Values Clarification

When we value something, it does not give that something it's intrinsic worth. "One man's junk is another man's treasure," goes the proverb. I remember some characters in the old Superman comics of the 1960's called the Bazarros. On the planet Bazarro, everyone dressed like Superman except the super heros, who dressed like Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen. The citizens of the planet valued garbage over gold, and so they traded all their gold for Earth's garbage.  Who's to say what is valuable and what is not? Me? You? The wealthiest man in the world? No. Only one can give an accurate appraisal of any given thing. God. God says what is of value and what is rubbish. Paul the apostle declared, "What things were gain to me I counted loss for Christ. Yes, without a doubt, I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as so much manure, that I may win Christ." God had opened Paul's eyes to what was of true worth. And the value He puts on the shed blood of Christ is the forgiveness of all sin. The value God puts on you is the blood of Christ.

Hanged

Sigmond Frued once said cynically: "Forgive your enemy, but only after he hangs." We all yearn for some kind of justice; some recompense for wrongs we suffer. The desire for payback is native to our gut. But Mr Frued was not far off the mark in his sarcasm. Someone must pay for what is done. Nothing goes unpunished or unrewarded. Someone was punished. Someone was hung. Is it enough? Of course it is.

The Light Swallows Darkness

But let's be clear: Jesus has no similarity to the tempter who worked through a snake in the Garden of Eden. Satan was a creature taking the world away into sin; Christ is the creator taking away the sin of the world. Lifted on the Roman torture rack, He is a vision of God’s wrath on the slithering snake that is our iniquity. For God made him who knew no sin, to be sin for us.

When Christ is mounted on the cross, He is all sin: our sin and the sin of our tormentors -– sins we commit and those committed against us. He is any sin committed at any time by anyone. More than that, He is us. He is the fallen beast that humanity has become. On that eternal hill, He lives it all. From the first breath of Adam to the death rattle of the last sinner on earth, He suffers it.

Matthew’s eyewitness account: “Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour.” The darkness of the ages is brought to the one point in time that is the whole point of time. In the right time Christ died for the ungodly. The death that gathers on Golgotha, is so thick it darkens the skies over Jerusalem as it lands on the Son of God. The Prophet Isaiah said, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” He suffers our pain, sin and death in ways impossible for us to comprehend. It is our cry that tears His soul when He screams, “Why have you forsaken me?”
How Shall We Then Forgive: Chapter Nineteen~The Serpent

Passover

For centuries Egypt enslaved the children of Israel. God sent Moses to Pharaoh with the message,  “Let My people Go.”

The ruler, considered a god in his own right, hardened his heart, disdaining the God of low-born slaves. After devastating the Egyptians with plagues, the “slave God,” as Pharaoh might have called Him, prepared to strike down all the firstborn in their land, the best of all their strength. The Egyptian oppression cost every firstborn male his life.

God ordered His people to kill a lamb: an unblemished male, and smear the blood around the door-frames of their houses. For I will pass through the land and strike all the firstborn in Egypt. Now the blood shall be a sign on your houses. When I see the blood, I will pass over you; and the plague shall not destroy you when I strike Egypt.

The blood on the doorpost said, “The wrath of God already visited this house. Death was here. Pass over this house.” This blood on the doorpost of the world means that pardon is free to any and all who choose to accept it. This Blood of The Lamb marks our offenders. Seeing only the precious blood of our Savior, we stop looking for any lower justice. We pass over that blood-marked person by imitating our Father.

From How Shall We Then Forgive; Chapter Eighteen: Like Papa

Father's Love

Sometimes your Heavenly Father's love can make you feel like you are His favorite child. That's just the way His love is. Only God's love can do this to us, because only He can love infinitely. He can give Himself fully to you and fully to me simultaneously. Only the God of paradox and mystery, the God who is three persons in one being, and fully man and fully God, can do this. Love us everyone as though there were but one to love. It is a riveting love, a love that keeps those touched by it loyal for the rest of their lives.

Yet not I, but Christ

The beginning and the end of the Christian life is Jesus Christ. A colleague at work asked me, "Doesn't the Bible say that God is willing to work with those who are willing to work with themselves?" Of course it doesn't. This philosophy uncovers the deepest weakness in modern Christianity: the tendency to trust in self before we trust in God. It is the reason we only turn to prayer as a last resort. The truth is this: God helps those who help themselves, with His help, to a heaping helping of His help.
The Alpha of our faith is Christ Himself. The lamda is Christ, and the omega is Christ. Our self reliance is an attempt to escape this fact.  He is not only the beginning of our spiritual life, He is the end of the self life. We fear the loss of self more than we fear the loss of God's grace. Even here, we can overcome this fear of death only through the love of the indwelling Christ

A Talking God

Growing up Catholic I faced a religious contradiction in my instruction. On the one hand, people who heard the voice of God, Jesus, Mary or one of those who had passed into heaven, were extolled. But if some contemporary soul were to say that he or she actually heard the voice of God, that one would be considered insane. Their hymnbook upside down, their bonnet to tight, and their rosary a decade short of a joyful mystery.
When I first experienced a revelation from God I had to tell someone. The priest I hurried off to see smiled patronizingly, suggested that my perception was askew, and asked if I would like to go to confession. I figured if he had no clue about what I just encountered, why would I trust what he offered. But I was a judgmental boy.
I sought out a relative whose advice I trusted and told her, "God talked to me."
"Jeff," she said with alarm in her eyes, "Do you know what a holy roller is?" And she walked away. I had some vague idea about what a holy roller was, and I knew it was something akin to crazy. But if it be crazy to "hear" the thoughts and feelings of God, then crazy let me gladly be.
But what is more crazy? A God who communicates with His children, or a God who can create this magnificent universe but cannot make himself known to a simple boy? It is believed that nothing is impossible to God...except plain communication with modern man. It is acceptable dogma that all things are possible to God...except a clear conversation with modern woman. Such a weak God is that.

And He walks with me, and He talks with me

And He tells me I am His own

And the joy we share as we tarry there

None other has ever known

(C.Miles)

Comprehending Joy

Beyond comprehension. John tells us, "The light shines in darkness, and the darkness does not comprehend it." Through the touch of God's truth, we all know of our personal darkness. The hidden faults that drive our chaos. We are an unconscious depravity, so benighted at the core that we appear to be delirious and demented shadows; substantially non-beings. There is of us an ontological void that is unaware of itself, let alone the light. Still, He shines there. Someday this light will obliterate our oblivious false self. Where once sin, a thoroughly blind numbness, pretended to exist, an unbearable and fearful awareness of joy will find it impossible to contemplate anything but infinite love.

Eternal Mercy and Holiness

It is love for His sacrifice that keeps our hearts from sin. By paying mind to His suffering, contemplating what he paid for my wrongs bolsters the spiritual will to live in His holiness. Knowing this love, fills my spirit with a fear that destroys all fear of death, hell and evil. Looking away takes me away into sin. Looking toward the cross keeps me near the cross.
Jesus, keep me near the cross,
There a precious fountain
Free to all, a healing stream
Flows from Calvary’s mountain
F Crosby

Let Go and Let God.

It is so hard to leave my hands off the controls. More than a few times, in a panic of doubt,  I have taken the wheel from the silent invisible God, and run my life into a ditch. He always pulls me out, of course, without so much as a sigh. He gets me back on the road and rolling. But it does tend to slow things down a bit.

The Offence Of The Cross

It is beyond our willingness to comprehend, but our depravity is thorough.


Two men went up into the temple to pray ; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself,God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess . And the publican,standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast,saying , God be merciful to me a sinner. I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased ; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted .


The good guys go away wretched, and the wretches come away good.

High Genetics

We need to know who our Father is. We need to know that He is into our true success just as much as we are into the success of our kids. Actually, His desire for our victory in life is as high above ours "as the heavens are higher than the earth." He desires our good more than we do. He wants the best for us, and HE is the best.

Forgiveness is Prayer

The spiritual life begins with a prayer, "God be merciful to me, a sinner. It continues with prayer as we "Do all things as unto the Lord." We live saying "God be merciful to them who are sinners like me." It ends with prayer, "O Lamb of God I come, I come." As Paul the Apostle tells us, "Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved." It really is that simple. Ask and you shall receive. We can either call upon our own "inner strength" or call upon Him to be the  strength of the inner person.

All

In the end, He is all we have. From the beginning, He is all we have. Forever He is our all.

Blessed to Bless

John tells us that "We have received "grace for grace." We first enjoy the gift, the we share it. We are graced that we might grace all in our sphere of contact. Re-gifting is said to be tacky. But as Paul says "What do you have that you have not received?" What gift do we give that was not given to us. Even when I give myself I am giving what was given to me. Nothing originates with us, not even ourselves. That's what makes our pride so laughable. We are all the poor in spirit." Without God's grace, all is poverty and bafoonery.

Goody Two Shoes

Christians are not good, and do not claim to be. Jesus Christ is the only good human. We can live with that and because of that.
This morning, as the "transporter crew" sat in traffic, Margret read a bumper sticker to us. It said: "I like your Christ,but I don't like your Christians because they're so not like Christ". We all agreed that was true. Only Christ is like Christ. We Christians confess that we are, at our best, sinners that need a savior. Be our behavior admirable or despicable our gospel is still the same: "Jesus Christ died to save sinners of whom I am chiefest." Though we do not meet a bumper-sticker's standards, and are rightly judged to be woefully unworthy, we forever remain joyfully and undeservedly forgiven.

Ease Into Grace

Excerpt from Chapter Seven: Pie

The Paperback is Available

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