MATED IN HEAVEN – Ron McGatlin
As my beautiful self-sacrificing God-loving wife approaches her 70th birthday this month she remains the most giving and personable child of God that I have ever known.
Yet she remains a great mystery to me.
After having not left her bedroom for over eight months now, she continues to provide for her own personal care without assistance from any doctors or nurses. She orders online and administers all the personal-needs materials that she must have. At the same time, she keeps me reminded of all the household and domestic family needs and tasks as well as my upcoming appointments.
Her phone, iPad, and TV are almost always on as she keeps up with hundreds of people to pray for their needs and personally encourage them. Phone calls are frequent from and to friends in addition to many cards mailed, and online messages sent or exchanged.
She orders most all our groceries and other needs online for delivery to our door every week. Her Christmas shopping is completed generally in the first half of November.
She makes friends forever and seemingly never forgets the details of her life with them. She knows how to comfort and stand with those in times of trouble and genuinely rejoice with them in times of joy.
All this and yet in almost constant prayer for me, my well-being, and my spiritual life’s work.
Truly Barbara possesses all the qualities that God did not put into my nature. She is social and relational to the core. While I am consumed in “deep Spiritual heaven and earth worldwide universal revelation, and strategies of godly wisdom and faith-filled power” to see Him change the world into the kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven. (Maybe there is a little something in that old saying about being so heavenly-minded that you are no earthly good?)
Perhaps her greatest gift is the ability to put up with my stumbling efforts to connect to the daily practice of real social and natural human life. Her ability to do this is probably among her greatest expressions of love and concern for the things of daily life in this world.
THE LOVE OF GOD IN CHRIST
It is only by the love of God in Christ Jesus that the entire Bride and Body of Christ on Earth fits all the parts together to magnify and glorify the God of heaven and earth in all Spirit and natural realms of creation!
It is truly Christ being fully formed in you and me that is the positive expectation (hope) of GLORY on Earth. (Colossians 1:26-27).
The devil’s biggest job is to disrupt or interrupt the connection and flow of the love relationship between God and His people on earth. Without the reality of the pure holy love flowing into the hearts and lives of His people there can never be the full expression of the Glory of God on earth.
Peace on earth is the flow of love of God in and through mankind for one another. The end of all death and lack or loss of faith and life are in the flow of the life order and design of God into and through mankind.
Wars are necessary to end unfruitful lives and restrain evil in people where love does not reign. Wars and strife among people can never bring the end of all wars. War is the love of God in action pressing rebellious mankind toward love ruling in their lives and the world.
The same God that loves righteousness destroys evil.
DEATH IS IN THE CROSS
Death and sickness do not belong in the perfect design of God. Strife between siblings and within or between families of God’s people is not the desire of God but it is used to press mankind toward the way of peace, the way of love.
Death and the cross or forever tied together.
Life and love are in the resurrection.
RESURRECTION is forever tied to LIFE and LOVE.
If we are still bearing the cross, we cannot yet receive our new glorified lives that are forever free from death and its weight upon our lives.
Now in this life, we are to take up the cross and follow Jesus through death into the resurrected life of Christ Jesus. We are not to continue dying at the cross. If we are still taking up the cross and bearing it, we are still only on our way to crucifixion.
There can only be resurrection after a death is completed. The cross is the complete death of the old and resurrection is the beginning of the new life in Christ now.
“I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.” Galatians 2:20.
LIFE NOW BEYOND THE CROSS
There is a time for reckoning in our hearts that which God has already provided.
“Likewise, you also, RECKON yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 6:11.
(Reckon means to “determine by a fixed basis,” “to take into consideration.”)
“Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. 7 For he who has died has been freed from sin. Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over Him. For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 6:6-11.
Let the work of the Cross the death for all our sinful life be completed in the resurrection into new life in God. Come to fully realize and fully determined completed crucifixion and now become fully alive in the new creation of life in Christ Jesus and His resurrected life now living in us!
THE GLORY OF CHRIST IN YOU
I pray for a greater revelation in all our hearts and lives of the mystery of “Christ in you the hope (positive expectation) of GLORY!” (Colossians 1:27).
This is life abundant and full of glory now and forever
This is not trying harder to do better and to be better. It is life after death NOW.
It is heaven coming to earth. It is the end of painful suffering at the bad news from the world.
It is not the moaning painful process of loss or tragic death and sickness.
It is the beautiful death of all darkness and a full-out rejoicing in abiding in the resurrected life that is above all earthly darkness and evil.
The life that is glory and victory in every good gift from above and having no part with the death and darkness of this world.
It is living above in heavenly places now and forever.
THANK YOU, JESUS, FOR LIFE!
Ron McGatlin
openheaven.com
basileia@earthlink.net