Saturday, September 3, 2022

Orange Moon Saturday, September 3, 2022 "Not Far"

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


    

               "Not Far"


    A.W. Tozer once referenced a British gentlemen who detested the notion of God's involvement in our lives.  "Things have come to a pretty pass," said the man ruefully, "when we allow God to interfere with our lives."

    The matter involves far more than interference.  To the unbelieving Athenian philosophers, the Apostle Paul declared, "In Him we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28).  Human beings exist as fish that swim in the ocean that is God.  Separate from Him in heart and relationship, the most ardent unbeliever nevertheless lives in unavoidable proximity to the God "not far from every one of us" (Isaiah 59:2; Acts 17:27).  Indeed, the fool who most loudly cries, "There is no God!," must inhale the breath given by God to voice his unbelief.  That our Lord grants air for such expression of unbelief may challenge our understanding.  It must nevertheless encourage our confidence in the knowledge that we bear witness to the reality in which every human being exists.

   The gentlemen disturbed by the thought of God's involvement in all things would have been far more perturbed had he known that despite his bluster, he lived, moved, and had his being in the God nearer than his next breath.  Believers do well to remember this as we seek to lead others to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.   The most ardent atheist takes flight from God while surrounded by Him.   He runs to his Maker even as he seeks to run from Him.  Certainly, he may never recognize the great fact of his existence, but he cannot escape it.  This makes our sharing the Gospel a different thing than we often consider, bearing witness to the ocean in which every fish swims, regardless of how much some bluster that no ocean exists.

   Things came to a pretty pass from the moment God made the human race by immersing us in a creation wherein every venue teems with the presence and moving of its Creator.  "Not far from every one of us" declared Paul to those who had no awareness of the Ocean in which they swam.  We do well to say the same to all, bearing witness to the truth that bears the power to draw the most wandering heart close to the God so near and so involved that "He giveth to all life and breath and all things" (Acts 17:25).

"Am I a God at hand, saith the LORD, and not a God afar off?  Can any hide himself in secret places that I shall not see him?" saith the LORD.  Do not I fill heaven and earth? saith the Lord."
(Jeremiah 23:23-24)

Weekly Memory Verse
   Because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying Abba Father.
(Galatians 4:6)

   


  































   

   


   



  











































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