“For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God” (Romans 8:19).

THERE IS A SENSE IN WHICH WE NEED TO GET MORE COMFORTABLE WITH THE IDEA OF IMPERFECTION. The perfection of this world having been broken by sin, God long ago set in motion a plan that will culminate in the creation of a new heavens and earth, not physical but spiritual, for all those who’ve accepted His pardon. The major portions of the plan are already complete, but the final end has not been reached, and so while time on earth remains, we must be content to live in the midst of a movement TOWARD perfection. As long as we live, nothing that we’ll have the opportunity to deal with will ever be anything other than incomplete. And the sooner we get comfortable with that idea, the better off we’ll be.

To be sure, there is another sense in which we ought NOT to get comfortable with imperfection. Complacency is a dangerous trait, and we dare not let ourselves become SATISFIED with the incompleteness of this world. We can’t afford to lower our standards.

But I believe we’ll reach forward more fervently if we go ahead and ACCEPT the fact that in this life we will never be anything more than incomplete. Recognizing that, for the time being, we’re not going to see anything more than God’s work “in progress,” we are then free to dream and yearn and long for the time when His plan will reach its climax, and we can finally go home. Accepting the currently unfinished nature of God’s purposes keeps us from demanding more of this life than it’s capable of delivering.

In Romans 8:22,23, Paul wrote of our “groaning” in this world: “For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now. Not only that, but we also who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body.” So the Christian who groans should hardly be surprised . . . but neither should he be discouraged! “Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is” (1 John 3:2).

“We must learn how to live as incomplete beings in an unfinished universe. We see God’s process from the middle, not the end” (Paul Ciholas).

Gary Henry – WordPoints.com

“They profess to know God, but in works they deny Him” (Titus 1:16).

WHAT WE REALLY BELIEVE ABOUT GOD IS OFTEN SOMETHING OTHER THAN WHAT WE PROFESS TO BELIEVE. We may say we believe He exists, for example, but if our actions are inconsistent with that belief, time after time, it would be fair to question whether we really believe what we say. Even in the affairs of this life, our real “master” is the one whom we actually “serve,” and when it comes to God, Paul asked the obvious question: “Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one’s slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death, or of obedience leading to righteousness?” (Romans 6:16).

But please don’t misunderstand. I’m not saying that we deliberately lie about our faith, claiming to believe one thing when we know that our real belief is something else. I’m simply suggesting that our words usually reflect what we know is RIGHT to believe, what we WANT to believe, and so forth, while our actions may indicate that — FOR ALL PRACTICAL PURPOSES — our REAL beliefs run in another direction. We don’t always have the thing Paul said we should be aiming for: a “faith unfeigned” (1 Timothy 1:5 KJV).

If there is a discrepancy between what we profess and what we practice, how should we go about removing it? We could, of course, get rid of the gap by lowering our profession to the level of our practice, but that would amount to giving up and selling out to the devil. But there are better things that we can do, surely.

First, we can be more honest about the gap between our profession and our practice. We can pray more frankly and openly to God about that. Second, we can elevate our practice to the level of our profession, always seeking God’s help in doing so. He wants us to obey what we say we believe, and He will help us to do so if we let Him. But third, we can accept the fact that we are going to be judged on the basis of our practice, not our profession. In the end, it’s our DEEDS that God will judge (2 Corinthians 5:10) — not what we said we believed, not what we wanted to believe, and not what we were planning to believe someday. Whether we admit it or not, it’s a fact: WHAT WE ACTUALLY DO IS WHAT WE REALLY BELIEVE.

“Can a faith that does nothing be called sincere?” (Jean Racine).

Gary Henry – WordPoints.com

“And the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him’” (Genesis 2:18).

WE ARE NOT SELF-SUFFICIENT CREATURES. We need contact with other beings who have a nature that corresponds to ours. And not just contact, we need the many benefits encompassed by the word “relationship.” We’ve been constituted such that our needs can’t be completely fulfilled within our own identities. We need something more than ourselves, something outside of ourselves. “It is not good,” God said, “that man should be alone.”

It is true that we VARY in the amount of human contact and relationship that we have to have to be happy. Some of us can get by with a minimum of those things, while others would find it hard to be happy without a bit more. In a pinch, of course, all of us could survive alone on a deserted island if we had to do it, but even so, the NORM for human beings is that we need one another.

But if that’s important to realize, it’s even more important to realize that we need relationship with OUR CREATOR. We need something ABOVE ourselves! And that relationship is one that we really can’t do without. We may delude ourselves into thinking that we’re getting along without Him, for a while, but the fact is, we’d do less damage to ourselves trying to do without oxygen than trying to do without God. Try as we may, we can’t NOT need Him!

Whether it’s relationship to other human beings or relationship to God, “loneliness” is the word that describes the absence of those relationships. And while you may think there are plenty of problems worse than loneliness, let me tell you that the emptiness of spirit denoted by this word is a terrible thing: it’s terrible not because it’s painful but because it’s the root of so many other problems that plague us. Having been created by God with needs that can only be filled in relationship with others, when those needs are not filled, many harmful things begin to happen.

So what’s the point? It’s simply that we ought to CHERISH the idea of rich relationship, both with God and with others who’ve been created in His image. We ought to work on BUILDING good relationships in every way that we can. And finally, the MAINTENANCE of our relationships ought to be one of our MOST PRESSING PRIORITIES.

“Loneliness is the first thing that God’s eye nam’d not good” (John Milton).

Gary Henry – WordPoints.com

“. . . and Joshua said to them: ‘Cross over before the ark of the Lord your God into the midst of the Jordan, and each one of you take up a stone on his shoulder, according to the number of the tribes of the children of Israel, that this may be a sign among you when your children ask in time to come, saying, “What do these stones mean to you?”‘” (Joshua 4:5,6).

IS THERE A RING ON YOUR FINGER THAT HAS A MEANING OUT OF ALL PROPORTION TO THE SIZE OF THE RING ITSELF? Perhaps there is. And we treasure many other things that have more importance than their physical size would indicate: photographs, mementos, keepsakes, and such. An antique sofa and an album of baby pictures might both be irreplaceable, but if the house were burning down, most of us (the mothers among us, at least) would grab the baby pictures to save, and not just because they’re easier to carry!

TAKE TIME TO FIND OUT WHAT THINGS MEAN. Years later, there might not have been many people in Israel who knew what that pile of rocks on the west bank of the Jordan meant. But those who took the time to find out would have been rewarded with a bit of knowledge that was both interesting and beneficial. These days, most of us stay so busy with our own trivia, we rarely stop to ask the meaning of even the most important things around us. But we’re the losers when we fail to ask, “What does that mean?”

TAKE TIME TO APPRECIATE WHAT THINGS MEAN. In regard to God, there are a number of events, observances, and even physical objects (what about your own Bible?) that have deep meaning attached to them. Do we appreciate these? Do we count them among our treasures? We need to take precautions against ever becoming so jaded that the meaningful things in life seem stale or dull.

TEACH YOUR CHILDREN WHAT THINGS MEAN. We do our children a disservice when we allow them to reach maturity without having been taught what the truly important things in life mean. Meanings have to be handed down, and so it’s the privilege and responsibility of each generation to see that its young people know what those who’ve gone before have found meaningful.

Few things are inherently valuable; it’s what they MEAN to somebody that makes them so. So meanings are very important, and we’d be better off if we spent more time thinking about them.

“The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it” (Carl Jung).

Gary Henry – WordPoints.com