Shaped and Filled

Day 68
How can you be one with Me in the midst of all that surrounds you, pressing in from every side, from above and below? These pressures are my tools, in my hand, to shape you into my likeness. Allow them to turn your eyes and your ears toward Me. This is life's journey. Through all that happens, press on toward the goal, fixing your eyes on Jesus. Study his life, how he acted and reacted. Then you will know him and you will know my character. As you study my word and see my attitudes and actions, you will understand my character, and my thoughts will become your thoughts. Know my ways, and you will be like Me.

Your attitudes determine how you will act (think -> say -> do). Have the mind in you which was in Christ Jesus, who made himself nothing. He emptied himself and I filled him with myself. I will fill you, and I will guard your ways, determine your steps, and make your paths straight.

Keep your eyes on Jesus, who both began and finished this race we're in. Study how he did it. Because he never lost sight of where he was headed—that exhilarating finish in and with God—he could put up with anything along the way: cross, shame, whatever. And now he's there, in the place of honor, right alongside God. When you find yourselves flagging in your faith, go over that story again, item by item, that long litany of hostility he plowed through. That will shoot adrenaline into your souls! In this all-out match against sin, others have suffered far worse than you, to say nothing of what Jesus went through—all that bloodshed! So don't feel sorry for yourselves. Or have you forgotten how good parents treat children, and that God regards you as his children? My dear child, don't shrug off God's discipline, but don't be crushed by it either. It's the child he loves that he disciplines; the child he embraces, he also corrects. God is educating you; that's why you must never drop out. He's treating you as dear children. This trouble you're in isn't punishment; it's training [Hebrews 12:2-7, The Message].

Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped , but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father [Phillipians 2:5-11].