27.11.11

O Wondrous Love from I John 4

This week was a meaningful one to say the least. It was the first time I have ever gone to a friend's house for the entirety of Thanksgiving break instead of spending the fall holiday season with my family (even though I really wanted to). I spent the time with a very close friend (Will) in Holly, Michigan and had some great time of what I like to call "mutual-discipleship" (or iron sharpening iron discussions). Anyways, I had a phenomenal break just randomly hit with little trials along the way, but scheduling a time to talk to a good Northland Camp friend from California and finding out I had a small clan of close Northland Camp friends around the area of my friend Will as well. This alone would make for a pretty fun break all ready not having to work, being with your best friend, and getting to do pretty much whatever we wanted.

The real blessing, though, was my personal study in my devotions through the holiday. Before this year, I really never had solid, meaningful, daily devotions with the Savior of my soul. Sad, I know. So, that being said, I really wanted to not necessarily "make up for lost time" with God, per se, (because that is a foolish thinking process) but instead I wanted to make something meaningful of the occasion. I was rescued from my sin 14 years ago in the month of November, when, through the preaching of God's Word by an evangelist at my church at the time, and some guidance from my dad, I asked Jesus to cleanse me of my sins and be my Savior after a Wednesday night service by my bedside. The salvation was just another reflection that drove me to make something meaningful to my personal digest of the Word of God during a holiday where thankfulness is expected even from those who do not associate themselves with God (at least in the United States).

Anyways, I finished a study through I & II Corinthians that I had begun the month prior and was deliberating before leaving my college campus for what book study to tackle next. It hit me like a ton of bricks when I saw my little booklets I bought from Northland Camp. To make a long story very short, the camp I counseled at the previous summer (mentioned a few times all ready) offered booklets that we use during our camp weeks to guide us through a particular passage in scripture with campers all summer, but structures it in a one-week program. The past summers' booklets I bought as many as I could before I left with intentions to work through them as well. One of them was from last summer, the study was through I John 4. I heard so many things from this passage and even read through the whole book a few times the past few months for prayer group so this was nearly jumping out at me as what I should study next.

I John 4 jostled my devotional life into yet another pulse of passion for Christ-likeness as I read through a new segment each day. Love and Fear are discussed in great detail not just in the Bible, but also the booklet as they ask very pointed, heart-revealing questions in the book. First, John asks us to test the spirits that try to influence us to see if they are even of God. If they do not confess that Jesus came to earth to take on flesh as a man, those people are not of God, period. Next he shows that God is greater than the entirety of the world, in power, sacrifice, love, and vitality. Furthermore, John shows us that Christians are of God in a variety of ways and ends his thoughts by defining love. How does John define love? As God. God is love. If you do not know God, you do not know love. What a powerful statement! He doesn't stop there! He further shows how we can display our love to others, how love is actually God giving us his love and perfecting it inside of us by dwelling in His children! Lastly, John closes by showing us how we can love one another. He states that love cannot co-exist with fear. Perfecting love casts fear out of the room. It drives out fear vehemently like Jesus drove out the money changers from the temple. How is it that this works? Because fear exists when we are tormented by what scares us. If I am fearful of how someone looks at me and try to love them, the love is empty and selfish and not selfless. I only can love because God loved me first and died for me.

After reading 21 verses in I John 4, there is no way I can be un-thankful for what God has given me. This Love is wondrous! The song at the end of the post is one I got on a CD from the Steve Pettit Evangelistic Team from a few years back that really reassures my love that is inexistant apart from Christ's finished work on the cross. God's love will never let me go. Romans 8 and I John 4 explode with this truth. Appreciate God today, give God His breath back, you owe Him.


 These are the Lyrics to the song "O Wondrous Love"

O wondrous love that will not let me go
I cling to You with all my strength and soul
Yet if my hold should ever fail
This wondrous love will never let me go

O wondrous love that’s come to dwell in me
Lord who am I that I should come to know
Your tender voice assuring me
This wondrous love will never let me go

I’m resting in the everlasting arms
In the ever faithful heart
The Shepherd of my life
You’ll carry me on Your mighty wings of grace
Keeping me until the day
I look into Your eyes

O wondrous love that sings of Calvary
The sweetest sound this sinner’s ever known
The song of Your redeeming Son
Whose wondrous love will never let me go

O wondrous love that rushes over me
I can’t escape this river’s glorious flow
You overwhelm my days with good
Your wondrous love will never let me go

12.11.11

Just a step into my mind about my God


From day one: rebellious, selfish, hateful, spiteful, lying, thieving, backbiting, wretched, and sinful. This is my bent as a human, innately sinful. Only seeking to fulfill what I want all the time. My wants are more important than yours when it comes right down to it if anyone would be honest with you. Funny thing is, most people will not even want to be honest, because people have a bent towards lying. Do you see how vicious this circle of sin can continue? I want a toy, but someone has it, so I covet, envy, and ultimately steal it in my heart before I actually steal it and fulfill my desire for the toy. Someone asks me if I stole the toy in question, I want to be safe from conflict and punishment so I lie. The lie gets me exactly what I want, no punishment and the toy at the same time. Problem solved. Some people don’t want to hurt their conscience so they tell the truth and get the punishment because they feel guilty. Likewise, some also don’t steal because of the same conscience violation. If anything else is true of humans, besides this bent towards sinning, it is our hate for being guilty.

Guilt is interesting, though. What we humans like to do is ignore the guilt or distract ourselves until they forget it, thus searing their conscience. Each time it gets easier and easier to ignore the conscience until it is finally hardened so that you don’t feel the guilt anymore. This same guilt does not make sense though. There is only survival of the fittest right? We are all just animals that are progressing to be better and have to be good people. Right?

WRONG.

How can we be progressing to a better world when everything around us is decaying or breaking? Man continually is dying and we still have not figured out how to live longer or forever. This endless bent to say that all “good” people are a little “bad” is absolutely true because all people are bent towards sin, but the argument that all “bad” people have some “good” in them is preposterous. All of what we do is sinful, wicked, and disgusting.

How is it that mankind can only sin continually? Because we defy God’s Law, that’s how we continually sin. What is God Law? God’s law is to love God with every part of our being and love our neighbor, or everyone around us, the same as we love ourselves. That is God’s Law.

Okay, okay, I know you’re wondering how in the fat world do we love God with every part of our being? Well the Bible lets us know how to do that. We are to treat other people with respect, not hate. We must love others more than even we love ourselves. We are to ask God to take away our desires to give us His desires for us. We must have God and His Word at the priority of our lives. We have to seek a relationship with our heavenly Father in His Word and pray to Him all the time. And there is the typical laundry list of do not’s as well. The list includes don’t murder, don’t hate, don’t lie, don’t commit adultery, don’t have sex outside of marriage, don’t covet, don’t envy, etc. There is a lot of do not’s, but there is a whole lot more of do’s than do not’s I can assure you of that. God left us quite the list of things to be doing.

But here’s the kicker, everything we do should not be motivated by “What can I get out of this?” Our motivation must be to give God the glory for all our actions, thoughts, and words. Anything we do with a self-motive is sinful, period.

Oh, and by the way, one sin, just one, is like breaking all the law that God established. It works like a giant chain, breaking a chain in any place causes the whole thing to break. Breaking one part of the law makes us guilty of all the laws. God also says that he is holy, meaning separate completely from sin and He cannot so much as look at sin because He despises it so much. So if you sinned, even just once, you have no hope of pleasing God. The punishment is death. Oh no, not physical death, it is far, FAR worse. It is an eternal separation from God and His presence, because He cannot so much as look at sin, God designed Hell. Hell is a real place where those people who sin must go in righteous judgment to be continually and eternally tormented in a never-ending inferno where your worst nightmare seems comforting in comparison to your current situation.

This is where you would object saying, so everyone goes to Hell? Yeah sure, everyone screws up sometime so you are being some kind of legalist that says everyone goes to Hell. Actually, without God’s love, yes, all people are doomed to despair in Hell. But there is a hope. The hope is not by buying your way to heaven. The hope is not by doing enough good so that God likes you enough to let you into heaven. And the hope is not by staying in Hell long enough to burn off our sin debt so that eventually we will get into heaven. The only way for you to be able to get into heaven would be for someone to take your death penalty after having lived a perfect, sinless life. They have to be fully human AND fully God since humans are infallible with a bent to sin, this is why being fully God is needful. This super-human (per se) would then have to take on death for the whole of humanity and then conquer death by rising again from the dead in order to give freely the power over it.

This sounds like an impossible task. But it happened. God sent His Son, Jesus to earth, born miraculously from a virgin to be fully human yet fully God to live a perfect life on earth. He had only a focus for others and God’s glory to teach people truth about His Word and to take the payment of death for us. He was crucified in a brutal Roman designed murder and rose from the dead three days later with over 5,000 eye-witnesses that saw Him before and after death.

Now what do I do? Nothing. You don’t DO anything. All you have to “do” is believe it happened, believe Jesus Christ died for your sins, fully cancelling out your death punishment and sin debt. Believe you do sin and that you do so many wicked things continuously. Ask Christ Jesus to forgive you of those sins and to come into your life to help you obey His law better out of thanks for what He did for you.

Okay now what, I’m saved from sin and death. Life doesn’t get any easier. Salvation only gets you the access to a wonderful relationship with a powerful God and a guarantee into heaven. Is that all you wanted? Sounds pretty selfish to someone who did all that just because He loved you. Why don’t you want to obey God’s law and please Him and get to know the Savior of your soul?! He loves you and wants you to love Him back! He doesn’t want a trite, one-sided relationship with the person he created!

Funny thing is we cannot, in our own strength so much as come close to obeying God with right motives or even do what He wants. The fantastic thing is, He tells us that by continuing in the relationship of reading His Word and praying to God like a conversation for help in order to please Him. The way we please God is by being filled with His spirit. A phenomenon that is impossible to explain until you become a Christian. There are so many things that I cannot explain on what we owe back to God. He asks only that we do our best to grow closer to Him. All He asks is that we try our hardest to be stewards of the life we are given to tell more people about His love for them and to love God the best we can. This is real love, real Christian faith.

7.11.11

The Rise of Fall

Autumn is the season
Where trees and plants have a reason
To die with a hope to return.
With the death the trees hope to spurn
New life, which cannot be possible
Without God making it permissible.
But God,
A two-letter phrase that prods
The heart to see a new alternative.
An option so divine, premeditive
By a holy, God, that chose such a contradiction
To show his glory to us in nature. 


The reality is this:
That sin’s payment is death, fatality, and separation
Christ took our payment to place us in reconciliation
Before God’s very presence. He won us back
So that through death and resurrection He could tack
Righteousness on my account, which I can never achieve
Aside from God’s empowerment that Christ gave so I might receive.
But God chose death to give life to the autumnal season,
And in worthless, wretched sinners
For no apparent reason.
 

This great mystery that God sent his Son
To die a payment for my sins because I run
So far from Him and choose to sin
But God,
Chose to use death to win
My soul back in His jealousy.
He arose in victory
Paying for sin, destroying death’s penalty
This gives all humanity a new reality.


God, so infinite in mercy, chose not to stop there,
He furthered his glory in another death. He chose to leave His chair
In heaven, the mighty throne to be a servant to his creation,
To rescue the human race in such a depravation.
Shown in yet another contradiction, that life can be given
At the expense of a perfect death He showed power that he could be risen.
Rising from the ashes, like a phoenix He conquered fatality
After in the grave for three days he arose to divinity
In to glory to give the gift of life back to humanity.