We read about kings that they were able to celebrate for months, Ahazuerus had a half a year celebration. For that you need a kingdom resource, kingdom culture, otherwise people get exhausted after a week. Nehemiah once feared for his life, because the king noticed he was “sour”, whereas no man, especially the cup bearer could be sour before the king. Why would king want depression carriers? He’d rather have joyful people next to himself and celebrate.
I think our Lord God also likes strong people around Him, not those whom He should serve, but those who serve Him. Think about this, whom would you choose for yourself, those who always demand service, because of the past or out of duty? Or those who are with you because of love?
I think a great part of love is when you are loved, perhaps, women know this better. That is, a person is ready to love, if he/she is loved. Most of cases a woman is happy when she is loved. This is an interesting arrangement.
This is why the Lord begins to build our faith with Him saying, “I love you”. He begins with proving our love to us when we haven’t responded to His love yet. He does that so that we can build our love on His love; so that we don’t build on us first loving God. In many Scripture places the Lord says that He loved us before, He loved us first. Why? So that our love is built on His love and not ours. Because our love swings up and down, we may feel either good or bad, be faithful or unfaithful. The Lord’s love endures, it is permanent, it is like heaven that stretches far forth.
“The Lord has appeared from afar to me, saying:
“Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love;
Therefore with lovingkindness I have drawn you”. (Jer.31:3)
The Lord appeared from afar, that is He was coming to you from the very beginning, from the mother’s womb.
To say honestly I don’t know if all the people are chose from the mother’s womb. I actually see three types of election. First is so to say attained one, when man is chose because of what he did. Like it happened with Ester – she wasn’t chosen by Ahazuerus from the beginning, but she pleased him. After all the girls had been brought to the palace, there was a year of preparation, as you know, before they would stand before the king. And Ester asked for nothing, but demonstrated wisdom and meekness and sacred beauty. And he was out of himself, and it is written that he loved her. He was a very wise king, he wasn’t possessed by any passion. His former wife Vashti was incredibly beautiful, but he listened to his princes, not to her, he actually divorced her because of her behavior and then chose himself a wise wife.
Attained election. You serve God, and thus minimum you raise your election, increase its measure through your journey.
There’s also election from your birth, as Paul puts it, from the mother’s womb. When a child is born the election starts manifesting God’s marks on his life, His traces, His signs of the person being chosen.
And there’s also election from the beginning, from the eternity. This is what I see in the Bible. I won’t argue if someone says that all the saints were chosen from the beginning. But what I see is these three types of election encountered in the reality.
The Lord reveals His love first, and you build your love on His love. What does this mean? The Lord shows us His love so that we understand how to build, and then He begins to teach us, so that we may learn watching how He loves us.
Talking about the election, we also talk about partaking of the grace, co-working with the grace. The grace that is given to you for raising in the Kingdom, is meant for you to work.
Say a king, with all his riches and resources, falls in love with a simple girl, who has great potential, but is ignorant, uncultured, uneducated. How can he make her a queen, which would certainly be his intention? Only by demonstrating royal culture. He would demand of her, despite her character, her background, even love, to be the queen and act accordingly, before all the retinue and the people, because there’s responsibility – the Kingdom, whether you want it or not. There begins the process of building the kingdom and reconstruction of the personality into the Kingdom culture. We were taken as we were, and it doesn’t mean we are kings right there and then. We need to become kings. In Christ Jesus we became sanctified, forgiven and justified, but we have to become kings yet – this is our responsibility.
And the greatest way to instruct us how to become a king or a queen is to demonstrate His love, His Kingdom. And this is what He does. This is why upon Christ’s love we should build our own love. He demonstrates how He loves us, how He died for us first, how He came when we were still blind, we drove nails in His hands, but He kept going and demonstrating that His love is stronger. This love is powerful, it appeared to us from afar, and it is everlasting. He paved the way for us with His back – “the plowers plowed on My back” (Ps.129:3) , and we walked on it, He wrote us on His shoulders, that is our names are written by the wounds of Christ.
Therefore, the Lord is revealing His love to us, and we should build on it. This means we should learn to receive. Learn to receive and not to think high of ourselves, but watch ourselves and don’t get relaxed. I want to continue the race not dropping the speed. You know when champions begin to invest in their disciples, but they themselves retreat for a coach job. People used to see him running first, and the crowd would applaud him, but now he is pushing his disciple in the back and his success is now his too. I think this is cool, but not glorious. Champion must always remain champion. It doesn’t even mean first, but like Moses always remained Moses, Samuel always remained Samuel, David always was David, and so were the prophets who were tortured and killed. Do not quench the race, do not lower the bar.
We’ve come not to people in a big or small group, but we’ve come to the point where Eternity is sounding. And it doesn’t really matter who is around you, spiritual people or not really, what kind of environment it is, favorable or unfavorable – your responsibility in the Kingdom doesn’t change. Because He’s given you the grace! Therefore you can’t ascribe it to an unfavorable environment.
You are given the grace, this point in the eternity, this perimeter of the spiritual geo location, where we are called by God. And even if the voice sound not so clear at times, not so loud or distinct, it sounds with interference – doesn’t matter. This is still the point where the heavenly zoom is happening. And it’s important that you can’t escape things here.
And He first showed His love to us, and we receive it and continue. Often times thing around us are a reflection – we have what we sew. Therefore, be watchful, because some of your circumstances may be your reflection. This is serious. And we are on the journey, in this goodness to one another we are together like a pack of birds, we flap our wings and seek the best of God’s.