Tag Archives: eternity

God is First!

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I wake in a rest stop.  With stuttering bones I sit in the driver’s seat.  The promise of sunrise already lights my place.  And my eyes drink what is placed before me.

Shadows of colorless shapes fill my eyes.  But a shadow of blazing intensity fills my soul.  The first will pass to history as the brilliant Sun rises to my left.  The second demands my full attention, for it is God who will be first.

The shadows are there; statues of men lay between the rising Son and my eyes.  The choice is brilliantly clear.  “To prayer with me!  These things of men put God last.  But I must put Him first.”

A love for He is from eternity clears the fog from my mind.  His Holiness appears as a jarring jolt.  And the folly of men recedes.

What love has man for this place of prayer?  He testifies to himself by the statues he has placed in this rest stop, and absence of praise for God who has given him hands.

Along the highway, to arrive at this place, I saw no sign of thanks to God.  I saw only small crosses to glorify the death of a man.  A rich crop of signs has grown up to direct the body.  But where are the signs for God?

There should have been a sign that said, “Praise be to God in His mercy!  We give thanks to you, O’ Holy One, for allowing us to build this highway.”  But there will be no such sign to find.

Man restrains his praise for God, yet elevates himself.  I too am man, and so I confess.  But confession is only the beginning.  Where is the choice within me to elevate God to first?  It must be found, and quickly!  Or prayer will be but words.

Open my eyes O’ Holy One.  Have mercy on this fool!  I see with clarity how all men have treated you as trash; how they relegate you as last.  But you have made me stand in a place where such lies blatantly reek of the pride of man.  If you are not first then I am last forever.

You are of eternity, and your Glory has always been so.  A countless host will proclaim in your favor.  They will turn their face from any man who promotes himself.  So they take their stance.  They have been proven and so they will remain.  Yet man considers that he would be acceptable among their ranks.

The great cloud of witnesses sing, “Holy praise to the Sovereign God.  And to his Holy Son!  For salvation belongs to God alone and to the Lamb.”

This song is to be sung forever.  And the great cloud of witnesses readily agreeds.  All the while man promotes himself.  And refuses a place for His Holy Name in this place of testing. 

What, indeed, is to be the outcome of the pride of men?  It is not what they expect.  For God’s judgment has stood, it will stand, and it will remain forever;  God is first!

Amen, amen, amen!

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.

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?

The Limits of Can

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The list of limits, which restrain the life of man, is long.  He is bound up and constrained by the Holy dictates of God’s great Wisdom.  The list of “can” is shorter, yet no less sure.  The first constrains rebellion.  The second unleashes holy righteousness with the unlimited power of God himself.

Man presses against the limits of restraint.  They invent machines to push into those limits, and succeeds.  There will be no glory from God for such pernicious strivings.  How can rebellious desire be rewarded?

But who, among men, reaches to the limit of “can”?   It is written for all to read, “With God all things are possible”.   In the way of obedience, this was said.  In the way of salvation to obedience, this was said.  Who, among men, reaches to the fullness of God’s Holy words?

There are the limits of this world.  The final limit, among men, is reached at the point of death; the release of the soul from the constraints of flesh.  All men will surely reach this limit and pass through.

Many will reach the next impenetrable limit of condemnation; they will go no farther.  No rebellious striving will produce success.  But who will reach beyond that finality to the unspeakable limits of eternity?

God is a God of order.  He has placed limits for all creatures.  In this age, he has constrained.  So it will be in the next age.  In this age he constrains rebellion.  In the next he will constrain Holy order.  Yet who, among men, reaches to the limit of “can”?

Jesus offers righteousness to man now.  Jesus is the righteousness of man forever.  Yet what shall be said of the fullness of possibility in this place of testing?  Who has reached the fullness of God’s willingness to give?  Who, among men, reaches deep to become what God is willing to give?

The Mind is Slave to the Soul

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The mind is a very fertile and powerful organ among the members of our body.  Regardless our state of affairs, it is able to rise to the occasion.  Though it is not the source of decision.

If a man is depressed, the mind can drive him to death.  If a man is joyful, no Depression can touch him.  If a man strives to accomplish a task, within the reach of his body, his mind will quicken.  If he determines to say, “No I will not”, his mind will shutdown possibilities.  The man is soul.  The body is the place where the soul lives.  The mind is therefore, the slave of the soul.

Within the boundaries of man (within the nature of constraints God has placed on this world), the mind is able to accomplish the things the soul desires.  This can be bad or good.  For if a man’s soul is darkened, so his mind will be darkened.  But if a man’s soul reaches for God, his mind also will reach for God.

God will respond to the soul who desires him.  Though the mind is full of wickedness, God can cause righteousness to grow.  But let the man, in his soul, first search diligently for what is God.  Let him also continue in this searching as he sees the fruit of God appear.

If I go to an apple tree, in its season of fruit, I do not expect to find skunks growing on it.  If I have planted the apple tree I will be quite miffed at its produce.  I will cut it down and burn it to ashes.  It will not matter if the tree has produced apples for years.  I have no use for skunks.  There is no place for them among my things.  And though they do exist, independent of my orchard, I will not grow them willingly.

Can we expect less of God who plants righteousness?  If a soul has once desired the holiness of God, receives what God graciously gives, then turns to embrace wickedness, can we expect God to embrace that soul?

The righteousness of God will cease in our things.  Though they will continue for a little while, as we have developed a habit, they will dissipate overtime.  In the place of the righteousness of God, we will find the fruit of wickedness.  How can we expect that to be received by God?

Let us be wise and press the mind to accomplish.  What our soul desires, the mind is forced to endure.  Therefore if we desire God, let us continue to desire more of God.  If he has blessed us with a crop of righteousness for a small desire how much more for complete desire?

Man is not body.  Man is soul clothed in a body.  The deception is complete enough to keep the fool a fool. 

No man has seen his soul.  But any man can readily see his body.  Most people believe the body is who they are.  They have not noticed the subtle difference between the decaying nature of the mind and the eternal nature of the soul.  They are caught in a deception, and there they will remain eternally.

The body cannot do the will of God if the man’s soul is in rebellion.  But let the man look up and desire his maker, and he will see marked difference in his life.  The problem is, most people do not understand this.  So when they once receive the grace of God, they fall back to the desires of the body.

If a man’s body is healed by God, men consider it a miracle.  But the real miracle happens when a man’s soul agrees with God, and of the body is forced to obey.  The mind will do as the soul commands.  Will the soul do as God commands?

Love of self

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Man does not have to love God.  You’re more than welcome to consume the things of this world that he has created for your benefit.  And no one can force you to thank him. 

You’re more than welcome to live your entire life without thinking about him and pondering eternity.  You can choose to live in the deepest of wicked behavior, or the greatest of social graces.  You are not forced to consider your life before his Holy eyes.

You don’t even have to think about your own death and what will happen after.  There is an eternity.  But you don’t have to ponder that.  It will come and take you when the time is right.

But if you hate him now, what will you do after this life?  Have you scoped out heaven and found yourself a place to live where God is not?  Perhaps you plan to purchase a piece of land on the edge of heaven, far away from his throne.  Have you thought that there may not be such a place?

For now you can ignore him.  You can thrive just fine with what he supplies, for he sends rain upon the just and the unjust.  But what will you do when the entirety of heaven and eternity contains the vibrant, glorious and radiant beauty of God?

Everyone you will meet will be singing beautiful songs about the God they love.  But you would hate them.  The song of selfishness you sing now is the song you want to hear.  But no one there will understand your words.  And the melody would be like a squeaking hinge or fingernails on a blackboard.

It’s okay, don’t worry.  God has reserved a place for those who hate him.  But the provision is made up of things you now despise.  No delicate banquet for you to attend.  No fine clothing to attract attention.  No loving family to support you in your folly.  No beautiful parties to attend.  No entertainment to distract you from your hours. And no possible hope of release.

You don’t have to love God now.  But that won’t change when you die.  If you don’t love him now you won’t love him then.

You can fill up your life with selfishness.  Its ok.  He has prepared a place for such as you.