So my mason jar analogy is really a depiction of the Gospel message. The Gospel is the really good news that the connection between mankind and God has been restored. Now at first glance you may be thinking, “right, I got it… someday when we die we can go to heaven…great message but not relevant to my current state of affairs.”
Quite honestly, for reasons I won’t go into, this has been the full extent of belief for much of Christianity the last couple of thousand years. So I acknowledge your position and understand where it came from but that is simply not the complete truth.
The only thing that happened was our opportunity to connect was restored. If we have accepted Jesus as Lord and Savior we have only believed the first shipment so to speak of God’s Grace. Why would God restore a relationship conduit if it were only for a one time deal? If that was the total event then why don’t we go straight to GO and collect our 100 dollars of heaven so to speak?
This is the rest of the really good news we haven’t paid enough attention to. The lid is off! By design we are constantly pursuing being full. And as we have looked at we have to overflow when we get too much of anything. The restoration allowed us for the first time since the fall of mankind to receive what God has meant for us to become the state of… all along.
Salvation is only the beginning. The Bible says we have been given according to His Devine power all things that pertain to life and being Godly through the knowledge of Him who called us to this Glory and virtue. In other words our access has been made possible by our knowing Jesus and accepting Him as savior. Then the real kicker… whereby are given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that by these promises you might be partakers of the Devine Nature, because you will have proven to have escaped the corruption that exist in the world because it operates by lusting.
Translation: Our access is a done deal. Because of it we receive God’s Devine nature or His God like supernatural productive life through knowledge of Jesus, who by now you should know is actually the Word of God, remember the lid, the word made flesh, you know… so we receive by knowledge of God’s word which gives us “promises”… that is plural promises not just heaven someday! It was the promise of salvation that you believed when you call Jesus Lord. Now we know there are many promises available in God’s Word. We can have more! And here is the really cool finish, we received eternal life by a promise but the substance (faith) of this current state of being (belief) is as a result of the out pouring of the Love of God. The last line here is saying our eternal life in Christ is a result of God’s Love filling us up, unlike the rest of the world which has nothing but the substance of lust to fill itself. Remember Love seeks for the purpose of reflecting back or expressing out its experience. God’s love is Life.
So our desire for fulfillment and propensity to overflow makes us the perfect tool for God to spread His love. The things we can get from God, those promises we talked about, are great and precious and available to every believer but the reason is so God’s love can manifest Life in an otherwise dead world. The Gospel serves His love not just our needs.
So I began this series of messages with this end in mind, only to tell you this last message is about a beginning. I have only one more blog to write. It is the one where I tell you details about this Prayer Works Ministry. I can hardly wait to tell you how wonderful and easy it can be to apply these 7 simple lessons to help you change your life and the lives of people you love. Be looking for that blog to come soon, until then may God bless you with fullness of LIFE as you study and seek His way, His truth and His Life…through His Word!
