Monthly Archives: July 2014

The Perfect Family

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Do you remember how you obeyed your parents?  Have you seen how your children obey you now?  Do you remember how rebellion lived inside you like a hungry lion?  Can you hear your children roar now?

Yet your parents loved you.  Regardless your children’s faults you love them. 

How much joy and love would have been shared if you had been a fully obedient child?  What a magnificent family you would have if your children were willingly obedient.  How much more adoration between you?

Did your parents know exactly what to do and when, every single day?  Do you make mistakes in raising your child now?  What if your parents had been faultless people?  What if you were a perfect parent today?   What an incredibly strong bond there would be between child and parent.

Have you considered how the Father in Heaven loves his Holy Son Jesus?  Both of them faultless for eternity.  Both of them, the essence of love.  Both of them perfectly wise.  The Father agreeing with the Son.  And the Son agreeing with the Father.

If you can sense the strength of love in a perfect family, you could multiply that times 10 billion and never come close to the love the Father has for the Son.

God told his Son to go teach his rebellious people and die at their rebellious hands on a cross.  The Son agreed and accomplished his Father’s will.  How precious to God the Father has Jesus the Holy Son of God become?  Causing a division between them is absolutely impossible.

He who has the Father has the Son.  He who has the Son has the Father.  They are identical in their mercy.  They are inseparable in righteousness.  Between them judgment is unanimous.  If power in God was forever, it is doubly so now.

Thinking of Jesus in any other terms is forbidden by the Holy throne of the Most High God.  Those who reject the Son, reject the Father also.  Those who do not obey or glorify Jesus, do not obey or glorify the Father either.  It is eternally impossible to have one without the other.

The Spirit of God is able to teach us this same obedience.  How much love does the Father have for those who obey and love his Son?  Let us make every effort to join them in their perfect family.

What’s it Take?

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I watched out the upstairs window, at a Blue Jay and a Robin.  “How cute.” I mused.  “They are waiting their turn with a piece of bread.”

But a piece of bread does not flutter when a bird lifts its head from pecking.  It was the Robin’s baby!

For a moment, she took her eyes off her love.  The Blue Jay took opportunity.  Now the baby languishes toward death, while the mother watches from a small distance.  Helpless to hope.  Lacking in size and talent to fight back.  Unable to morn.  Yet unable to look away.

I looked immediately for relevance to humanity, Christianity, and the nature of Spiritual reality.  “How does this apply to us?”

I remembered my thoughts in the shower.  “diligence gives life.  Slothfulness invites death.

Men love to play, rest, relax and be slothful.  Every man either fights against it, or he gives in rather often.  “What’s the matter with just hangin out?”  Everything is wrong with just hangin out!

A buzzard is a fright filled animal.  He loves peace and tranquility.  Yet when hunger comes, he must embrace a certain elevated level of stress.  He hates it.  But it’s a necessity.

Demons are much the same.  They hate righteousness.  They love peace and tranquility.  They are sloth amplified.  So when they come across someone just hangin out, they look with intense interest.  “Is he dead to God?  Or is there still some faith left.  Will he agree with my wicked and unholy desires?  Or will he balk at suggestions?”  If you agree with their enticements, they will consume you.

In my 60 years, I’ve learned that diligence produces peace and tranquility.  When things are in order and finished, there is a time to hang out.  But you won’t find diligent people hanging out to play games till sun up.  They will be tired and ready for rest.

Yet they will take the time to pray; that precious sacrifice of “last hour of strength”.  They will have busied themselves all day with things that matter, taking care of the charge before them.  They will not have even caught the eye of demons.  And, when their day is done, they will ask the Lord of Life to watch over their unconscious mind.  They are diligent to the core.  And they will LIVE.

Rest, peace, play and slothfulness will murder you.  Those who love you will watch with mute horror, as you are devoured by wicked behavior.  Your house will become a trash heap of useless dribble.  And life will elude you all your days.

Two rooms

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In my house are many rooms where I may live and thrive.

But two stand out as special rooms, for Him they glorify.

One room is bare, kept clean for prayer.  The other is kept for man.

In one my anxious heart is healed.  The other for words to send.

A path between the two is worn; a richly trodden way.

This is the path I’ve taken thrice, this wondrous golden day.

The room of send abounds with shelves, and a pile upon the floor.

The shelves contain the rarer words.  The pile I use the more.

What words appeal?  What words reject?  What words will action bring?

My fingers scurry through the mess to cause your heart to sing.

” Praise God all creatures big and small.  Adore his Holy name.  His righteousness and mercy sent has saved my soul from shame!”

Anxious Eyes

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I look to the sky that I may see clouds rising over the sea. 

There is a drought upon the land; a vast unholy drought.

The souls of men are shriveled up with the dryness of sin, yet they do not perceive.

I look to the horizon, and my ears strain against the breeze.  Will I see the water of life give life to what is dead?

Will men fall on their shriveled knees to beg for the mercy of God?  They already stand proudly, defiantly, dead.

Where is the blazing glory of God among all men?  Where is his name first among the words of men?  Where is the boldness of life?

I look toward the rising sun. 

I watch to where it sets. 

I peer with failing eyes at where the moon will rise.

With anxious heart I wait.

“Come!”

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There is horror at my feet.  The mercy of God has come to save.  What provokes these words remains unspeakable.  For the provocation is the Holy Spirit of God.

If I could speak what he has done, who among us would understand?  The language of the flesh cannot receive the language of the Spirit.  what God speaks in the moment, takes days to explain.

If I would speak of the horror that lay at my feet, men would perceive.  But to what value?  I would only be speaking of the things men already know.

What I desire to share, the words of men are not sufficient to describe.  Even the desire to have you understand, is beyond our grasp to comprehend.

I speak of the glory of God to save the souls of men.  I speak of how his love and wisdom and strength come upon a man.  I speak of how vastly different is my perception from His.  I speak of He who is Holy.  Yet willing to love those who are not.  For the singular purpose that they too may become holy.

I know there are some in this world who understand.  I know they too have tasted the mercy of God.  I know they too recognize the limits of communication between men in regard to the Holy things of God.

I am at complete lack to describe the horrors of sin.  I am void of means to describe the glory of God.  My words are small, pathetic and horribly lacking.  Still I am compelled to try.

When we reach the throne of God it will be too late to warn.  So this is the place of attempt.  But what warning can be given that has not already been said?  For we speak to the ears of men who cannot understand.

At the throne of God understanding will come.  But what good will that do then?  Today is our only day for salvation.  With all the strength I have, I tell you, “Seek the face of God!”

Look around you at the things you say you own.  On that day you will abhor every single one of them.  In this I am trying with all I know to give strength to the warning of the judgment of God.

Look within you at the things you think are good.  On the day you appear before him you will see what is Good, and abhor the perception you now have.

Please reach deep and find mercy for this message.  I cannot even describe the sincerity behind these words.  I beg you to receive these words.  And I confess, pathetically, this is the best I can give.

The Spirit of God says, “Come!”  Before the door on your life is sealed, come! 

What man thinks is pure is nothing but trash.  There is a purity, blazingly other.  I have perceived it by His grace, and horror at my folly consumed me.  Yet I thank him that I have perceived this before I am bound to stand before him.

Woe to man!  For he is of a people of unclean lips and hearts.  The Spirit of God says, “Come”.

Prayer

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People, by majority, tend to avoid prayer.  To most, prayer is like those little hammers you can buy to smash out your window in case you drive into a lake.  In fact it is so like that little hammer, that most people can’t remember where they put it when they need it the most.  If they remember at all.

But prayer is not exclusively for men.  When you tell people they should pray, they think of themselves as ugly and unworthy therefore afraid of the Most High God.  And they equate God with a holy law they cannot and are not willing to fulfill.  They may say “okay” but they will not.

People think of prayer as something they are expected to do as a righteous ritual.  But prayer is not for us.  Prayer is for God.  He takes delight in seeing his creatures come to him.  So when we don’t pray we rob him of his joy.

I will make a fool of myself by giving this example.  I lay on my bed one day, feeling fully unworthy of his presence.  I spoke a few words to him but did not kneel before Him in prayer.

Then I sensed that familiar loving voice of the Lord Jesus.  “It is not right to keep what belongs to him.”

The understanding was immediately clear.  Humanly speaking, I was hurting God’s feelings.  I was busily robbing him of his joy.  With that understanding, it was very easy to get up and kneel in humility to give him praise and thanks.

When people refuse to pray, they are often correct about their guilt.  But the guilt will not dissipate unless we go to the one who can remove it.  He will remove it if we come to him in humility and earnest intent.

How do I know this?  Because Jesus willingly allowed himself to be murdered so that he may become the mercy of God.   He is the crown jewel in all God’s creation.  No one exalts trivia.  Rather, he gives glory to his greatest prize.  How much more does God?

If we are guilty of sin, that is one thing.  But to be guilty of non-belieg is an entirely different matter.  By refusing to believe we are counting God’s greatest prize as far less valuable.

God was deadly serious about offering his Son as the sacrifice for our sins.  He is deadly serious about how we receive that sacrifice.  (It is not possible to put that more strongly.)  Therefore he is deadly serious about saving us.  Therefore he is deadly serious about his desire to commune with his creation.

There is holy wrath waiting for those who refuse to believe.  But his generosity and mercy are even more potent for those who receive His gift. 

This is true.  It is a faultless saying.   Why then would anyone refuse to give God what is rightfully his?

With the promise of utter annihilation , and the promise of eternal embrace, how can anyone choose the former?  It is not logical.  It makes absolutely no sense.  God refers to such a choice as foolish.

His people, in this place, willingly testify that God is a beautiful loving Father.   Ask and they will tell you how much God loves them. 

(I can only hope that the man you think is a Christian, and approach to ask, is truly in love with God.  Beware, many masquerade by wearing the name.)

With even a summary view of the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, you will get the picture of God in Jesus.  If you approach those books with humility, understanding will come.

There is no safety away from him.  But near him there is all safety and confidence, not to mention a clean conscience.  And by going to him we give him what is his. 

I had a dear old friend you once told me, “It is impossible to out give God.  He has a bigger shovel.”  If you give him what he wants, do you think he will not rightly give you what you need?