Day 92 - The gift of humanity
Scripture focus: I'll give you a new heart, put a new spirit in you. I'll remove the stone heart from your body and replace it with a heart that's God-willed, not self-willed. I'll put my Spirit in you and make it possible for you to do what I tell you and live by my commands. Ezekiel 36:26-27 The Message
The news is not good. The economy stinks. The globe is warming. Brittany Spears lost custody of her kids. All our favorite stars are in rehab - which is good news, but the bad news is that they tend to leave rehab and hit the club scene. If the only voices we listen to each day are the commentators found on television screens, magazines and radio programs - we could end up feeling pretty bad about being human.
McManus disagrees. "In fact, it is a gift to be human. The Hebrew imagery is that we were created out of the breath of God. We're the products of a divine kiss. When Ezekiel the Hebrew prophet spoke of the change that was needed in the human heart, he simply said that God would take our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. In other words, all God is going to do is to make us once again truly human or maybe fully human. When we live beneath our humanity, we become inhumane. When we live genuinely human lives, we become translucent reflections of divinity. " Soul Cravings, Erwin McManus, entry 14, Destiny.
Oh, my friends, I so wish we could understand this concept all the way down to our tippy toes! God isn't interested in our vain attempts to act super-human so that we might please him! We already please him! He's already delighted with us!
What God desires from us is that we let Him have his way with us. He wants us to trust Him.
"The good news is that we don't have to become gods to become something worth loving, worth respecting, worth valuing. Don't let your shortcomings and flaws convince you that you need to become something other than human. Our brokenness is not proof that God could not or would not love us, but proof that what we need is the God who both created us and loves us. What our souls long to become is not something other than human, but to become beautifully human. " Soul Cravings, Erwin McManus, entry 14, Destiny.
Recommended reading: Deuteronomy 18, 19, 20 in the morning; Psalm 73 in the evening
No comments:
Post a Comment