"ZOWIE!"

This may sound like a funny comparison to some of you, but as I started reading from Colossians 2:10 this morning, I thought about our new car.  In this particular scripture Paul is telling us how “God has made us complete in Christ…”  Vincent’s Word Studies clarifies the meaning of the American Standard translation of: “And in him ye are made full…” stating “Not ye are made full in him, but ye are in him, made full.”  The difference being the knowledge that our success in life is all about Him and not us!  Yes we make the choice and take the steps to be in Him, but we are to continually remember and trust in the fact that it is His power, His abilities, His resources and His grace working through us… and not our own!

When I come up against a wall in this life, it is the realization of Who I have inside of me that empowers me to overcome the situation.  In Him I become another person.  In fact, 2 Corinthians 5:17 says that in Him we are totally new creatures!

So what does this have to do with our Mustang?  Well, when we followed the Lord’s leading to move to Oklahoma a few years back, we knew that we would have to part with some things in order to help finance the move and lessen the amount of things we needed to transport halfway across the country.  After much prayer and a bit of heartbreak, my wife decided that she would give her beloved piano away and I felt it necessary to sell my shiny red Camaro.

As it turned out, the pastors we had given the piano to followed the call of the Lord to Montana a few years later and put the piano up for sale.  A good friend of ours from the old church saw the piano and just knew that they needed to get it back for Piper… and they did!  When we returned to Santa Rosa, her piano was waiting for her.  The tears in her eyes when she sat down to play it again told me that a part of her had been returned!  I can’t tell you how much that piano has also come to mean to me since Piper has not been able to play it for a few years now.  Just looking at it helps me to stay connected to the expectation of her healing and the vision of her playing it again!

I hadn’t really realized that the same thing was going on in me until my kids convinced me to go with my heart and purchase the new car even though I could not come up with any compelling reason to do so!  But I tell you… every time I get in to that Vapor Silver with a red interior car it mysteriously feels like a part of me has come home to stay!*  I can’t explain it, but I just feel complete!  You know… It just makes me feel special and loved of Papa God as He would bless us with such an over-the-top conveyance.

In many respects that is similar to what Paul is telling us who believe.  Our union with Christ makes us complete.  He fills the gaping hole in people’s lives.  The Moffatt Version says “It is in him that you reach your full life.”  As I studied this verse over the weekend I had the revelation that without him I am merely a natural man limited to what I see, hear, taste, smell and feel.  But in Him I have access to the supernatural and the Kingdom of God’s unlimited resources, capabilities and miraculous answers!  

That realization gives me a 1960’s Batman TV show exclamation like “Bam!” “Wow!” “Zowie!” “Smash!” “Zonks!” “Kapow!” and “Holy Miracles Batman!”**

When you understand what it means to be complete in Him, it kind of makes you want to put on your spiritual cape, jump in your Godmobile and go out (in His power) to conquer anything that the enemy of our souls puts before us… doesn’t it!

Have a great day.  Stay in tune to His Word, and keep asking yourself… “In What or Who’s completeness am I expecting ‘Zowie’ today?”

  

*Piper and I have always shared a passion for fun cars beginning with my very first car, a black MGB in the seventies, to our 280Z, a Bronco, a 4X4 Sports Truck, a Dodge Challenger and then the Camaro before the recent edition of the Mustang GT.

**Did you know that there is an entire web page dedicated to Robin’s “Holy” exclamations from the 1960’s DC Comics show?  Check it out at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_exclamations_by_Robin