Isaiah 43:19 Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.

Yesterday is gone and there is nothing that can be done to change what has happened.

Lamentations 3:22-24 English Standard Version

22 The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;[a] his mercies never come to an end;
23 they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.
24 “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.”

Footnotes

1. Lamentations 3:22 Syriac, Targum; Hebrew Because of the steadfast love of the Lord, we are not cut off

We have today because of His steadfast love. Yesterday is gone and we cannot relive it and to mourn it changes nothing.

Do we perceive the way to go in this wilderness we live in today? This is not our home. We are strangers in a foreign land, sojourners just traveling through time. The Lord does not wish us to live in regret and has given us a new beginning each morning, a gift to be cherished.

Is the Lord our portion or not? If He is, then why do we hope in anything else?

We live in this world that is corrupt and destitute of all hope in the kindness of mankind. They use, consume and build nothing but monuments in their own image. Vanities of vanities, it all crumbles in the end, waste and destruction that cannot outlast time’s corrosive nature.

We are living in the time of the prophecies and we cannot change them nor can we make them happen before their time. As much as we would like to see some of them happen in our lifetime, today is not ours to make but only to walk in according to the Way we are to walk.

John 14:6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

Walk by faith in the Way set before us, in the truth that only He can reveal, in this life that He has made for us.

Anything else is vanity and vexation of spirit.

Acts 2:47 praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.

proselytize

verb

• convert or attempt to convert (someone) from one religion, belief, or opinion to another.

Are you a member of the body of Christ?

If the answer is yes, I do not care about your label.

If no, then let us reason together.

Let me be as perfectly clear as I can on this issue. The Lord and the Lord alone determines who is added to His body. We can do nothing more than speak the truth in love which comes from being in the body of Christ.

If we speak for ourselves, then let it be about what we were that was unacceptable. I will admit that my words were “I found Christ.” That is not true. He found me. He has a loving way of correcting wrong thinking. He just keeps speaking the truth and sooner or later it sinks into my thick skull. Yes, I was hard headed. In some way I still am, a little bit.

What a member of the body of Christ is not, is hard hearted. I am not ashamed to say that I am now tender hearted. The heart controls behavior, the mind controls the tongue. James 3 has a lot to say about taming the tongue. Many years ago I thought James was a lawyer because his language sounded so legalistic. The Lord showed me otherwise.

I read the Word in order to discover this Lord who has taken up residence in my heart, or to be more accurate my heart is His heart. What I have discovered is that in many ways we are like Paul who was once Saul of Tarsus, a Roman citizen. Saul did not know Jesus when Jesus had an earthly ministry. Saul met Jesus when he was on his way to Damascus to persecute this new cult called The Way.

Paul’s epistles changed in texture over time. He was at the beginning better than the rest but over time the least of these. The Lord changed his heart and then changed his mind.

That pretty much speaks to being in the body of Christ. A change of heart, a change of mind and a change in behavior. 

Some of “those religions” teach that the change in behavior comes first to prove yourself worthy of salvation. You can change a behavior to “belong” to a label, but a label does not mean you are in the body of Christ. His abiding presence does.