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 bold, bright and
beautiful. Therefore, your current state-of-being or situation does not
define you or your life. More significant is the revelation and
manifestation of the true image AND
LIKENESS of God that He designed, destined, deposited and designated as
“YOU.” (Genesis 1:26-27) My friend, 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 shapes and sparks your very
existence. This is something that is 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 about the statue. Nevertheless,
while the heavy statue was being removed, the crane cable snapped and the
statue fell forcibly to the ground. The severe impact caused the exterior
concrete to crack. Nevertheless, 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 those people were killed, their golden secret
died with them and remained undetected for hundreds of years. Uncanny!
Consider this: 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.” Practical application?
YOU will have to look ‘underneath’ your present condition and
circumstance (with spiritual discernment) 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
For you see your calling, brethren, that not many wise
according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called.
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; 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, that no flesh should glory in His presence.
So don’t be surprised if something ‘breaks’ in and around
your life, so that your divine purpose and ultimate beauty can be revealed out
of the depths of your cracked and broken vessel. Look underneath and
live.
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. All my stuff is gone. My friends have abandoned
me. My health is disastrous. My
body is covered with oozing sores and I feel sure that I’m dying. And in
the middle of all this misery, my wife seems to be losing her mind and
abandoning her faith. 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 was empowered to SEE something else. And so, he challenged himself
to SAY something else. And his subsequent RESULTS were something else! (Job 42:10-16) IF
YOU CAN SEE IT…YOU CAN BE IT! Stay
tuned…more to come tomorrow.
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