Thursday, December 27, 2018

“The Most Important Relationship”

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


"The Most Important Relationship"       

     

     When our children were young, my wife Frances and I determined it was more important that our children know we loved each other than that we loved them.  We realized the security children find in the parent's bond with each other.  Of course, we loved and love them as we love each other, and we let them know it.  Still, however, we sought to ensure our daughters and son that Mom and Dad would always be lovingly together and devoted to one another through the love of Christ.  Our children, now adults, have all expressed appreciation and thanks for this God-given and enabled commitment that provided a vital sense of security during their formative years.  Most importantly, Frances and I sought by God's grace to mirror an even more vital truth, namely, that the most important relationship in our lives exists apart from us.

    "The Father loveth the Son… I love the Father… Thou lovedst Me before the foundation of the world" (John 3:35; 14:31; 17:24).

    Salvation does not primarily result from our discovery that God loves us, but rather that God loves His Son the Lord Jesus Christ.  "Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God" (I John 4:15).  Indeed, we can believe that God loves us without ever entering into saving relationship with Him.  If, however, we believe with our hearts that the Lord Jesus is the beloved Son, the Holy Spirit imparts saving grace and newness of life to our innermost being.  "This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.  Hear ye Him" (Matthew 17:5).

    Faith in the Lord Jesus places the sun, as it were, in the center of our personal solar system.  Or rather, the Son.  Receiving God's grace in Christ begins the holy process of redeeming us from the self centeredness of sin.  We exist to behold the glory of the Father and Son in relationship to one another, as revealed by the Holy Spirit.  Thereby we receive and progressively experience our own relationship with God, as affirmed by the Apostle John: "That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ" (I John 1:3).  The better we know that the Lord Jesus is the beloved Son of the Father, the better we know and experience the love of God for ourselves.  Again, John confirms such Truth to our hearts and minds, and to a life increasingly lived in the Father's will, as revealed through the Son, and empowered by the Holy Spirit…

"Who is he that overcometh, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?"
(I John 5:5)

Weekly Memory Verse
    Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. 
(Ephesians 6:11-12)




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