Good Pleasure part 5
Here it is, the grand finale of this Rant series. Phillipians 2:13, "For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure." His good pleasure--for Him to be our God and for us to be His people... that loving relationship between heavenly Father and beloved Son in whom He is well pleased--translates to our good pleasure. He works in us. LOVE works in us. Both to give us the want to, and the ability to. Love empowers us to love. When you know and believe that you are loved, and when you receive and release that love, that's when you experience it. Letting what's inside come out is how we experience and enjoy what is inside. God's good pleasure becomes our good pleasure. Look at Acts 20:35, "I have shewed you all things, how that so labouring ye ought to support the weak, and to remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, It is more blessed to give than to receive." We experience what we've been given... by giving it away. We have been given a gift. The gift of God. The good fight of faith is laying hold of that gift that we've already been given. Believing that we have it. The fight is not trying to get something we think we don't have. The fight is believing we have what we've been given. It was God's good pleasure to give us the Kingdom. That already happened. Now we seek the Kingdom--not in terms of getting something we don't have, but in terms of exploring what we do have. We focus on the Kingdom, and on our place in the Kingdom, and as our identity AS the Kingdom, and in that way we live in, and out of, the Kingdom. We enjoy the Kingdom. The days of heaven on earth. Think about this: How good does it feel when someone you love is proud of you? That's the good stuff, man. That's the real thing. And that's how God feels about us. He is well pleased. He is happy with how things are going. And that doesn't mean everything is "perfect" in our idea of nothing ever going "wrong." It simply means He knows the end from the beginning. It means we can make slow and steady progress and still get where God wants us to go. In fact, it means we can mess up and still get where God wants us to go. The key is to see this bigger picture. To learn and grow. You can't learn from your mistakes if you never make any. And you learn more from failure than from success. Sometimes you have to crawl before you can walk. It takes time. Maturity is a process. And our heavenly Father is there for us (and with is) every step of the way. He cheers when we take those first steps, and He picks us up and dusts us off when we fall. Nothing can separate us from our heavenly Father's love. Nothing can take us out of that place of favor. We are the apple of His eye. His favorite. His love for us is so strong that He literally gave Himself to us. His Son. His Spirit. His love. His life. So that we could have it. So that we could experience it. So that we could enjoy it, by sharing it. God's good pleasure (what makes Him happy) is our good pleasure (US being happy). That flows from love. God loving us and us loving Him back by loving each other. Receiving and releasing the gift (of love) that we have been given!