Reflections and Resolves for Living Beyond Self

Reflections and Resolves for Living beyond Self

Christians often say that in redemption they have been given new hearts. This is a correct statement as we read the promise of the New Covenant revealed in Ezekiel 36:26, And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. Every man is born with a hard and impenetrable heart of sin that can only be changed by the transplanting of the heart of Jesus Christ in redemption applied by the Holy Spirit. But the redeemed must ask what this new heart affects in themselves as new creatures in Christ Jesus?

In reflection upon our hearts being the well from which the springs of our lives flow (Pr.4:23), I would say that one thing we have been given is new sight. When we are given new hearts in Jesus Christ we are given an ability to see in a way we have not seen before. John Newton speaks of this new sight that we have been given in his most popular hymn Amazing Grace, “Amazing grace! How sweet the sound- that saved a wretch like me! I once was lost, but now am found, was blind, but now I see”. Therefore, those who are redeemed in Christ Jesus have new eyes to see differently than they have seen before and with this sight to resolve to live beyond self to all that we now are in Christ Jesus.

One of the ways I am seeking to be resolved to live with my new eyes is to fix them upon the glory of God revealed in creation. In Psalm 19:1 we read, The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. The glory of God is revealed in creation for the redeemed to find their joy in him who has created and sustains it.

Therefore, I am resolved with my redeemed eyes each day:

1. To see the glory. I shall look into the heavens and the earth once a day and marvel at the beauty, goodness, power, and wisdom reflected from his glory in all that he has created and sustains for his own pleasure.

2. To see the story. I shall look into the heavens and the earth once a day and know that God began this work of creation, he made Christ the Son the centerpiece of its unfolding history, and that it will have an ending that is the beginning of all things new.

3. To see the uniqueness. I shall look to see that every unfolding of God’s providence in the sustaining of his creation, with all “the bad” and “the good”, are the revealing of his plan to bring myself and many sons and daughters to glory.

4. To see the work. I shall look beyond myself or envy of others to see the work that is revealed to me to participate in his creation and new creation.

5. To see and receive. I shall look with my eyes to be a spectator of all existence which is God’s theater with a notion to receive without asking why or what it means. I shall wonder at what I hear, see, smell, taste or touch with that not of a three year that has to ask, “Why?, but of that of an infant who cannot find words and can only stare and be glad it is there.

6. To see with imagination. I shall turn to the good, true and beautiful things that the creature has been allowed and enabled to make or “create”.

7. To see time. I shall live to each moment well as that which God has created and sustained for the now as a bristle applied in his brush strokes to the unveiling of his masterpiece of all time.