“God and God Alone”

(A repeat from 2012, and thanks to our eldest daughter Marie for inspiration on the subject addressed.)

"God and God Alone"          

   

    When we look to other human beings for the fulfillment and satisfaction of our hearts, we place upon them a pressure to perform they can never fulfill.  We also set ourselves up for crushing disappointment and disillusionment.  Moreover, we erect an altar to a pagan idol that deceives and distracts us from the living and true God.

      "I am thy God… He is thy life… O Lord, Thou art my refuge and my portion (Isaiah 41:10; Deuteronomy 30:20; Psalm 142:5).

     Our Lord constituted us as social creatures, purposed to enjoy the presence, fellowship, cooperation and communication of other people.  Never, however, did He intend human beings to occupy a place in our hearts that He alone can fulfill.  Indeed, when we view someone other than God as "the joy and rejoicing of my heart," we inadvertently mistake them as being the source of our heart's fulfillment (Jeremiah 15:16). Certainly, people can serve as a blessed means of expressing the Lord's goodness to us, and should be appreciated accordingly. Never, however, can a human being serve as the essence of our personal peace and joy.  God reserves this singular role for Himself alone.  "In Thy presence is fullness of joy; at Thy right hand there are pleasures forevermore" (Psalm 16:11).

     Wonderful things happen when we affirm God and God alone as source of our heart's contentment.  First, we respond to Him in the love, worship, reverence and devotion for which He made and redeemed us. We also prepare ourselves for a life of consistent joy and peace as we rightly confess with the Psalmist, "My expectation is from Him" (Psalm 62:5).  Finally, we begin to truly enjoy people, be it those closest to us, or mere passersby on the pathways of life. Since they no longer hold the key to our heart's contentment, we can experience the joy known by our Lord.  He finds His joy and peace in Himself, and thus remains who and what He is regardless of the actions and reactions of others.  We also find our joy and peace in Him, and while others certainly influence us, they do not determine us.  God does, and for life, contentment, fulfillment, tranquility and purpose, we joyfully exult with the Psalmist…

"O God, Thou art my God; early will I seek Thee: my soul thirsteth for Thee, my flesh longeth for Thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is; to see Thy power and Thy glory, so as I have seen thee in the sanctuary.  Because Thy lovingkindness is better than life, my lips shall praise Thee. Thus will I bless Thee while I live: I will lift up my hands in Thy name. My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness; and my mouth shall praise Thee with joyful lips."

(Psalm 63:1-5)

Weekly Memory Verse 

   Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.

(Colossians 2:8)

    

    

"Whatsoever"

"Whatsoever"  

         "Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord" (Colossians 3:23).

   

    The command to do all things "heartily, as to the Lord" actually implies one of the most wondrous promises of Scripture.  Our Heavenly Father offers to us the opportunity to live vibrantly in this and in every moment by doing what we do "of Him, and through Him, and to Him" (Romans 11:36).

    First, "of Him."  The God who created us and spiritually birthed us when we believed in Christ must also be known as our Originator in everyday, practical terms.  We seek to live from His purposes and plans rather than our own, asking Him to begin our days and our ways.  Furthermore, we seek His redirection concerning matters that did not begin with Him, and protection from future commencements that originate in carnal or even devilish deceptions.  "Remove far from me vanity… There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death" (Proverbs 30:8; 16:25).  Confidence that our doings begin with the Lord leads to a heart of peace and an enthusiasm regarding "whatsoever."

    "Through Him."  We "live and move and have our being" in God (Acts 17:28).  "Without Me, ye can do nothing" declared the Lord Jesus of a living that genuinely constitutes life (John 15:5).  Living heartily requires His presence, His power, and our availing ourselves of Divine enabling for human living.  "I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me" (Philippians 4:13).  Recall that "whatsoever" we do (excepting sin) can be lived "to the Lord".   Thus we may confidently seek our Savior's leading and enabling for any and everything in life, be it obviously spiritual or seemingly mundane and inconsequential.  The truth of the matter is that nothing is that everything matters in the life of born again believers in the Lord Jesus Christ.  Everything possesses the potential to bear eternal consequence as we live "of Him and through Him."  The Apostle John stated the blessed matter in the clearest terms: "God sent His only begotten Son into the world that we might live through Him" (I John 4:9).

    "To Him."  Realizing that we can honor and please our Heavenly Father in big things, little things, and all things in between fills our lives with life, His life.  Only the most meager and sparse view of the Gospel leads us to believe that authentic relationship with God requires special places, postures, and practices.  The Lord Jesus put an end to such limitation in His discourse with the woman at the well: "Woman, believe Me, the hour cometh when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem worship the Father.. the hour cometh and now is when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth" (John 4:21; 23).  No truth of Scripture should more thrill and encourage us.  Living to and for the Lord constitutes life in its only true definition, or as the Apostle Paul exulted, "To live is Christ" (Philippians 1:21).  This means that I can seek to write this essay, in this moment, to and for Him.  Or I can wash the car or walk the dog or "whatsoever".  Everything can be viewed as our offering to God, as enabled by indwelling Spirit of the Lord Jesus who declared of His devotion to the Father, "I do always those things that please Him" (John 8:29).  This moment offers such opportunity, and let us rejoice in possibility of "whatsoever" worship, unfettered by circumstance, place, condition, or circumstance.

"Whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God."

(I Corinthians 10:31)

"Whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by Him."

(Colossians 3:17)

Weekly Memory Verse 

   One thing have I desire of the Lord, that will I seek after, that I 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)

    

   

    

    

“Upward, Outward, and Away”

"Upward, Outward, and Away"  

  

    The first response to God after Adam and Eve sinned revealed the utterly destructive nature of their unbelief and disobedience to God.

    "The eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons. And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden. And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou? And he said, I heard Thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself" (Genesis 3:7-10).

    Self awareness.  Self preservation.  Self deception.  Self-centeredness.  Originally created in the image of the God whose nature comprises loving unselfishness, our original forbears descended into the black hole of narcissistic self devotion.  Rather than the upward, outward, and away perspective of love, Adam and Eve turned inward in their perception of God, of themselves, of others, and of the world.  "Me" rather than "Thee" became their focus, and every human misery proceeds from the chosen and willful blindness.  Indeed, according to the Divine definition, this constituted a literal death in the spiritual and moral sense (Genesis 2:17).

   Salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ initiates our deliverance, turning us inside out by the entrance of the Holy Spirit into our spirits.  "The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit which is given unto us" (Romans 5:5).  The Christian life involves our Heavenly Father's ongoing determination and process whereby He changes us into the spiritual and moral image of the Son who declared, "The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister and give His life a ransom for many" (Matthew 20:28).  As we realize and submit ourselves to the revolutionary transformation, the joy of God becomes our joy.  We find our greatest pleasure in pleasing Him, and in meeting the needs of others.  We increasingly realize the oppression and darkness of the black hole from which Christ delivered us, and the wondrous glory of light and life in Him.  "Walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given Himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savor" (Ephesians 5:2).

    Rather than self awareness, the Holy Spirit directs our hearts to the knowledge of God and devotion to people.  Rather than self preservation, He enables the heart fulfilling joy of self sacrifice.  Rather than self deception, He illuminates the path of light, truth, and reality.  Rather than self centeredness, He centralizes the glory of God and the blessing of others in our hearts.  The presence of His Spirit makes possible and actual our redemption from the selfish emptiness and pettiness foreign to our nature as sons and daughters of the God who "is love" (I John 4:8).  He could give us no greater gift, and the great wonder  of our salvation in Christ is that "we shall be like Him" (I John 3:2).  Like Him in devotion to His Father and to people - such "hope of glory" beckons us ever further from the black hole of narcissism unto the Light that calls us to come to the upward, outward, and away journey that began in the new birth, and will have no end…

"For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man; that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God. Now unto Him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, unto Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen."

(Ephesians 3:14-21)

Weekly Memory Verse 

   One thing have I desire of the Lord, that will I seek after, that I 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)