Unclaimed Property

 

I saw an online news article last week about the unclaimed property office in the state treasurer's office in West Virginia, where our family used to live.  It said that there were millions of dollars in abandoned bank accounts, in insurance proceeds, etc. that the office was trying to return to the rightful owners.

So, hoping that there was something there for our family, I went to their database and entered the names of all of my immediate family members.  It turns out that my husband's name was listed as having some unclaimed property.  I called to make sure it really was his and that it didn't belong to someone with the same name. They matched his name with a former address and sent us the forms to claim the property.

Foolishly, I forgot to ask how much was coming to him so it could be $4, or $40, or $400.  Time will tell, but it made me wonder what unclaimed property the body of Christ has stored up in the heavenlies, waiting for us to realize what belongs to us.

I'm not just talking about the material wealth that God gives us to steward and use to build His kingdom.  The riches of God go far beyond money.  

To claim those things, there are steps that must be followed. 

First, you have to be a citizen of the place where the property is stored.  If you are born again, you are a citizen of heaven, even if you aren't living there.

Next, you have to realize that there is a record of what belongs to you.  In our case, it was a database, but your heavenly property is documented in the Word of God.

Then, you must make sure that the listed property is yours by establishing your identity. You must talk to the person in charge of determining that those things belong to you.  In prayer and the Word, you can learn who you are in Christ - your true identity.

The next step is filing a claim.  For us it was filling out a form and again, proving identity by sending a copy of a driver's license and a social security card.  For the Christian, it's claiming the promises of God by reminding Him of His Word and accepting by faith what He has declared is yours.

The last event is receiving what has always been yours - when faith becomes sight.  That's when you enjoy the blessing that God has given you and when you use it to bless others, whether it's a monetary or a spiritual blessing.

While I was on the website, I found the name of another family member who has some kind of property available to them. I took the time to make a phone call so they can claim what is theirs.  In the Kingdom of God, our job is to tell our brothers and sisters where to find what belongs to them and how to obtain it.  

The Bible says, "For all the promises of God in Him are Yes, and in Him Amen, to the glory of God through us."  2 Corinthians 1:20

1 Peter 1: 2-4 gives us more detail about these promises. "Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord, as His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue, by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may partakers of the divine nature having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust."

The promises wer given to us to provide everything we need for our physical and spiritual well-being so that we could be partakers of the very nature of God.  Riches like that are worth identifying, claiming, and sharing.

No Walls

 

If you are a regular reader of my blog, you may have noticed that you haven’t been able to be a regular reader for a while, because I’ve not been a regular writer.  I used to have a firm commitment to writing a blog post every Sunday night, but here we are at eight months into the year and I’ve only written a handful of posts.

This year, I have found myself in a dry season in my relationship with God.  It’s not the first dry season I have ever had, but I should have learned from the past ones how to deal with it correctly. I went through the motions a little, but that’s all it felt like - just a ritualistic, wooden attempt that I finally just stopped doing.  It was like a brick wall between God and me that made it basically impossible for me to hear His voice and feel His presence.  I didn’t hear those lessons from God in the everyday happenings in my life like I used to hear, so there was nothing to write.  I didn’t understand what had even happened, and I felt powerless to change it.

So I parked my life right there.  I accepted the wall instead of fighting to knock it down.  I went on with the daily routines of my new life in retirement, kept going to church, and just pretended that everything was fine.  However, there wasn’t a day that went by that the wall didn’t enter my thoughts.  God created us for intimacy with Himself. He designed us to hear His voice, and nothing else in this world can compare to that.  

I guess I was ashamed to admit that I had an issue, so I suffered in silence.  Then, on one recent Sunday morning, my pastor was ministering to the congregation at the end of a service as he gave the altar call.  He said that God showed him a wall that reached up very high, covered in claw marks.  I immediately recognized that wall.  It had been in my face for quite some time. Those claw marks were mine as I fought against it at first, but then I had grown tired and just sat down in defeat.

I didn’t go to the altar that morning. I told myself that because I couldn’t figure out what was causing me to see this wall up in my face every day, that I couldn’t knock it down, but I went home and even though my prayers seemed dry and cold, I asked God to show me the building blocks of this obstacle.  He brought things to my mind one at a time over a period of days, and I wrote them in my journal.

In my case, it was a very long list of things that had piled up gradually. There were many little stresses and changes  - some of them even good - that had taken my time and attention from God until I no longer felt close.  There were some major life changes and some frustrations and offenses, and I let the enemy use them to build a wall that stifled my intimacy with God. 

Once I could see the elements that made up the wall, I could deal with them through prayer and some wise counsel.  I found that as soon as I addressed the problems, my hunger for the Word of God and prayer returned as if the wall never existed. God had never hidden Himself during this time and as soon as I demolished the wall with God’s help, we were communicating face to face once again.

Are you feeling disconnected from God?  Is your prayer life routine and stale?  Are you avoiding the Word of God?  Do you see the same wall I was facing every day?  If so, please be wiser than I was and confront it today.  Ask God to help you understand and dismantle the thing that’s keeping you divided. 

James 4:8 says, “Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.......”

John 15:15 says, “No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing, but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.”

It is God’s desire to be near to us and to treat us as friends and children.  As I reestablish that intimacy with Him, I hope that I’ll be giving you more to read as He communicates to me the way He always has been faithful to do. All I have to do is immediately kick any brick away that threatens to build that wall again.