Saturday, March 30, 2013
Thursday, March 28, 2013
Without Excuse...
The heavens declare the glory of God,
and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.
Day to day pours out speech,
and night to night reveals knowledge.
There is no speech, nor are there words,
whose voice is not heard.
Their voice goes out through all the earth,
and their words to the end of the world. -Psalm 19:1-4
The Lord has made known His salvation; He has revealed His righteousness in the sight of the nations. ...All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God. -Psalm 98:2, 3b
The Lord has made known His salvation; He has revealed His righteousness in the sight of the nations. ...All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God. -Psalm 98:2, 3b
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. -Romans 1:18-20
So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said:“Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription, ‘To the unknown god. ’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, for
“‘In him we live and move and have our being’;
as even some of your own poets have said,
“‘For we are indeed his offspring. ’. -Acts 17:26-28
The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.”
They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds,
there is none who does good.
The Lord looks down from heaven on the children of man,
to see if there are any who understand,
who seek after God.
They have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt;
there is none who does good,
not even one. -Psalm 14:1-3
And those who know your name put their trust in you,
for you, O Lord, have not forsaken those who seek you. -Psalm 9:10
And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” So Jesus said to them, “The light is among you for a little while longer. Walk while you have the light, lest darkness overtake you. The one who walks in the darkness does not know where he is going. While you have the light, believe in the light, that you may become sons of light.” -John 12:32, 35-36
For with you is the fountain of life;
in your light do we see light. -Psalm 36:9
In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. -John 1:4-5
The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. -John 1:9
Tired of the Gay Marriage Debate?
I strongly believe we are to be involved in the choices our government is making, that there is absolute right and wrong in moral issues, and that America is a long way down the slippery slope, perhaps even to the point of being "given over" as Romans 1 speaks to. But I think Barnabas says it well...often we can forget the second great commandment which is "like unto the first" - that we are to love our neighbor (EVERY neighbor) as ourselves. I, too, often question, do we genuinely show Christ's love, or has proving ourselves right become the more important thing? Lots of good points here...
Tired of the Gay Marriage Debate?
Saturday, March 23, 2013
How to Smile Again...
"Look away from me, that I may smile again, before I depart and am no more." -Psalm 39:13
Here's David, the Godly shepherd king, in such a dark place that he was all mixed up about Who God is. It's not by God's "looking away" that we can smile again. The truth is that "those who look to Him are radiant; their faces are never covered with shame. (Psalm 34:5)
And...
"...then man prays to God and He accepts him; he sees His face with a shout of joy and He restores man to righteousness. (Job 33:26-...)
For a while David forgot.
Maybe this was one of the times when his good friend, Jonathan, strengthened him in The Lord. I have friends like that! Or maybe David did some very purposeful soul talk. He was good at that! (Psalm 42:5, 11; 43:5). Maybe truth shined through into the dark in some other way. However it happened, we know from many passages, including Psalm 27:4, that the man after God's own heart did not stay believing the lie. He sought hard to see the face of God!
Let us do the same! In times of darkness and in times of light.
"One thing have I asked of the Lord, that I will seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of The Lord and to inquire in His temple."
Friday, March 15, 2013
The Just Judge
"For the wrath of God is revealed from Heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth....For what can be known about God is plain to them...and they are without excuse!" -Romans 1:18-20 (excerpts)
A. W. Tozer explains the wrath of God this way... Since God’s first concern for His universe is its moral health, that is, its holiness, whatever is contrary to this is necessarily under His eternal displeasure. To preserve His creation God must destroy whatever would destroy it. When He arises to put down iniquity and save the world from irreparable moral collapse, He is said to be angry. Every wrathful judgment in the history of the world has been a holy act of preservation. The holiness of God, the wrath of God, and the health of the creation are inseparably united. God’s wrath is His utter intolerance of whatever degrades and destroys. He hates iniquity as a mother hates the polio that take the life of her child.
Any healthy human being hates injustice.
Suppose someone brutally attacks, violates and kills your sweet child. And suppose you absolutely know who the guilty person is. He is caught, brought before a judge, and the prosecuting attorney is able to show beyond a shadow of a doubt that this person is the guilty party. You are sitting in the courtroom grieving, observing the proceedings. The jury unanimously declares the offender guilty. It's time for sentencing. The judge looks at the criminal, a vile man who shows no remorse, and says, "I know you're guilty. You have destroyed a precious little girl, and you have permanently scarred her family. It's deplorable, for sure, but you know, I really don't care. You are free to go!" Your outrage would be hard to control! Even those other observers, less closely linked to the victim, would be utterly shocked and angry. This action would be completely unacceptable, and there would be cries for the judge to do what is right or give up his judgeship! The story would be all over the news, conservative or liberal. Bill O'Reilly would take up the cause!
Why do we expect less of God?
He is the perfect righteous Judge. His wrath must be poured out against unrighteousness, for it is that which destroys His precious creation. We are all guilty. We have all sinned and fallen short of the standard of perfection that is necessary in order for His creation to be healthy and whole. We are all doomed recipients of that thunderbolt of wrath.
But there is good news!
One day about 2000 years ago, Jesus prayed, "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do." -Luke 23:34. Nancy Leigh DeMoss, in The Quiet Place," puts it this way... "In the face of heinous rejection, injustice, and abuse, we hear the words that are even more powerful than human cruelty."
A prayer of forgiveness.
Who was that prayer for? That prayer was for Roman soldiers...It was for Pilate and Herod...It was for the wild, screaming mob...It was for His disciples...It was for the thousands on the Day of Pentecost...It was for you. And me. Charles Spurgeon writes, "I really like the word them because it's big enough for me to crawl inside!"
Nancy continues, "The only thing keeping us from experiencing the storm of God's righteous wrath is the fact that Jesus covered us with the shield of His grace on that day, that glorious day when He prayed, through pain made even more biting because of our treacherous sin, Father, forgive them. (Luke 23:34). And we are forgiven."
Christ knew the judgment had to fall. And it did. But it fell on Him, and Him alone. Jesus asks the Father to divert the judgment, and our Savior absorbs it Himself. I believe that shield of grace is the only thing that kept the whole earth from being destroyed on that fateful day in history. The Son holds up that shield still today, inviting "whosoever" under its protection.
The wrath of God continues to pour out against sin. His perfect justice demands it. But He is not only perfect justice, He is also perfect love. So He provides a shield against His wrath.
Yes, the wrath of God does continue to pour out against sin...
But not sinners...
Not sinners who seek refuge from God...
in God!
A. W. Tozer explains the wrath of God this way... Since God’s first concern for His universe is its moral health, that is, its holiness, whatever is contrary to this is necessarily under His eternal displeasure. To preserve His creation God must destroy whatever would destroy it. When He arises to put down iniquity and save the world from irreparable moral collapse, He is said to be angry. Every wrathful judgment in the history of the world has been a holy act of preservation. The holiness of God, the wrath of God, and the health of the creation are inseparably united. God’s wrath is His utter intolerance of whatever degrades and destroys. He hates iniquity as a mother hates the polio that take the life of her child.
Any healthy human being hates injustice.
Suppose someone brutally attacks, violates and kills your sweet child. And suppose you absolutely know who the guilty person is. He is caught, brought before a judge, and the prosecuting attorney is able to show beyond a shadow of a doubt that this person is the guilty party. You are sitting in the courtroom grieving, observing the proceedings. The jury unanimously declares the offender guilty. It's time for sentencing. The judge looks at the criminal, a vile man who shows no remorse, and says, "I know you're guilty. You have destroyed a precious little girl, and you have permanently scarred her family. It's deplorable, for sure, but you know, I really don't care. You are free to go!" Your outrage would be hard to control! Even those other observers, less closely linked to the victim, would be utterly shocked and angry. This action would be completely unacceptable, and there would be cries for the judge to do what is right or give up his judgeship! The story would be all over the news, conservative or liberal. Bill O'Reilly would take up the cause!
Why do we expect less of God?
He is the perfect righteous Judge. His wrath must be poured out against unrighteousness, for it is that which destroys His precious creation. We are all guilty. We have all sinned and fallen short of the standard of perfection that is necessary in order for His creation to be healthy and whole. We are all doomed recipients of that thunderbolt of wrath.
But there is good news!
One day about 2000 years ago, Jesus prayed, "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do." -Luke 23:34. Nancy Leigh DeMoss, in The Quiet Place," puts it this way... "In the face of heinous rejection, injustice, and abuse, we hear the words that are even more powerful than human cruelty."
A prayer of forgiveness.
Who was that prayer for? That prayer was for Roman soldiers...It was for Pilate and Herod...It was for the wild, screaming mob...It was for His disciples...It was for the thousands on the Day of Pentecost...It was for you. And me. Charles Spurgeon writes, "I really like the word them because it's big enough for me to crawl inside!"
Nancy continues, "The only thing keeping us from experiencing the storm of God's righteous wrath is the fact that Jesus covered us with the shield of His grace on that day, that glorious day when He prayed, through pain made even more biting because of our treacherous sin, Father, forgive them. (Luke 23:34). And we are forgiven."
Christ knew the judgment had to fall. And it did. But it fell on Him, and Him alone. Jesus asks the Father to divert the judgment, and our Savior absorbs it Himself. I believe that shield of grace is the only thing that kept the whole earth from being destroyed on that fateful day in history. The Son holds up that shield still today, inviting "whosoever" under its protection.
The wrath of God continues to pour out against sin. His perfect justice demands it. But He is not only perfect justice, He is also perfect love. So He provides a shield against His wrath.
Yes, the wrath of God does continue to pour out against sin...
But not sinners...
Not sinners who seek refuge from God...
in God!
Thursday, March 14, 2013
C. S. Lewis Wisdom...
“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
Wednesday, March 13, 2013
Friday, March 8, 2013
God Loves Harmony!
John 3:16 - "For God so loved the world..." I've always been taught, or perhaps I've just always thought, that "world" meant the people on planet Earth, and of course, it does. The "whoever" who needs to believe in God's Son definitely refers to a person, not some ethereal idea. But today when I looked up the original meaning of the word "world," I find that it is the Greek word "kosmos". The first definition listed is "orderly arrangement; an apt and harmonious arrangement in constitution, order, government". Also listed further down in the definitions is "the world and all it's inhabitants".
Christ shed His blood for people, surely, but in a very real sense He died to restore the world back to the harmonious arrangement that it was when first created, that harmony that God loves, the harmony that was destroyed when man chose lies over Truth.
God loves harmony, in our personal beings and in all our relationships. When we pray "Thy kingdom come," this is what we are asking for - the original harmony to be restored. Ultimately, His kingdom will come, we will experience that beautiful, perfect harmony. All creation "waits with eager longing" for that! (Romans 8:19). But here we are living life in the meantime. How then should we live?
As I see it now, we have three "should dos" as we wait...we should keep longing for the order; we should keep praying, "Thy kingdom come"; and we should keep striving for the beautiful harmony that "God so loves"! We need to work to bring every thought and every action under the umbrella of those three "shoulds" as we go about doing the daily stuff that makes up life in the meantime.
"Live in harmony with one another." -Romans 12:16
"May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." -Romans 15:5
"And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony." -Colossians 3:14
God loves harmony. So should we!
Christ shed His blood for people, surely, but in a very real sense He died to restore the world back to the harmonious arrangement that it was when first created, that harmony that God loves, the harmony that was destroyed when man chose lies over Truth.
God loves harmony, in our personal beings and in all our relationships. When we pray "Thy kingdom come," this is what we are asking for - the original harmony to be restored. Ultimately, His kingdom will come, we will experience that beautiful, perfect harmony. All creation "waits with eager longing" for that! (Romans 8:19). But here we are living life in the meantime. How then should we live?
As I see it now, we have three "should dos" as we wait...we should keep longing for the order; we should keep praying, "Thy kingdom come"; and we should keep striving for the beautiful harmony that "God so loves"! We need to work to bring every thought and every action under the umbrella of those three "shoulds" as we go about doing the daily stuff that makes up life in the meantime.
"Live in harmony with one another." -Romans 12:16
"May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." -Romans 15:5
"And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony." -Colossians 3:14
God loves harmony. So should we!
Thursday, March 7, 2013
Wednesday, March 6, 2013
God is Good!
"Oh give thanks to The Lord, for He is good; for His steadfast love endures forever!" -1 Chronicles 16:34
That word good means just about every "good" word one can bring to mind...
Pleasant
Pleasing
Beneficial
Favorable
Happy
Right
Well
Good for
Delightful
Better
Goodly
Cheer
These are the words listed in the Strong's dictionary as the author appears to struggle to really define/explain the good that is God. It's almost as if there aren't enough words, and actually, there truly are not! Our languages, whether Hebrew, English, or any other, will always fall short of really being able to define our God. The words that we use must be finite because they must speak to and be understood by finite minds, and a finite language can never full explain an infinite Deity.
Jesus did it best when "the Word became flesh," but even Him we "see through a glass darkly." The veil isn't there because of who He is, but because of who we are. Someday that veil will be completely removed, and we "will see face to face", and we "will know as we are known." And we will grow by leaps and bounds in our understanding of the goodness of God. And, in a way we have yet to experience, we will worship!
Because beyond our wildest dreams, He is good!
Monday, March 4, 2013
Thoughts from John Piper...
“One of the great uses of Twitter and Facebook will be to prove at the Last Day that prayerlessness was not from lack of time.”
“If you don't feel strong desires for the manifestation of the glory of God, it is not because you have drunk deeply and are satisfied. It is because you have nibbled so long at the table of the world. Your soul is stuffed with small things, and there is no room for the great.”
― John Piper, A Hunger For God
The wisdom of God devised a way for the love of God to deliver sinners from the wrath of God while not compromising the righteousness of God.”
The greatest enemy of hunger for God is not poison but apple pie.
It is not the banquet of the wicked that dulls our appetite for
heaven, but endless nibbling at the table of the world. It is not
the X-rated video, but the prime-time dribble of triviality we
drink in every night.”
Christ did not die to make good works merely possible or to produce a half-hearted pursuit. He died to produce in us a passion for good deeds. Christian purity is not the mere avoidance of evil, but the pursuit of good.”
“America today is a "save yourself" society if there ever was one. But does it really work? The underdeveloped societies suffer from one set of diseases: tuberculosis, malnutrition, pneumonia, parasites, typhoid, cholera, typhus, etc. Affluent America has virtually invented a whole new set of diseases: obesity, arteriosclerosis, heart disease, strokes, lung cancer, venereal disease, cirrhosis of the liver, drug addiction, alcoholism, divorce, battered children, suicide, murder. Take your choice. Labor-saving machines have turned out to be body-killing devices. Our affluence has allowed both mobility and isolation of the nuclear family, and as a result, our divorce courts, our prisons and our mental institutions are flooded. In saving ourselves we have nearly lost ourselves.”
If you alter or obscure the Biblical portrait of God in order to attract converts, you don't get converts to God, you get converts to an illusion. This is not evangelism, but deception.”
“Sleep is a daily reminder from God that we are not God. Once a day God sends us to bed like patients with a sickness. The sickness is a chronic tendency to think we are in control and that our work is indispensable. To cure us of this disease God turns us into helpless sacks of sand once a day.”
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