Orange Moon WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 14, 2026. “Onward, Higher, Further”

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

“Onward, Higher, Further”  

     Gather the finest hearts and minds of history, grant them 10,000 years to employ their cumulative efforts to fully explain the goodness of God, and see them fall to their faces in the acknowledge of abject failure in discovering the immeasurable measure.  

    "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 with the Apostle Paul that our deepest, innermost desire flows with the current of seeking the living God as the very Life of our lives.  “I delight in the law of God after the inward man” (Romans 7:22).  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

    "Say unto my soul, I am thy salvation."

(Psalm 35:3)

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Orange Moon Tuesday, October 13 2026 "Love and Liberty"

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

(A rewrite from 2023)

    

“Love and Liberty”

     Many atheist and agnostic materialists believe that human consciousness is, at least in how we perceive it, an illusion.  By this, they mean that natural forces and influences determine the internal realities of thought and choice most human beings believe to be freely exercised in terms of personhood.  Materialists contend our consciousness occurs as the product of machinery programmed by the universe in which we live.  According to their view, physics, chemistry, biology, and environment determine our consciousness rather than the personhood declared in the Bible.

    Such darkness counters the very reason for our consciousness:

   "To know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge" (Ephesians 3:19).  

    "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment" (Mark 12:30).

     The computer on which I type this message serves me well. Through the years, it has done pretty much everything I have needed and desired it to perform.  It does not, however, love me.  Nor will it ever.  Effective as it is in processing information, it has no heart for love, either to receive or to give it.  Indeed, it has no heart.  This points to the truth that without freedom, as given by God and defined by Scripture, there can be no love.  Most importantly, there can no experience of the main reason for which human beings exist, namely, to know the love of God, and to love Him in response… 

   

    “To know the love of Christ… I will love Thee, o Lord my strength” (Ephesians 3:19; Psalm 18:1).

   Through the Lord Jesus Christ, God beckons human hearts unto His heart.  He call us to know and receive His love by faith in His atoning work, and to thereafter love Him by faith in His enabling work.  Thereby, we freely live in the wonder of His love for us, and the empowering grace of our love for Him.  "If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed" declared the Lord Jesus of the liberty whereby we fulfill our reason for being (John 8:36).  Only spiritual reality establishes and empowers such a glorious internal experience of heart and mind.  Deterministic materialism does not allow for love, whether in terms of Scripture, or in the intuitive realization that natural forces of the universe could not and cannot create love as we all know it be.  Certainly, our Heavenly Father has no interest in any deterministic notion of a love that would be empty, hollow, and utterly meaningless if programmed or coerced.  Neither should we.

    "God is love" declared the Apostle John (I John 4:8).  Thus, love is real.  Love is eternal.  Love is spiritual.  Love requires liberty.  It cannot be determined or programmed.  The Psalmist knew this truth of all truths, that everything in God's creation points to Him and the freedom whereby we know His love, and thereby love Him in joyous response.  Yes indeed, let us join the Psalmist in his glad affirmation of liberty, I will love Thee, o Lord, my strength!"

"We love Him because He first loved us."

(I John 4:19)

“The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit which is given unto us.”

 (Romans 5:5).

Weekly Memory Verse

  There failed not ought of any good thing which the Lord had spoken unto the house of Israel; all came to pass.”

 (Joshua 21:45). 

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Orange Moon TUESDAY, OCTOBER 13, 2026 "Come"

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

“Come”  

     Born again believers in the Lord Jesus Christ are never alone. "I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee" (Hebrews 13:5). In the best of times, the worst of times, and the ordinary, mundane, and everyday living of our lives, we exist in proximity to One nearer to us than our next heartbeat. "In Him, we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:25). We are as fish swimming in the ocean that is God.  Moreover, through the Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ, God gives us eyes, eyes of the heart, to see the great fact of our existence.

     "Thine eyes shall see the King in His beauty" (Isaiah 33:17).

    Not only is our Heavenly Father present both with and within us, He is also willing and able to help us regarding whatever our current needs may be. He is "for us" as Paul wrote to the Romans, and the throne of grace is ever before us, offering help in time of need (Romans 8:31; Hebrews 4:16). There is always Somebody to turn to for believers, always Somebody to trust, and always Somebody who can do something about our present state and condition. "They cried unto Thee, and were delivered: they trusted in Thee, and were not confounded" (Psalm 22:5).

   Let us open our eyes and our hearts to the great fact. Let us come both humbly and confidently to the throne of grace, never fearing we will be rejected. "He that cometh to Me, I will in no wise cast out" (John 6:37). The Lord Jesus has made a way for us, and indeed, He is the way (John 14:6). Thus, the faithful can come, and the failing can come. The joyful can come, and the discouraged can come. The trusting can come, and those tempted to doubt can come. And while the full-hearted can come with their songs of exultation, the throne of grace is just as much a place for the broken hearted with their tears of pain. "Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price" (Isaiah 55:1).

    The Spirit of God and the Word of God beckon us in this moment to "look unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith" (Hebrews 12:2). Our Heavenly Father calls us to rest our hearts in His own blessed heart, and to find our needs met in the only place where needs are met. And the invitation of the Lord Jesus rings through the ages to all who will approach the throne of grace by way of His blood, His name and His ongoing work of interceding for all whose "faith is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness..."

"Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For My yoke is easy, and My burden is light."

(Matthew 11:28-30)

Weekly Memory Verse

    "Say unto my soul, I am thy salvation."

(Psalm 35:3)

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