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 (and will not) define your life. Most
significant is the revelation and manifestation of the true image of God that
He has 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, 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
the enemy onslaught. Since all of those 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) to discover all that GOD has created. I love what the Word
reveals about God’s propensity to use unimpressive ‘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 whenever something ‘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, that 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 therefore, he challenged himself to SAY something else. And indeed,
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!
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