HAVE I SEEN HIM?

HAVE I SEEN HIM?

After that He appeared in another form unto two of them. Mark 16:12

Being saved and seeing Jesus are not the same thing. Many are partakers of God’s grace who have never seen Jesus. When once you have seen Jesus, you can never be the same, other things do not appeal as they used to do.

Always distinguish between what you see Jesus to be, and what He has done for you. If you only know what He has done for you, you have not a big enough God; but if you have had a vision of Jesus as He is, experiences can come and go, you will endure “as seeing Him Who is invisible.” The man blind from his birth did not know Who Jesus was until He appeared and revealed Himself to him.  Jesus appears to those for whom He has done something; but we cannot dictate when He will come. Suddenly at any turn He may come. “Now I see Him!”

Jesus must appear to your friend as well as to you, no one can see Jesus with your eyes. Severance takes place where one and not the other has seen Jesus. You cannot bring your friend unless God brings him. Have you seen Jesus? Then you will want others to see Him too. “And they went and told it unto the residue, neither believed they them.” You must tell, although they do not believe.

“O could I tell, ye surely would believe it!
O could I only say what I have seen!
How should I tell or how can ye receive it,
How, till He bringeth you where I have been?”

~Oswald Chambers

I want to SEE HIM!
Have I REALLY?
Wouldn’t I KNOW without a doubt, or does Wormwood encourage me to concentrate on the wrong thing here?
I think I have… but perhaps not!

When I recognize what He has done for me, doesn’t that show me WHO He is?

Maybe not.

crap.

I don’t want to get caught up, though, in focusing on whether or not I’ve seen Him!  I want to focus ON HIM!

This whole Christian life thing is rather tumultuous, isn’t it?  Here I am, looking at me again!  That’s exactly what I DON’T want!!!  How easily it begins!  I must pray.  Whether I’ve seen Him or not, I WANT TO!

The desire of my heart is to SEE MORE HIM, as FLAME says, “I wanna see more of Him ‘Cause I’m sick of more of me.”

©PortCityPrincess 2009
All Rights Reserved

Sneaky Stinkin’ Idols!

All right!  This is good!  This is GREAT!  The depression lasts for just a second, before I realize what God is doing with me!
I beg Him to strip me of my idols… He’s faithful to do so!
My political idols have been crushed to powder.
Who is Ron Paul or Chuck Baldwin compared to the Christ?
My patriotism is NOTHING anymore, for I am not of this world!
What is the Constitution when juxtaposed with the living Word of God!?!
Those are only a few of the more obvious, in-your-face (hind-sight being 20/20) idols that I have recently abandoned… happily, willingly, once reminded of Whose I am and of who I am in Him! (Qualifier:  Mind you, these revelations of my heart don’t mean I abandon responsibility.  Quite the contrary!  I am MORE passionate and zealous, because MUCH MORE than this nation and my children’s future is at stake!  The lordship of Jesus Christ is at stake!  This makes me MORE diligent in the political process!  Being a king and priest unto God doesn’t make me complacent!)

I digress.

Reading My Utmost for His Highest this morning, by Oswald Chambers, I find an accusing finger pointed right at me!

The test of spiritual concentration is bringing the imagination into captivity. Is your imagination looking on the face of an idol? Is the idol yourself? Your work? Your conception of what a worker should be? Your experience of salvation and sanctification? Then your imagination of God is starved, and when you are up against difficulties you have no power, you can only endure in darkness. If your imagination is starved, do not look back to your own experience; it is God Whom you need. Go right out of yourself, away from the face of your idols, away from everything that has been starving your imagination. Rouse yourself, take the gibe that Isaiah gave the people, and deliberately turn your imagination to God.

Doggone it!  But YAY!  I think that my EXPERIENCE and my CONCEPTIONS are blasted idols!  Woohoo!
Not woohoo that I have idols… but WOOHOO!  God has revealed them to me… so that He can get rid of them!

HUZZAH!  Isn’t it exciting and… INTIMATE?!?

I like what Oswald Chambers goes on to say:

One of the reasons of stultification in prayer is that there is no imagination, no power of putting ourselves deliberately before God. We have to learn how to be broken bread and poured out wine on the line of intercession more than on the line of personal contact. Imagination is the power God gives a saint to posit himself out of himself into relationships he never was in.

Am I weird?  Perhaps.  But I am a child of the King.  I am an EXCITED child of the King…
I’ve been focusing so much, lately on these EXPERIENCES or lack of, or slowness of them…
BLAST IT!
My imagination is starved!
Thank you, God, for using Oswald Chambers and Isaiah to shake me!

Woohoo!

♥

©PortCityPrincess 2009
All Rights Reserved