"If you have run with footmen and they have tired you out, Then how can you compete with horses? If you fall down in a land of peace, How will you do in the thicket of the Jordan?" Jeremiah 12:5 NASB
If I don't know what I can handle how can I know what my 'horse', or vehicle, can handle?
The land of peace has few obstacles but the thicket has many obstacles that require preparation, gear and planning to pass.
Some may say, 'I just won't compete with horses and Jordan is too hard for me.' Nonsense talk! Who has whispered that garbage in your ear?
Don't you want to feel the wind in your face? Don't you want to see the faithfulness of God in the moment to bless a prepared life?
Life is for living not just existing.
Thursday, March 21, 2019
Wednesday, March 13, 2019
Love And Longing
Sitting here contrasting different kinds of love. Loving something, or someone, beautiful (in demand) versus loving the ugly unwanted thing. Love that is 'arranged' versus romantic (chosen). Selfish love and love based on principle.
Love versus lust. Hate and cold indifference.
"If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love." - 1 Corinthians 13:1-13 ESV
Love is what people want and fear most.
I struggle like everyone does and everyone does struggle. This is a particularly difficult time of struggle in some ways. I wrestle with God because by sight things look a certain way but then I ponder His love... specifically the love manifested by and through Jesus and I become grounded again.
I see men trying to love women who have moved on. I see people raising children without a partner bearing life's burdens. I see sick friends and even noble people who died deaths that seemed cruel and anonymous and I struggle but love, real love, grounds me and eases my mind.
God taught me and teaches me daily how to love. I learn what to drop and what to cling to as I follow Him and the lamp of His word lights my path.
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Love versus lust. Hate and cold indifference.
"If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love." - 1 Corinthians 13:1-13 ESV
Love is what people want and fear most.
I struggle like everyone does and everyone does struggle. This is a particularly difficult time of struggle in some ways. I wrestle with God because by sight things look a certain way but then I ponder His love... specifically the love manifested by and through Jesus and I become grounded again.
I see men trying to love women who have moved on. I see people raising children without a partner bearing life's burdens. I see sick friends and even noble people who died deaths that seemed cruel and anonymous and I struggle but love, real love, grounds me and eases my mind.
God taught me and teaches me daily how to love. I learn what to drop and what to cling to as I follow Him and the lamp of His word lights my path.
--
Thursday, March 7, 2019
Repair Or Start Over?
"The word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD: 'Arise, and go down to the potter's house, and there I will let you hear my words.' So I went down to the potter's house, and there he was working at his wheel. And the vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter's hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to do. Then the word of the LORD came to me:" - Jeremiah 18:1-5 ESV
This is a fundamental truth about mankind and fallen systems. Jeremiah needed to see this before he could hear and understand Israel's provision to communicate that provision to them.
Are people fundamentally good and they just need training and occasional mending and healing or are they broken beyond repair and they need a rebirth?
I read the Bible and see the cross as 'an engine of transformation' because it evaporates my humanity and then I am condensed again in the resurrection. That process allows for purity and the cyclical removal of impurities.
I see philosophies and theologies that teach that man is good and doesn't need to be remade and they look good on paper but do they work in practice? No. Not for the vast majority of humanity and the Christian God can't fellowship with anything but absolute uncompromised holiness and purity.
Don't fall for the, 'Wash, rinse and repeat.' advice given by well meaning but false teachers. It isn't spiritual. They aren't hearing from God. They are warmed by their own faulty fleeting fire of a natural idea.
God remakes men.
"Jesus answered him, 'Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.' " - John 3:3 ESV
Rebirth solves a fundamental issue.
"Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ! - assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another. Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil. Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need. Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you." - Ephesians 4:17-32 ESV
This isn't a 'look at examples of good people and be like them' theology. This is the exchanged life based on a rebirth.
"And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him:" - Colossians 3:10 KJV
A new person can have a healthy self-image in honesty. The old man is slowly being poisoned by things that can only be purged by the cross.
I look to God and declare by faith that practical newness can happen today. I ask Him to fill me with His Holy Spirit and let the evaporation of the cross work on me. Jesus was raised on the third day and you and I are raised with Him. His identity is intertwined with our view of ourselves and we can hear what God's wants to communicate because we agree with Him about a fundamental truth about the nature of our relationship with Him.
--
This is a fundamental truth about mankind and fallen systems. Jeremiah needed to see this before he could hear and understand Israel's provision to communicate that provision to them.
Are people fundamentally good and they just need training and occasional mending and healing or are they broken beyond repair and they need a rebirth?
I read the Bible and see the cross as 'an engine of transformation' because it evaporates my humanity and then I am condensed again in the resurrection. That process allows for purity and the cyclical removal of impurities.
I see philosophies and theologies that teach that man is good and doesn't need to be remade and they look good on paper but do they work in practice? No. Not for the vast majority of humanity and the Christian God can't fellowship with anything but absolute uncompromised holiness and purity.
Don't fall for the, 'Wash, rinse and repeat.' advice given by well meaning but false teachers. It isn't spiritual. They aren't hearing from God. They are warmed by their own faulty fleeting fire of a natural idea.
God remakes men.
"Jesus answered him, 'Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.' " - John 3:3 ESV
Rebirth solves a fundamental issue.
"Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ! - assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another. Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil. Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need. Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you." - Ephesians 4:17-32 ESV
This isn't a 'look at examples of good people and be like them' theology. This is the exchanged life based on a rebirth.
"And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him:" - Colossians 3:10 KJV
A new person can have a healthy self-image in honesty. The old man is slowly being poisoned by things that can only be purged by the cross.
I look to God and declare by faith that practical newness can happen today. I ask Him to fill me with His Holy Spirit and let the evaporation of the cross work on me. Jesus was raised on the third day and you and I are raised with Him. His identity is intertwined with our view of ourselves and we can hear what God's wants to communicate because we agree with Him about a fundamental truth about the nature of our relationship with Him.
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