The beauty of God

God is the most beautiful being in existence.  He has been showing me some of His beauty lately in His character.  God's character is a radiant, exuberant joy which is full of compassion.  This is a mystery, as joy and the suffering of compassion do not usually go together.  However, God is love, and love's first description in 1 Corinthians 13 is that it "suffers long." Love is also kind.  Can you imagine a radiant being, full of joy, who willingly suffers with you your every pain and misfortune?  The Bible says that He "dwells in inapproachable light." This light is His joy, which bursts out of Him every instant and upholds the fabric of the universe with the song of His Voice.

At the same time that He radiates joy, He suffers continually a great and terrible anguish, since the people He loves so much are separated from Him and are suffering.  The agony that His people feel is shared by Him every single moment of every day and night.

To know God is to share in His suffering joy.  This supernatural co-occurence of suffering and joy is one of the greatest witnesses of truly knowing Christ, who is God in human form, which He took on in order to bear our suffering with us and save us from our separation from Him.

What God is seeking

Many young believers in Christ, when they first come to the Lord, are passionate about spreading the Good News to everyone they can.  Oftentimes, however, their efforts to convert their family and friends are met with frustration, discouragement, and failure.

This is because the best witness to God's transforming power is not simply passion about God, but rather a transformed heart full of the fruits of the Spirit.  Without love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self control, passionate believers do not bear witness with their characters that God really does change lives.

Other people focus on the power of God to heal, perform miracles, give prophecy and inspire the gift of speaking in tongues.  However, again, without the fruit of the Spirit, the spiritual gifts alone do not attract people to God and do not have the power to accurately represent Jesus to others.

Ironically, it is the nine fruits of the Spirit which provide the most powerful witness to God's power and reality- not miracles.  God is seeking believers who will lay down their lives in order to allow God to produce spiritual fruit in their hearts over time, through the process of maturing in Christ.  Everyone who ignores this call to become mature in Christ is in danger of becoming disillusioned, either with God's process, which requires suffering, or with God himself, as they see their efforts to transform their sphere of influence repeatedly fail or fall short.