Orange Moon Tuesday, July 26, 2022 "What Is a Father?"

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

(After finishing the writing of this, I realized how appropriate it was to write about this today, on the anniversary of our youngest daughter's birth.  Happy birthday, Emmie!)

"What Is a Father?"

    I really did not know what a father is until I became a born again believer in the Lord Jesus Christ.  My dad passed away when I was two, and I have little recollection of him.  Thus, my Heavenly Father became my first paternal figure, albeit in different terms than an earthly patriarch.

   "Grace to you and peace from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ" (Romans 1:7).

   I have been in a learning process for nearly 47 years, discovering from Scripture and personal experience what a father - the Father - is.  I am also a father, which has added much to my understanding.  This leads me to often ponder the most basic question of fatherhood, namely, what is a father?

   Forever will not suffice in providing full answers to the question in terms of God our Father.  His infinite character, nature, and way will not allow us to ever know all He is to us in this most fundamental office and relationship.  We can know some.  We can know more.  But we can never know all.  Since this is true, I often pare down the question of God's fatherhood to the most elemental inquiry: what is the first and simplest truth of what it means to be a father, as revealed in Him?

   For me, faithfulness serves as the answer.  By this, I mean that when God becomes our Father through spiritually birthing us in Christ, He will always be who He is to us as the progenitor of our sonship or daughterhood.  He will be faithful to His own character, nature, and purpose first.  His glory and holiness require that.  "I am the Lord.  I change not" (Malachi 3:6).  Upon this basis of perfect fidelity to His perfect nature, He will then always act toward us in our best interests (which includes the best interests of others in our lives and sphere of influence).  "If God be for us, who can be against us?" (Romans 8:31).  

    This will involve moments of blessedness bestowed from our Father's gracious and generous heart in a manner that brings happiness.  "God… giveth us richly all things to enjoy" (I Timothy 6:17).  It will also involve necessary challenges He determines or allows that bring sorrow to our hearts and tears to our eyes.  "Before I was afflicted, I went astray.  But now I have kept Thy Word" (Psalm 119:67).  We require both administrations of God's heart and hand in this present lifetime.  He will faithfully administer both, just as we would expect from a good - a perfect - Father.  He will be who He is, the most important aspect of His involvement in our lives.  Moreover, He will always act in accordance with our best interests, meaning we can "trust the Lord will all thine heart" (Proverbs 3:5).  Faithful.

   Countless other wonders of a Father's character, nature, and way await us in this day and forevermore to amaze us with glories to come.  Being perfect, all grace us with light and life that enable our devotion to Him and to others.  None are more important than others.  In this present life, however, some seem to impact us with greater significance and power.  For me, God's faithfulness most seems to form and inform my understanding of His loving fatherhood, and of beginning to answer a question for which even eternity will not allow complete understanding... "What is a Father?"

"God is faithful."

(I Corinthians 1:9)

"Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God."

(I John 3:1)

"Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights."

(James 1:17)

"Wherefore let them that suffer according to the will of God commit the keeping of their souls to him in well doing, as unto a faithful Creator."

(I Peter 4:19)

Weekly Memory Verse

    Because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying Abba Father.

 (Galatians 4:6)

   

   

   

  

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Orange Moon Monday, July 25, 2022 "Servants"

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

"Servants"

    Born again believers in the Lord Jesus Christ are servants of a Servant.  Moreover, a Servant also indwells our hearts.

    "The head of Christ is God" (I Corinthians 11:3).

    "Ye call Me Master and Lord: and ye say well; for so I am" (John 13:13).

    "The Spirit of God dwelleth in you" (I Corinthians 3:16)

 

    A hierarchy of authority exists in the triune godhead of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  While equal in substance and being as God, the three Persons of Divinity function in terms of what might be called rank or standing.  "My Father is greater than I" declared the Lord Jesus Christ.  Moreover, both the Father and the Son are said to "send" the Holy Spirit, indicating authority over Him since those who send are, by definition, greater in position than those who are sent (John 14:28; 26; 15:26).  Thus, in God we see the Father as ultimate authority, and servanthood in the Son and the Holy Spirit as the most vivid expressions of devoted submission to authority.

   This constitutes believers as especially equipped to serve.  First, in the Lord Jesus, God provides the most beautiful example of humble dedication to the purposes and will of Another.  "I do always those things that please Him" said our Savior of His loving service to His Father (John 8:29).  Then, in the indwelling Holy Spirit, the servant nature of God actively dwells and works within us to empower our devotion to God and to people.  Indeed, when Scripture commands us to "by love serve one another," it means that we submit ourselves to the character of the Lord Jesus and the leading of the Holy Spirit as the dynamic means of humble service (Galatians 5:13).

   This changes everything in our understanding and response to the truth of our servanthood.  No longer do we see our role in any manner of burden, drudgery, or sterile responsibility.  We rather rejoice that to humbly serve flows from the wondrous current of Divine humility that ever streams in our born again hearts.  Of course, our flesh may resist the movement of the Son and the Spirit within us (Galatians 5:17). Knowing the truth of our present consideration, however, powerfully enables us to overcome resistance to the privilege of servanthood.  We rather find ourselves amazed by the wonder that through Christ and by the Holy Spirit, God allows us to know service to Him and others in terms of an eternally ancient glory of humility that has forever existed in Him.  "To live is Christ… as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God" (Phillipians 1:21; Romans 8:14).

   The Lord Jesus bewildered disciples when He knelt before them, not long before He hung on the cross for them.  "Lord, dost Thou wash my feet?!" said Peter (John 13:6).  He did not know the servant His Master was, and has eternally been.  Nor did Peter know that another Servant would one day indwell His heart to birth Divine servanthood as the guiding and empowering nature of his human and redeemed spirit.  "Because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying Abba Father" (Galatians 4:6).  Yes, to serve God involves more, so much more, than we often consider.  A Servant inspires us by example.  A Servant indwells us to make possible our walk in the sublime humility of the living God.  We can do no better than to allow the greatest of all Scriptural passages regarding the subject at hand to conclude our consideration…

"Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, and took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men, and being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted Him, and given Him a name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."

(Philippians 2:5-11)

Weekly Memory Verse

     Because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying Abba Father.

 (Galatians 4:6)

   

   

   

  

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Orange Moon Sunday, July 24, 2022 "The Miracle"

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

(A repeat from 2014.  If I could have written only one of these messages, it would have been this one.)

"The Miracle"

   Scripture records many miracles, acts of God's direct intervention that exist as marvels of wonder only He could perform.  One transcends them all.

   "Great is the mystery of godliness. God was manifest in the flesh."

 (I Timothy 3:16)    

   In his poem, "My Sweetest Comfort," Edward Caswall beautifully depicts the nature of the Lord Jesus Christ, the God who became man, and the man who remains God.

It is my sweetest comfort, Lord, 

And will forever be,

To muse upon the gracious truth 

Of Thy humanity.

Oh joy!  There sitteth in our flesh, 

Upon a throne of light,

One of a human mother born, 

In perfect Godhead bright!

Though earth's foundations be removed, 

Down to their lowest deep;

Though all the trembling universe 

Into destruction sweep;

Forever God, forever man, 

My Jesus shall endure;

And fix'd on Him, 

my hope remains eternally secure.

   The poet's sublime offering beautifully illuminates the truth of a singular Being in whom Heaven and earth perfectly unite.   The Lord Jesus Christ dwells in a nature unlike any other.  One with the Father and Holy Spirit, He nevertheless bears a substance of being unlike the other Persons of the triune Godhead.  He became human as "the son of man," while remaining Divine to the degree His Father addresses His Son in the most direct terms of Deity possible: "Thy throne, O God, is forever and ever!" (John 5:27; Hebrews 1:8).  

  

  Our Savior forever exists as the God who became man, and the man who remains God.  The holy synthesis of His Deity and His humanity perfectly united constitutes a miracle and a marvel.  How can He even be?  Long ago, a bewildered Solomon wondered how God could dwell in an earthly temple:

     "The Heaven of heavens cannot contain Thee!  How much less this house that I have builded!" (I Kings 8:27).  

  What would Solomon have said had he known that God's dwelling in a material temple of brick and mortar foreshadowed His inhabiting a human temple of spirit, soul, and body? 

   In Heaven and earth, there is no one like the Lord Jesus Christ.  In Him, eternity and time meet.  Heaven and earth unite.  The infinite and the finite embrace.  God and man dwell in perfect accord and harmony.  Or, as the Psalmist beautifully depicted, "Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other" (Psalm 85:10).  Our Father reserves for our Savior a place He alone occupies both now and forever. He is the God who became man, and the man who remains God.  Of no one else will this ever be true.  Our Savior constitutes a miracle, the greatest of all miracles.  The Wonder of wonders, our Lord dwells as the supreme accomplishment in the light of which all other mighty acts of God pale in comparison.  Thus, God the Father and God the Holy Spirit direct our hearts to God the Son, in whom works the Divine "eternal purpose in Christ" (Ephesians 3:11).  We must join our Father and the Spirit because in both Heaven and earth, there is no one like the Lord Jesus.  Nor will there ever be.  

"He is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He might have the preeminence."

(Colossians 1:18)

"This is My beloved Son.  Hear Him."

(Mark 9:7)

Weekly Memory Verse

    "We preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord."

 (II Corinthians 4:5)

   

   

   

  

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