Accepted in the Beloved

God has made us accepted in the Beloved?

How, you ask? Through His own beloved Son, we are accepted. He reigns, and we reign in Him, and we are the righteousness of God by proxy. If you accept Him. If you believe in Him.

God so loved the world that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish, shall not be left alone, shall not be left to themselves to die, shall not be forsaken, but shall have eternal, everlasting, timeless, permanent, unchanging, glorious life, redemption, salvation, hope, joy, peace, newness of being, rebirth, sanctification, revival.

In him and through him and to him are all things.

Where is there room for a lack of self-esteem, when God himself esteems you so highly that He would die for you?
In fact He did esteem you so highly that He did die for you.

“Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die.”

Yet Jesus Christ died for you, because He esteemed you that much. Because He loved you that much,
He poured out every last drop of His precious blood, in order to make you accepted and acceptable to God.

In the light of that… where is there any room for self-doubt? Self-condemnation? Despair?

Jesus Christ died for you, He died for me.

Wake up O sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will rise upon you.

Walk in the light as He is in the light!! …if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.

All sin, all unrighteousness, everything that is not right… made right
everything that is not whole… made whole
darkness… made light

In Him, and through Him and to Him

Amen

The floods of disappointment

When disappointment comes, it’s as if somehow our lives are shut down, and the streams of our lives back up like water behind a dam.

It’s as if we’re stuck in this bitter, putrid, festering, muddy pool of frustration, self-pity and doubt. Its as if our lives have been inunundated.

This is not life as God intended it for us. His word says that he has come to give us life, and life in abundance. He doesn’t want us moping around by the festering pools of our life, without hope and without God active in our lives. He wants to get the streams flowing again.

Flooded fields are not productive fields. In fact, when the flooded water gets stagnant it grows toxic bacteria which can kill the ability for the fields to produce anything, even once the floods have gone. In order for the fields to be productive again, there is a plowing process which must take place, but more about that later.

God wants to open the floodgates of our lives which have caused the blockage, the areas which have allowed disappointment to take over. But even when the floodgates are opened, the floods persist sometimes. Why is that?

The reason is that there is much sludge and silt which has backed up behind the floodgates, so that even though they’re open the putrid, stagnant, foul, bitter waters remain. The gates are stopped up with the sludge and various other (indeterminate) junk.

OK, I’m speaking rhetorically here. What do I mean?

To recap: there are two processes that need to take place, to get rid of the backed up junk and putrifying flood water. First, there is an opening: the floodgates have to be opened. Then there is an unstopping which must take place.

In Isaiah, we read “Then shall the eyes of the blind be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped.”

The opening of the floodgates represents the opening of our eyes: we are able to see, we’re able to assess the damage, realize we’ve been subject to flood, realize that there is something we can do about it, and see the Lord before us, the blood of Jesus, the price He paid for our redemption so we don’t have to wallow in the floods of disappointment, bogged down in our lives.

Secondly, our ears are unstopped. We’re not only able to see, we can hear from God what it is that we need to do to get ourselves out of the muck. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.

Jesus opens the eyes of the blind (ours) and the ears of the deaf (ours) so that the backed up filthy floodwaters can subside, hope is restored, and the festering disappointment gives way to the fruitful fields of God’s plan for our lives.

Remember, he knows the plans he has for us, and they really are to prosper and not to harm us. Whatever the devil has meant for evil, God meant for good.

As the eyes of our heart are opened, we are able to say, with Job, “Though he slay me, yet will I praise him”.

Then as we begin to praise him, our ears are unstopped, and we hear Jesus rejoice over us with singing.

He truly does delight in us, he is already saying “Well done, good and faithful servant”. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. While we were still a long way off, the father has seen us and is running with open arms.

He has come to change your name. No longer desolate, now your name is delight. The joy of the Lord, his joy over you is your strength.

The LORD has made proclamation
to the ends of the earth:
“Say to the Daughter of Zion,
‘See, your Savior comes!
See, his reward is with him,
and his recompense accompanies him.’ ”

12 They will be called the Holy People,
the Redeemed of the LORD;
and you will be called Sought After,
the City No Longer Deserted.

Recompense and restoration are coming. A marriage, a restoration is coming, and is now here as you look to him.

Grace and Truth

Jesus warns us in the gospels to build our house upon the rock, and not upon the sand, because when the storms came the house built upon the sand was utterly destroyed, while the house upon the rock stood firm.

I wonder if our “house”, that is our live, our integrity, our relationships, our beliefs (I mean the things in which we put out trust: if we’re Christian, we “say” God… but is that where our trust really is?), really are built upon the rock.

Fortunately for us, God sends us building inspectors from time to time to probe us (with the help of supernatural tools that God provides).  Its not always who we think it should be.  Its not always in the way we think it should be done.  But no matter, God in his mercy probes away.

Like the dentist, he probes, pokes, grinds away the calcified buildup… and like the dentist, occassionally “YEOOCH” he hits something.  A crack.  Like a cracked tooth, God will send his building inspectors to find cracks in our foundation.

Sometimes it’s not who we would like (the wife or husband we like to blame for everything, since it’s never us). Sometimes its not in the way we would like (“Well… I just can’t believe that they would say that… well I never, well I’m just so offended…”)

But guess what, it is right and it is God.

Jesus says He is the way, the Truth and the life.

The way is to come to him.  The life only comes via the truth, and guess what, the truth is often painful.

God is so gracious, he comes to give us truth before its too late.  What to do when the truth comes crashing down?

Run to him.  Run to the throne of grace, to find mercy in our time of need.  And believe me, when we’ve had a dose of the truth it is definitely a time of need.

Overcoming Disappointment

  

“Sing, O barren woman, 
       you who never bore a child; 
       burst into song, shout for joy, 
       you who were never in labor; 
       because more are the children of the desolate woman 
       than of her who has a husband,” 
       says the LORD.

When dreams are shattered, its not just hard to pick up the pieces.  It’s impossible.  We know what happened to Humpty Dumpty.

What does God say to us when life gives us lemons?   Make lemonade??  No.

God knows that the lemons of life are often too bitter to be of any use for anything, other than to be tossed back into the pit from whence they came.  So what does He give us instead.  He gives us hope.   Not the pitiful “I hope so” of the plaintively desperate.   Not the “hopefully” of the hopeless.  No.  

Paul writes to the Romans:

…since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.

“Hope does not disappoint us”

Hope, in the Glory of God, does not disappoint us.  And we also have hope from the word of God in Isaiah.  A promise, that he will give us “children” in our barrenness.  Joyce Meyer says “If you’ve been disappointed, get reappointed”.

And when I first heard that—well, I was seething—but then God gave me a picture.  God reappoints us with a new appointment—not the same appointment—a new one, tailor-made for where we’re at

Because within the black hole of disappointment, the crucible of broken dreams… the-thing-that-you’d-hoped-for-that-just-ain’t-gonna-happen…ever!  The nothingness of defeat.   God says “I will turn the specter of failure in to a sceptre of righteousness”

How?

By giving us a new dream, a new vision, a new hope.   Maybe yesterday we dreamed of a perfect marriage.  Until that was decimated in the ashes of an acrimonious divorce.   Maybe we’ve been crippled… physically or emotionally.  Maybe we got struck down by depression.  Maybe we lost our confidence. Maybe our best friend betrayed us.  It doesn’t matter.

The new hope is a vision of Gods glory, it’s engaging Gods plan for redemption that meets us head on right where we’re at.   Its focusing on the cross,  Jesus Christ, the True King, himself utterly broken and bereft for our sakes.  But not without hope.  As we gaze upon the cross, a remarkable transformation begins to take place.  He who knew no sin, no brokenness, was made sin for us so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.  There it is—the specter of failure turned into a sceptre of righteousness.  Its praying through the depression.  Its loving our enemies.  Its learning to be gracious in defeat.  Its the gospel… the good news.

Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.

Hope has come.  Jesus Christ is that hope,  he alone can fulfill that longing and complete the picture right in the midst of our incompleteness.   And in the midst of that, the new plan for our future begins to unfold, right where we’re at.

For I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a future an a hope.

Seek God… Impact Your World… Live Life

Simple concepts… yet utterly true if we are to succeed in life as God defines success.

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom”  And so we begin our journey by seeking God.

The results of seeking God are obvious… we begin to desire what He desires, that is to Impact our World with His love, His truth, His reality.  But not at the expense of living our life as He intended.  No we are given the best of both worlds.  Jesus came to give us life, and life more abundantly.

But we are to be careful on our journey, lest we lose our way, and we fall away.  Now how could it happen that we would lose touch with such a Love, such Truth, such Meaning?  It is simple… we begin to look at ourselves.   The word that springs to mind is Narcissism.  This is the cancer of the soul, when we begin to turn in ourselves.   It starts innocently enough… along the way there are always trials, there are always troubles, there is always sickness, there is pain, there is disappointment, there is death.  Worse, religion comes in and demands of us sacrifices that never even entered the heart of God. [Yes, God demands sacrifice but in a way wholly different and fulfilling to the meaningless waste demanded by religion] And the outworking of this is often brokenness.  We find ourselves in a place where what we used to be able to do, we can’t.   What we “should” be able to do, we can’t.  What we’re expected to do, we can’t.   So in that place of brokenness we find ourselves turning inwards.  And the sick cycle that is narcissism begins.

“What about me?” this sickness cries “Nobody’s paying any attention to me”.  Like Rick off The Young Ones: “Everybody listen to me”.  Or Neil: “Nobody ever listens to me, I might as well be a Leonard Cohen record”.

And the narcissist might as well be a Leonard Cohen record, for the pitiful sound emanating from his tired soul.  That dreary dirge “Hallelujah” echoing—without hope—for an eternity in the background.

No!  God says “Seek Me and Live”.  Narcissist, “Seek God and live”.  Impact Your World and Live Life.

Wake up, O sleeper, Rise from the dead and Christ will shine upon you.