Month: February 2016

Jesus spoke to the people once more and said, “I am the light of the world. If you follow me, you won’t have to walk in darkness, because you will have the light that leads to life.” (John 8:12, ESV)

And Jesus said unto them, “I am the Bread of Life. He that cometh to Me shall never hunger, and he that believeth in Me shall never thirst.” (John 6:35, KJ21)

“But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.” ( John 4:14, KJ21)

God gives us many things but one of the greatest things He gives to us, is His revealing Himself to us, in the Scriptures. We should honor Him and His ways which shows respect that He is God. The Bible calls this the “fear of the Lord.” We understand following His commandments will bring joy and true direction in our lives and we should want to listen to Him. Finally we should trust in our Lord God in all He does.

Our greatest desire, purpose and meaning as followers of Christ, is found in desiring the living Word of God become our very life, by the presence and power of the Holy Spirit in our hearts. Thus God’s Word cannot be considered or thought of as just sayings, words, themes and guidelines that we learn or even memorize. The Word of God must be our very light by which we see with for the moment and the future. The Word of God must be the breath to sustain our living in and through every situation and encounter day by day, month by month and year by year. The Word of God must be the bread by which we are nourished and strengthen to for the challenges and stresses that we face. The Word of God must be the water that clenches the thirsting in our body and spirit yet remaining inexhaustible and life giving even as we drink it in over and over again. There is life in the Word of God but must see it as essential for our lives and we must let it become life to all of us.

“The precepts of the Lord are right, giving joy to the heart. The commands of the Lord are radiant, giving light to the eyes. The fear of the Lord is pure,
enduring forever. The decrees of the Lord are firm, and all of them are righteous” (Psalm 19:8-9 NIV).

Suggested Reading – Psalm 19

“Do not be filled up with the empty beverages of the earth focused life … this only leads to foolish living and endless unfulfilled stupors, but desire the eternal nectar of the Holy Spirit so that you may be filled to overflowing with the presence of God in every aspect of your life and find the countless blessings He wants to give you (Paraphrase – Ephesians 5:18).”

We seek so much of what the world values as we live our lives out on this earth. Many times we are seeking clichés, fame, fortune and fanfare which in the end are very shallow in significance and empty of any lasting value. God’s purposes and plans and the leading He brings through His Spirit take us to attributes and new life brimming with great significance and overflowing with eternal value. What would our lives be like, if we truly desired more and more of the direction of the indwelling presence, fruit and ministries of the Spirit of God?

The Holy Spirit creates new in us, crusades beside us, comforts us in all times, clarifies us, convicts us, and completes us by bringing forth new revelation while deepening our understanding of the revealed and eternal Word of God by His abiding and living presence in our spirit, heart and mind.

The Holy Spirit is “The Creator” as creates us as a new creation and brings forth fruit in that new creation. He is “The Crusader” because not only does He battle alongside us and His power is endless, as He is God. The Holy Spirit is “The Comforter” because He speaks the truth and brings the promises of God to us at all times. He is “The Clarifier” as He teaches us and deepens our relationship with the Living Christ. He is perfect as “The Convictor” of sin because His convicting is perfectly and completely true serving only the purposes of God in sanctifying us. The Holy Spirit is “The Completer” of all prayers as he carries and completes all prayers before the throne of God and is the seal of our inheritance of eternal life.

The Holy Spirit is God and what He gives us, is truly beyond our comprehension. The Holy Spirit is Christ alive in our life, thus we should be as desperate for Him as we are for air itself. In order for us to be fully alive in the spirit, we must breathe deeply of the Holy Spirit. Desire ever more of Him and yield your heart, soul, mind and spirit to Him, and you will never be disappointed. He will fill you over and over again, and you will overflow with the richness and bounty of all He will give to you.

Suggested Reading – John 14

It is not an easy thing to find someone who cares about you as a person and acts in your interest because of their concern. It is inherent and expected that families care about those within the family unit whether immediate or extended in various connecting and loving ways. Compassion is also expected in a true friendship in concern for another person and in the loyal willingness to invest and involve oneself in the life on another. Compassion from the culture around us is varied and unpredictable.

We all need compassion from one another. By definition, compassion is a sympathetic consciousness of another and out of it, love brings forth the basis and actions that help us function, cope and live out our days on this earth. Yet compassion, given and received, feigns and fades as we as human beings must contend with the limitations and frailties of being human.

Yet there is “One” whose compassions fail not (Lamentations 3:22). Jesus lived out the compassion of God in the flesh as He both saw the needs those around him and lovingly and miraculously brought redeeming action to every situation he saw, felt and encountered. Jesus was the compassion of God as He loved and lived. He lived to feed the tired and hungry, both physical and spiritual food. He lived to bring healing to the needy while lifting up the broken and liberating the captive of sin and despair. Jesus was the compassion of God in the flesh addressing every need as He loved with the love of God.

The compassion of Jesus is extraordinary. The compassion that marked His life on the earth is the way He is now. It is not only that He sees and hears us, but He attends to us. As He died, we see the compassion of Jesus in one of the greatest example of compassion possible, as He attends to the request from the condemned man on the nearby cross. Jesus was weakened to the point of death, emotionally and spiritually drained, isolated and abandoned with the weight of the sin of the world laid upon Him. Yet He responds to this condemned man of sin, in love with the gift of eternal life. How can we ever doubt that Jesus will not see us, hear us and compassionately attend to us?

Then he said to Jesus, “Lord, remember me when You come into Your kingdom.” And Jesus said to him, “Assuredly, I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise” (Luke 23:42-43 NKJV).

The rich and privileged men stood in front of the crowds consumed with religious pretense, language and bluster as they came fully clothed in roles and robes of significance. They looked to the side without turning their heads or averting their eyes yet making sure people saw their slow hand movements as they purposely let their bulky offering fall into the offering box.

The old nondescript woman in tattered clothes quickly slipped the tiniest of coins in the offering box as well … blushing while glancing around, trying to avoid the stares of aversion and disdain.
The people admired and noticed the bulky shimmering robes and the overflowing offering of the man as he proudly basked in their admiration but disregarded both the gift and the woman who quickly exited the temple.

Yet, the Savior saw the truth midst the pretense. The Savior saw the giving of nothing and the gloating pride of the rich men and the delivery of everything by the poor woman. Thus the men, who gave nothing, received nothing but the false admiration of the moment devoid of the presence and blessing of God and the poor woman who truly released her heart found the richness of the abiding of God in her life.

Some were fooled in the days of the Savior and some are fooled today. Simply taken in and fooled by those who make a spectacle of their faith.  Don’t be fooled by those that make a show of their position, their wealth, their religious words and the trappings of their faith while they give nothing to their God.

Instead … see the truth and substance or real faith in those that release everything as they deliver their hearts to their Savior. The faith of the humble will always give a richness of life to the humble through the blessing of God because they  look to Him for everything they need.   It is the opposite way with the pretending of the proud. A certain emptiness will always remain in their faith because they desire what is essentially devoid of truth and substance, as the God they claim to know, is not needed or really acknowledged and thus little comes their way from God.

And He said, “In truth I say unto you that this poor widow hath cast in more than they all. For all these have of their abundance cast in unto the offerings of God, but she of her penury hath cast in all the living that she had.” (Luke 21:3-4, KJ21)

“For by grace are ye saved through faith …” (Ephesians 2:8, KJ21).

For centuries … parents, poets, politicians, philosophers, teachers, preachers, psychologists and writers have walked down the descriptive and analytical pathways of the metaphor of life being a road. These varied helpers have tried to help others navigate their own roads by offering insights and advice on the difficulties of roads being both considered and traveled by those under their responsibility or care and direction. Warnings have issued and warnings have been ignored. Advice has been offered and advice has been cast aside like unneeded excessive baggage into the adjoining ditch on these many and varied roads called life.

There seems to be in the heart of all human beings, a sense of stubborn ignorant, selfish and rebellious determination to walk down roads of our own choosing. We walk by the warning signs of experience, we shrug off the concern of those who would help us and we fail to consider the timeless advice from our God just because we want to go our own way on the roads that we want to walk down.

Roads of lust, coveting, greed and desire. Roads of pride and unconcern. Roads of power and self-absorption. Ancient ill-advised treacherous roads that seem new and fresh only because we are foolish and unwise to believe we are better equipped than the myriads of those tripped up on these dangerous pathways. How utterly vain and ridiculous we as human beings can be! How desperately we need a Savior with an endless supply of grace!

What a blessed reality to find a Savior with such an amazing grace on the rebellious roads each of us have travel throughout the days of our lives. Patient grace that knows every detail of our foolish journeys on roads that end at the cliff sides of danger and destruction to catch us as we fall. Immense and powerful grace, that intervenes to stop us from harming ourselves and others through the mysterious and miraculous presence of a Savior who uses people, places and things to help us. Welcome and inviting grace that redeems our choice of roads, again and again. It was grace that redeemed an adulterous David and proud Saul on their poorly chosen roads and it will be grace that will redeem us on our roads of life as well. Thanks be to God for the Savior that meets all of us on our ill-advised and badly chosen rebellious roads in life!

Suggested Reading … Psalm 51, Acts 9:1-9

You will say on that day, “I will give thanks to You, O Lord. Even though You were angry with me, Your anger is turned away and You comfort me. See, God saves me. I will trust and not be afraid. For the Lord God is my strength and song. And He has become the One Who saves me.” As water from a well brings joy to the thirsty, so people have joy when He saves them (Isaiah 12:1-3, NLT).

We may at times give a hurried backwards glance at our failures, hesitating and restless in the uncomfortable realizations of feeling regret for our failures and sins. We may go slightly forward with our lives, but every now and then, the weight and residue of sin’s consequences may buffet us like a strong wind as we remember or face what remains.

We do not know which direction to go … whether to face into the wind or run from the imposing indictment of ourselves. We have seen the brutal reality of our sin and from the nastiest of nightmarish judgments that we sense we deserve, we can only long for a savior.

We long for a ray of expectation, for a glimmer of light to squeeze through the foreboding heaviness and give us a reason for a solution. We sense the disappointment of our Heavenly Father and yet He is our only hope.
We long to look up but our gaze is fixed on our failure. Then it happens, then a greater reality demands our attention. The only One that can change our helpless predicament has traveled the distance between hope and despair, between regret and promise and between foreboding and assurance to bring us salvation.

Our Savior has come! As we see Him, we faint in awareness … His love is greater than we can comprehend. He is here. He has come again. He is now with us, freely giving grace to erase all fear and His presence to empower us anew by securing the ground and the sustenance to journey forward anew into the days ahead. What joy we have as we drink deeply from His unending well of overflowing salvation. What joy to be welcomed again and again into the loving arms of the gracious beyond description Heavenly Father who travels beyond all sin to bring salvation in the gift of His Son!

Suggested Reading … Isaiah 12