Coffee Shop Thoughts
I came to the local coffee shop to spend some time in planning our new series starting Sunday, “The Song of Solomon Series”, but I felt from the Lord I just needed to spend some time with Him first.
I have been studying though the book of Isaiah in my quiet times so I picked up there and the Lord showed me something awesome I’d love to share.
Last week we had a meeting at the new building to discuss where the
Lord is leading us spiritually this year and to do some brainstorming together. I told you how the Lord had impressed on me this theme for the year about priorities: aligning our lives to match His. The idea that when we make our list of priorities, He shouldn’t come first, then family, etc. God wants to be preeminent over every area of life. He doesn’t want a place, He wants a position. He wants to be Lord. Lord over your job, your family, your thoughts, over everything.
So we talked about instead of focusing on a huge list of things we could do to become the church, we looked at who He wants us to BE as the church, realizing that things to do as the church will come out automatically when we are allowing Him to make us BE the church.
So in Isaiah 61:10-11 I read today in the coffee house an awesome promise that relates to us allowing God to realign our lives to match His priorities and agendas instead of our own.
“I will greatly rejoice in the Lord; my soul shall exult in my God, for He has clothed me with the garments of salvation; he has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself like a priest with a beautiful headdress, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. For as the earth brings forth it’s sprouts, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to sprout up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to sprout up before all the nations. ”
- Isaiah 61:10-11
Do you see what He is saying. If we are believers, then He has planted salvation in our hearts. And if we just allow Him to be the Lord over every area of our lives and align our lives to match His priorities, then He will automatically cause the salvation He has planted in us to rise up not just for us to see or even those closest to us. But He says that if we as a church, a community of believers live like this, if this is who we are, then He will “cause righteousness and praise to sprout up before all the nations!”
If we “become” the church He has called us to be He will cause the salvation in us to sprout to those around us and they will see and praise God too!
What needs to change is you and me today to realign our lives to match up with God’s priorites? So that we become the church? So that we will see the salvation in us sprout up to imact our community an our world?
