"What Do You See?"

We all remember the story of the man in the Bible who was taken to see Jesus in Mark 8 vs. 22-26. When he met with Jesus, he was led out of the town by the Master. At the outskirts of the town, Jesus spat on his eyes and laid his eyes on the man. He then asked him if he could see anything. The man then gave the famous answer of "I see men as tress, walking." Jesus laid hands on the man again and his sight was fully restored.

There are quite a few things in that passage. The first was that for most people when Jesus met them they got healed immediately or delivered instantaneously. Yet here was a man who was walking with Jesus in the full glare of people and yet wasn't healed. Walking with Jesus doesn't guarantee that all will be fine and dandy. Anyone who says that is a liar. We will have our own share of troubles.


The second thing was that when Jesus asked the man if he could see, the man had a choice of trying to gloss things over or be pessimistic. He could have complained that he wasn't seeing well. We don't know how long he was blind or what caused it. However we do know he had an expectation of Jesus which was why he came to him. He could have expressed disappointment at the fact that he couldn't see well. "Is that all you can do?" might have been a valid question. But there are two things here. The man acknowledged that he could see but he also made it known all was not well yet. 


While we wait on God for something, the situation might not change at once. The change might be incremental. But we need to stop and thank God for the incremental changes even as we keep trusting and asking him for the total deliverance we are looking for.

 

What Does God Call You?

I have been thinking about the name that God calls us. We all have names that we were given by our parents at birth or we have names that we answer to that were given to us by other people. But there is a name that God calls us by because it has to do with our purpose.

God has called each one of us to do exploit for him. When we think of exploits, we think of something big and great. But I would like to think that exploits have to do with making the name of God known and great. If we think of people in the Bible whom God used to do exploits, there is a particular name which we associate with them. I believe that is the name God has called them. If we say Jesus, we think Saviour. If we say Moses, we think Deliverer. If we say Jeremiah, we think Prophet.

I believe that we all have a name that God has called us even before we were born. That is the name that fits us even more than the name we go by or are known by among our family and friends. We all need to find the purpose for which we are created. The purpose will determine the name that God knows us by. It's not enough to glide through life. To live a full life, we need to know why we are here and live the life passionately.

God's Riches At Christ's Expense (GRACE)

It's quite interesting that the Bible says that: "O taste and see that the Lord is good." Ps. 34:8. It also says that "the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance?" Rom 2:4. But it's quite interesting that even though the Bible says that God is good, quite a lot of people, including me, came to Christ after being "threatened" by God's wrath. We were asked to repent or face damnation if we did not turn our lives over to Christ.

Even Jesus testified about about the goodness of God. Someone walked up to Jesus and called Him good. Jesus asked why the man was calling him good and that there was none good except God! That's quite interesting. Even Jesus the sinless sacrifice acknowledged that only God was good. Then where did we get the idea that God was some angry being out for us?

I think there is a lot of truth in the statement that quite a lot of us had father's that we felt were not good or loving enough and we projected those angry and ambivalent feelings that we had toward our earthly fathers at God. For some of us who grew up in Orthodox churches, this is especially true. And the people who revealed God and Christ to us also had this same problem. Which is why we have never fully understood the topic of God's grace. We have been vaccilating between grace and the law because we just couldn't believe in a God who loved us so much and yet there was nothing we could do to earn his love. Many of us knew our father's and some of us know the things we did or tried to do in other to please our fathers. And in the end, we were always dissappointed when we came up short because we just couldn't match up to their expectation of us.

God is not like us. There is nothing we can do to win his love. He loved us even before we came to him and he will continue to love us, no matter what we do. That is a hard concept for us to grasp. In future posts, I hope to share what I have discovered about the grace of God and his love for us.


(JC Cruz is the author of DECEPTIO out now from WestBow Press. (http://www.westbowpress.com/). You can follow him on Twitter at @Cruz_JCReal)