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For the Lamb
Victoria Boyson
www.speakinglife.net
One day, as I prayed, I saw our God in His majesty. He sat awe-inspiring on His throne. And for just a moment, I felt this awesome fear...the fear of God (Ps. 33:8).
In just a breath of a vision, I felt His holiness - He was indeed awesome. In feeling His presence, I was struck by two thoughts that overtook me.
God is Everything
First, we serve an INCREDIBLE God who
is EVERYTHING He claims to be. He is to be feared and should be feared by all men. I felt deeply sorry for any who do not FEAR Him as the ONE AND ONLY GOD.
He has chosen to call Himself our Father, but He is
EVERY BIT God with more majesty than can be imagined on this earth. Every ounce of worship, praise and love we can give, He merits it all and so much more. He deserves our lives - He deserves all of us. He is truly
worthy...worthy...worthy.
He is awesome, holy and beautiful beyond measure. Truly, what a GREAT God we serve. What a privilege we have been given to serve Him, to be called His children. What a privilege we have been
given to love Him. He is holy, righteous and just - worthy of all our love. Truly, He is fearsome in His majesty.
I have often wondered how I would act when I finally got to see Him and now I know for sure what I would
do...I would melt. I would melt in to a mass of nothingness, and shiver in fright at His awesome presence. As I lay there, I know He, in turn, would fill me with His strength, enabling me to be with Him.
As I sat for
just a brief moment stunned by reverence, I felt His power infusing into me and suddenly I knew that, with God's greatness, there was absolutely nothing I could not do. With His power in me, I was truly more than a conqueror.
I was made fearless, empowered by His ferocity.
He is God, saints, absolutely God. He is not our puppet, He is our God. And we are His children; we belong to Him. There is no place for our personal will, it is
irrelevant in the face of His glory. In His glory, we are simply absorbed into Him, into the mass of glory that makes Him God. All that we are in the natural is
left behind and we are at once nothing. Yet, we are everything that He is because we are in Him and He is in us.
We are powerful as we are in Him and nothing outside of Him can make us fear or regret; we stand in Him.
We are nothing in ourselves, yet mighty in Him. His power radiating through us can and will transform nations for HIS KINGDOM.
All that we do, all that we are is because of Him - He is great and we are simply a part of
HIS greatness. We are made great through HIS GREATNESS.
We Need God
Secondly, I was struck by my need of God. How terrifying to see my absolute necessity of Him. I am truly a sinner and have no justification whatsoever apart from Jesus Christ. I am wretched and have broken covenant with God. I felt truly as Romans 3:23 says, "All have sinned and fallen short of His glory." We have all failed Him.
We have nothing by which we can justify ourselves and what a cruel hoax the enemy plays making us feel as though we could be good enough for Him in ourselves. No matter how good we think we are or how much we have done,
our works, knowledge or opinions will not justify us.
Hell is real and we do deserve to go there. We are of the earth and are inherently cursed with it (see Gen. 3:17). Yet, as we've received Christ, we are made new
creations. "This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person" (2 Corinthians 5:17 NLT. No longer do we belong to this cursed earth. Yes, we are in it, but we do not belong to it (see Jn. 15:19). We
belong to God. We are His family and He has made a way for us to live for Him inspite of our sinful nature.
So many, even in the Church, have unknowingly snubbed their noses at the sacrifice Christ made for them. They
have adopted and are "holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied it's power" (2 Tim. 3:5). As pride entered in, it labored to cause them to justify themselves by their actions and choices, and even
striving to decieve them into taking personal credit for the blessings of God.
If we call upon God and ask Him to show us our true spiritual condition, we would see that we are utterly blind, naked, and wretched.
Although we may deserve death because of our sin, it is God who seeks to rescue us from it.
It isn't as though He's just tolerating us or putting up with His Son's desire to redeem us. No! Indeed, He, our heavenly
Father, created us and is desperate to save us. He loves us so much and wants us with Him. It is torturous for Him to think of eternity with out us. He's in agony at the thought of us being tormented in hell, seperated from Him and His comfort. He wants to comfort us, strengthen us and love us.
Indeed, we will be judged, Church. There will be a judgment day. It will happen, and nothing we do for ourselves in this life will matter then (see Mt. 15:13). Even what we've done in His name, yet by our own
initiative, will not remain. Only that which is done in obedience to the Lamb will endure.
He's knocking at the door of our hearts, seeking to enter our lives. We must repent of our sins, stop leaning on our own
understanding, turn away from our idolatrous ways and cast ourselves completely on His mercy - clinging only to Him and Him alone.
As He becomes our life, our source and our love, we are transformed. We are made
ONE with Him, absorbed into His glory, a part of His kingdom (see Gal. 3:28).
Surrender Everything
What have we lost by giving away our lives for the Lamb? Eternal death in hell? Yes, that's what we've given up
to live for Him and that is all. "If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake, you will save it" (Matt. 16:25 NLT).
Indeed, we have not realy lost anything by
surrendering ourselves into His glory. It is we who have received. He is the giver of life, life in Him - life abundantly (see Jn. 10:10). We are partaking of life in His glory, living on this earth as ONE with Him. Halelujah!
What an enormous privilege and what a huge responsibility: to receive life from Him by giving our lives to Him. For the only thing He desires is all of us, for our humble surrender of all that we are to His Lordship. It is only in serving Him that we find life. Only in living for the Lamb will we truly live.
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