God

Great Quotes From Ages Past #10

/ taethne

In Christ, as a great storehouse, lie all the riches of spiritual wisdom, the massive ingots of solid gold which when coined into creeds and doctrines are the wealth of the Church.  All which we can know concerning God and man, concerning sin and righteousness and duty, concerning another life, is in Him Who is the home and deep mine where truth is stored… The central fact of the universe and the perfect encyclopedia of all moral and spiritual truth is in Christ, the Incarnate Word, the Lamb slain, the ascended King.

 

Alexander MacLaren

 

Hymn Devotions Day 15 – A Mighty Fortress Is Our God

/ taethne

DAY 15  – A MIGHTY FORTRESS

               This song has brought comfort to me many times. Whenever I go through trials, whenever I have been faced with persecution because of my faith in Christ, I lean on God to be both my unassailable place of refuge and my defender. Whenever, like the apostle Paul, I am so hard pressed that I despair even of life, my hope rests in the never failing strength and mercy of my God.

It is so easy to look at the evil in the world and despair. Often, it seems as if goodness is failing and the darkness is winning. It is then that God’s Word provides the ultimate comfort by revealing the final result – God wins. Good triumphs. Evil is banished. Our ancient enemy is forever defeated by the might of our Savior and God.

As a mere human, I am no match for the Prince of Darkness. As a son of the Living God, a prince of the Kingdom of Light, co-heir with Jesus Christ and temple of the Holy Spirit, I have nothing to fear. My life is hidden in Christ and all I have to do is call on His name. He is my refuge and my strength, an ever present help in times of danger.

 

            Lord, help me to remember that You are my place of safety, my refuge, my fortress. Help me not to become overwhelmed at the amount of evil in the world but to overcome it by shining Your light. Let me rest in the assurance that You will return, set up Your kingdom, and banish sin and evil forever. Lord, let me also run to You and You alone for safety.

A MIGHTY FORTRESS IS OUR GOD – Martin Luther

A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing

Our helper He amid the flood, of mortal ills prevailing

For still our ancient foe, doth seek to work us woe

His craft and power are great, and armed with cruel hate

On earth is not His equal

 

Did we in our own strength abide, our striving would be losing

Were not the right man on our side, the man of God’s own choosing

Doth ask who that may be? Christ Jesus it is He

Lord Sabaoth His name, from age to age the same

And He must win the battle

 

And though this world with devil’s filled, should threaten to undo us

We will not fear for God hath willed, His truth to triumph through us

The Prince of Darkness grim, we tremble not for him

His rage we can endure, for lo, his doom is sure

One little word shall fell him

 

That word above all earthly powers, no thanks to them abideth

The Spirit and the gifts are ours, through Him who with us sideth

Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also

The body they may kill, God’s truth abideth still

His kingdom is forever

Confession and Repentance – pt 1

/ taethne

One of the best definitions of confession I have run across was written by Dr. Richard Krejcir. He writes the following: “Repentance is before God; confession is before God, then having others hold us accountable to our faith. The distinction between confession and repentance is that confession is taking our repentance and telling someone besides God (of course you have to go to Him first and foremost!) to hold us accountable.”

This is an area of Christian discipline I find to be lacking in most people’s lives, and in the life of a church as well. Tomorrow I will continue to develop thoughts on the discipline of confession.

Hymn Devotions Day 14 – Holy, Holy, Holy!

/ taethne

DAY 14 – HOLY, HOLY, HOLY

               What a magnificent, majestic song to sing in praise to God! Yes, all the saints do adore Him, the God of our Salvation. When we stand before the throne we will cast down our crowns at His feet, acknowledging that He and He alone is worthy of any honor. The great angels and other heavenly creatures also will bow in reverence, honor and awe before our great God.

We cannot see Him now. To witness His holy glory would destroy us. Our sinful bodies are simply not capable of withstanding His perfect presence. One day, we will have a new body and be cleansed from all sin but for now, He is hidden from our sight. Now, we see as through a glass darkly, but then we will see clearly.

At the coming of the Lord Jesus, when this present heaven and earth pass away and everything is made new, only those who belong to the Lord will inhabit the universe. All His works will praise His name. All will give Him the glory He deserves.

Every time I sing this song, I am swept up in emotion as I reflect on how wonderful and amazing God is. I sing this with all my heart and mind, praying that He takes joy in my offering to Him. Early in the morning, in the middle of the afternoon, late in the evening, all are appropriate times to ring out praise to our most holy God.

 

               Most high and holy God, I offer to You everything I have. Nothing I am or will be is in any way a worthy gift to such a magnificent God, but all I have I give to You. You alone are worthy of praise and glory and majesty. I bow before Your glorious throne.

HOLY, HOLY HOLY by Reginald Heber

Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty

Early in the morning our song shall rise to Thee

Holy, holy, holy! Merciful and mighty

God in three persons, blessed Trinity

 

Holy, holy, holy! All the saints adore Thee

Casting down their golden crowns around the glassy sea

Cherubim and seraphim falling down before Thee

Who wert and art and evermore shall be

 

Holy, holy, holy! Though the darkness hide Thee

Though the eye of sinful man Thy glory may not see

Only Thou art holy, there is none beside Thee

Perfect in power, in love and purity

 

Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty

All Thy works shall praise Thy name in earth and sky and sea

Holy, holy, holy! Merciful and mighty

God in three persons, blessed Trinity

Simply. Church.

/ taethne

So tired of playing the church game. You know what I mean. Everyone smiles and says they are doing fine. I know better. As their pastor, I see who is hurting. This one is crippled by fear. Another is a worry wart. This guy is losing his job and his wife is scared they may lose their home. This lady is battling cancer, again. This couple desperately wants children but cannot. Another couple is concerned about their rebellious child. Still a third is separated and aren’t sure they want to reconcile.

Beginning today, our church is redoing our services. We have one simple rule – no masks. Honesty is to reign. Trust will be rebuilt. Hope restored. No fluff. No Oprah rah-rah.  Simply. Church. Where we come together to worship God and lift up each other. We will spend time in confession, testimony and the Word. We will plead with God to remake our lives, our family, our church. We will ask for the Spirit’s power to cleanse and empower us to live godly lives. Because, Christ bids us to come just as we are and He loves us enough not to leave us there.

Simply. Church.  I wonder why we ever got away from that.

Hymn Devotions Day 11 – Come Thou Fount

/ taethne

DAY 11 – COME THOU FOUNT

Prone to wander – yes, that is me. Prone to leave the God I love. Why? That is the question, isn’t it. Why do we leave the place where we are safest? Why do we leave the One who has given us everything we need to live a godly life?

O, the depths the human soul has sunk to! Even when brought into a transforming relationship with the God of the Universe we still seek to go our own way. Yes, I will raise my Ebenezer, knowing full well it is only by His help, His grace and power that I have come as far as I have. Only by His help, grace and power will I arrive at the destination He has planned for me. I need to pray for Him to daily bind me to Him. Not to keep me from experiencing a wonderful life, but to keep me from danger and harm. To keep me close to Him, the Savior of Life and every good blessing.

If I cannot keep myself close to Him, and I have proven over and over that I cannot, I can ask Him to keep close to me.

Bend my heart to Thee Lord, I pray. Fetter my wandering feet so they do not leave Your path. You have said you will never leave me nor forsake me and I appreciate that very much. Forgive my sins, I pray, and draw me close to your side.

 

COME THOU FOUNT by Robert Robinson

Come, thou fount of every blessing

Tune my heart to sing Thy grace

Streams of mercy, never ceasing

Call for songs of loudest praise

Teach me some melodious sonnet

Sung by flaming tongues above

Praise the mount, I’m fixed upon it

Mount of Thy redeeming love

Here I raise mine Ebenezer

Hither by Thy help I’m come

And I hope by Thy good pleasure

Safely to arrive at home

Jesus sought me when a stranger

Wandering from the fold of God

He to rescue me from danger

Interposed His precious blood

O to grace how great a debtor

Daily I’m constrained to be

Let Thy goodness, like a fetter

Bind my wandering heart to Thee

Prone to wander, Lord I feel it

Prone to leave the God I love

Here’s my heart Lord, take and seal it

Seal it for Thy courts above

The Downward Spiral of Sin

/ taethne

One of the best messages I have heard (and I wish I could remember the speaker’s name) was entitled “Cain at the Guggenheim – the downward spiral of sin”. The speaker used the famous New York City museum, which spirals ever downward, as an illustration of what sin entices us to do. On every level of the museum there is an exit. It may be hard to find, but it is there. In the same way, through every temptation we face there is an exit, if we will discipline ourselves to look for it and take it. If we do not, we find ourselves digging a hole deeper and deeper into despair.

Sin so easily entices us. It is easy, attractive, fun for a season. The ramifications of sin, though, are destructive and entangles us so thoroughly that once we are snared it takes a miracle of God to set us free. Stop and think is one of the Bible’s overarching themes, although couched in different terms. Stop and think, is this going to please God or anger Him? Stop and think, will this build someone up or tear them down? Stop and think, is this a wise course of action or a foolish one? Stop and think, will this draw me closer to God or push me farther away? Stop and think, is this what God has commanded or simply what I want to hear?

We tell our children all the time, stop and think. Think through the consequences of any action. What will happen if I do this, what will happen if I do not do this. It is amazing to me, that God gave us this wonderful, reasoning organ we call the brain and how little we use it.  Stop and think. No one “falls” into sin. We choose it. Deliberately. Because we like it, we like how it makes us feel, we think the potential consequences are worth it. Stop and think. That kind of reasoning will put you on the broad ramp spiraling down to destruction. Sin crouches at your door seeking to master you, like it did Cain. Rise up, put on God’s armor, seek His will and He will help you to master yourself and to throw off the shackles of sin.

Is Jesus Enough? Excerpt

/ taethne

 

One of the songs we often sing at our church has a line that goes like this:

He gave His life, what more could He give?

 Oh how He loves you, oh how He loves me, oh how He loves you and me!

When we come to Jesus Christ in saving faith, we are acknowledging that He gave His life to pay the penalty for our sin. That act of supreme sacrifice makes Jesus worthy of our love and worship. Even if Jesus never does anything else for us, His procurement of salvation for our souls is more than enough. Any other blessing we receive from Him is simply extra gravy on an already overfilled plate.

When we start to live our lives based on conditional requirements rather than on the finished work of Jesus Christ, we are, in effect, saying that His death was not sufficient for all our needs. We are saying that we need more proof, more tangible benefits before we will give Him the honor He is due. Can you see how arrogant that way of thinking is? Can you see how are attitude has shifted from gratefulness of being a recipient of God’s mercy to one of an expectation of God existing to serve our wants?

We all know of people who started out on fire for the Lord and who dropped out along the way. Many became angry with God for His not answering their prayers a certain way or for not protecting a loved one from harm. If we are honest we must admit that we, too, have become disappointed in God for failing to meet our expectations.

Discouragement sets in when we become disappointed. Disappointment comes from unmet expectations. Our expectations and reality often collide and rarely do we blame ourselves as having expectations that were misguided, ill-founded or unreasonable. We blame either the reality around us or God for not changing the reality to suit our needs.

When pressed by adversity our hearts reveal the truth about us and about our relationship with God. Many believers are in love with the things of the Lord but not the Lord Himself. Despite what our lips may profess, our hearts show the shallowness of our faith. We act more like the crowds who followed Jesus for the miracles of food than the disciples. After all, when one becomes disappointed in God, is it His fault for not catering to our whims and desires or ours for not understanding His ways and trusting in His goodness?

God is good. When we cease to believe that foundational principle we open ourselves up to despair and hopelessness. Even when we do not understand the reasons why things are happening to us, we must cling to that one assurance. Job did. Job was greatly disappointed. Job could not understand why all those calamities had occurred in his life. Job, though, held onto his faith that God was good. Through everything Job never lost his faith in that aspect of God’s character.

One of the ironies of the Christian life is that so many of our prayers center on God healing or delivering us from a life-threatening situation – in effect delaying our arrival at the very place of our reward! How angry people get at God for transporting their loved one to glory instead of leaving them here to endure this sinful, broken earth. It seems that we have lost sight of heaven, that death has somehow regained her sting. Dying has become less than an entrance into eternity and our selfish desires to cling to more time on earth with our loved one trumps our desire to let God determine what is best for them.

The ultimate healing, the ultimate deliverance is from this body of decay and sin and to be with the Lord in heaven. When we take a lesser view on this it diminishes our faith and trust in a God who is good. This lesson was driven home to me in a dramatic way.

The day before my son, then 17 months old, was to have open-heart surgery, my wife and I were passing through the halls of the Ronald McDonald house where we were staying. People in those places get close to each other since all there are in similar situations. One lady we had spoken with quite often was packing her clothes. “I’m going home”, she said in response to our inquiry.  Knowing that her little boy was very ill and could not have possibly been released, we asked her why. “My boy died last night”, she answered. Seeing our hurt, embarrassment and shock plastered on our faces, she took us aside and said, “You’re not ready for your child to die, are you?” We shook our heads no.  “You need to be. Come in here and let me tell you something.” For over an hour she talked with us about how she knew her boy was in heaven, “doing that little shuffle-step dance for Jesus like he did in church on Sundays.” She told us that she was thankful for the years Jesus had loaned her boy to her and that he wasn’t suffering anymore. She thanked Him for His deliverance and healing of her boy. She praised Him for His goodness and mercy. At that Ronald McDonald house I learned that God loves my children even more than I do and that when we pray for complete recovery and healing it may be that God takes our loved ones to heaven to accomplish just that. God is good in all He does because goodness is a central characteristic of Himself.

Our faith grows deeper when we mature enough to understand that our belief at how God can best answer our prayers is different than His knowledge of how best to answer our prayers.

To be honest, even the depth of a faith that acknowledges that God is worthy because He made a way to provide for our salvation is not deep enough. You see, God is worthy because He alone is God. Even if He had not made provision to save mankind, if He had allowed us to enter eternity forever separated from Him because of our sin, He would still be worthy of praise. He did not have to save us. He made us. He made the earth for us to live on. He made colors and sounds and our senses to enjoy them. God made a universe and populated it with myriads of wonderful and incomprehensible things. He is God. He is the Creator and Maker of All Things. He is Good and Holy and this makes Him worthy to be praised.

Now, the fact that He made us with a redeemable soul and sent His Son precisely to redeem that soul is, indeed, good news. The character of who God is, though, is what makes Him worthy of praise and adoration. His holiness is the reason that He is worthy.  A faith that worships God and gives Him praise and adoration based only on what He has done for us, whether it is a family, a job, a car or even salvation is a deficient faith. God is worthy because He is God.

This was a critical point in my walk with Christ. I loved the fact that He had sent people into my life to share the gospel with me. I loved the fact that His Spirit had drawn me to saving faith in His redemptive act.  I loved the family He had given me. I loved being a minister of the gospel and leading others to faith in Jesus. But I had to ask myself if my love for Him was deeper than even that. Did I love Him just because He is?

In his book, The Painful Side of Leadership, Jeff Iorg makes this profound statement:

Most leaders easily forget their primary reason for being placed in their leadership role. The primary reason isn’t for you to do things for God. It’s so God can use your leadership setting as a laboratory for shaping the image of Jesus in you. (Iorg, 2009)

 

Excerpt from Is Jesus Enough? available in print and Kindle editions from Amazon.com and our sister site, http://www.discernmentministries.webs.com