Call it jitters, uneasiness, the mopes, a tizzy, or just plain ol’ feeling lonely. Whatever you want to call it, there’s something about a crisis that seems to ratchet up the urgency around partnering. It’s not unreasonable to assume the recent and new requirement of social distancing adds to this anxiety, and it may bring more intense feelings of loneliness to the surface. It’s the gap between the meaningful connection you’ve dreamed of having and the ones you might currently have. Something is missing, and you might feel that no one has been able thus far to fill-in the blank. Now that there seems to be yet another obstacle to meeting people, you might be tempted to give in to feelings of hopelessness, and unconsciously shut down the very energy that moves you closer to what you want.
Hope is a powerful reality. It is a little different than faith. With faith, our expectations are more informed and defined. With hope, we don’t know as much about the outcome, but because our trust is firmly anchored in God through Christ, we know that the outcome will be a good one. Romans 8:28(NLT) assures of this. It tells us, “And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.” Our tendency is to want to place our hope in other things—things we can see, feel, taste, smell, and hear. While the knowledge we glean from our five senses is often detailed specific and very helpful to us, it can’t replace the spiritual knowledge we desperately need in order to keep thriving in hope.
Hebrews 3:6(NLT) tells us, “But Christ, as the Son, is in charge of God’s entire house. And we are God’s house, if we keep our courage and remain confident in our hope in Christ.” You and I are God’s house. 1Corinthians 6:19 tells us that our bodies are the temples of God, because the Spirit of Christ abides within us. But if we are closing the door on Christ, our house is empty, and it can be no surprise that this emptiness will permeate every aspect of our existence. For Jesus said in John 6:53(NKJV), “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you.”
We have a tendency to want to place all our hope not in the Spirit that we cannot see, but in people and things that we in fact can see. We may not view it as such, but this is a fundamental error that completely changes how we respond to life and how life responds to us. An overwhelming number of people don’t have a deeply abiding trust in the Spirit, and this equates to not trusting ourselves and not trusting others. It’s a state of being that repels rather than attracts.
John 4:24 tells us that God is Spirit, and we must worship Him in spirit and in truth. God is invisible to the physical eye, but He is very visible to the eyes of our human spirits once they come alive to Him in Christ. When our spirits come alive to God through Jesus Christ, we then have the ability to not only see Heavenly Father in the spirit but to worship Him in the spirit as well. We don’t see what our human spirit is engaging and impacting on our behalves, but our spirits are continually communing with God’s Spirit, who is our inexhaustible inner Source.
Philippians 2:13 affirms that the Holy Spirit—God’s Spirit is working inside us to ignite both desires and energy that is equal to His agenda. You and I should be chopping at the bits to move according to God’s melodic rhythm, because we were birthed from it. This is the truth from which we worship. It’s the truth from which we move and have our being. For many people, this sounds too out there to fathom. They are more willing to trust in things they can see, yet, our whole reason for being on this earth is to do as 2Corinthians 5:7 says, which is to walk by faith and not by sight. We are here to make manifest the riches of God’s invisible Kingdom to a visible world. Not enough of us are believing and doing this, and we are seeing the consequence of it in real time.
We will always feel displeased, displaced, and out of synch when our approach to life is completely opposite of the life that lives within us. Only the Spirit of Christ, the Holy Spirit, can tie us to the Divine. This is a truth so powerful and eternal that it completely transforms a life. Colossians 1:27 affirms that all our hope lies in Christ. Therefore, we cannot hope in the destiny of connecting deeply with someone if we deny the hope we’ve received to live by the light of Christ. Some of us want one without the other and doing so means that we are not letting our lights shine. Instead, we’re hiding them from the spirits of those who long to call us friend or spouse. Through our beloved Big Brother and Savior, Jesus Christ, we can change this, and we should.
Romans 1:19 tells us that God, our Heavenly Father, isn’t a stranger as many think He is. He made Himself known to us through His Son, because all that can be revealed about Him is contained in Christ. It is within Christ that God expresses Himself completely and accurately, in a human body like yours and mine. You and I are made in the image of our God, we’re in the image of the Divine. We have to sit in the magnificence of this reality in order to love and live through the love of Christ. This is our authentic identity, and the more we embrace it, the more those who are destined to walk with us will be attracted to our light.■
Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
“In the Image of the Divine” written for Crazynlove.com ©2020. All rights reserved. All done to the glory of God through Jesus Christ, our Lord!