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Living With An Awakened Perspective

How A Kingdom Imagination Looks Beyond

A Kingdom imagination is a necessary ingredient for a fullness of life. I have come to believe that over the past few weeks. And I have been challenged to increase my Kingdom imagination to more and more awareness of what God may be doing around me.

Awakened

One of the first things I have learned about living with a Kingdom imagination has been to live with expectancy. God is doing a lot of things around me, within me, and through me, and I have been learning to look forward to those things with a sense of urgent expectancy, waiting to see what he’s doing as he reveals it.

As I have been waiting with that sense of expectancy, I have sense my heart being awakened in new and deeper ways.

God has given me gifts and talents and passions. He’s given you the same things, gifts and talents and passions. What I have seen in my life is that I have grown accustomed to the way I have been doing things, and have let my excitement for those things slip a little. Those things that used to excite me and make my pulse race have grown commonplace and mundane.

I didn’t intend for this to happen, but it did anyway. And to be honest, it bothers me. A lot.

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Memorize Scripture: Psalm 119:161-164

Hiding God’s Word In Our Hearts

God brings joy. As the author moves toward the end of this psalm, he leans more and more into the nature of God and his Word. In this passage, he refreshes his own memory about the joy God’s Word brings him. You can see it for yourself in Psalm 119:161-164:

Psalm 119:161-164

So far, the psalmist has shared that God’s word displays God’s mercy for us to see, and that God’s truth is found to be clear as well. As he meditates on those two characteristics, he seems to almost pause here to share the joy that those qualities of God bring to him.

And yet, at the same time, this is the third characteristic that we can see in this stretch of stanzas as we near the end of this psalm. God is the source of our delight, and that is a constant, whether we face easy times of difficult ones. The psalmist is facing persecution from those who do not love God, from those who hate the truth. But he still finds a reason to rejoice.

God’s Word Brings Joy

These few verses here bring a sense of refreshing to our hearts. The psalmist has covered some weighty and difficult things through the verses of this psalm so far. This brief section reminds us of the joy that God brings to us. And it seems as if he finds a new way to express this joy in every verse of this passage.

In verse 161, he states that his heart trembles at God’s Word. In my own experience, my heart trembles in two different ways: in the face of great fear, and in the face of great anticipation. Either could be the case here, and more likely both. He is standing against unjust persecution, and yet he trembles before God’s Word.

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Living With Expectancy

How A Kingdom Imagination Sees Interruptions

Recently, God has been helping me reignite my Kingdom imagination. My perspective has become clouded over the years, and I see mostly what I want to see, and not what God sees. He has been helping me clear that perspective so that I can see more how he sees.

Living with Expectancy

Regaining a Kingdom imagination… I know that sounds a bit vague. It’s a little undefined and cloudy. But I think that’s a perfect description of how my vision has been for the last few years.

Not my physical vision. That’s cloudy enough that I need glasses, and bifocals at that, to see clearly what I’m doing most of the time. No, I’m talking about my spiritual vision. I’m talking about that perspective that can only come from God, to see the world around me, not only with a worldview that is biblical, but to actually see things as God sees them… At least as much as I can.

A few weeks ago, I was challenged with this idea while I was at Wilderness, a Christ In Youth retreat. In that moment, when this concept was introduced to me, I was challenged specifically to reimagine what God could do in the lives of my family. And I have been catching a glimpse of that new vision ever since.

God has shown me that he has a bigger plan for my family than I do, and also a bigger plan for my own life than I do. That has kind of caught me off guard.

I mean, I intellectually know that to be true, but somehow, I have allowed myself to forget that fact. I have forgotten that God is the one that wants to direct my paths, and not me. That has been a tough and bitter pill for me to swallow, because my pride wants to be in control. And because my pride doesn’t even want to admit that God needed to nudge that reminder into my head. My pride tends to get in the way a lot these days.

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Memorize Scripture: Psalm 119:157-160

Hiding God’s Word In Our Hearts

God is merciful. That is the truth that psalmist shared in the first half of this stanza. In the second half, we find the next truth that he has learned about God. You can see this passage for yourself in Psalm 119:157-160:

Psalm 119:157-160

In the first half of this stanza, the psalmist discussed the characteristic of mercy that he has found in God. God is merciful, and that is all the more evident to us as we become more and more obedient to him.

But this isn’t the only characteristic that the psalmist has learned about God; in fact, there are at least three more truths that he has learned that he reveals in this stanza and in the next.

The second thing that he has learned about God is found in this passage. He states it quite clearly in verse 160, but it has been seen already in Psalm 119, and more than once.

God’s Word is True

This is a reality that the psalmist has already shared. We have seen it in verse 142, and again in verse 151. It seems as if the further this psalm progresses, the more this concept appears. The reason for this is simple: the truth of God’s Word is a vital lesson that we must learn. The psalmist has come to understand it, and so must we.