Face to Face

Longsuffering is not suffering long periods without the activity of faith so as to identify with those outside of God experientially or at present in eternal standing. One would have no qualities to express if he identified totally with those void of life.

Your sentimental concern for a situation can bring about no reconciliation without the provision of God’s plan. The search for a solution is impersonal when inquiries for decisions are made without the Person, Jesus Christ. We need to have the characteristics of Jesus because His personality is derived from the reality of truth. Otherwise our counsel is based on a lie and has no substance in life. Outside of the Finished Work of Calvary, everything is manufactured and not created in Jesus Christ. With our humanity, we can only enter into the sufferings of others. To help them, we need the attitude of divinity.

Man has imaginations of who he wants to be. God has a life portrait of who He has made you to become. Man has to strive to be what he desires through a mental image. God conforms you to who you are to be through a living Christ. As a Christian, you live in face-to-face communion with One Who dealt with your sins at face value. He not only removed the fruit, but the root also—there is no more source of sinful cause. Though we still have a sin nature, it does not have us. Instead of striving in the mental imaginations of time, we grow in the eternal image of Christ.