The Grace of Wrath

I receive regular news letter emails from a brother who freely shares how Christ is continuing making himself real in his life. This last email he had a link to a short article that significantly tied in with things Father had put upon his heart, it’s this article I want to share here, The Grace of Wrath.

If the bottom line is that God IS Love, then we are going to have to line everything up that touches our lives as well as the lives of all those around us, with the truth of that unshakable, undeniable reality, but guaranteed this is going to be a white water shooting over the rapids ride, so buckle your seat belt, this is not intended for the faint of heart.

“My beloved friends let us continue to love each other since love comes from God. Everyone who loves is born of God and experiences a relationship with God. The person who refuses to love doesn't know the first thing about God, because God is love—so you can't know him if you don't love. This is how God showed his love for us: God sent his only Son into the world so we might live through him. This is the kind of love we are talking about—not that we once upon a time loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they've done to our relationship with God.”

For way too long the suffering have had to settle for such empty religious platitudes regarding the injustice, heartaches, and compounded hurts they have endured with pointed and heartless jabs such as this: “God’s ways are higher than our ways, His thoughts are not His thoughts,” so stop your moaning and groaning and get on with life no matter how cruel and unfair it keeps getting!

The eternal purpose and plan of God the Father was to have a house, his house filled with sons and daughters. Our spiritual birth right is that we were and are created to be filled to over flowing with the true experiential knowing (day in day out) of his unconditional loving acceptance of us.
It says in Romans 8:28 a most often misquoted verse only because it is unfortunately separated from the rest of the good news that flows with this one isolated verse. “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to His purpose.” And that unfortunately is where it ends for way to many sadly.
It goes on to say and define how this working together of all things is going to be accomplished: “For whom he did foreknow, he also did predetermine to be conformed to the image of his son, that he might be the first born among many brethren.”

I like this from the Message Bible: “God knew what he was doing from the very beginning. He decided from the outset to shape the lives of those who love him along the same lines as the life of his Son. The Son stands first in the line of humanity he restored. We see the original and intended shape of our lives there in him. After God made that decision of what his children should be like, he followed it up by calling people by name. After he called them by name, he set them on a solid basis with himself. And then, after getting them established, he stayed with them to the end, gloriously completing what he had begun.”

Apart from an initial and continued revelation of this God and Father of love, this so called life most of us live is nothing more than a sadistic cruel joke muffling out any laughter. There is no way to even approach this God with out faith it says, but guess what, He is wanting to do just that, offer the intangible to us, His abounding love from deep within to ask Him directly what the truth really is about your pain filled and broken lives!

I’m going to end here with a most powerful word from the Scriptures, I hope any reading this will go directly to God by simply asking Him, I want to know the truth for myself.
There is so much more to His grace than what we have settled for, allow Him to set you free from all and any lies, He LOVES you!

Rich

Who Are You

Right from the start I want to thank my good friend and brother Dave Aldrich for his very keen artistic eye and ability to work the magic on my new blog, 'thanks Bro'!
The banner picture which we chose was in fact two different pictures that he transformed into one, the one you now see.
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Last week I was sharing with my wife a thought I had, about how after the fall when God called out to Adam, 'Adam, where are you,' I believe hidden within that call was a mystery that was going to so transform man that it would far surpass and exceed all that had preceded the fall and the relationship Adam (man) had with God.
Hidden within the 'where are you' in my opinion was something far more glorious, 'who are you'?!
There is no possibility of ever discovering who's we are, or who we are apart from being brought into right relationship with God, (ergo, where are you) and the beauty of that is, He has torn down, removed every obstacle that would stand in the way for this to happen.

As in the movie the Matrix, no one can tell you what the Matrix is, likewise, no one can tell us who we are either, and in light of this I wanted to share something here from Paul A Walsh from his book The Bonsai Conspiracy.

"Acceptance is based on one thing-perfection [Matt. 5:48] Whose? Not ours but Christ's! It is not so much what we are in Christ but rather, Christ in us. He has made us perfect forever [Heb. 10:14]. He is our life [Col. 3:4] and our righteousness [2Cor. 5:21]. Jesus did not just live His life for you. He lived it as you. He died for you so that He could live in you now. Consequently, when the Father see me, He sees Him [John 14:20].

Even those of us who purport to rest in the love of God have a tendency to secretly believe that God would accept us more if we were more like X, Y or Z. This unease is reinforced by our discipleship programmes which consist of somebody telling us what we can, cannot, should and should not do rather than just telling us who we are."

Bottom line, we have no ability to interpret our acceptance from our works.
I believe it is in the drawing he does, bringing us unto Himself, and in that place of total acceptance, He alone discloses who we are.

I look forward to the further unfolding revelation the Father brings not only into my life but in the lives of those scattered throughout the earth.

Rich