Did you know that there are areas of real estate in your own community that contain something so valuable that all of the world's money, diamonds, gold, and every other precious mineral pale by comparison? What are these places? Your local cemeteries! They are the most wealthy places of all, because buried in graves are songs that were never sung, books that were never written, businesses that were never started, and encouraging words that were never spoken. All of those and countless other wonderful things that never became more than good intentions are now lying six feet under the ground.
Why does this happen? Why do so many people talk about doing great things, but end up taking the visions and dreams that God placed in their hearts to the grave? The answer is simple. They never found out why God put them on earth, and so their lives were mere shadows, having no real meaning. They did not succeed in fulfilling the purpose for which God created them, because only in His purpose is the secret to a successful life to be found.
What about the people who have written hit songs or best-selling books? Are they successful? Only if those things were done with God, because what the ungodly understand as success is not success at all. While it may be true that they pursued their dreams and accomplished some or all of their vision, whatever someone accomplishes outside of Christ is not in the will of God but is achieved by the arm of carnal flesh. Such efforts are the abuse of their own beings: the abnormal use or abuse of God's original intent for the gifts and talents that He placed in them for His purposes and for His good pleasure.
The truth is without God we can do nothing! The sooner we realize this, the sooner we can begin accomplishing God's purpose for creating us. Only then can we truly be fulfilled: only then can we live genuinely successful lives. For our dreams and visions can only be fully understood and truly realized within the context and fulfillment of God's vision for us. In other words, it is only by fulfilling God's will that we can be fulfilled.
Now it is of the utmost importance to know that whenever we commit ourselves to God for the fulfillment of His will we will experience resistance, including the attacks of the enemy sent to abort God's will for our lives. I use the word "abort" quite deliberately here. Abortion is an inflammatory term, one that stirs the emotions. Indeed, many in the Church and in secular society view the abortion of an unborn child as a great evil. Many others view abortion as a bad thing at worst, but because they do not know God they do not understand why He views abortion as one of the Seven Abominations (see Proverbs 6:16-19).
I admit that even after I had become a Christian I had it all backwards, until the Holy Spirit taught me otherwise. It all came about when I began wondering why I did not feel more strongly about the abortion issue than I did. As I sought the Lord concerning my obvious lack of empathy for the babies being aborted, I was shown something that would forever change the way I felt about them. I was focusing on how bad the aborting of little babies was, while totally missing the bigger picture: the fact that human life is much more than the body.
We are spirit, soul, and body, in that order. Consequently, our true selves are not based on our physical bodies, but on the inward man of the heart. In other words, there is much more to natural birth than a cuddly little baby being brought into the world. For even as a jeweler places a valuable diamond ring into a comparatively inexpensive little box, God places us in physical bodies. Therefore, while the suffering a baby experiences being murdered in the womb is a great tragedy, the greatest tragedy of abortion is that the baby's spirit and soul are never given the opportunity to develop as God intended.
This last point is missed by most people, because they base their emphasis in life on their physical bodies, whether on supplying its wants and cravings, or on dressing it, or on projecting some sort of image with it. Please do not misunderstand me on this: the maintenance of our bodies is indeed important for the fulfillment of God's plan for our lives, and He will provide all that is required and more to those who will trust in Him. Even so, He never intends for our bodies to be our primary focus. In fact, this is where most folks find themselves being drawn further away from Him.
God, knowing so well our backwards way of thinking, calls us to repentance through the prophet Isaiah, "Seek ye the LORD while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near: Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the LORD, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD." (Isaiah 55:6-8)
The way God thinks is not the way we think, and God wants us to repent, to turn around, and see things from His point of view. During His earthly ministry, the Lord Jesus often pointed out the backwards thinking of humanity, and in the following passage, the Lord instructs us regarding the basic care of the body and of the soul:
"Therefore take no thought [do not worry], saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. " (Matthew 6:31-33)
This is certainly not the way career-minded people function in today's world where the pursuit of food, clothing, shelter, wealth, and social standing come well before the pursuit of godliness. Observe however that none of this should be construed as saying that God does not care about our physical well-being. After all, He designed the human body, and the scripture declares that God gives us richly all things to enjoy (see 1Timothy 6:17). However, all things belong in their proper place and perspective, and this next verse states quite succinctly God's order of thought regarding prosperity and health: "Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth." (III John 1:2)
In other words, the health and prosperity of the soul is the principal thing, and God's number one desire for us is that we prosper and be in health, as our souls prosper. Therefore, if our concentration is on our fleshly bodies to the neglect of our souls, then we are serving the creature more than its Creator. We have been living our lives backwards. Success or prosperity as God defines it can never come from this.
In order to be truly successful, we must know what manner of being we truly are. The spirit comes first, the soul next, and the body last. When we are born again, God recreates our spirits in His image. The next order of business is the remaking of our souls. This is where the will of God is to be fulfilled in us, and because of this, the soul is where the enemy focuses his attacks. Even as there are abortion clinics working round the clock to terminate the lives of countless thousands of God's young ones, there are even greater attacks being waged against God's people specifically for the purpose of aborting the gifts that He has placed in each of us for the fulfillment of His will while we are here on the earth. This may be surprising, but it is nonetheless true: the vast majority of abortions that assail humanity on a daily basis are not being performed with a scalpel. They are actually being performed with something much sharper: the wagging tongues of ungodly people! For it is by lying words that the gifts and callings of God are aborted in the lives of people.
What are some of these lying words? Consider what the enemies of God said to those who were reviving the wall of Jerusalem in obedience to the great calling of God that He had put into the heart of his servant Nehemiah (see Nehemiah 2:12): "But it came to pass, that when Sanballat heard that we builded the wall, he was wroth, and took great indignation, and mocked the Jews. And he spake before his brethren and the army of Samaria, and said, What do these feeble Jews? will they fortify themselves? will they sacrifice? will they make an end in a day? will they revive the stones out of the heaps of the rubbish which are burned? Now Tobiah the Ammonite was by him, and he said, Even that which they build, if a fox go up, he shall even break down their stone wall." (Nehemiah 4:1-3)
Observe the import of the lying words of the enemies of God: "The thing is too great for you!" they said. Nehemiah and those with him were small and despised in the eyes of their enemies. What is not so evident is this: because God was with Nehemiah and the builders, their enemies were actually saying that the thing was too great for God. Hence, God was small and despised in their eyes; all of their words of condemnation applied directly to the Lord. As the scripture says, "For even Christ pleased not himself; but, as it is written, The reproaches of them that reproached thee fell on me." (Romans 15:3)
What does this scripture mean, "The reproaches of them that reproached thee fell on me"? The Lord is saying that when someone persecutes any of the children of God, they are actually persecuting God Himself! He takes it personally, because the Lord identifies His people as Himself. This principle is also seen in the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats. "And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." (Matthew 25:40)
Saul of Tarsus (later to be known as the Apostle Paul) was dramatically confronted with this truth prior to his conversion: "And Saul, yet breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord, went unto the high priest, And desired of him letters to Damascus to the synagogues, that if he found any of this way, whether they were men or women, he might bring them bound unto Jerusalem. And as he journeyed, he came near Damascus: and suddenly there shined round about him a light from heaven: And he fell to the earth, and heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? And he said, Who art thou, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest: it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks." (Acts 9:1-5)
Saul was going about to arrest and imprison the disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ, or so Saul thought. The Lord tells Saul that he was in actuality persecuting the Lord Himself!
In the Book of Isaiah, we find this wondrous declaration the Lord made concerning His people: "Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands." (Isaiah 49:16) The Lord engraved us on the palms of His hands, and because we are, Jesus gave us the following promise: "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand." (John 10:27-29)
Many, many times in Scripture we find God saying, "Fear not, for I am with thee." To those who are being cut down and despised by others or by their own old nature in lying attempts to prevent them from fulfilling the high calling of God, God's answer to Gideon will suffice: "And the LORD looked upon him, and said, Go in this thy might, and thou shalt save Israel from the hand of the Midianites: have not I sent thee? And he said unto him, Oh my Lord, wherewith shall I save Israel? behold, my family is poor in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father's house. And the LORD said unto him, Surely I will be with thee, and thou shalt smite the Midianites as one man." (Judges 6:14-16)
We need to realize this great truth and live within the realization that the Lord will never leave us nor forsake us. Therefore, we too can declare in the words of the Apostle Paul, "For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 8:38-39)
To be continued....