Notes from this week's podcast: Who Do You Favor?

"You look just like your father!" 

We, as God's children, should favor Him. 

> What does that mean? 

> Do you?

> Who do we act like? Look like? Resemble? Who do we favor, as we go about our day, go about our lives?

We often think of favor when we come to God and ask for favor. We want God to do good to us, ("God, give me a special privilege, benefit. Do something for me on my behalf or lift a burden.") 

* But God's favor is about giving God the opportunity to move in our lives so that every action and reaction resembles Him. 

God, I want to resemble You. I want to favor You. 

When you became a child of God, He really began working His goodness in your life, to make you rememble Him. So everything that comes into our lives -- what God is working in our lives, what God allows to come into our lives is good because the end result is so that we resemble Him. We look like Him. We favor Him. 

God, from Your perspective, what is "gracious to me"?  

The Hebrew word means to show favor to me. 

When He wants to allow His favor on us, it means He is working His graciousness, He is moving through His Holy Spirit to move in a way that we favor Him -- that we resemble Him, that we reflect Him in the world around us. 

Right now (and always) the world is desperate. It truly needs to see what God looks like. They need to see our Father through us. (This is the way your Father speaks. This is the way your Father acts, forgives, taught you.) 

God is befriending you so close, so dear that you end up with His features -- with His eyes, with His heart. 

So to say that God is good and gracious, it's to allow God to move in your life, to work through your life so that your life favors and resembles His character, His throughs, His ways.

Why would we want to settle for less? 

We allow Him, we welcome Him to move in our lives. 

"It's Your face, O LORD, I shall seek. Do not hide Your face from me"  because we desperately need to see what He looks like. That's the graciousness of God. He moves in to support us, to help us, when it's easy to fall back in to my selfishness, pride. He moves in to defend us. Why? Because He wants us to resemble Him. 

- We have to be intentional and we have to make time for it. If you truly want to favor your Father, the Holy God, the Righteous God, the Savior, the Sovereign God, you have to spend time and get in His presence. Gaze upon His face so that you know and learn what He looks like. You have to dwell there, to reflect His beauty. 

- Just as good as God is, I aim to be the physical resemblance of my spiritual Father. We all have to ask if that's our aim each day.

Prayer: Lord, by Your Spirit, will You give me understanding? And, what You're doing in our lives, how You're working through us today so that we'll not resist the move of the Holy Spirit through us and in us. But that we'll totally empty self and allow You to flow through us, that Your Spirit flows through this vessel, so that everything, every thought, every action, every reaction, everywhere my feet trod today, I resemble You, that I favor You. And that others see how much You, Father, and I favor one another. In Jesus' name. 

 The Spirit of the living God, give me understanding to discern what His character is, what His ways are, what He looks like, what He says -- to be so separated from the world that we are distinct in what we do, that it looks like Him. 

Father, I open my spirit to hear the Spirit of the living God speak to me -- that I perceive, I understand what You're telling me to do. I don't let the flesh control me. I discern, Lord, and I can separate what is unrighteous and righteous. And, I need what is righteous. 

I pray that you have the favor of God on you, that others see that you resemble Him. 

  Scripture for further study: Psalm 27:7; Isaiah 55:8-9; Psalm 27:8-9, 4; 2 Corinthians 5:9, Job 32:8