a couple percolating themes i was pondering this morning:
1.manifestation. my desire is to see the holy spirit manifest in greater and more tangible ways in my life. i want to see him effectively and consistently express himself in, through and around me. i’ve been thinking about how spiritual beings, whether holy or evil, manifest through humans according to our worship, and thinking about the specifics of how we facilitate these manifestations. i’ve been looking at experiences in my life and the difference between manifestations of light and dark that have moved through me. the next step from there is possession, and the difference between the way evil forces take possession and holy forces.. more on this later i suppose..
2. running. paul of tarsus wrote about this concept to the body of believers in corinth (see 1cor,ch9, v24-27) . what interests me is a statement he made about “running to win”, or “running to obtain” the spiritual reward, jesus. somehow i think there is a sharper edge of this being worked into me. the couple times now when i have trained and finished marathons, i really only trained and ran them to finish, not to win. there was a core element to my training and my goals that was only about finishing, and not about winning. in my life there has been a general pattern of settling for mediocrity. i did finish the races i entered (and that barely), but i don’t think the reward was as satisfying as it could have been, if i had aimed to win. even by aiming to win, no matter the outcome, i would have finished better. i can also look at other life experiences and see this pattern.. selah. perhaps part of the issue for me, at least in training for marathons, was my gut knowing that the reward wasn’t worth the sacrifice (not that i didn’t enjoy the marathon experiences, because i did, and i learned from them about other things like perseverance, the stretching of personal limits, and the enjoyment of friendships, etc). in many arenas of life, the rewards are, as paul said, just plain “corruptible”. it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do them well, but it sure does seem like a ‘spinning of wheels’ at times.. simply put, the spiritual reward is extremely worth it. it is “incorruptible”. God help me to overcome my obstacles to abandonment, and run the course that you have for me, aiming to win. i’d like to be able to say as paul said “i’ve dumped it all in the trash so i can win jesus”.