The End Game

And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful.  Revelation 21:5-6 (KJV)

What is God up to?  What is His purpose for my life?  Why does He allow us to go through difficult times and endure hardship?  These questions permeate the minds of God’s people.  Even for those that say they trust the Lord it is hard not to ask, why?  Why did I lose my job?  Why did my spouse leave me?  Why did I get sick?  Why did I lose my loved one?  Why are there wars and famine?  Why do evil people seem to prosper while good people endure hardship?  The list of whys can go on and on.

Know this, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground it cannot bring about new life.  Written in the laws of God is the principle of the sowing.  Bundled in the tiny seed that has fallen from the stock that withered is the potential that only God can see.  Who can count the number of trees one tiny acorn can produce?  Inside that which was cast off from the mighty oak lies another tree.  Inside that tree lies thousands of acorns each able to produce more trees.  I have several oak trees around my property and I routinely rake up the acorns that fall to the ground.  All that I see are the tiny cast offs of from the wonderful shade tree that graces my yard but I am caught in a moment of time.  God is not.

We are all like that.  We live in this hour and enjoy the usefulness of the things we are blessed to have around us.  Every possession, every friendship, every love, is viewed through the lens of our own limitations.  But God is not subject to our limitations.  He sees the acorn and counts the trees.  Imagine how different our decisions would be if we could measure the souls touched by our kindness or the hearts mended by just a word of grace and mercy.  Instead of responding in shallow haste we would measure every word, every action, every thought in the light of eternity.  That is how God decides. 

Yes, His ways are higher than ours, His purpose more pure, His thoughts infinitely clearer and I know that I can trust Him.  Our verse this week reveals that God is sitting upon His throne and He is making all things new.  From the ashes of our lives He brings forth beauty.  He is not discouraged by what we see as failures but instead God is looking beyond our faults and seeing the unimaginable.  There is no life so lost that God cannot use it.  No heart so dark that God cannot cause light to spring forth.  No circumstance so dire that God is not in the midst of it.  He has not abandoned us.  God sits on His throne and speaks strength to the weary, hope to the abandoned, and life to the dead. 

I Was Born For This

Ephesians 1:3 (NIV) Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.

Throughout the earthly ministry of Jesus He never failed to point those that came to Him to His Father. Even after His triumphant resurrection when He appeared to the disciples He told them, “Peace be unto you: as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you.” John 20:21 (KJV) The passages where Jesus refers to His Father are so numerous that it is hard to choose one to illustrate but the truth is evident that Jesus lived to glorify the Father. He came to do the Father’s will. He had to be about the Father’s business. He would pray to His Father and His Father would send the Holy Spirit. When Jesus commissioned us to preach the Gospel He invoked the Father and when the final battle is won and Christ stands triumphant He will lay everything down before the throne of His Father so that God may be all in all.

“The last enemy to be destroyed is death. For he "has put everything under his feet." Now when it says that "everything" has been put under him, it is clear that this does not include God himself, who put everything under Christ. When he has done this, then the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all”. 1 Corinthians 15:26-28 (NIV)

The object of all activity in the universe is summed up in these verses. God will be preeminent in all things. He is the reason that Jesus willingly took up His cross. It was in obedience to the Father that Christ came to earth and it will be to the praise and glory of the Father that Jesus will return and establish His Kingdom. To understand this dynamic is to repurpose our lives and clarify our existence. To God be the glory should be our cry. From the rising of the sun to the setting of the same our lives, our decisions, our loves, and our passions must conform to His will and lift up His name. We were born for this.

To Preserve or Not To Preserve

Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savor, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men. Matthew 5:13 (KJV)

It is important to place these verses in context. Jesus had just completed listing the eight qualities that must define the Christian life. Some might feel that they could live out these qualities in isolation, away from the world, but as Jesus continues the Sermon on the Mount He makes it abundantly clear with His comparison of Christians to salt and light that the beatitudes were designed for great impact on those around us. These two metaphors make it clear how we should live our lives in relation to the world.

You, and you alone are the salt of the earth! Jesus is clear in this statement that there is no other option. God has established His Church as the vehicle He will work through to hold back the forces of evil that would drag men’s souls to eternal damnation. Man when left to his own devices does not evolve as the world teaches but rather falls deeper into sin and like rotting flesh begins to putrefy. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and man cannot climb out of the slimy pit that He is in by himself but instead continues to slip deeper and deeper.

God has always had a people. He found Noah, Abraham, Moses, and David men that would listen to His voice and became those of “like precious faith” to stand against the tide of this world. When Jesus came He had a two-fold purpose. On the cross He would become the ultimate sacrifice, the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. But His other purpose was to establish His Church. He told Peter in Matthew 16:18, “that upon this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” The Church is not a building or denomination. It is you! The believer who has surrendered their life to God and been filled with His Spirit will exhibit the transformation that only Jesus can bring to our lives. We have been changed from death to life and that life is vibrant because it contains the breath of God.

It is God’s breath, His life, in you that makes you salt, holding back the decay and preserving a dying world. Jesus in you is the hope of fallen man and the power of God to Salvation. You have been sent, with a purpose, into a fallen world to carry the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Be the salt.

Purposeful Purity

Matthew 5:8 (KJV) Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.

    “So what are your plans for the day?” 

     Those words rang in my ears early in the morning as my beautiful wife patiently waited for the answer.  “Huh?  I uh…. hadn’t thought about it.”  Now in my defense it was 5:15 am and I was in the shower trying to wash the sleepy from my mind.  But that question started the thinking process and led me to this meditation.  Do we make plans to be with God during the day? 
 
     So often we start our day and begin the business of this life.  We spend time grooming our bodies, feeding our bodies, talking with our spouse, loving the children, and organizing our work, but do we purposefully plan our communion with the Father?  If being pure in heart corresponds to having a “single eye”, we must cultivate our relationship with Jesus.  That means loving Him on purpose and with purpose.
 
    There are many things competing for our time and affections.  We cannot take for granted that our love will just prosper.  In recent years there have been many proponents of “date nights” with your spouse. This is a perfect example of loving on purpose.  Smart couples will not relegate their relationship to just one night a week but will schedule time every day to actively seek the heart of their love.  Then that couple must defend that time against the thieves that try to steal their attention and affections. 

      So it is with Jesus.  He is never turned away from us.  But far too often “He stands at the door and knocks.”  We have not defended our time with Him.  Life and all its urgent needs have distracted us from the lover of our souls and we have allowed the love that once burned in our hearts to grow cold.  We still love Him we just don’t have time for Him and we find ourselves empty.

    Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall be filled.  Today, let’s make that something we do on purpose.

Need a Light

Psalm 27:1 (KJV) - The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? the LORD is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?

      In Genesis 1:26 God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” . Most of us think of an image as “a physical likeness or representation of a person, animal, or thing, photographed, painted, sculptured, or otherwise made visible” and that is one of the dictionaries definitions. Today I would like you to consider the dictionaries second definition, “an optical counterpart or appearance of an object, as is produced by reflection from a mirror, refraction by a lens, or the passage of luminous rays through a small aperture and their reception on a surface”. When we look at an object what we are really seeing is light. The light from that object passes through our eyes and an image is created. This definition of image serves us well when contemplating the Scripture in Genesis 1:26. We were created to reflect The Father.
      God had a plan when He created you. He was showing off. When Adam and Eve were commanded to go and fill the earth God wanted them to replicate Him. He wanted an earth filled with His glory. But sin marred the lens of our aperture and darkness covered our souls. The light of God cannot be reflected through the selfish, soulish nature of sinful man and so God sent His only begotten Son into the world that the world through Him might be saved. The blood of Jesus, the sacrificial lamb of God, takes away the sin of the world. When we place our faith in the finished work of the cross old things are passed away and behold all things become new. Instead of a reflection marred by sin we are once again restored so that we can fulfill God’s purpose for our lives. What is that purpose? To allow His light to flood our soul and reflect His glory to a world that is lost in the darkness of sin.
      The Psalmist said, “The Lord is my light.” Can you say that today? When your family, friends, neighbors, or co-workers look at you who do they see? Do they see the light of His glory shining brightly in your heart?