FROM the previous posting:
IT is often said that we need the “big picture” if we are to have the right perspective on a thing, the right vision as to what is, was meant to be, and will be. One does not and cannot have the right perspective on Rom. 8:28 without the connecting “for” of Rom: 8:29: “For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren.”
IF we want to have the right perspective on Rom, 8:28 we need to know “what” it is God is doing in the working all things together for good. When we were little, the next word we learned to say after “no” was “why.” Curiosity is built into our DNA. Unrestrained, it’s what tripped up our first parents in that first temptation. Our children can be very effective in using the “why” technique to avoid doing a thing or question obedience. The question “why” wants to know the reason, the “how” a thing can happen or work; but sometimes the “how” is not all that easy to explain or understand. But sometimes knowing the Big Picture helps.
YEARS ago when I worked in the power plants of Southern California Edison, frequently a directive would come down from the Energy Control Center to take a particular action with one or more of our station’s generators, sometimes contrary to our local operating schedule or planning. Whenever we questioned one of these inconvenient directives – “why” – we were met with the aggravating words to just follow the direction, with the understanding that we “don’t have the big picture” regarding the System Requirements. That answer never settled well.
HOWEVER, I was privileged on one occasion to be allowed to visit the Energy Control Center. After traversing several layers of security, I entered an immense room with a huge circumventing map on the wall of glittering lights, connecting lines, and digital numbers. It was a mockup of the entire Western Electrical grid in real-time operation, from the Pacific Northwest to the Rockies Mountain States with all the interties and contractual exchanges going on and being balanced out between all the connected electrical utilities and power sources. I asked one of the Dispatchers where “my generating station” was located on the map? To which he point to a not insignificant, but still rather small block of flashing lights and numbers in a lower corner of the map. … When I got back the plant the next day I said to my crew of dedicated operators, “Gentlemen, there really is a ‘big picture,’ and I’ve seen it. Oh, my! We really are a part of something bigger than ourselves that is really quite hard to explain.”
IN Christ, “we have been made for transcendence, something bigger than ourselves.” (Paul David Tripp, Quest For More). As we saw in last weeks reading,
[God] is bringing into being Another, altogether other, and that is His Son, my new life. Slowly, seemingly all too slowly; nevertheless something is developing. The sonship is not very much in evidence yet, but it is going to be manifested. What God has been doing will come out into the light eventually- conformity to the image of His Son.”
Well, I’ve gone long today with my preface comments, so I’m going to forgo posting the next None But The Hungry Heart, and leave you instead with this applicable verse for your consideration and personal mediation:
“But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.” – 2Cor 3:18
IN lieu of Rom 8:28-29, 2Cor 3:18 defines what I call the “principle of assimilation” – what we focus on often determines who we are. The desires of our heart influence what we ultimately become. Give prayerful thought to this verse, because “Every day we are becoming the person we are going to be forever.”
In the inexorable riches of Christ,
Joe
Neh. 8:10; Isa 30:15; Job 2:10; Jas. 1:2; Prov. 21:30
********************
