"...[when He was well-pleased] to reveal His Son in me, in order that I may be good-newsing Him in the nations, immediately not did I consult flesh and blood..."
-God was well-pleased... The pleasures of God - you realize that in His right hand there are pleasures forever, right (Psalm 16.11)? Surely of all the qualities which the Lord possesses to the n-th degree, joy is right there among them. He is the happiest being in the universe. Do we much consider these, the things which bring pleasure to the heart of our heavenly Father? Faith totally pleases Him (Hebrews 11.6), a life of faith, a heart of faith, a step of faith. It brought Him great pleasure to create the universe, and to create man in His image, to place him in a garden paradise, to give him a job, and to commune with him every day. In fact, whatever the Lord wants He does, and this brings Him pleasure (Psalm 135.6)(Scripture tells us He was even pleased to kill His Son - Isaiah 53.10 - whoa, heavy - which tells us just how overwhelmingly important is His plan to bring many sons and daughters to glory. It completely supercedes and negates all other considerations by comparison). It is our lack of faith, faithlessness, our own lack of desire and devotion and lack of correspondence to what He wants that brings Him grief and provokes Him to anger.
-Nevertheless, God was well-pleased to reveal Christ IN Paul, one who was on a self-appointed mission to destroy Christ. Revealed not just to him, but IN him, which gave him both a story and a message as well as a life and a countenance to back it up. But don’t miss this - IN ORDER THAT. There is always an in-order-that, a reason, a purpose behind the call which follows the call. God called Paul in order that. He similarly calls you and I - in order that. It falls upon each of us thus called to present ourselves and our wants fully to the Lord and to let our minds so flow together with His that we can and do fall perfectly into step with all that He wants (Romans 12.1-2; Ephesians 5.10, 5.17; Colossians 1.9-10). Paul’s call, his in-order-that, was to carry the good news of Christ to the nations - which would bring even more pleasure to the Lord. Any idea yet what your in-order-that might be? It all begins with surrender, a humble choice of who’s gonna be in charge, of whose wants will win in my life. The old question is posed, of which one of the two dogs who are fighting each other will win? The one you feed. Whose wants and pleasures am I feeding in my life? The wants of God? Or my wants?
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