IF YOU CAN SEE IT...YOU CAN BE IT! - Part II

IF YOU CAN SEE IT…YOU CAN BE IT! - Part II

Almighty God is the creative artist of your eternal existence.  His original portrait of you is exceedingly bright and beautiful.  Therefore, your current state-of-being or situation does not define your life.  More significant is the revelation and manifestation of the true image of God that He designed, destined, deposited and designated as “YOU.”  And if you can somehow manage to SEE IT…you can BE IT.  In a word, there is hidden treasure ‘buried’ inside of you.  No thrill in life exceeds the discovery of the divine intention that sparks and shapes your existence.  This is something I find absolutely extraordinary and fascinating about God.  He hides His greatest treasures in the least likely of places: within frail, fallible, human vessels of clay.

As I say so often, God is always up to something behind the scenes.  It reminds me of a story I heard in a seminary class on world religions.  Some years ago, a priceless statue called “The Golden Buddha” was discovered in the city of Bangkok, Thailand.  It had been hidden in plain sight (right under everyone’s nose) for centuries.  Ostensibly, it was a plain concrete statue of Buddha, supposedly standing guard over the town square.  No one paid any attention to it.  In fact, tourists discarded their soda cans there, and rested packages on it while changing their camera film to snap the next ‘big’ picture.

One day, a priest asked to relocate the statue to a temple in a rather obscure neighborhood of Bangkok.  His request was approved quickly, simply because no one cared at all about the statue.  Nevertheless, while the heavy statue was being removed by a crane, the cable snapped and it fell forcefully to the ground.  The impact caused the concrete exterior to crack.  What appeared to be tragedy morphed quickly into triumph.  The next morning, visible shafts of brilliant sunlight reflected off the gold that was hidden inside the crack. To everyone’s astonishment, inside that eight-foot tall statue was an awesome work of art, forged from the world’s largest single chunk of gold.  Years before this, Thai citizens were in danger of being overrun by enemies, so they melted down all their gold and created a statue of Buddha.  Then they covered the gold image with concrete and mud to hide its enormous value from their attackers.  Since all of these people were killed, their golden secret died with them and remained undetected for hundreds of years.  Uncanny!

who knows what GOD has hidden inside you?  It reminds me of the teachings of Paul, as recorded in II Corinthians 4:7.  “We have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us.”  Friend, you will have to look ‘underneath’ your present condition and circumstance (with spiritual discernment) in order to discover all that GOD has created.  I love what the Word reveals about God’s propensity to use ‘concrete vessels’ to bring forth pure gold.

I Corinthians 1:26-29 (KJV)

26 For you see your calling, brethren, that not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called. 27 But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty; 28 and the base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, 29 that no flesh should glory in His presence.

So don’t be surprised if something soon ‘breaks’ in and around your life, so that divine purpose and ultimate beauty can be revealed out of the depths of your cracked and broken vessel.  Look underneath.  

It bears repeating: LOOK UNDERNEATH!  There are precious deposits of gold hidden there!  If I may be permitted to paraphrase the words of Job: ‘I’m in a real tight situation right now.  My children are dead.  My stuff is gone.  My friends have abandoned me.  My health is gone; my body is covered with oozing sores and I feel like I’m dying.  And in the middle of all this misery, my wife seems to be losing her mind.  She’s telling me to curse the Creator and Lord of the Universe and just lay down to die.  Nevertheless…GOD KNOWS THE WAY THAT I TAKE.  And even in the midst of these decaying and dying circumstances…I KNOW THAT MY REDEEMER LIVES!  And deep down in my spirit I believe…when this is all over…I’M COMING OUT LIKE PURE GOLD!’  Job was surely aware of his circumstances, but he SAW something else.  And he challenged himself to SAY something else.  And his subsequent RESULTS were something else. (Job 42:10-16)  In other words: IF YOU CAN SEE IT…YOU CAN BE IT!

Sisters and brothers, be continually blessed, and please (above all else) MAKE SURE YOU ARE READY TO MEET OUR SOON COMING KING.  Maranatha!  Stay tuned…more to come tomorrow.