Monday, March 20, 2023

Orange Moon Monday, March 20, 2023 "The Life of Our Lives, the Hope of Our Hearts"

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


"The Life of Our Lives, the Hope of our Hearts"

   

    Our fellow human beings can be and are such blessings to us.  Be it family, friends, colleagues, or people we simply meet in passing, much of the happiness in our lives comes to us through others like ourselves.  We do well to give thanks for all, realizing God's gift to us of people, and also how He shines to us through them.

   "I exhort, therefore, that… giving of thanks be made for all men" (I Timothy 2:1).

   This being said, we do not fail to realize that people cannot fulfill the deepest requirement of our hearts.  They cannot be our peace, our joy, our love, or our life.

    "He is thy life" (Deuteronomy 30:20).
    "To live is Christ" (Philippians 1:21).

    We do injustice to fellow human beings and to ourselves when we look to them for that which only God can give.  The delusion began long ago when Adam looked to fallen Eve as the hope of his heart, distrusting and disobeying God by hearkening to her voice as she offered the fruit God had forbidden (Genesis 3:6-17).  Eve could not be the fulfillment of Adam's heart, any more than any human being can fulfill ours.  Adam chose poorly, however, and passed along to his race a deception that runs deep in us and must be overcome.  Yes, people, blessed as they are to us as gifts of God, cannot be our God.  "I am thy God" (Isaiah 41:10).
    
   Through the Lord Jesus Christ, God offers to all the salvation whereby He becomes the realized Life of our lives.  By definition, the new birth involves the redemption whereby "ye turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God" (I Thessalonians 1:9).  People can be those idols, that is, false gods of the heart to whom we look for a satisfaction and fulfillment they cannot possible provide.  Again, this does not minimize the blessing of God others are to us.  However, the truth maximizes the Blesser, who must become maximum and primary in our hearts.  "Christ… is our life"  (Colossians 3:4).

   Great peace awaits as we build an altar within our hearts whereupon we sacrifice the deception that something or someone other than the living God can rightly occupy the innermost sanctum of our spirits.  That holy of holies exists only for One.  The Life of our lives alone fulfills our hearts because they exist for His vital presence, working, and infusion of Himself as the content for which He made them.  To live is Christ, that is, His indwelling us through the Holy Spirit, and His Person as the hope of our hearts…

"God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying Abba Father."
(Galatians 4:6)
"Thou shalt fear the LORD thy God; Him shalt thou serve, and to Him shalt thou cleave."
(Deuteronomy 10:20)

Weekly Memory Verse
    "Thou shalt fear the LORD thy God; Him shalt thou serve, and to Him shalt thou cleave."
(Deuteronomy 10:20)

    




















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