Love And Obedience

John 14:15,23

"If you love Me, you will obey what I command." 

Jesus replied, "If anyone loves Me, he will obey my teaching."

Romans 6:19

Everyone has heard about your obedience, so I am full of joy over you; but I want you to be wise about what is good, and innocent about what is evil.

Jesus is not commanding us to love Him, He is saying that if we do love Him, then we will want to do what He commands, we will delight in following His teachings. Loving Him will tune our hearts to what He wants for us, and our desire will be to please Him. Just like the loving child will want to please his parent, or the new bride joyfully submits to her bridegroom. This is the kind of relationship God wants to have with us. And when we do view Him in love, then we will do what is right and shun what is evil. 

Paul writes the Romans that he rejoices over their obedience, and adds another detail that is to our benefit: To be wise about what is good, but to not have such an intimate knowledge of evil, to be innocent about the evil, so we won't get caught up in its seductions. 

O Father, teach us how to love You by obeying what You have taught us; teach us to obey the authorities You have place over us in Christ, and to love them as You have loved us. You have honored us by placing Your Name upon us: teach us to honor others in love and obedience. And I know that by doing so, You will bless us with the benefits of Your goodness, and You will receive all the credit, all the glory, for You have planned it so.

Even so, come, Lord Jesus!

Our Words

Ecclesiastes 5:4-6

When you make a vow to God, do not delay in fulfilling it. He has no pleasure in fools; fulfill your vow. It is better not to vow than to make a vow and not fulfill it. Do not let your mouth lead you into sin. And do not protest to the temple messenger, "My vow was a mistake." Why should God be angry at what you say and destroy the work of your hands?

This regards our words, what we say. We always need to pay attention to what we say we will do, and always do what we say we will do. Being true to our words is very important to God. It used to be that a man was true to his word and a handshake was binding. Today, we have to have a written and signed contract to be considered binding. So now we need to be especially careful of our words: God still weighs our words and expects us to be faithful. If we are not, if we carelessly say we will do something, and then forget about it, God remembers. If you find that God has been destroying the work of your hands, maybe you could examine what you have promised in the past to see if you have done what you said you would. 

Even so, come, Lord Jesus.

Our Part In God's Plan

Psalm 32:8

I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you and watch over you. 

John 16:13-15

But when He, the Spirit of Truth comes, He will guide you into all the Truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come. He shall glorify Me; for He shall take of Mine, and shall disclose it to you. All things that the Father has are Mine; therefore I said that He takes of Mine, and will disclose it to you.

Oh, wow! Everything that the Father owns, also belongs to Jesus, and He has given us His Holy Spirit to live inside us, in our spirits. This is the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Jesus, that will never leave us. He teaches us everything we need to know, and guides us in the path God has set before each of us to walk. God has provided everything for us that we need to know, to do, to think, and to accomplish, all to fulfill His plan for each of us, that fits into His great Plan of the Ages. It's all a huge, grand puzzle. Each of us fits into place the pieces of our individual puzzles, which fit together into larger puzzles, that all will come together into that huge, grand, super-puzzle of His Plan of the Ages. Our God is really amazing: His knowledge, His wisdom, His goodness, His grace and mercy to us, His kindnesses to us, to have us work out each of our parts of His grand Plan. 

God has this whole Universe inside Himself, held securely in His hand; He is the absolute Sovereign, Who has planned out everything ahead of time, and is, through time and circumstances, working out all the different parts of this picture, using us as His hands and feet in this world. When each of us does the things He wants us to do, when we submit to His authority over us, then He teaches us what we are to do to accomplish His will: because of His love for us, this is always for our benefit, and He will receive all the credit, all the glory.

Even so, come, Lord Jesus!

 

Truth Or Myth?

Isaiah 29:13-14

The Lord says, "These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship Me in vain; their teaching are but rules taught by men. Therefore once more I will astound these people with wonder upon wonder; the wisdom of the wise will perish, the intelligence of the intelligent will vanish."

So many churches in America today could be described by this passage. They teach that our God of Truth has put myths in His Word, because Science and Scientists have "proven" that these Old Testament stories can't possibly be true because there is no "evidence" that they really happened. They're only stories told to try to illustrate a "truth" in the spiritual realm.

If these stories of Adam and Eve, of Noah and the Ark, of The Exodus, of Jonah and the Great Fish are not historical events recorded accurately, then all of Jewish and Christian religion is a farce, and Jesus was either deceived into believing them as true or lied in accommodating His teachings to the erroneous beliefs of His listeners. 

And if the Old Testament stories aren't literal truth, then are the New Testament stories also myths? Did Jesus really live as a historical person, did He really die and rise from the dead? Do we have a living hope, or are we just wishing that everything will turn out okay in the end? 

Then there are also those today who think of themselves as "the Intelligentsia;" they are full of this world's knowledge and wisdom, and they worship themselves as man-gods. They think that they can have agape love without God at all, Who is Love. Without God there would be no love at all, only ego and hatred. They are fooling themselves. 

But if everything written in the Bible really is True, if it is Science that is looking for evidence in the wrong place, or the wrong time frame; if we really can trust God to be Almighty, Creator, and Author of Truth; then our hope can be sure, we can trust that what He said happened in the past really did happen, and what He said will happen in the future really will happen, and that He will keep all the promises He gave to His people, just as He said it will happen. 

So Jesus will return to the Earth to reign as King Jesus over the whole world, and His promises to Israel to be the head, not the tail will be fulfilled, and the World will experience its Golden Age. 

Even so, come, Lord Jesus!

The Very End, And The Beginning

Psalm 46:6

. . . He lifts His voice, the earth melts.

II Peter 3:10

The Day of the Lord . . . the heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will (melt)(be laid bare)(will be burned up).

Revelation 20:11

The Great White Throne . . . Earth and sky fled from His presence, and there was no place for them.

After Jesus reigns on this Earth for 1,000 years, and Satan, who has been bound for this 1,000 years is released, Satan will go over the whole world quickly, deceiving the Nations again, and lead all the armed forces of the world against King Jesus; that's when the unthinkable happens and the whole Earth literally explodes! The whole Universe will be re-made, this time with no curse, no Second Law of Thermodynamics, and it will last forever. 

Even so, come, Lord Jesus!

The Light Of The World

John 9:5

. . . I am the Light of the World.

Jesus is the one constant in our chaotic world. His Word never changes, He will never change His mind about the good future He has planned for us.

No matter how far the evil-doers of the world go in doing their evil, no matter how heinous and horrifying their evil deeds, God is still God and Jesus will still be instant and present in us by His Spirit. We never need to give up, it will never be "too late" for Him to make things right. No matter what harassment, persecution, or even martyrdom comes to us through evil men, Your wrath will be upon them, but will not come near or touch us. We can count on Your light, Lord.

Even so, come, Lord Jesus!

Christmas Gifts

Matthew 2:11

On coming to the house, [The Magi] saw the child with His mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped Him. Then they opened their treasures and presented Him with gifts of gold and of incense and of myrrh.

These wise scholar-kings who had been looking for a sign that this momentous occasion had arrived, spent their time and efforts to travel probably for months to find this Child. The gifts they presented Him are very significant: Gold is given to kings, as He is the King over all kings; Incense (or Frankincense) signifies that He is our High Priest, to offer the fragrant perfume of our prayers before the Eternal Throne of God in Heaven; and Myrrh, a burial spice, indicating that He would submit to going through Death itself in order to conquer it, and He will destroy it at the end of this Earth's time as the last enemy to be destroyed.

Because these wise men presented gifts to Jesus, we give gifts to one another at Christmas. But the greatest Christmas gift is Jesus, Himself: That God loves us so much that He gave, He gave us His only Son, He emptied Heaven of His Son for a time, so that whoever would put their trust in Him would never die eternally, but live with Him forever. That is the great wonder and Truth of Christmas.

Even so, come, Lord Jesus!