on, occupied by the one with whom we are occupied - who we allow to occupy us, possessed by the one we are possessed with (John 14:23; Rev 3:20-21)
we will be like the one of whom we are a disciple - and we will naturally do what they do and will learn to do it the way they do it
The work of redeeming our imagination - and we are not alone in this great work! We have been graced with: God’s word, His presence - Holy Spirit, the grace of our imagination - redeeming our imagination in turning our minds and hearts toward Jesus.
Let us behold Him
Colossians 1:15-23
