Tag Archives: joy

The Orphaned Altar

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During an exquisite time of visitation from God this morning, I fell upon something that gave me the child’s belly laugh for a while. Though I tried to sober up and stop chuckling, it kept coming back. Much like a living cartoon from the Far Side.

Today’s times are not what they were in the day of Abraham. Such visitations from God inspired those beautiful men to lay an altar of stones in a place here or there. They were a testimony to HIS love and faithfulness. And people well respected them as long as they understood the reason for the pile.

But after this beautiful visitation from our God, shall I gather a few stones and make a small altar to his love? He came upon me in a truck parking lot. Yeah, let me just do that.

There is no place for understanding what is holy in today’s world. A man will come along and see a small pile of rocks on his pristine blacktop. “What kind of a fool would do a thing like this!”

Busying himself with some kind of tool, the small pile of rocks would quickly be moved back where it came from. No understanding. No sense of holy. No one does these things today. And the irony of two different days is a joke before the Holy Throne of He who inspires souls to give endless thanks for His love.

This picture of futility stirred me to pure laughter. Go ahead, someone tell me modern man is closer to God than he ever was before.

He IS

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Consider the Lord Jesus.

From the beginning the Living God spoke Living words.

This is the Lord Jesus, the Christ of God.

He IS.

Consider His testimony among us. Faithful,

He IS.

His crucifixion is not what He was.

He IS.

The machine of our sin had no hold on Him. From the Living God,

He IS.

Of the Living God,

He IS!

“Here We Go Again.”

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Every time I read the Bible, I come to those certain places that give me reason to pause. Sometimes I overlook the difficulty and read on anyway. But the older I get the less capable but I am of overlooking the difficulty without taking a moment to prepare myself for what comes next.

The difficulty is this:
God delivers Life to man in a certain place and time. It is always well received, as it should be. But not long after, evil summons its strength to come and eradicate the work of God.

It is lovely to read the joy God has sent to earth. It has become almost unbearable to witness the response of evil Man. Evidently this continual sequence of events is necessary in this godless world. Perhaps, so is my response.

Does anyone else feel this way?

The Intangible Key

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This is what I am learning from God.  

No religion of man will produce the key to the front door of God’s house. At best it can only bring us to within sight of His Holy Mountain (perhaps even a rise in the ground at the foothills). This is also true of altered Christianity.  


We should not be deceived by our own mind; NOTHING inhabits the things of God’s land but the things of God. Utter truth and perfect sobriety are the consuming joy of Christ’s kingdom.  


Anything other than Christ is nothing more than a passing dot of a shadow in a darkened place. Life is Life. Everything else is death.  


Even those who make a religion out of telling others about these things will find their religion has an end. Evangelism and prophecy will not save us. It can only lead others to such as this post. For the day will come when no one will say to his neighbor “Know ye the Lord”. All things will be revealed to all God’s creatures.


Let’s stop drinking our own fermented opinions. May we sober up.  


Learn with me. On what are you placing all your hope? Have you examined your religion; those things you are doing because you think they please God?

A Profitable Life

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The beautiful stories in the Bible, where God displayed protection for his people, are not just stories. He is willing to save his people of faith from anything in the world can deliver against them.  

Years ago, there was a video of a man on an island carrying a cross toward flowing lava. He was hoping that a symbol of God’s majesty in Christ would stop the destruction of his town. The man was set on fire from the heat.  


Do you expect God to rescue you from everything? He will. But the word “everything” includes a whole lot more than this world can hold. There are the things of heaven, compared to which nothing in this world can hold a candle.  


Death, turmoil, confusion, and violence are the nature of this place. You’re bound to get some of all of it. Trust him anyway. He has a place in his kingdom for all who put their trust in the Son of the Living God. It is written, “they will never be put to shame”.


Try hard to remember, God’s desire is not to give you a pleasant life here. That would make a mockery of his kingdom. His desire is to prove his love to you so that you can have a rightful place in glory. See what the writer of Hebrews says in chapter 11.  


32 “And what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson and Jephthah, about David and Samuel and the prophets, 33 who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised; who shut the mouths of lions, 34 quenched the fury of the flames, and escaped the edge of the sword; whose weakness was turned to strength; and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies. 35 Women received back their dead, raised to life again. There were others who were tortured, refusing to be released so that they might gain an even better resurrection. 36 Some faced jeers and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. 37 They were put to death by stoning;e they were sawed in two; they were killed by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated— 38 the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, living in caves and in holes in the ground.”

True Peace

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Interesting to me: people know about what they’re going to read here.  But how many still chase after things it won’t last, only because they want to avoid God.   


The definition of true peace does not lend itself to the opinions of Man. True peace is not the absence of turmoil. Therefore you can’t buy it with ignorance.  

True peace does not come to us by diligent ritual. Even if all things went well for the perfectionist, what peace he thinks he has can be destroyed by a speck of dust.  


And the one who thinks they will gain peace by not involving themselves in the difficult things of God, is undone by the simple miraculous beauty of a butterfly.  


True peace has one origin and one substance. To gain it we must appear in the fire of condemnation that radiates from the Living God’s throne. True peace will always come dressed in the humiliation of our own eternal weakness.  


True peace can only be had by learning to trust Jesus in everything. Every other opinion regarding peace will be shattered.  


There is no institution on earth where you can go to begin your journey into true peace. In this, even the church can’t help you. The Church can only point to the One who is willing and able to give you Life.  


Where you need to go is the last place you want to go, but the absolute place you will arrive; the throne of the God who made you.