Any Gospel message, parable, miracle or exorcism has a purpose that leads to a decision. The purpose leads to faith in Christ John 20:30-31. The decision leads unsaved people to personal faith in, and commitment to, Christ. FIRST we accept his forgiveness of sin as a gift of grace, Ephesians 2:8-9. Then we practice faithful discipleship as a Christian duty Ephesians 2:10. In turn, duty becomes pleasure. Colossians 1:13-14 teaches the same truth in different words.
Thus, Christ calls both saved and unsaved people to his purpose, wanting each to make the decision that undergirds life with God's love. If we don't have that Love:
If we once possessed both forgiveness and discipleship:
-- compromised them or -- buried them under the cares of life Luke 8:14. Once finding, secure them firmly as the first step to restructuring life. Whatever...don't delay:
Don't stand outside Christ, making excuses and stating doubts. Come inside obedience, despite them. Any doubt we have will be resolved in obedience and any question will be answered in obedience as the veil covering unbelieving Jewish eyes is removed by turning to the Lord II Corinthians 3:16. While Jesus has no tolerance for self-serving excuses and doubts, he has a surfeit of forgiveness for all confessed sins.
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Midwest floods in 1993 swamped thousands of acres of land, and multiple cities, along the Mississippi and its tributaries. Engineers worked tirelessly to save further catastrophe by bolstering levees built to protect human habitations from the Mighty Flow.
At times they had to risk undermining the levee by moving soil from its base to its crest. They knew it could compromise the entire structure. But felt the need to risk it to prevent an overflow that would breech the levee. Sometimes they won. Sometimes the river won. God's love undergirds human life and never fails to protect it. Satan never wins unless we turn from God to devices of our own manufacture, thinking we can save ourselves without God. God's solid foundation stands FIRM. It ENDURES and offers FAIL-SAFE infrastructure for life. But only HE! Those who disregard God's will invariably, somewhere in life, by some circumstance or experience, find life eroding beneath them. Thomas Andrews, builder of the RMS Titanic discovered that. On the dock at Liverpool he had ironclad confidence that not even God could sink the ship. Only to find on April 14, 1912, that an iceberg could and did. When he knew the inevitable—not long after hitting the frozen ice—he retired to the smoking lounge. All he had worked to achieve; all the mastery of shipbuilding that he put into the giant vessel; all the pleasure he promised himself and his company after a successful voyage—all IRREPERABLY damaged and hopelessly lost in one brief instant of collision with an object he never contemplated could interfere with his quest for fame and riches. Once it did, it left his massive ship DOOMED and himself a hopeless victim. A steward later found him standing in the lounge, looking AFT.... He asked if Mr. Andrews wouldn't try "to make a go for it." No answer. He stood arms crossed, staring AFT...devastated...while his DREAMBOAT sank beneath him. Without God's love in our life the same will happen to us...sooner or later...in an accident, a disease, a business failure, a broken marriage, rebellious children—fill in what could happen to you that you never anticipated, and for which you haven't developed a defense by faith in God. We will all, in our passage through life, find storms breaking over us, beating against us. Nevertheless, with God's love as the Mighty Pedestal on which we build life, NOTHING can ever shatter us, weaken us, defeat us, or find us so dispirited we fold our arms and quit because life became too hard, too mysterious, too awesome, TOO MUCH! "I fled him down the nights and down the days and down the labyrinthine ways of my mind..." begins Francis Thompson's eloquent epic poem The Hound of Heaven. The story of a man who sought God's beneficence in created things, not in God, only to find "their faithlessness to me in their traitorous trueness" to God. Only to find the inescapable Hound of Heaven deigning to love him enough to pursue him, asking, "Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee, save me, save only Me?"
God, the Mighty Hunter of human minds and hearts, loving each "ignoble thee" called ____________, put your name in the blank, as I put mine—all over the world all through history. He relentlessly pursues us, joyfully ambushes us, audaciously tracks us to all the lairs to which we flee from him. All because he LOVES us and wants us to love him. Because he delights more in our confession of him than a thousand loyalties declared by angels—since mortals KNOW the JOY of salvation angels can experience only vicariously through us. God's love always HOPES we'll admit our lack and his sufficiency; our self-imposed fragmentation without him and our entirety in him; our few weak arguments and excuses for unbelief and his persuasive, bold, convincing evidences of Himself. Why do we stubbornly cling to our forlorn humanity when we can be held in God's everlasting arms, caressed by his everlasting grace? In June, 1802, Alexander von Humboldt climbed 19,000 feet of Ecuador's Mt. Chimborazo's 20,500 feet elevation. On those snow-capped shoulders he claimed to climb earth's highest mountain.
To his later dismay he learned that the Himalayas, not the Cordilla Real, had the highest mountains, including Mt. Everest, the highest of all. Which could disappoint a guy. But instead of accepting the fact that his achievement had been remarkable, THOUGH surpassed by an even greater achievement, and getting on with life, he considered all his succeeding days as failures. As every inventor, engineer, athlete, technician, entrepreneur, etc. knows, what he does, makes or builds can be surpassed by someone else. And...likely will be. Which doesn't make previous achievements any less valuable. For very often those who later enjoy greater success have learned much by studying previous efforts and research. The love shared in the Godhead never fears a greater power coming, sooner or later in humanity, offering greater spiritual, social, intellectual or emotional power to humanity. In addition, their love never needs to re-define itself to fit our increasing mental, emotional, medical or technical skills. It does, automatically, persuasively and instinctively enlarge our abilities in every way to fit its peerless definition. An armory bristling with weapons:
A Marine in Okinawa in WWII found a terrified Japanese mother and her child. He responded by consoling and feeding them. Young Moslem men guided planes loaded with fuel into the Twin Towers, the Pentagon and, kept by passengers from flying into the White House, crashed in a Pennsylvania field. All because their love of Islam created hate for others. While humanity's perverted nature distorts God's love, humanity's fallen nature limits our desire to express God's love. The heat that leaves the sun's surface at 1,800,000° kisses the earth with but ½ of a billionth° of warmth, something like 50¢ out of a Billion dollars. That 50¢ worth keeps humanity alive, earth spinning on its axis and the season in their beneficent appearance. The little love of God getting into small human minds and stubborn hearts makes daily life possible and worthwhile. Thank God for 50¢ of heat from the sun. Solar surface heat would burn all to a crisp or annihilation. BUT... Glory...the more of God's love we experience, the more benefits we receive, the more delightful, embraceable, understandable and empowering it becomes. We never have TOO MUCH of GOD's LOVE. In this Thanksgiving Season, I pray God's benediction of Jude 24-25 on you and yours. Blogs will resume November 29, 2021. God Bless.
A LONG time ago, as a student at Lincoln Bible Institute, this writer heard a chapel message from Brother Enos Dowling called--Love Is Like That. The writer remembers the Title, but recalled only an illustration of a cat neutralizing a dog's natural animus by approaching and arching her body against his legs in a reconciling gesture. That illustration DIDN'T get in the writer's book Love Is Like That. The essential teaching of the book is the same as the Bible's: the Godhead of Father, Son and Holy Spirit embodies the Source and definition of True Love. Many lesser loves exist, among them:
God's genius alone reveals love's incomparable, unconquerable and immeasurable nature in two letters: SO, as in God SO LOVED John 3:16. The words encompass more of God's love than:
To correct all fallacies about love—the incomplete, contradictory, corrupt or unbelievable—God calls us to: .distinct .unparalleled .original .peerless love and to the principal of FIRST USE. That is, how Love originated determines its highest, positive, helpful use in humanity. |
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