October 24, 2015
Psalm 139:15-16
My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
The Sixth Day Exercise
God knows it all—everything.
And whether we think that is a good thing or a bad thing has less to do with anything we might want to hide and everything to do with how we understand the nature and character of God. Is God out to get us or to save us?
The way we see and understand the nature of God will determine just about everything else in our lives. Is God unfathomably good or unapproachably frightful. Unfortunately, our default vision of God will correspond more with the way we have experienced authority figures in our past. It’s why one of the biggest and most foundational transformations we need is the healing of our image of God. How does that happen? It comes through immersing our lives in a community of people who are themselves profoundly immersed in the Holy Love of God by the power of the Word of God and the Spirit of God. This is where the true nature of God is revealed to us.
God knows us perfectly from before we are born. The trouble is from the moment of our birth, we know God imperfectly. God’s true nature must be revealed to us. We cannot figure it out. We will not find it left to our own devices. But it is God’s greatest desire to reveal himself to his children.
So what about you? How do you see and understand God? What influences from your past have damaged your vision of real authority? Can you begin to bring those before the true God for healing?
DO THE SIXTH DAY EXERCISE HERE.
In case you are new to the Sixth Day Exercise. In case you are just joining us, each week we share in an exercise called “The Sixth Day Exercise.” As Genesis 1 has it, God created human beings in his own image on the sixth day. Genesis 3 shows us the desecration of the image of God in our race which has only compounded itself across the centuries. It’s why the Image Bearer himself, Jesus Christ, came. His life, death, resurrection and ascension reversed the curse of sin and death and created a pathway whereby our broken race could be made gloriously whole again; restored to the Creator’s intent. Paul put it this way:
For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. 1 Corinthians 15:22.
Given we were made on the Sixth Day, it makes sense that we might stop and assess how it’s going on the long journey of being “remade” on each successive sixth day.
DO THE SIXTH DAY EXERCISE HERE.
P.S. Join the Daily Text Fasting Challenge. It’s 40 days, one day per week at a time, over the next 52 weeks. It’s a food only fast. Begins after supper on one day and ends at 4pm the next- 2 meals. Liquids fine. Fasting goes better together. I’ll send you a short weekly encouragement email if you register.– sign up here.
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J.D. Walt writes daily for Seedbed’s Daily Text. He serves as Seedbed’s Sower in Chief. Follow him @jdwalt on Twitter or email him at jd.walt@seedbed.com. Get the Daily Text delivered to your inbox fresh every morning. Subscribe HERE.