WHAT MAKES LIFE TICK?

Don't you love life?  Or, do you?  Do you find living to be a marvelous experience? Or, do you find it to be a troubling puzzle waiting to be solved?

I have always been impressed with a phrase in First Thessalonians 3:8, for now we really live if you stand firm in the Lord.  Really live hit me that one could be living; but not really.  I was a portion of the not really until I began to move into Jesus instead of moving into church rules and regulations.

(Don't misunderstand.  There are true doctrines and false ones.  We must mature in the true ones.  But one of the greatest false ones is that we can have a right church without heart-felt devotion and praise to God through Jesus.  It is possible to be enmeshed in church with all of its correctness and not know the very Son who is redeeming us.  That was me.)

Life takes off when drawing toward the Son who is the way, the truth, and the life. Why?  Of course, I wouldn't have a complete grasp; but will venture out with an observation.

I think what makes life tick is the industrious and defiant Spirit of Jesus.  Nothing is impossible with Him.  Swollen lakes?  Walk on the top.  Overrunning sea?  Part it. Dead in the grave?  Break out.

It is this factor that keeps us from ever giving up.  There is always possibility in Jesus.  We can read any situation and circumstance and believe God has an unthought-of and an unheard-of answer.  Christianity has been reduced over time to hoping for the best; but not so much the impossible.  As a result, life seems to be rather routine; even with church tacked on at the beginning of the week.

I am very weak in this; yet, it is worth considering.  Churches are ignored by much of society because we are a powerless sort.  This is a Last Days dilemma.

But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come.  For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God; holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power; and avoid such men as these.  (II Tim. 3:1-5)

The church is in desperate need of receiving the warning of Paul's charge to Timothy.  We move about in formation with little difference in power from what one would find in a humanly designed institution.  This is not to be the case for those of us in the kingdom.  It is a super-charged plant of workers for God; workers at a whole different level beyond man's energy and focus.

God's Holy Spirit is what makes life tick.  We must perpetually trade our insight, talent, and muscle....for His.  May we pray to see God work upon earth according to His power and strength.  When we believer this...life will really live!