The "down-side" is a blessing?!

Our family has just received a wonderful answer to a 2-month (or more) prayer request.  How absolutely wonderful the LORD is!!! Never ceases to amaze me!!  As I pondered on this graceful gesture from my heavenly Daddy to my family, I realized that soon, sooner than you might think, we will probably move on to other prayer requests, etc...

Don't get me wrong, God is absolutely marvelous in everything that He does... yet there is a down-side to joys on this side of heaven.  We have a child, wonderful!...soon we are embroiled in the ins and outs of child raising ...then they leave...ouch!  We bought a house, great!...soon we are doing our best with upkeep and decorating and fixing, etc...We bought our first new car! exciting!...soon we will be rotating tires, changing transmissions, etc...I felt great last week!...marvelous!... haven't felt so good this week

All these blessings bring with them a "down-side" of decay and aging.  Oh, if it would just be all good and no down-side!! we lament.  But wait...perhaps this is what draws my heart towards heaven...the down-side.  There is no downside there and that is exactly what I long for.

To us who are children of God, we look upward, where He is.  To those who are not, they look around for more...how sad.

Thank you LORD for the downside.  It draws my heart to You and your promise of an eternity with You with absolutely NO DOWNSIDE!!!

Hallelujah!

An Old "new" Message

There truly is "nothing new under the sun"!  As I have been looking into Revelation and studying it carefully, it shocks me how germane (to use one of our new vocabulary words!) the messages to the seven churches are today!

To the church of Ephesus:  As always Jesus Christ starts with a commendation: You have persevered against false doctrine, you are doing all the good works.  The rebuke:  You have left your first love!  As I studied on, I remembered wrestling with a question in my own soul about church-planting, etc..  I remember asking myself, "What ever happened to the churches that Paul planted?  Did they remain faithful? Would it be a reflection on Paul's ministry if they weren't?"  As usual the LORD is faithful in answering the questions...actually sometimes I wonder if He gives me the questions, so that later on He can answer them, and get all the glory, and I get to know Him better as my faithful God! He's always doing that kind of stuff, ya know, increasing our faith and stuff!

But I digress...Paul had planted Ephesus and commended for their love for one another, about 40 years earlier!  However, here is God rebuking them because they had left their first love!!  What happened?  I guess, we can do all the right things, and fool ourselves into thinking that we are doing them for God when in reality there is no relationship with Him!

This is apparently the church at Ephesus' plight. Oh, they were doing all the right things alright... enduring a wicked culture, confronting heresy, even hating what God hated, but they had no relationship of love with the God they were doing all this for!  So what was the Exhortation?:  Remember how it was before you lost your first love for God, Repent of your straying, and Renew your devotion to God by doing the things that kept your first love burning!

So...how about me?  am I busy doing and not being?  What was God's promise to the church at Ephesus?  The promise is only for those who have ears to hear!  For us believers!  " To him who overcomes, I will grant to eat of the tree of life which is in the Paradise of God."  In other words, eternity in the presence of the God whom they love!!!!  But wait, if we don't have a relationship with Him here, why in the world would we want to spend such a loooong time with Him there?  

Oh LORD, hit me upside the head when I start doing things FOR You rather than spending time WITH You!  Teach me to look to You for satisfaction instead of looking to works, action, busyness, etc... for importance.  That would be going back to the "elementary principles of this world", wouldn't it?  Wow! the church at Ephesus wasn't that different than the church today!!

The Tarnished Image

Simple thoughts this morning...but deep application!  Satan's grand desire, within the knowledge of his limited capabilities, is to effectually tarnish and degrade the image of God everywhere.  In spite of his inability to totally destroy this world, he finds pleasure in "tarnishing" God's image by "submitting creation" to sin and death, etc...  In spite of his inability to "pluck out of God's hands" those who are His, he finds pleasure in "tarnishing" God's image in them.     

To the extent that I allow Satan to use me for his ends, is to the extent that I will be used by him to "tarnish" God's image in me.  Well, how does he go about "tarnishing" God's image in me?  This would be an important question to those who are "zealous for good deeds."  One of the many answers possible...he uses our interactions with others and our reactions/responses to them!  As long as I am preoccupied with how I'm being treated by others, I am unable to focus on bearing God's image in that particular situation.  The true image-bearer is more intent on bringing forth a true image of Christ in every situation, than in making sure self is understood, complemented, patted on the back, etc...

This morning has been such a great example of this in my own life!  I have allowed my body, my "instrument", to be used to distort the image of how Jesus Christ would deal with a particular person in a particular situation!!  

In other words, I "tarnished" God's image of Christ in me.  The words coming out of my mouth were right, but my attitude, plastered all over my face, was wrong.  What a terrible picture of my Savior's compassion and kindness. 

I am so awed at the grace of my LORD as He deals with me...and yet I fail to show that same grace to others..."oh wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death?...Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!."  Rom. 7:25

"There is , therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus."  Rom. 8:1

Unbelievable grace....