In The Middle Of Eternity - Thoughful Tuesdays

It is the Thoughtful Tuesday today.

There are many people who have been close to God and have given us good thoughts to meditate on.

God's Word gives us many verses we need to pray about.

Today is dedicated to those thoughts, ideas, verses and words that make us think and make us want to be closer to God.

Here are today's thoughts!

Here I sit in the middle of eternity.  This wheelchair has helped me sit still.  I’ve observed with curiosity the way we Christians grasp for the future, as if the present didn’t quite satisfy.  How we, in spiritual fits and starts, scrape and scratch our way along, often missing the best of life while looking the other way, preoccupied with shaping our future.  In my least consistent moments I too try to wrest the future out of his hands.  Or worse, I sink back into the past and rest on long-ago laurels  But God is most concerned with the choices I make now.  God, standing silently and invisibly and presently with us in the middle of eternity, is interested in a certain kind of change.  He brings us choices through which we never-endingly change, fresh and new into his likeness.

Joni Eareckson Tada

For all the gods of the people are idols: but the LORD made the heavens.

1 Chronicles 16:26
The King James Version

This post is part of the Thoughtful Tuesdays series.

The Full Assurance Of Faith - Part 1

Christians are not perfect in knowledge.

We are not free from ignorance, no, nor from mistake.

We are no more to expect any living man to be infallible, than to be omniscient.

 

The Christians are not free from infirmities, such as weakness or slowness of understanding, irregular quickness or heaviness of imagination.

Other imperfections that we, the Christians, possess are impropriety of language, ungracefulness of pronunciation and other thousand nameless defects, either in conversation or behavior.

From such infirmities as these none are perfectly freed till their spirits return to God.

Neither can we expect till then to be whole freed from temptation.

In this sense there is no absolute perfection on earth.

In what sense are the Christians then perfect?

I am not speaking of babes in Christ, but of adult Christians.

The fullness of time is now come, the Holy Ghost is now given, the great salvation of God is now brought to men by the revelation of Jesus Christ.

The kingdom of heaven is now set up on earth.

A Christian is so far perfect, as not to commit sin.

To be continued...

 

This post is part of the Thursday Devotionals series. And it is the first part of The Full Assurance Of Faith - a reflection on the writings of John Wesley. 

Circumcision Of The Heart - Part 2

What is there here, which any man, or woman, of understanding, who believes in Bible, can object to?

What can you deny?

Without flatly contradicting the Scripture.

What retrench?

Without taking from the word of God.

“Here is the sum of the perfect law, the circumcision of the heart. Let the spirit return to God that gave it, with the whole train of its affection, -- Other sacrifices from us he would not, but the living sacrifice of the heart hath he chosen.

Let it be continually offered up to God through Christ, in flames of holy love. And let no creature be suffered to share with him; for he is a jealous God. His throne will he not divide with another; he will reign without rival. Be no design, no desire admitted there, but what has Him for its ultimate object.

This is the way wherein those children of God once walked, who being dead still speak to us: ‘Desire not to live but to praise is name; let all your thoughts, words, and works tend to his glory’. ‘Let your soul be filled with so entire a love to Him that you may love nothing but for his sake’. ‘Have pure intentions of heart, a steadfast regard to his glory in all your actions’.

For then, and not till then, is that ‘mind in us, which was also in Christ Jesus’, when in every motion of your heart, in every word of our tongue, in every work of our hands, we ‘pursue nothing but in relations to him, and in subordination to his pleasure’; when we too neither think, nor speak, nor act, to fulfill ‘our own will, but the will of Him that sent us’; when, ‘whether we eat or drink, or whatever we do’, we do it all ‘to the glory of God’.”

John Wesley

Is there anyone one who can object to this?

Is not this the language, not only of every believer, but of everyone that is truly awakened?

This is the second part of the Circumcision Of The Heart. This post is also part of the Thursday Devotionals series.

You can find the first part here - Circumcision Of The Heart - Part 1

Of Letting Go And Letting Suffer - October 2nd

“All in all, it was a never-to-be-forgotten summer — one of those summers which come seldom into any life, but leave a rich heritage of beautiful memories in their going — one of those summers which, in a fortunate combination of delightful weather, delightful friends and delightful doing, come as near to perfection as anything can come in this world.”

L.M. Montgomery, Anne's House of Dreams

Memories are a wonderful thing.

Especially memories made with the people you love.

It's hard to accept when people we love die.

We would wish to live in a world that is like our memories.

Where only the good things exist.

Where it is always summer, the summer of our childhood.

I try to remind myself that the sorrow is for us who were left behind.

Our lost ones are filled with joy now, without pain and suffering, it is better in every sense.

They are now in the land of eternal summer, where everything is goodness and evil has no room.

Sometimes it seems that our suffering has no meaning.

It is good to remember that God is much greater than us.

What He knows is beyond our understanding.

And He always wants the best for us.

The relationship with God is like the relationship between a parent and a child.

Now that I have my own son and have seen him growing up and been the parent for him, I understand why everyday can't be candy and ice-cream day.

Why I have to deny good things from him, fun things and why he needs to learn to stand for himself and have character and stamina.

I think God suffers greatly when He sees us suffer.

But He knows that the other option will only bring more suffering, a suffering that is much more vast and horrible.

Different Sins - September 30th

"Christians get very angry toward other Christians who sin differently than they do."

Philip Yancey

I have many sins.

And many times it seems I have learnt to live with them.

We have sort of made peace.

If I don’t bother them or pray.

Or try actively get rid of them.

If I just feed them a little.

Just a bit of me from time to time.

They’ll let me alone.

Most of the time.

They are my domesticated sins.

But I still need to judge the sin.

Because God told us to do so.

But it must be the other sin.

The one that I don’t do.

The one that is truly horrible.

The sin that I see others committing.

That I judge.

Do you judge and condemn the people who sin differently from you?

Do You Conform To The Norm - September 29th

“Nontheless, it should be frankly admitted that for many modern Christians and Jews, “the valorous woman” (of Proverb 31) is hard to appreciate. A (woman) student at a prestigious urban university observed, “This is not the kind of woman we’ve learned to admire!” It is indeed the case that women whose work is primarily at home are accorded little public admiration in our society. But the problem of appreciating this woman goes even deeper than that. It will not do to make facile comparisons between the biblical figure and the suburban housewife, or alternately between her and the modern career woman. The difficulty of appreciation lies in the profoundly different social structure and function of the home in modern technological culture, and it is a difference that encompasses men’s lifestyles and work as much as women’s. For virtually all of us, the home is primarily a place of consumption rather than production. Very few households in our highly industrialized culture aim at self-sufficiency or produce any significant portion of their own food or clothing.”

Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs

Ellen F. Davis

Is your home a place of consumption or of production?

What have we made of our homes?

Why does the work have to be done outside of the home?

Why do we need to leave our family to be productive?

What really makes us happy or fulfills us with joy?

Conforming to the social norm?

Or finding our own destiny?

September 28th

September 27th

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. 

C. S. Lewis

What do you choose?

Is Jesus a man who calls himself a doorknob?

Is he a demon from Hell?

Or is He the Son of God?

September 17th

Casting the sins to the currents of God's grace - (Not so) Wordless Wednesday

"The Tashlich (literally, "casting") is a tradition dating back to the Middle Ages in which the sins of the repentant are ceremonially cast into the deep, ever-flowing currents of God's grace. It is a time of both penitence and celebration as a year's worth of shotcomings and failures are acknowledged, accepted, and then washed away so that life can begin again, fresh, with no mistakes in it."

Rachel Held Evans

¹⁸ Where is another God like you,
    who pardons the guilt of the remnant,
    overlooking the sins of his special people?
You will not stay angry with your people forever,
    because you delight in showing unfailing love.
¹⁹ Once again you will have compassion on us.
    You will trample our sins under your feet
    and throw them into the depths of the ocean!

Micah 7:18-19

New Living Translation (NLT)

Poor and needy - (Not so) Wordless Wednesday

 

The wicked draw the sword and bend the bow to bring down the poor and needy, to slay those whose ways are upright. But their swords will pierce their own hearts, and their bows will be broken.

Psalm 37:14-15

The New International Version

Loving kindness - (Not so) Wordless Wednesday

“In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.”

1 Thessalonians 5:18

“Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”
Hebrews 4:16

“but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.”

Isaiah 40:31

“But as for me, I am like a green olive tree in God's house. I trust in God's loving kindness forever and ever.”
PSALM 52:8

“Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.”
Colossians 3:12