Recent blogs by my daughters about their families has stirred my thoughts toward such relationships. Few things visible on earth give a better example of the relationship one should have with God than that between children and their mothers. Even Dads cannot deny it. It is an envious position. So tied to her care and loving protection, the child has only to encounter a difficulty and she is the first thought, and that thought is obsessive in its magnitude, putting aside all other rational and attempts to calm and pacify. And on the other side, the loving mother will not fail to come to her child's aid, further affirming the child's obsessive trust.
Oswald Chambers, one I often refer to for his wisdom, relates, "The total being of our life inside and out is to be absolutely obsessed by the presence of God." He is our shield and protector against the unknowns of life. When we are threatened, He should be our first thought and cry. When we are in joy, His should be the first smile of affirmation that we seek. He is to be our magnificent obsession.
Another illustration I have often used to show our utter "protective custody" is found in imagining a solid rubber ball, in whose precise center a small dot is further imagined. In truth, that dot, which represents us, the totally surrounded by the equal and total presence of the ball. No outside influence may pierce to the center until it does so through the ball's mass. In the same way, being hid in Christ places us at the protected center of His care, and staying at the center is to be our obsessive lifestyle. Paul himself so stated it in this focus passage from Luke's recorded work, the book of Acts, chapter 17, verses 27-28: "That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after Him, and find Him, though He be not far from every one of us: For in Him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring." In his letter to the Colossian church Paul writes that our "life is hidden with Christ in God." (3:3)
In these lines of verse, I've seen it this way:
Oswald Chambers, one I often refer to for his wisdom, relates, "The total being of our life inside and out is to be absolutely obsessed by the presence of God." He is our shield and protector against the unknowns of life. When we are threatened, He should be our first thought and cry. When we are in joy, His should be the first smile of affirmation that we seek. He is to be our magnificent obsession.
Another illustration I have often used to show our utter "protective custody" is found in imagining a solid rubber ball, in whose precise center a small dot is further imagined. In truth, that dot, which represents us, the totally surrounded by the equal and total presence of the ball. No outside influence may pierce to the center until it does so through the ball's mass. In the same way, being hid in Christ places us at the protected center of His care, and staying at the center is to be our obsessive lifestyle. Paul himself so stated it in this focus passage from Luke's recorded work, the book of Acts, chapter 17, verses 27-28: "That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after Him, and find Him, though He be not far from every one of us: For in Him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring." In his letter to the Colossian church Paul writes that our "life is hidden with Christ in God." (3:3)
In these lines of verse, I've seen it this way:
Oh Lord, help me to seek Your face
With Presence felt through each day's race.
Help me to know 'mid joy or trial
Your Presence close in every mile.
When facing threat may my mind raise
To claim Your shield in my malaise,
And may in joy my first thought be
Your smile because I came to Thee.
Oh Lord, that I'd be Your possession
As I keep You my magnificent obsession.
Be encouraged, O child of God!
2 comments:
Thanks for being a great dad.
I like the words "magnificant obsession."
Hope you have a great weekend! Love ya!
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