Can You Imagine Being in the Mind and the Heart of the Lord?
Good Morning Friends,
Today we try to get our head around this idea of a new heaven and a new earth and I figure it is something like a dream of God contemplating and anticipating and planning what is going to happen in our lives. It is a sign and wonder that changes everything. Friends, those moments that God creates are absolutely marvelous but the re-creation even more so for that will change us in ways we cannot even comprehend. It is a love that helps us to remember the things we need to remember and forget the things we need to forget. Can you imagine the Lord dreaming beyond time and space and thinking about us in this way? Can You Imagine Being in the Mind and the Heart of the Lord?
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43Scripture: When the two days were over, he went from that place to Galilee 44(for Jesus himself had testified that a prophet has no honour in the prophet’s own country). 45When he came to Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him, since they had seen all that he had done in Jerusalem at the festival; for they too had gone to the festival.46 Then he came again to Cana in Galilee where he had changed the water into wine. Now there was a royal official whose son lay ill in Capernaum. 47When he heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went and begged him to come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death. 48Then Jesus said to him, ‘Unless you* see signs and wonders you will not believe.’ 49The official said to him, ‘Sir, come down before my little boy dies.’ 50Jesus said to him, ‘Go; your son will live.’ The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and started on his way. 51As he was going down, his slaves met him and told him that his child was alive. 52So he asked them the hour when he began to recover, and they said to him, ‘Yesterday at one in the afternoon the fever left him.’ 53The father realized that this was the hour when Jesus had said to him, ‘Your son will live.’ So he himself believed, along with his whole household. 54Now this was the second sign that Jesus did after coming from Judea to Galilee.
John 4:43-54 (NRSV)
17For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind.18 But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating; for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight.19 I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and delight in my people; no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it, or the cry of distress.20 No more shall there be in it an infant that lives but a few days, or an old person who does not live out a lifetime; for one who dies at a hundred years will be considered a youth, and one who falls short of a hundred will be considered accursed. 21 They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
Isaiah 65:17-21 (NRSV)
Message: I truly believe that if we want to change our lives, our futures, our families, our relationships, it is surely our daily habits that must change as a witness to the characteristics of true faith. The activities that fill our daily lives become habits and traditions and spill over for good or for bad. But there is a change that is divine enthusiasm that has little to do with what we do and everything to do with God inviting us to join a divine dream. I cannot explain it but somehow God gives us the courage through love to change so we can live a life abundant. He only asks us to have faith to let Him act with us in love. Anticipation of love here is important for it creates a change in us as the belief in us grows. No we really cannot explain this love… this renewal of everything that manifests God’s immense joy of the Jesus in us. It is so much like a waking dream that makes space for God’s love and for God’s power. It is not for the power of a person, but for the power of One who is in love with us and who wants to rejoice with us. This expansion of time and space filled with love is faith. This is believing. Here God changes us and others, and the world as we bear witness to Jesus and His expansive love.
Pray we let the joy in us be a witness of a changed life instilled with the strength of the Lord. Pray our hearts are made new. Pray we are in the mind, in the heart of the Lord. Pray God rejoice over us. Pray we believe. Pray we give God the space to change us…to transform us…to re-create us in the reality of a love that triumphs. Pray we rejoice for God is in love with us.
Blessings,
John Lawson
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