Hands Got A Bit Messy

Have you ever processed a deer or have you been there after a friend gets the deer with a bow and arrow or rifle?  Regardless if it is your first time or if you have done it many times the processing can get a little messy.

After Adam and Eve ate of the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the Garden...who came looking for them?  Of course, God came looking for them.  We get this picture that God is so angry and ready to beat us/them and yet God knowing all they had already done He said...Adam where are you?  God was looking for a response.  

Adam stepped beyond his fear towards the Holy God he knew was His father...he stepped out wearing his fig leaves knit together which represents our own efforts (our own righteousness) to stand before God.  God, in His love, mercy and grace, killed and sacrificed one of His very own creations.  God with blood stained hands made them clothes called tunics of skin and robed / clothed them covering their shame.  He did it for them, He covered their shame.

God always wanted to be with His creation, but His creation hasn't always wanted to be with Him.  His love is greater than our love.  So many Christians today live in shame because they realize they don't love Him like they should and they try harder and harder to do things that make them feel better about themselves (fig leaves knit together).   Instead we only need trust His goodness and think upon the great love that He has for us and step out from the bushes / the shame, naked and allow Him to clothe us with His love and righteousness.  Give up your futile efforts and let Him love you.  First John says this...not that we loved Him but that He first loved us.  

I promise you, you will live the life you want with the power you need when you let Him love you first.  You may feel unworthy, but He has declared you worthy no matter what.  God loves you know matter what.

Click here to listen to this wonderful song by Don Francisco...you will be glad you did.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZM1mmcis-s

Stinking Treadmill

I am always amazed at the Christian who calls for us to observe some sort of thing to do for the purposes of righteousness, holiness, and sanctification.  They probably wouldn't call it law keeping or observance of the law but in fact it is no different.  Many times I have heard Christians talk about how muslims lead a very holy life in comparison to the average Christian and how we should live equally as holy, if not more holy lives than them.  All they are doing is putting themselves or someone else on the guilt trip treadmill.  Motivation like this is a very dangerous deception.  Misunderstanding the purpose of the law and trying to keep the law for the purpose of righteousness will lead us directly to a life filled with judgment, condemnation, madness, and death not just towards yourself but towards others as well.

A missionary friend of mine ministering in East Africa right now just wrote a note detailing his meeting with an English speaking native pastor.  The pastor told my friend how muslims were pushing to have their ceremonial laws become part of the constitution there in the country he is ministering and they were pushing for public execution which is muslim ceremonial law for certain violators.  The pastor told my friend that it is increasingly becoming a big problem in the bush and he pulled out his cell phone and showed my friend a video of a man bound and then beheaded with a 10" knife as the crowd chanted "Praise be to Allah."  The man was muslim but had received Christ.

You might say, "well that is what those barbaric muslims do...we Christians would never do anything like that."  Well we have in the name of Christianity done those things physically about 500 years ago.  While we don't do this now physically we do it verbally by laying shaky foundations based upon a works righteousness mindset which does the very same thing.  This performance based mentality torments the souls of many Christians, heaping condemnation, judgment, madness, and death upon the people that otherwise want to love God.

The law will bind you and kill you if you try live by it to fulfill your righteousness and sanctification.  Sure you will succeed at times but you will only be strengthening in your own mind that with enough discipline you can do it.  That self-righteous mindset will only keep you trapped on the treadmill and you will wear yourself and others out.  The law was given to plainly show us that we were unable to fulfill God's righteousness on our own and that we despairing of ourselves to fulfill it, would entrust ourselves to His Messiah, Jesus the Christ.  When Jesus came He brought grace and truth and preached acceptance and freedom to those bound.  Why would we tell others anything else.  Just trust Him.

God is more interested in what He is doing in you than what He is doing through you...never forget that.

Identity

As Christians our singular focus should be to help the people we come into contact with sense God's love stronger than before we met.  You might think this is not for you and that this is for the priest or the pastor to do but nothing could be further from the truth.  You may be unsure of God's love for you and others, but that is only because religion has distorted the view and opinion of God.  Religion kills, steals, and destroys relationships.  Religion stinks.

God is all about the relationship.  He deeply wants to grow in relationship with us and when we do grow in relationship with God, and also others, we will begin to see our true identity and His true nature as our loving Father.  We were as infants, kidnapped or lost from our true family and growing up never knowing, only sensing, that we belonged to Him.  We wanted to come to know Him but became confused and bound because of lies we accepted but never resolved with Him personally.  But then one day we heard something that gave us hope, finally seeing the lies as false, and we came to know the truth about God as our one true Father and His heart for relationship with us individually.  Our eyes and ears were opened to see and hear His love for us.  Our hearts and our lives were set free.

This is a true story.  A young eagle was found wounded in a national park.  Over nearly an entire years time the eaglet was nurtured back to sustainable health and strength.  The park rangers and veterinary team that helped bring life back to this now much larger eagle, took the bird out to a remote area within the park.  Upon releasing the eagle, instead of taking off and flying, it hopped over to an open path and just stood there in the sun.  The staff tried to shoo the eagle and make it take off flying but to no avail. This lasted for several hours until finally the eagle found refuge under a low growing bush.  The staff could only imagine what would happen at nightfall knowing the bird wouldn't likely make it through the night on the ground as many predators were present in the area.  Just before sunset another eagle appeared soaring high above a nearby bluff announcing his presence with a high-pitched screech. The hand nurtured eagle still under the bush, began to stir and then hopped out from underneath.  Another screech from the eagle high above caused this now healthy eagle to begin to hop around further and give out a fragile call while moving his head around with apparent excitement and purpose.  With one more screech, seemingly even before the eagle high above had finished, the former sickly eagle jumped and began to flap his wings and fly, climbing higher and higher with each stroke of his wings.  Within minutes the now healthy eagle was soaring as high with the other eagle.

We have been like the unhealthy eagle that needed encouragement and mending.  We were held captive, fragmented, and lost not knowing our true identity.  At some point in our lives someone came along out of nowhere, like the eagle soaring high above, calling out to encourage us, giving us words of Life.  Our hearts said a loud and resounding, "YES" and we were encouraged as we were reminded of our true identity as His children.

Today and hereafter, purpose to share words of Life reminding the bound, the lost, the fragmented and the healthy of their value to God and who they really are as His children.  (Romans 5:15-19)   :-))

Experience This

• You've never experienced love like this.  You can't make Him mad.
• You've never experienced faithfulness like this.  You can't make Him turn His back on you.
• You've never experienced peace like this.  He will always be with you.
• You've never experienced freedom like this.  No more chains, you are just free to love.

It is ours for the taking...only believe.

God loves you and has reconciled Himself to you through the work Jesus completed.  Nothing else for you to do, just have a heart full of thanks towards the God of this universe that wants you to come back to the family. You then can begin to trust Him to live through you.  His ways will become your ways and His thinking will become your type of thinking.  You will come to know that you may have changed your mind about God but He has never changed His mind about you.

A Picture is Worth a Thosand Words

Do we ever see in scripture Jesus giving sickness to anyone to teach them a lesson? NO !!   Do we ever see Jesus in scripture killing someone off to teach their family or friends something? NO !!   Did He ever make or encourage someone to sin? NO !!   These ideas are ridiculous and aren't even near scriptural, yet so many Christians talk as if these are true.  They say God will sometimes do these things to mankind, even to His own blood-bought children, to help bring about some redemptive purpose in the earth.  You know, that is at best inconsistent thinking and at worst sick theology.

God isn't the one controlling everything, bringing or allowing sin and sickness on people.  Somehow religion has made the word Sovereign come to mean that God controls everything.  It doesn't.  It means the highest in rank or authority.  That is all.  You want to know why we have sickness and destruction all around us in this life.  The answer isn't so profound.  The fall of Adam brought on all of the destruction of sin and sickness that we see in the world today and it was his free will to do so.

Jesus told His closest friends that, "as you have seen me you have also seen the Father.  The writer of Hebrews, in the very opening of His letter, says that Jesus was the express representation of the Father.  We should know the answers to all these ludicrous questions and they are all a resounding NO.  We never see in scripture Jesus doing these horrible things, yet today like Job's friends we have been sitting around, pontificating on why they have happened. 

God doesn't make people sick or die prematurely no more than He makes someone sin and give their life to gluttony, drug abuse, or adultery.  There is no redemptive purpose for mankind in those things.  Theories of us being used for redemptive purposes like these are misguided and self-centered at best.  There was one man who was sent for this and He accomplished it perfectly and completely.  His redemptive purpose did not fail.  His redemption was enough.  He is Jesus, our Sovereign Lord.

Priorities

Paul encouraged us to abide these three...faith, hope, and love. But he didn't stop there, he finished off by saying, "but the greatest of these is love." Unfortunately we have many times forgotten this simple truth, that THE GREATEST IS LOVE. Something important to remember is this, any truth exalted beyond its priority is no longer truth.

Take the issue of Faith. We have Christians everywhere trying to get more Faith. They believe they don't have enough. They believe they lost it somewhere. They believe they haven't as much as they used to. They believe they need more. Scripture clearly shows that we have enough. If all we need is a mustard seed amount then don't we have enough? If we had enough faith as a rank sinner to believe upon Jesus for the saving of our souls, then now as children of the Most High God, don't we have at least just a little bit more. Most Christians have spent more time praying, reading their Bible, and confessing scriptures to get more faith than they ever have to see and feel that they are Loved of God. It is clear that something is wrong with this picture.

Going back to that awesome scripture in I Corinthians 13, "abide these three, faith, hope and love...but the greatest of these is Love." Think on this...Faith alone cannot produce hope or love. Hope alone cannot produce faith or love. But Love, it always produces both faith and hope. Paul explained it this way in his writing to the Galatians saying this, "faith works by love."

Because of misplaced priorities we haven't majored on understanding all the facets of the love of God. I guarantee we won't exhaust the subject in one lifetime. Like a beautiful, multifaceted diamond, when you turn it to examine it more closely you see a new, never before seen, ray of beauty. If you want more faith operating in your life, meditate exclusively on the love of God and Him as your one true and faithful Father. Faith will naturally come. Running short on hope for your situation, give determined focus to nothing other than His love and faithfulness towards you. Hope will arrive in sufficient abundance.

Love truly is all we need.