the HERE and NOW

God wants to be a VERY PRESENT help in any time of trouble.  We tend to think of our salvation as the experience of first coming to Christ, and for our future blessing after we die.  But He wants us to know how NEAR and NOW His help is.  My husband and I were reading this morning from a book called How People Change, by Timothy Lane and Paul Tripp.  We were very blessed by the 3 pages we read today of chapter 1.  I love to quote people, so I must share this from the book:

"I am now a child of God, with all of the rights and privileges that this title  bestows.  This is important because each of us lives out of some form of identity replacement.  That is, if who I am in Christ does not shape the way I think about myself and the things I face, then I will live out of some other identity.

Often in our blindness, we take on our problems as identities.  While divorce, depression, and single parenthood are significant human experiences, they are not identities.  Our work is not our identity, though it is an important part of how God intends us to live.  For too many of us, our sense of identity is more rooted in our performance than it is in God's grace.  It is wonderful to be successful at what God has called you to do, but when you use your success to define who you are, you will always have a distorted perspective. 

Second, a 'here and now' gap in the gospel also causes us to be blind to God's provision.  As Peter states, in Christ we have been given 'everything we need for life and godliness.'  Why does he use two words here, both 'life' and 'godliness'?  The second word is meant to qualify the first.  If Peter had simply said that God has given us everything we need for life, it would b easy to add the word eternal before it.  This is how this passage is often interpreted.  We find it much easier to embrace the gospel's promise of life after death than we do its promise of life before death!  But when Peter says that God has given us everything we need for 'godliness,' we know that he is talking about life now.  Godliness is a God-honoring life from the time I come to Christ until the time I go home to be with him.

Peter is saying that we cannot live properly in the present unless we understand the provision God has made for us.  Many believers are blind to the fact that this provision runs deeper than the commands, principles, and promises of Scripute we normally associate with the pursuit of a godly life.  It is even more fundamental than the conviction of the Holy Spirit or our legal forgiveness.  God's provision for a godly life now is literally Christ Himself!  He has given us Himself so that we can be like him.  (See Galatians 2:20)

.....Without an awareness of Christ's presence, we tend to live anxiously.  We avoid hard things and are easily overwhelmed.  But a clear sense of identity and provision gives us hope and courage to face the struggles and temptations that come our way."


May we be so aware of His presence, that we truly can rejoice throughout every day!