Tuesday, May 26, 2009

60: The Pleasure's All His

This morning I was reading in Ephesians and ran across a verse that caught my attention.

(Actually, I was re-reading the same four verses over and over again, hoping for some level of comprehension amidst the sleep that was calling my name . . .)

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.
Ephesians 1:3-6 [emphasis mine]


(Let me digress for minute: We have no office or separate room in this house for our computer, therefore my blogging sessions are prone to a certain little girl's squeals as she rides her "daddy horsey" super fast through the house - which I love by the way. It's just not so conducive to producing fluid thoughts. I actually sat here with my fingers in my ears and re-read - AGAIN - those verses like five times to try to get my writing groove back. But a funny thing happened. The Word of God started seeping into me as I was forced to really, truly concentrate on it and not breeze through a familiar set of verses. As I read and soaked in the Word my heart was filled with pure joy at the reality I was reading . . .let me urge you to read and reread and see if the same doesn't occur to you!)

Anyway.

The phrase that leapt off the page was that God predestined (planned ahead, thought it through, mapped out) our adoption as His children through Christ according to his pleasure and will! Pleasure . . .Will.

Have you ever seen the Passion of the Christ or a similar reenactment of the crucifixion?

Pleasure . . .Will.

Christ willfully submitted to the horror of the cross in order to have the pleasure of calling us his brothers and sisters.

Really?

My human mind cannot wrap around that fact. That is so far above any sacrifice I could comprehend offering even for those I love the most, especially considering who Christ is and who we were when He died for us ("while we were still sinners [liars, cheats, gossips, addicts, selfish, prideful, disobedient, coveters, idol worshipers, greedy, gluttonous, delighting in evil, *ad nauseum*] Christ died for us . . ." Romans 5:8, brackets mine)

Let that truth soak into your spirit today. Christ's sacrifice for you was no accident.

It was his pleasure.

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