Do you believe that you are an heir of the world?
What difference does it make for you to know and believe you own the world?
Genesis 17:8 is one of God's first promises made to Abraham. God said, I will give you (Abraham) and your descendants the land of Canaan, which came hundreds of years later. Notice how God said "I will give YOU", Abraham...yet Abraham died before ever having seen Canaan. That implies that God was speaking that Abraham will rise from the dead for the fulfillment of the promise.
In the New Testament there are several references to this truth being retold to people over 500 years later.
Matt 22:32- I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob? He is not the God of the dead, but of the living.”
This is again speaking of all the promises that God remembers having once spoken to Abraham that will come to pass. How do we know these will actually come to pass? Well, we get a glimpse of every promise being fulfilled in some temporary way on earth. The descendents of Abraham, for example, did eventually inhabit the land of Canaan, and all the other promises made also came to fruition such as His Abraham having a huge offspring as countless as the sand (which include you and me and all believers), and the promised Holy Spirit. Never once did God's word fail. Even in Abraham owning Canaan, it did not fail because logically speaking Abraham needed to be the father of many nations first, and that would require more time for the accumulation of people born after him. But we got a glimpse of His descendants being given the land of Canaan as a little taste of the real fulfillment in Christ when we and Abraham will be given ownership of land in the Kingdom of God over all the universe.
You and I will sit on the throne of the universe. No longer as subjects as we know ourselves to be now, but as coheirs with Christ! On His throne!
Millions of us. How can this be? We think how can I be the heir And you be the heir? When a father dies one son get this and another gets that. They can't both be given the same house. But this is something we should think about. We are being shaped into a kind of people that will have the wisdom to rule with one another in such a deep kind of love similar to the way in which a married couple walking in the Spirit can live under the same house with a deep committed love to each other.
All of us, as brothers and sister--as one family, and as joint heirs to God's kingdom will be fellow rulers over everything together....TOGETHER. What does that say about love?
Luke 16:12- And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to someone else, who will give you what is your own?
Right now, all that we might think is ours (possession) is really God's.
This is why the enemy loves to make us think that we rely on ourselves to have something like respect, beauty, money, and self esteem. We get tempted by possession of such things, because there is a God-made quality in all humans made in His image that have the capacity to possess or own things, and the enemy twists that capacity, as he does all gifts from God, toward insignificant and lifeless things that pull us away from exercising our capacity toward owning the universe cojointly with Christ!
Every blessing and good thing you think is yours--your health, your car, your family, your understanding, your money...all of it is all God's!
Think about it. Right now you have a few things that you think are yours, but when you contemplate eternity then that something or those things you think are yours now are actually exposed as God's training toys for you as He observes the way you handle it. Does what you own make you love people more or does it isolate you? Your body is not yours, but God gives us health or allows sickness as a means of training us to use what is not ours for His glory because if we can steward what is not ours for Him, then we can eventually own that which is His as our own forever.
Each of us will own the world, but eternity will be governed by millions of God's heirs because we love each other--making that ownership possible.
Romans 5:2-5
We have also obtained access
through Him by faith
into this grace in which we stand,
and we rejoice
in the hope of the glory of God.
And not only that, but we also
rejoice in our afflictions,
because we know that
affliction produces endurance, endurance produces proven character, and
proven character produces hope.
This hope will not disappoint us, because God’s love
has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit
who was given to us.
The glory of God is OUR hope now and our PORTION in eternity when we rise from the deadness of this temporary life.
Meditate on eternity as a coheir and as a child of God who will share the throne with Jesus and millions of others.
Eternity matters because it changes how we view suffering. If suffering is what produces endurance, and endurance produces a character quality that produces the joy of one day being able to share the kingdom with our brothers and sisters because of LOVE, then suffering is the greatest gift of all.
We are heirs of the world in Christ who is the heir of the world because His Father is God the Creator and King of Kings! It doesn't get any higher than God!
"And if you belong to Christ,
then you are Abraham’s seed,
heirs according to the promise."
-Galatians 3:29
"So no one should boast in human leaders, for everything is yours —"
- 1 Corinthians 3:21
We don't boast in men or the things we admire about them and want to possess for our own, because we are heirs of everything God owns! Why would you need to boast in being beautiful or smart or successful? That's nice but you can boast in owning the world which is far greater and more precious than a short span of years as rich or beautiful or acknowledged. Christ said that we can't love God and the things of this world. Only one type of character in a person will be given ownership of the Kingdom as a coheir, and that's the child of God who loves His family so much that they rejoice in giving up everything they have for them. It's why the apostle Paul said in Romans 9:3 that he would forfeit his own ties with Jesus forever if it meant that his brothers (the Israelites) would come to know God! His character loved deeply and profoundly! It is this kind of character that will be able to own the kingdom of God with others. A person of deep and profound love for others, the love that would give up everything--our image, our reputation, our comfort, our beauty, our time, our money, our very lives for the sake of others!
"For the promise to Abraham or to his descendants that he would inherit the world was not through the law, but through the righteousness that comes by faith."
(Romans 4:13 HCSB)
If such a character sounds impossible to attain right now, understand that with man it is impossible, but with God who works and wills us according to His sovereignty--it is possible. We walk by faith, meaning we walk by what we can't see--the impossible--and God gives us His Word to remind us of where we are going.
Let us love like that: to practice walking in what we have now with the mentality that what's mine is yours.
To believe that God is shaping our character inside to truly say "nothing would make me happier than to give you what I have."
Right now we own nothing.
Everything we drive, wear, buy, eat, ride, visit, see all belongs to GOD! He gives us all gifts now, and each gift has a purpose...they are not just ends in themselves. The profundity of our lives is in the shaping of our character toward the hope that one day I can give everything to someone else out of love.
Contemplate your life right now in view of eternity. I see what I own too often as that which I earned or worked for, but possessions are useless and they fade away, and I am reminded to see what I have as a gift preparing my character for what I will own in eternity with Jesus and all the believers who chose the superior way of love.
In eternity We INHERIT everything as finally truly OURS. But if we can't manage what we don't own now from God how could He give us what is His to truly own for ourselves? He will not give His kingdom to people who cannot handle it.
To contemplate eternity is to be encouraged and brought into the sobering truth that this is preparation time. That is how we love one another eagerly, with a humble heart, knowing that God helps us along the whole spectrum of the process. We meditate on His word day and night, we at least think about this truth even if we can't get it right, and this humility shapes us to relinquish possession of control of this stuff of ours to follow God's leading as He guides us into what it means to be His son or daughter, coheirs of His Kingdom.
When I look at something I have, this Perrier drink in my hand, this right here is not mine but God gave it to me for the purpose of me practicing what it will be like to OWN it. Can I drink this Perrier with God's glory in mind? Can I drink this Perrier thankfully? Can I drink this Perrier as my worship to God? This is a gift, it's not even mine! I'm drinking it because God gave it to me for not only my thirst or preference but because God is shaping me to be able to handle His kingdom. If I can't even take care of the gifts He gives me, which all belong to Him, how can I later own all that belongs to Him? Look at the things you have in your life. Those are not yours. Those all belong to God and we are stewards of His gifts on earth. Every gift is another opportunity to be made into a coheir of God's kingdom.
You and I are living for God's glory, meaning we have eternity in view. We have ownership of God's kingdom in our minds over ownership (or the facade of it) of the stuff we had once so foolishly chased after in this exposed short span of a lifetime now. You want to think your value is this or that, your struggle is this or that, your idol is this or that, contemplate eternity!
Meditate on what eternity means as a coheir. I feel like I'm saying this so much, but this morning I woke up with eternity in my heart. And lately God has been putting eternity and loving others on my mind and I wanted to share this because it just makes sense! And because in my own life I struggle against possession of things that I want in my future or battles with sin that I find are equal to my worth and value in life, all of which I mentioned in the examples of beauty, money, acknowledgments, family, reputation, comfort, security, and a certain kind of career. But what good is all that in and of themselves when exposed to the light of eternity? To be about eternity is to be about love for others just like Paul was saying he would cut himself off from Christ forever if it meant saving his brethren and how Jesus DID CUT HIMSELF OFF FROM His Father to give us salvation. He also rose from the dead and reunited with His Father to show us that death was the way to get there, making death lose its grip of fear on us. If death is the way to eternity then that's good news, because all of us will one day die, but how many of us will live for eternity?
Let me just get specific again:
What you gain in this life all belongs to someone else! Your very education is a gift! Your looks are a gift! Your job is a gift! Your parents are a gift! Your friends are a gift! Your children are a gift! Your very life does not belong to you! This is a gift from God for you to practice in becoming a ruler of the world! But what kind of ruler will be able to share ownership with millions of other people who will sit on the throne with Jesus? The kind that are filled with love for one another. Can we use our gifts from God in this life to practice love for one another instead of love for ourselves? What would that look like especially with a certain sin or idol in your life that you so crazily hold tight to? Let eternity loosen your grip on such things.
I want to be a person shaped by God through my gifts not controlled by the gifts themselves. I want my gifts to be my vessels for giving to others my time, my energy, my attention, and my heart.
To have proven character in being able to feel inside that nothing would make me happier than to give the others all that I have.
Profoundly deep and unfailing love.
That is why we are called to love one another. Not because it's nice for now, but because it is crucial for eternity as coheirs and co rulers of EVERYTHING God owns. We will own the world together, and if you don't like that idea then you won't like heaven.
Love is truly the superior way of God's coheirs.
Today we are being shaped with some gifts to love from the inside out.
Contemplate eternity.
Jmegrey
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