I Forgot Love Existed

I loved this clip.

Its truly amazing how when your heart can be so abused that love seems to be so far removed from where we are.

Rich

United with Christ or Hooked Up to An I.V.

If the man Christ Jesus is not our personal mediator between God the Father and ourselves, then because there are no vacuums, there is going to be someone else a surrogate and substitute which will leave us with but a form of godliness lacking any and all power.
The Father has covered all the bases, he has left nothing to chance, those who have ears to hear and eyes to see will not live vicariously from the regurgitated revelation others received, they will in fact thrive and flourish as a result of feeding and feasting upon the hidden manna of Christ in them, the hope of Glory!

I love when Jesus asked those (disciples) who followed him “Who do you say that I am,” the responses were varied and mixed, then Jesus asked, “Who do you say that I am,” to which Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of God.”
Jesus acknowledged that this was not a result of any human ingenuity, but the direct initiation of the Father’s doing.
It is upon this foundation alone that only He can lay the building and establishing of His church will be built.

I am witnessing so many that are trying to find a short cut of knowing Him personally, and believe me there are so many that have set themselves up as a substitute for the man Christ Jesus in the lives of those He alone has fathered.
Many have fled what has been coined as “the institutional church” but in my opinion I see many of those who were and are part of that exodus now hooked up to an IV (intravenous), having an appearance of life but perhaps are simply once again being deluded into having but an facsimile of life derived from what the ‘grace teachers’ are laying out for their nutriment.

I love the graphic illustration in the book of Acts where a certain Jew was trying to exorcise a demon from a person, the demon in that person manifested it self by saying, “Jesus I know, Paul I know but who the hell are you.”
There are NO shortcuts to know Him and as our brother Peter said, “Continue to grow in the grace and the true knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.”

I want to include a quote from something I read today that beautifully stretches this out even further. This was taken from A Wilderness Voice (Michael Clark & George Davis) “All Things New."

We are comfortable with our old wineskins because it gives us the feeling that we are in control. Where men are in control, God is not! He is forced to leave those old wineskins behind and find new ones to pour the new thing He is doing into. God always leaves old wineskins to their religious rigidity and chooses new ones for His new wine. Men prefer the old wine over the new because it is no longer alive and doesn't stretch their religious wineskins. As they cling to their traditions, they make what God is currently saying to them of no effect, and doom themselves to become spiritually extinct. Men call this the "Post Christian Era" for a reason. Christianity has ceased to be relevant with His relevancy. God continues to reach out to a dying world so we have a choice to make. We can either move on in the flow of His Spirit or cling to our dead and "safe" traditions and institutions.
Jesus told Nicodemus that those who are of the Spirit of God are like the wind with no man knowing from where it comes or where it is going. The wind is symbolic of the Spirit of God and it by nature refuses to be confined by the structures built by men. One dear brother put it, "The opposite of the wind is bricks!" We either move with the wind or are left behind. God will move on and we will be left standing there like that old Pharisee saying, "How can these things be?"
Paul wrote,
Therefore from now on know we no man after the flesh: yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet from now on know we him no more. Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creation: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. (2 Corinthians 5:16-17 KJ2000, emphasis added)
The nature of Christ's continued working in us is to make all things new within. The wine is always stretching our wineskin. As He does, even our ideas of who He is are no longer static because we cease to know Him after the flesh. After being confronted by the living God at the end of his trial, Job cried out, "I have heard of you by the hearing of the ear: but now my eye sees you. Therefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes" (Job 42:5-6 KJ2000). We all should abhor the religious self in us that has been limited to the hearing of men as opposed to hearing the Spirit. When Saul of Tarsus (later known as Paul) had his first encounter with the living Christ, he was knocked to the ground and blinded. The first words out of his mouth should be our continuing prayer: "Who are you Lord?" God delights to manifest Himself to those who want to see Him as He is. "Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God."
Our old things pass away as the Spirit draws us deeper into His wondrous, uncontainable truth that He prepared for us from the foundations of the world. Life is no longer static and dead. Instead we are alive with a continuing fresh view of the greatness of our God and His Christ. Yes, "Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God has prepared for them that love him. But God has revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searches all things, yea, the deep things of God" (1 Corinthians 2:9-10 KJ2000).

Rich

Signs, Signs, Everywhere Signs

“Have you seen my brown sweater?” “Which one?” I asked. “You know that special one. I was going to wear it today for parent teacher interviews,” my wife replied.
Well, she/we looked and looked - but no sweater appeared. My wife got very frustrated. Added to this was the fact that we were in a hurry today, and when she went to the closet simply to take the sweater down from a hanger, not finding it where it should be, then having to totally change her outfit very quickly just added to the upset.

Every day is a whole new deal, at least for us, and we’re not even living in the ‘fast lane.’ The norm went sideways for us today because of other out of the norm things needing to be done.

This whole incident spoke volumes to me because it seemed my wife was experiencing a ‘divine setup’. The following thoughts are what came out of this capricious moment.

Jesus was asked at one point in His journey to “show a sign,” Matthew 12:38-40, but Jesus answered them, "An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.”

I found this interesting, the ‘sign’ Jesus chose to convey to those seeking and wanting a sign, was the entombment of Jonah imprisoned in the bowels of a great fish, and using it to illustrate a parallel to what was soon going to unfold in his life as well, by being killed and buried for three days, but then miraculously brought back to life.

There are those who have according to their template, and litmus standards connected the eschatological dots, crossed the T’s and dotted all the I’s, they’ve been studying this (for some) an entire life time.
I find it comical to see those who are not in touch with the living, resurrected Christ living in and through them as them, which in my opinion is the greatest “sign” anyone could ask for, verses having a pet theory all put together perfectly.

Getting back to my wife and what happened this morning, I’m not picking on her or putting her down at all, but these actions spoke to me of the lunacy of those who are wanting to get our attention to “all the signs” lining up, and yet their lives are NOT lining up with the Living Sign Himself in us as us.
Maybe there is supposed to be an inner rapture first, being daily set free from me, myself and I, before the other rapture comes along?

Just for the record, I believe in the rapture and all that it encompasses, but maybe, just maybe experiencing the present resurrected Living Christ in me as me will be a very appealing “sign” to those looking for an unshakable stability in the midst of everything that can be shaken being shaken!

Rich

By the way, the sweater that was once lost, "is found!"

For further enjoyment check this out. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiJk6MeBx54

Hard, Cold Facts

There were no C.S.I. forensic experts available at the time when the bare, hard, cold facts were laid before Jacob. His son Joseph, to all appearances, was dead. Did not Joseph’s own brothers retrieve his coat of many colours, now covered in blood and torn to shreds? Jacob looked at the evidence and exclaimed, “It is my son’s coat; an evil beast has devoured him; surely Joseph has been torn to pieces!” The brothers knew the truth about Joseph. In their jealousy of and hatred for him, they had sold Joseph as a slave to a band of traveling Ishmaelites and covered up their crime with lies. Joseph was not dead at all, but his brothers chose to dig a deeper grave for themselves by trying to support and comfort their grieving father:
“All his sons and all his daughters rose up to comfort him; but he (Jacob) refused to be comforted; and he said, For I will go down into the grave unto my son mourning. Thus his father wept for him.”

What has any of this to do with us in our day to day living, in our personal God journey? Only everything! Case in point:

My friend Ron from Nova Scotia (I’ve mentioned him in previous blogs) visited with us from Wednesday of last week until Saturday. He had previously stayed with us for a while in October. Here’s a bit of his story: about seven months ago, after twenty-five plus years of marriage, he came home to find a note from his wife stating she was leaving and would not be returning. Talk about “hard, cold facts”! Yesterday would have been his wedding anniversary, but instead of it being a celebratory, joyous occasion, it was but another pain-filled reminder of all that now appears to be lost. On top of that, on Tuesday he is meeting with a financial advisor to finalize the process of declaring personal bankruptcy. My wife brought it to my attention that Ron was facing bankruptcy, both literally and figuratively, in that there was a real parallel between physical and spiritual bankruptcy.

Getting back to the story of Joseph; anyone who has read this wonderful account knows it has a happy ending. We have the glorious advantage of knowing that in the end “what [Joseph’s brothers] had intended for evil, God meant for good”. The cold, hard “facts” were eventually exposed, but that didn’t keep Jacob from believing a lie and grieving for the son he believed to be dead. In the end, however, we know his sorrow was turned to joy. In Ron’s case, he can see nothing but darkness and death and sorrow. The cold, hard facts have blinded his ability to see any good in his heartbreak. His heavenly father, however, knows that this time of grief has the potential to produce in Ron a capacity to respond to God’s unfathomable love and comfort in ways that up to now Ron has never dreamt possible. It makes little difference whether Ron’s wife returns; what really matters now is the issue of Ron’s heart.

Within each of us there is a divine instructor, tutor, wanting to lead us into what is already ours, but the weaning process of knowing the “truth” verses the so called hard cold facts is where the rubber meets the road.

Rich