The Special of the Day… From the Orange Moon Cafe…
"How Great His Goodness"
Were it possible to gather the finest hearts and minds of history, granting 10,000 years to employ their cumulative efforts to fully explain the goodness of God, the end result would be abject failure.
"How great is His goodness!" (Zechariah 9:17).
How great is His goodness? Forever stretches before us as a journey into the infinite character and nature of the Lord Jesus Christ, whose love "passeth knowledge" (Ephesians 3:19). Like the adventurers and discoverers mentioned above, we will journey evermore upon an Ocean without shore, unto a Summit impossible to scale, and toward an horizon never to be reached. "Sail onward, climb higher, and come further" beckons the Holy Spirit in a refrain of grace that will resound no less in the far reaches of forever than it sounds in this hour. Indeed, no end awaits us in our venture and adventure into a glory never to be fully known or comprehended...
"His greatness is unsearchable" (Psalm 145:3).
Our journey began in the moment we trusted the Lord Jesus as our Savior. The Holy Spirit entered our hearts, birthing a "new creature" that delights in the living God (II Corinthians 5:17; Romans 7:22). "Created in righteousness and true holiness," our "inward man" ever looks outward and unto Christ (II Corinthians 4:16). Of course, we still live in fleshly bodies susceptible to looking anywhere but in the direction of the Lord Jesus. "The flesh lusteth against the spirit" (Galatians 5:17). We must therefore "reckon" ourselves to be "alive unto God though Jesus Christ our Lord" (Romans 6:11). Regardless of past experience, present emotion, contrary thoughts, or physical sensations, we must affirm that our deepest, innermost desire flows with the current of seeking the living God as the very Life of our lives. The presence of the Spirit of Christ in our spirits assures this holy inclination. "God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying Abba Father" (Galatians 4:6). We may not always think, feel, speak, or act accordingly. However, our Christ-inhabited spirits ever yearn to gaze upward, outward, and away unto God. "One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in His temple" (Psalm 27:4).
Through the presence of Christ, the most faithful and the most failing believer bears deeply within the realization and the inclination to make God the quest of the heart. He ensures this by working in us "both to will and to do of His good pleasure" (Philippians 2:13). For the faithful, this elicits joy and peace as a walk in reality ensues. For the failing, unbelief and sin are all the more serious because the believer lives in opposition to their nature and being in Christ. Thus, we reckon, that is, we choose to believe that God's grace did truly birth a "new man, created in righteousness and true holiness" when we believed (Ephesians 4:24). This part of us, the very heart of us, joins the Psalmist in longing devotion to the One for whom we were made, the One whose heart beckons our hearts to venture ever further, ever deeper, and ever higher into a Goodness for which forever will not allow full discovery…
"As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after Thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God?"
(Psalm 42:1-2)
"But God, who is rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved), and hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us through Christ Jesus."
(Ephesians 2:4-7)
Weekly Memory Verse
And this I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge, and in all judgment."
(Philippians 1:9)
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