Blog In Audio:
Greetings,
Love inspires true hope and hope inspires faith. What is a proper perspective in finding our hope? Our hope cannot merely be in the things that God does or the promises that He makes to us. Our hope cannot be in beginnings and endings, since we don’t always know which we need in our lives. Our hope must be in the One who gives beginnings and endings. He is the one who really knows what we need?
Revelation 1:8 “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End,” says the Lord, “ who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.”
When we put our hope in God our hearts are clear to hear what He says to our hearts. When we lay down our preconceived ideas as to what He should do in our lives and we simply trust who He is in our lives, we hear Him clearly. When we hear Him in our hearts, we become inspired in our actions. Our actions become those of faith. Our worlds are changed through a partnership with His voice in our hearts that inspires the actions of our lives. This is the testimony foreshadowed in the history of God and the men and women of faith.
The kingdom of God is an internal force of love and life upon the human heart that is the testimony of intimacy with God in Christ. The administration of the law was an external influence upon the human soul and was limited to the instruction of words and the voice of a prophet. The administration of grace is an internal influence that brings about true change of the hearts and minds of men. It is not an administration of mere accountability to God. It’s an administration of intimate and powerful relationship with Him. It’s an unshakeable testimony of God in the human heart.
Hebrews 12:25 See that you do not refuse Him who speaks. For if they did not escape who refused Him who spoke on earth, much more shall we not escape if we turn away from Him who speaks from heaven, 26 whose voice then shook the earth; but now He has promised, saying, “Yet once more I shake not only the earth, but also heaven.” 27 Now this, “Yet once more,” indicates the removal of those things that are being shaken, as of things that are made, that the things which cannot be shaken may remain.
The voice of God within our hearts is a more sure voice than a covenant of remembering what He has said in the past or the discipline of keeping to rules that He has established for us to follow. The writer of Hebrews was admonishing the Jewish people to remember that they were meant to be Hebrew people, and it was time to know the intimate voice of God within their hearts that empowers children of God to be children of faith. This is the power of the kingdom of God for each and every one of us.
External things can be removed, but the internal realities of the kingdom of God in our hearts is enough to frame a world of love, hope, and faith in any environment we find ourselves in. The kingdom of God is not just a promise for us in heaven to come, but also for heaven coming into our world in increasing measures as we respond to the internal voice of the One who loves us in all things. We must let the shakable things be removed so we can become the unshakeable people empowered by His love. Faith is the foundation for that which cannot be shaken.
Hebrews 12:28 Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us have grace, by which we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear. 29 For our God is a consuming fire.
Faith is the foundation of lives established by knowing God’s love. Love is the unshakeable attribute of God’s kingdom that God desires for each of us to know. Reverence and godly fear is found in a revelation. God’s way in our lives is one of faith because God’s character is one of love. By faith we see Him, by faith we know Him, and by faith we love Him in all that we are and do. As leaders we must lead in faith, and we must lead for faith in those in our world.
Food For Thought,
Ted J. Hanson
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House of Bread Ministry
3210 Meridian St.
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