Orange Moon "Amazed!"

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

 

"Amazed!"   

 

       A good friend and I meet for lunch just about every Friday.  After eating and talking about the Lord, the news, sports (Bama!), family, friends, and the world in which we live (!), we have a time of prayer before going our separate ways.  Like our discussions, we pray about any number of things, including family, friends, fellow believers, and again, the world in which we live (!!!).

 

    Yesterday, I was particularly blessed by how Bill began his prayer.  "Lord, we are amazed by You, and by the things You do."  In a nutshell, Bill gratefully expressed appreciation for the glory of who God is and what He does.  Amazing indeed!  His offering of praise for the Lord and His ways reminds me of King David's similar affirmation: "Thou art great, and doest wondrous things" (Psalm 86:10).

 

   Appreciation for who God is and what He does speaks to the eternal glory of our Lord's character and His capability.  Who God is leads to what He does, and what God does reveals who He is.  We will all forever echo some form of Bill's affirmation of amazement as the light of the Lord Jesus Christ and the light of Scripture leads us to journey ever further into the Person of God, and witness with ever-increasing wonder the performance of God.  "I will praise Thee forever, because Thou hast done it" (Psalm 52:9).

 

    Thankfully, our eternal adventure of beholding God and His doings begins now, in this earthly epoch of our eternal life in Christ.  We day by day open our eyes in the expectation that our Lord will reveal His glory in ways we can already see.  Certainly, every believer possesses a backlog of such experience whereby God has unveiled aspects of Himself and His ways that leave us... well, let us employ Bill's rhetoric: amazed!  Upon this history of what we have already beheld, we then set forth in the determination to respond to the Lord's beckoning to see even more.  "The path of the just is as the shining light, which shineth more and more unto the perfect day" (Proverbs 4:18).

 

   The greatest of all hymns, "Amazing Grace," inspires us to look by faith into the amazing face of our God, and to gaze with wonder upon His amazing ways.  Bill got it right in his prayer, didn't he?  "Lord, we are amazed by You, and by what You do!" Forever will not exhaust the wonders of God's character and capabilities that await us in the life to come, and in this day of the life that is.

 

"As for me, I will behold Thy face in righteousness… Come, behold the works of the LORD."

(Psalm 17:15; 46:8)

 

Weekly Memory Verse

    "The Lord is good to all, and His tender mercies are over all His works."

(Psalm 145:9)

 

    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Orange Moon "The Most Sacred Ground"

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

 

"The Most Sacred Ground"   

 

       "And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying…. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken Me?" (Matthew 27:46).

 

    In a Bible wherein every verse presents holy ground upon which our hearts may tread, Matthew 27:46 offers perhaps the most sacred of all.  God the Father and God the Holy Spirit abandoned the Lord Jesus Christ to die alone on the cross of Calvary, thus rendering Him as the most forlorn and loneliest of all souls.  Indeed, only the Savior knew loneliness against the backdrop of eternally perfect fellowship with other like Beings.  "Thou lovedst Me before the foundation of the world" (John 17:24).  

 

    What would it mean to a heart that had always been perfectly loved to lose such blessedness?  "We did esteem Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted" (Isaiah 53:4).  Certainly, we can never know.  Without minimizing the loneliness known by others and ourselves, we must realize the Lord Jesus ventured far further into the darkness of forsakenness than any other will ever know.  For our sakes, the Father smote Him with the full fury of His wrath against sin. This included utter abandonment.  The Lord Jesus thus knows lonely like no one else knows lonely.  The lonely can therefore bring their hearts to Him with full assurance that He can do something about their sorrow.  "I will be with Thee" sounded the promise of the Old Testament.  "I am with Thee" promises the assurance of the New Testament (Isaiah 43:2; Acts 18:10).  The basis for such grace rests in the sorrows of Calvary and its forsaken Christ.  Because, in direct proportion to the Lord Jesus being abandoned on the cross, those who trust Him can forever be sure of God's promise," I will never leave thee nor forsake thee" (Hebrews 13:5).  

 

    The better we know what the cross involved, the more we will know the salvation and life it made possible for our hearts.  This especially applies to God's abiding presence for all who believe.  We cannot yet see, hear, or touch Him.  However, as we trust Him, we can have confidence He will make Himself known in ways that assure us we are not alone.  Realizing the sorrow of loneliness known on the cross will go far in leading us to also realize its greatest gift.  Long ago, someone lost for a time that must have seemed like an eternity the presence of His Father and the Holy Spirit.  Because He did, in this moment and forevermore, God's presence resides and abides abides with us as the promise made possible by the loss…

 

"I am with you always."

(Matthew 28:20)

"He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him."

(II Corinthians 5:21)

Weekly Memory Verse

    "The Lord is good to all, and His tender mercies are over all His works."

(Psalm 145:9)

 

    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Orange Moon "Love: Personal and Doctrinal"

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

 

"Love: Personal and Doctrinal"   

 

       Love is, in its essence, a Person, or rather, love is the triune personhood of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit eternally dwelling as one God.  "God is love" (I John 4:16).

 

     Love is also doctrinal, that is, love is love only as defined by the Scriptures.  "And this I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and in all judgment" (Philippians 1:9).

 

    We must know and respond to the reality of love both personally and doctrinally.  We come to God in loving fellowship through the Lord Jesus Christ, as led and enabled by the Holy Spirit.  We come to God in doctrinal understanding of love by the Bible as it leads us in the light of God.  No true experience of love exists without true understanding of love as revealed in the Person of God, and taught in the Word of God. "Love is of God, and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God" (I John 4:7).

 

    We cannot know our Lord in a manner satisfying to either Him or ourselves apart from His love being the most intensely personal reality of our lives.  Indeed, the discovery and ongoing realization of our Lord's devotion to us constitutes the very heart of our relationship with Him.  "The Son of God… loved me and gave Himself for me" confessed the Apostle Paul of the most wondrous blessing he could imagine.  "The love of Christ passeth knowledge" proclaimed Paul of a wonder he could never begin to fully fathom or experience (Galatians 2:20; Ephesians 3:19). This elicited the holy response in the Apostle whereby he sought to love the God who so loved him. "We love Him because He first loved us" (I John 4:19).

 

    The same Paul also knew nothing of a love that did not perfectly and perpetually flow with the current of Scripture.  "Hold fast the form of sound words, which thou hast heard of me, in faith and love which is in Christ Jesus" (II Timothy 1:13).  "Faith and love" must ever correlate with "sound words," the sound words of God's Word, the Bible.  Love must have definition in order to foster genuine devotion.  We must increasingly understand its source and origin in God Himself, and also what steps the Holy Spirit will lead us to take as we seek to "walk in love" (Ephesians 5:2).  

 

    No experience begins to compare with being loved by God, and loving Him in holy response.  No subject offers more thrilling mental stimulation and interest than what it means that "God is love," and that for believers, "the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit which is given to us" (I John 4:8; Romans 5:5).  Love is Personal.  Love is doctrinal.  As always, two rails lie before us upon which the train of Truth travels as our Lord calls us to know and understand His love, and to journey ever onward in the wonder…

 

"Now our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and God, even our Father… hath loved us, and hath given us everlasting consolation and good hope through grace."

(II Thessalonians 2:16)

"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment."

(Matthew 22:37-38)

 

Weekly Memory Verse

    "The Lord is good to all, and His tender mercies are over all His works."

(Psalm 145:9)

 

    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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