Orange Moon Friday, April 26, 2024 "Needing Need"

The Special of the Day… From the Orange Moon Cafe…

"To Need Need"

"We need need.  We require the lacks in our lives to remind, encourage, and challenge us to 'trust in the Lord with all thy heart.' "

  

     We need need.

     "But my God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus" (Philippians 4:19).

    God made us as dependent creatures, as those to whom He "giveth… life and breath and all things" (Acts 17:25).  Presently, this involves requirements based only on our nature as supplicants, but also our existence in a fallen world rife with imperfection, challenge, and difficulty.  We will remain needy creatures in our eternal state, and in fact, born again believers in the Lord Jesus Christ will far better know that "in Him we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28).  Thankfully, however, we will be removed from the sin that tempts us to think of ourselves as gods who must supply for our own existence, and from the world, the devil, and the flesh that cause needs such as we will not know in eternity to come.

    The Apostle Peter called believers to serve as "good stewards of the manifold grace of God" (I Peter 4:10).  This perfectly describes our nature and function as human beings.  Our Heavenly Father made us to be active creatures in heart, mind, and body - "doers of the Word and not hearers only" (James 1:22).  We do so, however, as the recipients and caretakers of Another who supplies our personal requirements, and then makes possible our service to others needy like ourselves.  Consider salvation and the old adage that bearing witness to the Lord Jesus involves "one beggar telling another where to find bread."  Ever supplicants.  Ever stewards.  Ever servants.  Most importantly, ever dependent sons and daughters in Christ who affirm with Him the reality of what it means to truly live as human beings personally related to God: "I live by the Father" (John 6:57).

   We need need.  We require the lacks in our lives to remind, encourage, and challenge us to "trust in the Lord with all thy heart" (Proverbs 3:5).  We exist for His grace to be known and accessed.  "I am poor and needy" declared the Psalmist, referencing not only the difficulties of life, but also his nature as one utterly dependent on the only self-existent, self supplying Being who exists (Psalm 40:17).   "Thou art God alone" (Psalm 86:10).  We do well to consider this truth regarding the needs of the present hour.  Our Father weaves vital revelation through requirements, whether directly administered by His hand, or allowed by His wise heart and mind.  Yes, we need need because it reminds us that we need Him.  In this life, we would wander far away from God's supply without the difficulties that bear witness to our nature as supplicants.  "We must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God" (Acts 14:22).    

   If we could find the richest person on the planet in any moment, as accounted by God, he would likely not appear as such.  He might well seem to be most needy.  However, if we could look into his heart, we would see "the unsearchable riches of Christ" accessed by one who keenly realizes his need for need, and his blessed opportunity to trust the Lord as supply for "life and breath and all things" (Ephesians 3:8).  The writer of Hebrews well knew this truth, and beckons the needy - including you and me - to approach the Source and Supply of our existence both now and forevermore…

"Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, to obtain mercy and to find grace to help in time of need."

(Hebrews 4:16)

"And lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I should be exalted above measure."

(II Corinthians 12:7)

Weekly Memory Verse

     We have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace, wherein He hath abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence.

(Ephesians 1:7-8)

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Orange Moon Thursday, April 25, 2024 "Consistent"

The Special of the Day… From the Orange Moon Cafe…

"Consistent"

"Let us earnestly yearn for the consistent walk with God that should characterize the life of every born again believer in the Lord Jesus.  Most importantly, let us realize the faithfulness from which such a life proceeds."

  

     Regarding the Christian life, consistency is required.  The Apostle Paul addresses this truth in his epistle to the Philippians.

    "Being confident of this very thing, that He which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ" (Philippians 1:6).

    Yes, consistency is vital - God's consistency.  Of course, this does not discount our own need and desire to faithfully apply ourselves to fellowship with our Lord and  a corresponding life of faithfulness.  As Paul also wrote to the Philippians, believers have the privilege and responsibility to "work out" that which God "worketh in" (Philippians 2:12-13).  Never, however, do we perceive our own constancy as the primary factor of a life lived for the glory of the Lord Jesus.  Pride or despair inevitably ensue if we install our determination or discipline as root rather than fruit.  Conversely, growing faith and humility flow from Christ known as the perfectly consistent Executor of godliness who empowers our devotion to God.  "We shall live with Him by the power of God… to live is Christ" (II Corinthians 13:4; Philippians 1:21).

   Perhaps, like me, you have experienced too many occasions of inconsistency in walking with God.  This may have involved obvious detours from the path of righteousness.  Or, we may have thought we walked closely with our Lord when the actual truth  of the matter involved proud delusion rather than humble devotion.  Either path of inconsistency must lead us to the remedy so blessedly affirmed by the writer of Hebrews:

    "Let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus the Author and Finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider Him that endured such contradiction of sinners against Himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds" (Hebrews 12:1-3).

    Let us earnestly yearn for the consistent walk with God that should characterize the life of every born again believer in the Lord Jesus.  Most importantly, let us realize the faithfulness from which such a life proceeds.  The Author and Finisher perfectly fulfills this consistency.  To the degree we know and grow in such realization will be the degree to which our lives flow in genuine and growing faithfulness to God.  Our consistency is the fruit of His consistency, known and fulfilled by faith.  No other way exists whereby a genuinely consistent walk with God is possible.  Nor do we need any other way…

"As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in Him, rooted and built up in Him, and stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving."

(Colossians 2:6-7)

Weekly Memory Verse

     We have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace, wherein He hath abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence.

(Ephesians 1:7-8)

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Orange Moon Wednesday, April 24, 2024 "But Now..."

The Special of the Day… From the Orange Moon Cafe…

"But Now…"

"Romans 3:21 tells us this, proclaiming a righteous relationship and standing with God so freely given and maintained by the Lord Jesus that our Father will not see us apart from Christ."

  

     From Romans 1:18 to 3:20, the Apostle Paul paints a progressively dark and bleak portrait of humanity, finally concluding with "all the world… guilty before God" (Romans 3:19).  If the Apostle Paul's treatise ended here, all would be without hope and subject to the wrath of God.

    Thankfully, Romans 3:21 illuminates hope for all as one of the brightest rays of redeeming light shining forth from Scripture:

    "But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets, even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe."

   God offers to those rightly condemned the possibility of being righteously converted.   The Light of the world, the Lord Jesus, bursts forth in Romans 3:21, glimmering with redeeming grace to "all them that believe."  God imparts the freely given robe of Christ's righteousness to all who receive His grace by faith, accounting us as forgiven, and even more, as forever justified to the degree He "will not impute sin" to the believer (Romans 4:8).  He sees us as "in Christ," and thus views His Son and His righteousness when looking upon us before He sees anything else about us (I Corinthians 1:30). 

    We would have to view such grace as unwise and even scandalous were it not for our awareness of the perfection of God and His doings.  "As for God, His way is perfect" (II Samuel 22:31).  This perfection directs our attention to the cross of Calvary where "God hath made Christ to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him" (II Corinthians 5:21).  A just God can righteously justify sinners because He righteously condemned the Lord Jesus to the wrath we deserved - "just and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus" (Romans 3:26).  Indeed, any adequate Biblical understanding of what happened on the cross of Calvary yields a complete confidence in how forgiven and made righteous God accounts believers to be in Christ.  We may not always live accordingly, and believers are ever subject to chastening and scourging by the Father who loves us (Hebrews 12:6).  However, the judgment fires that burned so hotly upon the Lord Jesus on the cross now illuminate the eyes of our hearts to behold the freely and forever bestowed righteousness "unto all and upon all them that believe."  In the light of Calvary, how could it be otherwise?

    Find the believer in this hour most inexcusably felled by temptation and sin.  God does not and "will not impute sin" to this son or daughter.  He rather sees the robe of Christ's righteousness that continues to adorn the fallen.  He remembers the robe stripped from His Son as He hung upon Calvary's cross, and the sacrifice of sorrow deemed so precious in His sight that His wayward child remains justified in His sight.  Certainly, He is not pleased with what He sees of unbelief and disobedience.  Recall that the writer of Hebrews referenced believers when he declared, "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God" (Hebrews 10:31).  God disciplines His children, including the "most inexcusably felled" we consider.  However, nothing will cause our Father to ignore the robe, the robe of Christ's righteousness that adorns every believer, woven at such a cost and freely given by such grace.  "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?… He hath made us accepted in the Beloved" (Matthew 27:46; Ephesians 1:6).  

    Paul proclaims a righteous relationship and standing with God so freely given and maintained by the Lord Jesus that our Father will not see us apart from Christ.  We may not always requite such a marvel of grace.  But God will always view us through the lens of such a measure of grace.  "Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound" (Romans 5:20).  Romans 3:21 tells us this, and let us rejoice in its wonder yet again…

"But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets, even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe."

(Romans 3:21)

Weekly Memory Verse

     We have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace, wherein He hath abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence.

(Ephesians 1:7-8)

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