RIGHTEOUSNESS & PRAISE

Have you ever come across Isaiah 61:11, it says ‘for as the earth brings for the its bud, as the garden causes things that are sown in it to spring forth; so the Lord will cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before all the nations!’ Quite a promise isn’t it?

God has deposited so much in our lives! From day 1-not the day you were born, I daresay not even the day you were conceived- but long before that. When He laid the foundations of the earth, long before time began. When He began to consider the creation of the cosmos, when He thought about bring the universe into being, He structures your end before you began. In Him you exist…! [Selah]

God never embarks on investments that will end in futility [Phil 4]. Every investment God makes yields positive returns. He watches over them to perform them! Like Pastor Paul Adefarasin would say ‘there is a Word over your life’ and God watches over this Word to perform it!

Every investment God makes in your life is like a seed sown into the ground. And like a true gardener He tends the seed/plant until the right fruit is produced- in this case righteousness and praise!

Jesus is our foundation, the Solid Rock upon which we stand! Indeed, you are hid in Christ in God! You are planted in Christ so to say! Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it abides alone! We have become the wheat fallen to the ground (Jesus- where we are planted), there we die (we are buried with Him- Rom 6:4), there- in Christ we experience the power of resurrection! In resurrection we find righteousness and praise!

The change from a seed to a tender shoot is a mystery. As is the change from a life that is dry, without form and void to a life of righteousness and praise! A wise man once said that only God know the mystery of the transformation of a man from a sinner to a saint! And so is the mystery of the crucified and resurrected Jesus!

It is a mystery, but God can and will perform this miracle! Everything revolves around Him. He is the one who draws us in, and causes (note this word was used twice in once verse, thus showing the emphasis on process and the fact that the change is totally wrought by God!) to be transformed to something beautiful (see Ecclesiastes 3:11a).

The only path to righteousness and praise in our lives is death! A death like Paul alluded to ‘I am crucified with Christ… but Christ lives in me..’ I am not saying go out and commit suicide! I am saying kill your flesh; let your flesh have no dominion over you any longer. Be alive to God and dead to the flesh!

The life of righteousness and praise is a glorious life! It’s Zoë- God’s kind of live. It is the touch of the divine! And the process righteousness and praise is: DEATH – BURIAL – RESURRECTION

Jesus could not be glorifies before He died, man cannot be imputed with this righteousness purchased by Jesus unless he walks the same path.

When we pray ‘lead me in the paths of righteousness’ we are literally saying ‘lead me in the paths of your death, through to your resurrection’ That was what Paul meant when he said ‘that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death! (Philippians 3:10). The power of resurrection is the full power of the Holy Spirit!