Meditation Thought: “[when] we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. (Romans 8:15-17)
Christ suffered, not because He obeyed God – but because other men would not obey God. To obey God may, for a short time, bring suffering because not all do obey God. But none can defy God and defeat Him – therefore, our position as being obedient will lead to a place of glory from the the place of suffering. And the disobedient shall see the errors of their thinking and actions, and shall be encouraged to repent, thus paving the way for renewal. Any one of us can be at any of these places, at any time – depending upon our understanding of God’s will and our degree of obedience to God’s will.
Our hope lies in Christ, who makes possible our claiming of our rightful inheritance, when we had thrown it away by our sin. He made arrangements with the Father – more accurately, He obeyed the Father’s request – to make our action of refusing our inheritance disappear – it simply was no longer a valid transaction. In accepting Christ’s contract made for us with the Father, we arrange to receive our inheritance. He has done for us what we were unable to do for ourselves. It has the effect of erasing our dishonorable actions as completely as if they were a dream and not reality.
We have been saved from what we feared would be our fate as we realized the magnitude of our rebellion and disobedience. Coming to know how powerful our Father is, we finally realize that it is best to obey Him – not out of fear for His wrath but out of the recognition that His requests to us have been in our own best interests. It has only been our inferior intellects, our lack of faith in His love, and our insistence on being the sole dictator of our life that has kept us from understanding the Father desires us to receive His inheritance. But He cannot will it to us unless we are going to be responsible in administering it. He must know that we will use it as He Himself would use it before He dares let us have it. And the way He knows we will administer it according to His principles is to know that we have His character reflected in our character. The only way we are able to do this is to be obedient to His teachings: the only way we can be obedient is to have Christ living in us through our faith – through our yielding the scepter of our ego to Christ that He may be the guiding force within us. When we do this, we share His fate – His leading us in obedience do the Father’s will does result in our suffering from those who are not under His leadership. But His leadership also results in miracles of healing, of renewing, of creating, of beauty, of love, of power – all bringing such glory to the Father, that He shares His glory with the Son, and the Son shares it with us.
We cannot know where Christ will lead us. But we can trust that every path leads to glory: to peace, to joy, to fulfillment, on faith through the ministrations of the Spirit, and in the kingdom through the reality of our spirit being at one with His Spirit.
Meditations of Marie's Heart 