Orange Moon Saturday, April 20, 2024 "Perfect" Part 2 - The Altar

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

"Perfect"

Part 2 - The Altar

"If we have build the altar within our hearts, let us visit it often to affirm with praise, "His way is perfect."

   

     "As for God, His way is perfect" (Psalm 18:30).

  

     Ask any born again believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, "Is God perfect, and is His way perfect?"  As a matter of doctrine, all will answer in the affirmative.  "Yes!"  However, we live our lives amid countless foes who challenge our confidence and sorely tempt us to wonder about our Heavenly Father's determinations and allowances.  Indeed, the Psalmist who declared "His way is perfect" also bemoaned, "Lord, why hast Thou forgotten me?" (Galatians 5:17; Psalm 42:9).

   Among the altars of heart we must build deeply within our spirits, none bear more significance than the determination to sacrifice any notion of imperfection in God or His ways.  We will never fully trust Him if we allow the slightest bit of license to question our Father and how He works.  Of course, we will face many challenges along our way in a fallen world, and the most godly among us will experience thoughts and emotions that counter the conviction of God's way as perfect.  "The flesh lusteth against the spirit" (Galatians 5:17).  Moreover, our Father administers His perfection within the context of eternal realities and "the eternal purpose which He purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Ephesians 3:11).  If we attempt to interpret His ways according to our temporal and limited understanding, we will often find it impossible to affirm perfection and rejoice in the assurance that accompanies such vital confidence.  "To the carnally minded is death, but to be spiritual minded is life and peace" (Romans 8:6).

   If we have build the altar within our hearts, let us visit it often to affirm with praise, "His way is perfect."  If not, let us immediately bow our hearts and heads to set afire any notion that counters absolute perfection as the quality of everything God does, has done, and will do.  We then go forth in the awareness that much temptation awaits us, and thus, much opportunity to overcome "Why hast Thou forgotten me?" with "As for God, His way is perfect."  The way will often be hard and challenging in our present lives.  However, "life and peace" await us as we refuse to believe anything other than perfection as the quality of God's being, and the way of His hand.

"He is the Rock, His work is perfect: for all His ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is He."

(Deuteronomy 32:4)

Weekly Memory Verse

   "In Thy presence is fulness of joy; at Thy right hand there are pleasures forevermore.

(Psalm 16:11) 

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Orange Moon Friday, April 19, 2024 "Perfect"

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

"Perfect"

"Perfect in character.  Perfect in intention.  Perfect in wisdom.  Perfect in capability.  The list can go on and on regarding the God whose perfect way proceeds forever and in this moment from the perfection of His being."

   

    "As for God, His way is perfect" (II Samuel 22:31).

   What if, rather than perfection, the Psalmist had affirmed God's determinations and allowances as good?  Or very good?  Or great?  Or very great?  We would remain supremely confident in "the integrity of His heart and the skillfulness of His hands" (Psalm 78:72).  However, could we "trust in the Lord with all thy heart?" (Proverbs 3:5; emphasis added).  Perhaps we could and would.  However, "perfect" leaves no room for doubt or hesitation in flinging our souls without abandon upon the trustworthiness of God.

    This includes the blessings, the challenges, and the mundane of this day and hour.  God can be trusted about everything in our lives.  He can be thanked for the pleasant because "every good gift and every perfect gift cometh down from the Father of lights."  He can be relied upon in pains and difficulties because He is "a very present help in trouble."  He can be acknowledged in everyday repetitions and responsibilities because "I am with you always" (James 1:17; Psalm 46:1; Matthew 28:20).  Perfection promotes such promise, that is, the perfection declared by Scripture and believed by our hearts.  "I will praise the Lord with my whole heart" declared the Psalmist because he knew God's determination to care for His people with "My whole heart and My whole soul" (Psalm 111:1; Jeremiah 32:41).

   Perfect in character.  Perfect in intention.  Perfect in wisdom.  Perfect in capability.  The list can go on and on regarding the God whose perfect way proceeds forever and in this moment from the perfection of His being.  We must know this about Him, planting deeply within our hearts the conviction that whether we understand His ways or not, all of them flow with the current of absolute, spotless integrity and omnipotent skill.  "As for God, His way is perfect."  No truth more inspires and enables our confidence in the greatest evidence of all regarding divine perfection, namely, the Lord Jesus Christ…

"Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot."

(I Peter 1:18-19)

"He is the Rock, His work is perfect: for all His ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is He."

(Deuteronomy 32:4)

Weekly Memory Verse

   "In Thy presence is fulness of joy; at Thy right hand there are pleasures forevermore.

(Psalm 16:11) 

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Orange Moon Thursday, April 18, 2024 "The Good Fight"

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

"The Good Fight"

"We live our present lives on a spiritual battlefield, whereupon if possible, we would smell the smoke of conflict as we awaken to every new day.  Somebody does not want you and me to trust God today."

   

    Trusting God in a fallen world involves conflict termed by the Apostle Paul as "the good fight of faith" (I Timothy 6:12).

    Occasionally, foes of the Lord Jesus Christ refer to faith as a crutch wielded by the weak.  Scripture, however, affirms faith as a shield borne by the saints who recognize the absolute necessity of dependence on God in order to overcome assaults by enemies far more cunning and able than ourselves.  "The just shall live by faith" declare both Old Testament and New (Habakkuk 2:4; Romans 1:17).  Failure to live by faith results in exposure to "the fiery darts of the wicked," purposed by the world, the flesh, and the devil to lead the unsuspecting away from the only true life human hearts can know - "to live is Christ" (Philippians 1:21).

    For the believer, recognition of the "good fight" must accompany our present experience in a world that "lieth in wickedness" (I John 5:19).  Somebody - many somebodies, actually - do not want us to trust God.  Make this personal.  As a believer in the Lord Jesus, you will face assaults on your confidence in God every day of your present lifetime.  This includes today.  Walking by faith does not merely involve our fellowship with the Lord.  We also make our way with friends who help, and in the presence of foes who seek to hinder.  We rightly emphasize the former.  However, we minimize the latter to our own detriment.  "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 6:12).  Little wonder we require a shield, along with the other armaments that comprise "the whole armor of God" (Ephesian 6:11-19).

    The fight of faith is "good" because, by definition, the conflict leads us to trust God.  James teaches that we "resist the devil" not by directly confronting our foe, a foolhardy and dangerous gesture even the warrior angel Michael avoided, but rather by heeding our calling to "submit yourselves therefore to God" (James 4:7; Jude 1:9).  We fight the good fight of faith by doing what the engagement clearly implies - we "look to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith," trusting "the Captain of our salvation" to lead and enable us (Hebrews 12:2; 2:10).

   We live our present lives on a spiritual battlefield, whereupon if possible, we would smell the smoke of conflict as we awaken to every new day.  Somebody does not want you and me to trust God today.  Awareness of the challenge that awaits helps us to realize the very nature of the conflict.  Everything in our life flows from how well we know and trust God.  Again, "the just shall live by faith."  The fight - the good fight of faith - provides opportunity to do exactly that which our enemies seek to hinder.  Let us therefore get our spiritual dander up, realizing that the challenges we face in trusting God are not simply about our flesh.  No, somebody does not want you and me to trust our Lord today.  By the grace of God, and our faith therein, may they not be successful.

"For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh.  For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds, casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ."

(II Corinthians 10:3-5)

"This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith."
(I John 5:4)

Weekly Memory Verse

   "In Thy presence is fulness of joy; at Thy right hand there are pleasures forevermore.

(Psalm 16:11) 

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