Tag Archives: hope

Come Dine With God

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Spilled out, without reserve, is the Holy Blood of Christ.

Dressed in Holy will; clothed with endless Mercy.

Gentle, meek, humble of heart and full of Holy intent to save.

 

What sin have you, which forces itself into your sweetest of dreams?

It can be covered by His Holy Love.

What desire do you have that can’t be mended?

 

Come from far, wide, and near.

Come and dine with the Holy One.

Rise up on your shaky legs and stagger t’ward home.

 

He made you.  He knows you.  He loves you, as if from afar.

Yet your guilty days are spent within His Holy Body.

For, “In Him we live and move and have our being”.

 

He has seen you.

Can you see Him?

Look with faith to the things past; those horrible things done, on that day, to the Holy Son of God.

 

He endured without fault.

For your sake He performed the Holy will of His Father.

“It is finished!”

 

Come, sit at the table to receive.

Come dine with the Holy One of God.

He will wash you by the Holy Blood of His covenant of promise.

 

You need not suffer any longer.

No sin is too great; His Holy love is greater.

Come taste and see that the Lord is Good.

Confidence of an Incompetent Buffoon

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I want to testify about something that I think might be helpful to many.  If something can go wrong for me, it already has.  It just hasn’t appeared before my face yet.  To add to that, I seem to be prone to make a number of really foolish choices along the way.  In short, I expect to fail. All told, I’d call myself stupid but I don’t think its proper to elevate one’s self.

Evidently this is the nature of Who I am.  And there are many who are like me.

There are a million and a half accomplished human beings. I fall into the majority of humanity.

With that said, I want to address the topic of confidence.

Confidence is a very fickle human quality.  By in large, most people have a false confidence.  I mean, they think they are something because someone has told them so, or they have fooled themselves into believing they are something.  All the while, their very soul knows the truth.

A person’s confidence has to do with comparison to others.  If someone strokes your ego, you think you are something because they compare you to someone else.  But in fact, others are being compared to you.  Sounds like a formula for complete devastation.

That’s all fine and dandy.  It won’t stop just because I pointed it out.  But why do people pay so much attention to their confidence level?

The answer has to do with fear. People are horrified to think that others would realize they are only incompetent buffoons.  So they keep testing the water and fishing for compliments.

But what if no compliment ever comes?  Is the person destined to be devastated for their entire life here in this place of testing?  The answer is no.

There are butterflies, Birds, cats, dogs, horses, grass, trees and stars that do not compare us to others.  Often people who have a lack of compliments toward them will turn to such things.  Curiously, as a result people praise them for loving nature.  Ya hoo!  They got confidence!

But the fear doesn’t leave, does it?  Instead of having a bold spirit you simply turned your attention to something that can’t attack you.  You put a little finger bandaid over an amputated arm.

I have found that as I have to turn to the Lord Jesus Christ, I am accepted.  By faith in the words he spoke, I am someone!  And he promises not to ever turn away from me!

Yes I’m an incompetent buffoon.  But in my lord Jesus, I am precious enough for him to die on a cross to save me.

With this brand of confidence I can agree with the writer who said, “I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.”

That doesn’t mean I become an accomplished human being.  It means that the incompetent buffoon has found someone to love him.

This confidence despises human comparison.  It learns to make fun of my failures.  It generates an unquenchable hope.  And I no longer fear humanity.

The only thing I fear now is that I might displease him in some way.  But this is residual trash from the things I have been taught as a man.

Believing his words, I have confidence to approach the Most High God!  What is it to me if men compare themselves?  What is it to me if they think I really am an incompetent buffoon?

All it took was to believe in the Son of God.  Not at all an impossible task, when I realized I was a fool. 

If men have despised me, it has worked out for my salvation.  If they purposefully diminished me and cast me aside,  it was for my benefit.  Who needs the confidence of men when we have the confidence of Christ?

On a side note I will say I feel sorry for the beautiful people of this world; those people who are beautiful in the eyes of everyone, and have all the ego stroking they can get.  Since they have acceptance they are not likely to look for anything else.  But I would caution them to remember: you will get old, sick, frail, and eventually die. 

Where will your confidence be as you stand before the Most High God, naked and ashamed?  You’ll be standing there with all the people who thought you were something.  They won’t think so highly of you then.

The Common and the Holy

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What’s wrong with the words we use in common speech today?  A great deal is wrong with the words we use in common speech today.

American society is no longer built on the Bible’s vocabulary.  It is built on what is common to man, not on what is Holy before God.

I don’t point this out to make accusation.  I point this out as a matter of fact:  That if I am to speak of the things of God, I must use the vocabulary of man.  It makes no sense to send a man who speaks a certain language and expect foreigners to understand him.

So if I talk about the things of God, I run the risk of ignorance on the part of the listener.  Therefore it is good, sometimes, to paraphrase until a man’s soul strives to understand.

But there are also times when the only words that are of any value, in explaining the things of God, are the very words which God has given to us.  One such word that falls, if you will “to the dirt”, between the things of God and the things of man, is “rejoice”.

Show me a place on Twitter or facebook where “rejoice” is used regularly.  Point to conversation, and show me where two people have used the word regularly and with understanding.  Though it is a simple and self explanatory word, people simply don’t use it.

But in the things of God, it takes first place.  I rejoice at the righteousness of God!  I rejoice at his excellent and unexpected mercy!  And I rejoice that his promises are true and faultless!  I rejoice continually, that my sins are forgiven before the Living God; in Christ Jesus my Holy and Faithful Lord!

How many times I have tried to explain this, and realize I have not found the means to communicate.  Even when I speak to Christians, who know these things, there is a lack of evidence that they understand.  For their lives only reflect a certain portion of such rejoicing.  How then can I expect to relay these things to a people who do not know their left from their right.

But I will testify of what is true.  And by the truth, I am forced to use the word “rejoice”.  (I suppose I could use the word “elation”, but how is that any more common than the word “rejoice”?)

I ask forgiveness from those who do not understand its value.  But it is the only word English has, to properly describe the joy a man experiences at the forgiveness of his sins.

I understand the righteousness of God, because I have read it in His Holy Word the Bible.  I see that I am not able to uphold his Holy Law, for I stumble around as a man in the dark when I try to do it.  Fear becomes my best friend, and drives me to seek His mercy.

So, by “The Faith“, His Holy Word teaches me.  I approach him in prayer with confession.  To my complete amazement, the Sovereign God reaches down to touch me with forgiveness.

With understanding comes a volume of tears.  And when I rise from prayer, confidence fills me, where there was fear before.  I am forgiven of my trespasses, and find the strength, to strive after his Holy Law again.

Who can explain this mystery?  I look within, and find myself void of proof.  I can tell you it’s true, but I cannot prove it.  I am forced to display what God has done in me.  And you are forced to judge rightly according to what you perceive in me.

Is there love?  Yes.  Is there patience?  Yes.  Do I display a hatred for the things of man, while I love the things of God?  Yes. Is there knowledge of His Holy Word?  Yes.  Is there a desire to do the things of God rather than the things of men?  Yes.  Has his love made me different than other men of this world?   The answer is yes.

The forgiveness of God produces these things, which are called fruit.  And it is these things that God is looking for in his people.  “Does the man believe, to the point that he has changed.”  This is the summation of God’s intent.

Without such fruit in a man, he cannot say he has understood the forgiveness of God.  But when the forgiveness of God comes, as I have described, there is a rejoicing that does not cease.

Rejoicing in God is a never ending, that is to say eternal, gift that we give back for the love he has given.  We are forced, by our love, to worship Him with truth, and joy, and desire to do righteously.  What better word might someone use than “rejoice”?

The absence of this word, among the people of America, tells me that they have not received forgiveness for their sins.  Others may say, “This has to do with a lack of Bible knowledge.  It is simply a lack of vocabulary.  Teach them, and they will own it”. 

How can I possibly own what belongs to God unless God gives it to me?

I do not perceive that America lacks vocabulary.  For they talk incessantly between one another.  And they seem well enough able to understand, for they respond in great volume.

Bible language has to do with Bible things.  Bible things have to do with the Living God in Christ Jesus.  Those who do not know the vocabulary of the Bible, do not know the living God.  For the words of the Bible become a living testimony in the one who receives forgiveness of his sins.

I understand a debate that may form by what I just said.  But I ask you to leave it where it is, that men may ponder this in their soul.  If men see us debate the issue they will leave the job to us.  What good is then accomplished?

Willing Heart

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I tell you a truth.  I do not worship God because I am a righteous man.  I worship God because he has shown me how to love him. 

The world is mistaken.  They see God as a taskmaster, a demanding and angry Lord.  Even all the divisions in the Christian Church appear because of this. 

But man is horribly in error.  It is written, “Unless the Lord builds a house the builder builds in vain.”   The truth of that comes home when a man understands that the Lord is willing to build His Holy house within him.

I could continue with my own words but to no great advantage.  Let me place here a more beautiful way of saying all these things.

“Once I stumbled in the darkness
doing only as I pleased.

But, I wasn’t really happy,
And, my heart was not at ease.

I just didn’t have the willingness
to follow His commands,

‘Til I layed my heart completely in His hands.

If you don’t have a willing heart,
ask Him to give you one.

If you can’t seem to make a start,
Trust in His power.

For the Lord of Love is watching you,
He sees what you’re going through.

And, He can make a way,
If you want Him to.

Oh, do you want Him to?
… Then, tell Him so.

(Kelly Willard “Willing heart”)

If you want to live, simply ask.

The Building of Elegant Poverty

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Outside the battered door is a courtyard of gravel.  Here men walk without shoes and fall to their ravaged knees.  Yet there is smooth cool stone inside, bloodstained by the feet and knees of those who have entered.

The plants which adorn the court are but missshapen bushes, yet elegant to he who owns the place.  By design, its appearance refuses the praise of the elegant and proud.  Only the desperate poor come here.

Within the door, the floor shines from wearing.  Billions of feet have scuffed it to a fine polish.  The walls depict the beauty of promise; the promise of hope and the promise of accomplishment. 

Those who enter are bid “Welcome”.  While embrace endures restraint.  Commanded are they who attend the visitors, “Help them with what they need.  But let us see what they will do”.

The floors above, stage by stage, present a new Horizon.  Each stairwell guarded carefully and hidden behind the most narrow of doors.  Only with the proper password and consent, may anyone ascend.

Above the floors which one may enter, is a building in the works.  No one is allowed past the ceiling of the top floor until the work is finished on the next.

No news of preparation comes from those who build.  No revealing of the grandeur they put in place is told or seen.  Yet as each floor was finished there were men prepared to climb.  So it will be until its completion.

“As long as it is day, we must do the works of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work.”

“Yes!”

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God says, “Yes“.  And he has engraved that Holy Word in the Holy Blood of his Holy Son across all creation!

He says “yes” to our desire to live forever.  He says “yes” to everything that is righteous and good.

If we do not live, as if he has said “yes” to us then, by whatever measure we fall short, we call him a liar.  It is established that God cannot lie.  So then who are we to refuse his answer?

He says “yes“, and so there is sure joy toward the promise of eternity.  He says “yes“, and so we become a righteous people in His Holy Christ.

The first is to believe and be set free from all the things that bring failure and shame.  The second is to “become” and overcome sin and temptation.  The first gives us strength to honor his Holy Name and testify with great boldness, even in the face of hatred and ridicule; even in the face of wicked and unholy doubt. 

The second gives our testimony the strongest possible foundation.  This is the strength to stand with glory; that standing which causes men to wonder and marvel.  We become His “yes” before their very face

God has said “yes” in the very suffering and blood of His Holy Son.  He has said “yes” to the destruction of all who do not believe and remain in the filthy death of unbelief.   He has said “yes” to any man who desires righteousness from his Holy Hand, and looks for it earnestly.

How do we dare say no?  Let us combine our knowledge with faith, and rise up to give Him the glory that is rightfully His! 

Let us not be like those who fell, dead forever, in the desert!  Let us be as the example of Stephen, his holy and righteous servant!