Quick Hitters

A short collection of things I think about.

1. He alone is the Creator. Everything else and every other being, no matter how angelic, other-worldly, supernatural, long-lived or powerful, is something He made and owns with absolute ownership. He answers only to Himself.
   
2. He is not limited to the dimension or realm in which we live. From our viewpoint, His reality is uncountable dimensions. From His viewpoint, His reality is a single dimension that encompasses EVERYTHING.
3. His nature, character, and essence go so far beyond what we can comprehend or even imagine, that – though He Is One – He is One in such a way that we can’t really grasp it. So, He shows us His Oneness in three very real personages: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. That’s a deeply inadequate way of saying it, but it’s the best I can understand, and even that just barely. Even though I don't really understand it, I fully believe it.
4. As Creator, He has absolute, unlimited right of ownership over everything and everyone. Absolute and unlimited.
5. Nothing stops Him but Himself. He is always true to Himself and fully consistent with His fully consistent nature. You can't limit Him, I can't limit Him, nothing can limit Him. 
6. He has no internal contradictions. He will never do, think, want, or feel anything contrary to His perfect nature.
7. He gets to do anything He wants, anytime He wants, and He never owes me – or you – an explanation. That can be a scary thought, but when I'm surrendered and trusting in His Son and in His wonderful plans, it's not scary at all. In fact, it's a good thing.
8. For His own reasons, He is putting up with evil for now, but He will never lose to it. 
9. At a point of His own choosing, He will put an end to evil.
10. He is never capricious.
11. He is never in debt to any person or created thing.
12. He wants to share eternity with us. Eternity, the place where He lives. He's trying to take us there, not keep us out.
13. We can't go into eternity with Him the way we are now. He's not being mean about it; it's just a fact. Our current essence cannot exist in His raw presence.
14. The idea that I’ve met some requirement and now He owes me – well, that doesn’t compute. To think that He ever owes me anything, no matter how much I work for Him, no matter how many conditions or requirements I’ve met, is completely incorrect. What I get from Him -- all of it -- comes only because He is good and gracious and loving, never because I earn any of it. 
15. He craves and yearns for a love relationship with me and you. Not employer-employee, not Master-slave, but love.
16. He says, “Love me with all you’ve got, I’ll love you with all I’ve got, and we’ll go down this road together. Trust me, it's going to be alright.”
17. He knows we are badly broken, so broken that our very essence is defiled. Knowing that, He chooses to accept us just as we are, but with one condition: we have to let Him transform our essence through His Son, Jesus.
18. For oil and water to mix, the oil must become water or the water must become oil. Think of that as a metaphor. Since He will not be defiled to become like us, we must be transformed to become like His Son. Our essence must be changed to be like His.
19. He has work for me to do, but far more than that, He wants to love on me and share His heart with me. He wants my loving companionship. Any work I do for Him flows best out of that.
20. His goal isn’t to cause me to have a nice day. His goal is to transform me into the image of His Son. Sometimes that means I don’t have a nice day.
21. He's not out to hurt you, He is out to set you up for an eternity where He can dote on you and really, really  enjoy you. To accomplish that, there's a lot to change. A lot. But it's all worth it.
22. Understanding His goal and trusting His heart, I can give thanks in everything because I know where His process is headed. Besides, where else can I go to get this done? I can’t get there by myself, even with all the self-help books and self-help sermons in the world. Speaking of self-help books and self-help sermons, there's a lot of people making a lot of money off of them. To me, they're of very limited value. I need Jesus.
23. The programs, processes, traditions, and set-up we follow in our churches never enclose God like He's something you can put in a can. He may choose to work through (or in spite of!) our stuff for a season, but He is never enclosed or contained in any of it.
24. He sees our lives and our deaths very differently from the way we see them.
25. From here, that life seems like a dream. From there, this life was the dream from which we've finally woken.
26. Eternal life with Him will be so much more than we can imagine that we can't imagine how far beyond that it is. Yes, I meant to say it that way.
27. We work at fitting God into our lives when we should be concerned with fitting ourselves into His life.
28. He has incredible, loving, big big dreams for you. This world brings Him a lot of aggravation, but the dreams He holds for you make all of this present aggravation worth it to Him. He looks at His dreams for you and gets excited. He is thrilled with the end result He has planned.
29. No matter where and how He finds you now, He can take you into His dreams. Let Him.
30. My real job is to care about His happiness. With that, everything else falls into place.
31. I find it’s much easier to love you when I see you in the light of His happy plans for you.
32. He wants me to obey Him, but it’s soured if it's external obedience and happens just because I’m reasonably good at following rules. 
33. His great preference is that I live out what pleases Him because my essence, desires, and yearnings have become custom replicas of His essence, desires, and yearnings. When that place becomes where I live life, the being and the doing flow naturally and easily with great joy.