Every human being has a religion. Religion is Man’s obedience to his version of God. It is good then to obey the constructs of our religion. But it is better to employ the trappings of faith.
Every once in awhile, when the time seems right to you, put your religion in a box and leave it outside your room of Prayer. Dress yourself in nothing more than faith. Then go to God in truth.
Once stripped of what you think is righteous obedience, you will find yourself humbly and woefully inadequate before the Living God. But when you leave the room of Prayer, and recover all your trappings of religion, they will seem far less important. You will have grown a smidge or two.
By His Grace
Category Archives: religion
In the Blink of an Eye
Have you looked into the coming future of Man? Do you know about the utter devastation of all wickedness? Do you know how sure it is?
At the very moment of Eternity when God lips cease speaking the command, a devastating and eternal blow will be sent to all this darkened the creation. Like a lightning bolt that strikes a pea, the earth and all this black universe will be no more.
Everything man currently loves will become nothing more than a floating ember of ash. Absolutely nothing, of even the dust, will remain.
Heaven will move, taking its rightful place. This place of testing will be no more. The joy and righteousness of God will prevail forever.
When this happens it will be as if this place has never existed. All the things men love will be gone. And it will happen in the blink of an eye.
It will happen faster than it takes an atheist to remember he has said there is no God. Have you considered these things with serious and vibrant desire? Or have you been like so many others?
Lashed to a portion of the ship, the man proclaims there is no storm. The ship is tossed 45 degrees to the left, then is forced the other direction 90 degrees. All the while he stupidly proclaims, “There is no storm”.
It’s easy to see there is no common sense in such a man. Are you living your life like that? Or are you letting common sense cause you panic?
Such realization ought to send us to the words of God. Truly believing this ought to make our fingers tremble as we turn the pages. Is this the way you see people reacting to this News?
It doesn’t matter how we respond, does it? It doesn’t matter what comes of us when God puts an end to all the things men have loved.
Heaven will gain its rightful place, that place that this place of wickedness has consumed for so long. And it won’t matter whether we believed this or not.
I urge you because I love you, think about this. If I despised you I would say nothing. Please let your mind think this through.
The Good Die Young
Some say there is no God. Others doubt that God cares. Some think there is a God and that he cares, but they are left to fend for themselves in this place until they reach heaven.
Then can you explain why there is any good in this world at all? What is it about the world that gives you the impression that good can triumph here? A bad man succeeds, while a good man is shot down in the street. And isn’t there a saying among us that the good die young?
The proof that there is a God remains in his faithfulness to deliver survival to a people who despised him so vehemently, and glorify violence and death.
You think you’re in control of your life? Think about this:
A man in India, one single man, will do a single task today. What others have done before him, throughout the world, will dictate what he does today. Another man in Saudi Arabia will do something today. He’s single action will reach you or your children sooner or later. Are you really in control of your life?
People will do what they do. They will say, or not say, what they want. A handful will give glory to the Majesty of God among us. But most will live their entire life giving no glory to God at all. They may respect him and fear him but they refuse to speak of His Holy name in public.
Yes God cares, in spite of the fact that we don’t. God is beautiful in Jesus the Christ. Man is a mucus mold on eternity. Still God holds out his hand to us.
18 “Come now, let us settle the matter,”
says the Lord.
“Though your sins are like scarlet,
they shall be as white as snow;
though they are red as crimson,
they shall be like wool.
19 If you are willing and obedient,
you will eat the good things of the land;
20 but if you resist and rebel,
you will be devoured by the sword.” (Isaiah chapter 1)
Loyalty Supreme!
For reasons only known in heaven, God began a creation. He spun with Invisible thread, creating something from absolutely nothing.
A Blackness was born in The Kingdom of Light. He speckled the Blackness with fiery balls. Appearing from nothing were little places of special interest. They were darkened little globes that we’re not like the fires at all.
Imagine, if you can, the wonder of the angels as they did the bidding of their Father. And their wonder kept expanding. The work went on for a very long time.
Every item in the darkness was placed precisely where The Father said to put it. Joy and wonderment filled all Heaven as the creation took shape before their very eyes. It was an intricate dance of tiny objects, all floating in the blackness. A precise ballet of love. Every item spun precisely around another.
Then, amazement upon amazement, God spoke a word unheard before. “Let us create Man in our image”. Adam, he was called. The meaning of the word is “First Blood”.
In his hands, The Holy Word of God began the work of The Father. A handful of dust took shape. An unspeakable perfect work of art lay on the ground. “Let the Breath of Life enter.” The man’s breath began. His eyes opened. And from a perspective only capable in this creature of dust, he saw his surroundings for the first time.
Love and joy filled the servants of God as they were Witnesses to this amazing Work. Unquestioning, innocent obedience bore the fruit the Living God intended. And now they would watch that same obedience flow through the blood of this creation.
Blood! The first of its kind. Never before was there a creature with such exquisite limitation. How unspeakably beautiful was the work of The Father. What great tender care was given to their new brother.
But press forward in time with me. Witness the history of decay. See the frustrated Beauty become ragged edged and hideously vile. Read the history of man in the Bible and weep.
Look at the horror which we have become. Not only have we murdered the love of God, we joyfully toss him in the cesspool of unbelief. And the people despise anyone who speaks His Holy Name.
Dare to tell me that God has no right to destroy his enemies of this filthy place!
But this is not the end of the story, for amazement fills the servants of God still. As by that same innocent obedience, they reach into the Blackness of sin and create a people of light.
For now, the tiny lights glow in the Darkness. But the day will surely come when the darkness will be swallowed up by the place from which it was created. That which is abhorrent to man will rule with Christ for eternity.
Something from nothing became blackness. But something from Blackness will become dazzling, bright and brilliant Lights of Life.
Join in the building celebration; the Symphony of redemption is a beautiful song, being played by those who love Him. And the Beautiful song is played against the backdrop of hisses, boos jeers, wailings, screams, and violent intent. Make all the noise you want, you hideous creatures of hatred. Your silence is moving toward you now.
I will love the God who made me! I will adore the one who fashioned me from nothing! Stand with me or not, what difference can it possibly make?
By His Grace.
Understand
Kedoshim, K’doshim, or Qedoshim (קְדֹשִׁים — Hebrew for “holy ones,”
Does this Define Christianity as you have heard it?
The Reason for Faith’s Necessity
2 questions:
_____________
1. Why do we need faith?
2. What does the voice of God sound like?
Beginning with the second question:
The voice of God is life. When the Israelites were released from bondage in Egypt, God displayed his voice in a thunderous noise from the mountain. But this was for the sake of the people, that they may worship Him and obey. As he spoke with Moses, however, he used no such voice. Rather, God treated Moses as a friend. (What does that say about those to whom he spoke as a thunderous noise?)
The voice of God requires faith to hear. God is thoroughly life. Everything he is, everything he says, everything he does, is life. Ask yourself then what does life say, what does life sound like, what does life look like, what does life feel like? Look carefully at the situations and things that come to you.
Please don’t consider that God is like a man. The life I am speaking of is Purity, Holiness, Righteousness, Justice, Mercy, and in the end Grace to us through sustaining toward the same things.
He would prefer that we gain his wisdom to perceive with our eyes and ears, mind, heart and strength. Isn’t this why the first and greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your mind and with all your strength and with all your soul? Then you will begin to hear his voice. How do I know this?
Romans 1:20 tells us how we know this. “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities–his eternal power and divine nature–have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.”
(And we have the testimony of those who do hear his voice through faith. The one who writes this testifies. And some who read this testify. The voice of God, one may say, also comes from those who know him. Perhaps better said, those God knows in Jesus His Holy and Righteous Son. The people would find advantedge listening to the words of such people, instead of pre-judging them as worthless.)
He speaks to us from what we can say “IS”. Because life “IS”.
And we must inject another slice of information here. God does not demand too much, for he gives us everything we need to accomplish his Holy will in our lives. To say he does not, is to join with satan in the primary accusation that has caused creation of this place of testing in the first place. We find the second slice of information in the following scripture.
5 If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. 6 But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. 7 That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. 8 Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do. (James 1)
Rejecting this promise is a sincerely precarious place to choose to live! For if we do not receive his wisdom, that God is so willing to give freely, we will surely lack precious gifts. (Even, perhaps, finding death in the end. For not a single one of those who of those who heard the Thunders from the mountain receive the promise of God.)
Having read this, it is now your responsibility to act. Though having said that, (it sounds like a threat) the Wonders that God is willing to give to any man is far worth the struggle to suppress our rebelion (That which is crouching at our very door, desiring to have us. But we must master it. [Taken from Genesis 4:7])
Think about this deeply: we need faith because it will never cease to be necessary.
Go and see if what I have said is true.
P. S. The voice of God is called Jesus. Think about that for the rest of your life.
Words From There 