Cerrogrande

Good morning, friends,

Please take a moment to look at the picture. Follow the road. The path is not easy, is it? It winds around. It passes through rough terrain: mountains, trees, brush, a town.

Now if you are on this road what would your plan be? To me, it looks as if you could take a couple different paths. Look ahead in the picture to the beautiful mountains in the horizon…if you were on the road in the “front” of the picture, would you see all that is coming? Or, with the winding nature of this road would you be focused on what is DIRECTLY ahead?

Would you stop your car and say, “Forget it. Let’s go back. It’s too difficult.”? Look at all that you would miss. The sweet little town, the mountains ahead are all waiting just around the bend. You have to trust the Mapmaker to guide you as you wind and go.

Dear ones, God is asking us to focus directly on what is ahead for us. This picture helps us see that we cannot get this panoramic look over our whole path like this cameraman did. God is the only one who sees our life laid out before us. He has given us all we need for this day. Not tomorrow. Not looking back. Today. Rest in Him. Declare to Him the following words of Paul that resonate to the depths of my soul.

Philippians 3:
7But whatever former things I had that might have been gains to me, I have come to consider as [[a]one combined] loss for Christ’s sake.
8Yes, furthermore, I count everything as loss compared to the possession of the priceless privilege (the overwhelming preciousness, the surpassing worth, and supreme advantage) of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord and of progressively becoming more deeply and intimately acquainted with Him [of perceiving and recognizing and understanding Him more fully and clearly]. For His sake I have lost everything and consider it all to be mere rubbish (refuse, dregs), in order that I may win (gain) Christ (the Anointed One),
9And that I may [actually] be found and known as in Him, not having any [self-achieved] righteousness that can be called my own, based on my obedience to the Law’s demands (ritualistic uprightness and supposed right standing with God thus acquired), but possessing that [genuine righteousness] which comes through faith in Christ (the Anointed One), the [truly] right standing with God, which comes from God by [saving] faith.
10[For my determined purpose is] that I may know Him [that I may progressively become more deeply and intimately acquainted with Him, perceiving and recognizing and understanding the wonders of His Person more strongly and more clearly], and that I may in that same way come to know the power outflowing from His resurrection [[b]which it exerts over believers], and that I may so share His sufferings as to be continually transformed [in spirit into His likeness even] to His death, [in the hope]
11That if possible I may attain to the [[c]spiritual and moral] resurrection [that lifts me] out from among the dead [even while in the body].
12Not that I have now attained [this ideal], or have already been made perfect, but I press on to lay hold of (grasp) and make my own, that for which Christ Jesus (the Messiah) has laid hold of me and made me His own.
13I do not consider, brethren, that I have captured and made it my own [yet]; but one thing I do [it is my one aspiration]: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead,
14I press on toward the goal to win the [supreme and heavenly] prize to which God in Christ Jesus is calling us upward.

The Amplified Bible does such a beautiful job here with these verses. Do you consider your walk with the Lord to be “the overwhelming preciousness, the surpassing worth, and supreme advantage”?

Our busyness, our hurry, our worry takes our focus off what Paul considered the MOST important privilege “of progressively becoming more deeply and intimately acquainted with Him [of perceiving and recognizing and understanding Him more fully and clearly]”!

Jeremiah 9:
23Thus says the Lord: Let not the wise and skillful person glory and boast in his wisdom and skill; let not the mighty and powerful person glory and boast in his strength and power; let not the person who is rich [in physical gratification and earthly wealth] glory and boast in his [temporal satisfactions and earthly] riches; 24But let him who glories glory in this: that he understands and knows Me [personally and practically, directly discerning and recognizing My character], that I am the Lord, Who practices loving-kindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth, for in these things I delight, says the Lord.

Oh friends, glory in the knowledge that you understand Him. Our hardships are so hard yet what would happen if instead of worrying, wondering, hoping for the next thing to be solved, we GLORY in who the LORD was, is and is to come. If our focus was not so heavily on what if but oh WOW!

How Great Thou Art;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLLMzr3PFgk

Forget what lies behind, my friends, strain towards what lies ahead. Press on towards the goal…

Satan wishes us to become embroiled in the hardship of this temporary life and God longs for us to praise Him.

Look for His glory. Pray for His glory to be revealed in you. It will, friends. I am so confident of that prayer.

Come with me today, as we glory in Him. We say no to Satan and his minions and we say yes to the Lord and…

Ephesians 1:

17[For I always pray to] the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, that He may grant you a spirit of wisdom and revelation [of insight into mysteries and secrets] in the [deep and intimate] knowledge of Him,
18By having the eyes of your heart flooded with light, so that you can know and understand the hope to which He has called you, and how rich is His glorious inheritance in the saints (His set-apart ones),19And [so that you can know and understand] what is the immeasurable and unlimited and surpassing greatness of His power in and for us who believe, as demonstrated in the working of His mighty strength,http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ephesians+1&version=AMP

I’m sure I’ve shared this but it bears repeating:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlHqG00xCLA

Pray on. Press on.