Mirrors Finely Polished

One evening when our kids were over, we recognized that the grandkids were quietly playing in the family room....now different families of grandkids coming together in a family room and playing together and being noticeably  and commendably quiet is not something that you normally associate in that environment. But it was so!  All of a sudden the silence spoke to our parental nature and we headed to see what was up in the game room.....It was a sort of weird phenomenon but we looked down and the kids were all huddled around this toy gas station. The station had built into it a garage, and deep in the wall way back was a piece of metal which was to be used as a mirror. When you put a car in front of it, the reflection looked like a bunch of cars and this caught the kids imagination...the image was very poor but nevertheless it made one car look like several.....and several cars made it look totally undiscernible, but it kept them concentrating on mixing combinations of cars and colors to see how the reflection (though it was bad) would turn out....the metal was a very poor way to reflect the proper image of its subject ......

When I was a kid, we had a wonderful three bedroom camp in Tionesta, PA. When we bought the camp, it had a lot of primitive old items in it, and two or three of them were mirrors that hung in each room...the years had taken their toll on those mirrors and the winters, where the camp sat unused for months without heat, played an enormous rule in their effectiveness to reflect...so when you went to look into one of them, all you could see was this black coming through. Whatever image you hoped to see when you approached it, was always disrupted by that black on the mirror. When I was little I would try unsuccessfully to wash it off. Those mirrors could not reflect the clarity that the subject being reproduced wished to see! You could look in those mirrors and never see the lettuce on your tooth or the poppy seed stuck in a crevice near your gums.....lol.....

I was thinking of the gospels this week and I just so deeply thought of the apostles, those dear fisherman, those twelve men who were providentially called to be Christ’s witnesses in the world after He Himself had left it. It was to be their peculiar duty to give to the world a faithful account of their Master’s words and deeds, and a just image of His character, a true reflection of His spirit. This duty could only be given to us by persons who had been, as nearly as possible, eye-witnesses and servants of the Master from the beginning. Those twelve on whom so much depended, it plainly behooved to possess very extraordinary qualifications....those twelve mirrors would have to be finely polished because they were designed to reflect the image of Jesus...

             …us too!

Hearing His Voice

Isa 26:9 KJV “With my soul have I desired Thee in the night; yea, with my spirit within me will I seek Thee early.”

How we all need a faith walk where our Father God is open in His communication to us….where His love and grace, His will and wisdom is heard by us so it can lead and guide us……His voice known to us, His tone always hinting of welcome, His sweet whispers present to soothe our souls…..

I know there are people who would say, “that is a bunch of nonsense, I believe in God and that being in church is a good thing. I know church helps to keep people in step, but as to God sharing His will with you and His being present to communicate His heart to you, I don’t believe in that at all.”

That line of reasoning just helps to prove my text….God doesn’t manifest Himself to the world…..it’s for those who desire to hear His intimate whispers while lying under the stars, His voice like the sound of a thunder clap, the sweet melody that comes out of struggle and despair, the One singing to you in that great and terrible time of sorrow. That is the voice of our Father.  A Believer should not have a simple “feel good” hunch about his Lord…every believer should have a deep-in-the-soul, know-in-your-knower ability to distinguish the pleasant and thoughtful voice of God because it is so present in his/her life.

I believe that there are times when we as Christians are in a season of fellowship where it seems like we are living right next door to the Kingdom of God….times when our heart is so filled with such heavenly ecstasy that if we were to move another inch we would walk right past the pearly gates and into Paradise. There have been times in my life when I feel like I could walk right into the Holy place and take a piece of the showbread right off the altar. Times when I could smell the incense from the censors and hear the harps and angels singing…times when I am alone but feel a comforting Presence like nothing I can explain.
The apostle Paul wrote, “I will come to visions and revelations of the Lord.” He spoke of a man (maybe even speaking of himself) who was caught up to the third heaven and heard unspeakable words not known to the human ear….

A voice spoke to Moses at the burning bush. The prophets dreamed strange dreams…John, and Jesus Himself, heard that voice at His baptism…even men wishing to do harm to God’s people…..men not believers at all have been told by God…”abandon this or that.” Men throughout the ages have heard that voice….felt that push…been ignited by His unction…

God wants to reveal more of Himself and His love to each of us, and those of us who preach, and those of us who continue to share the Word, and those of us with an active witness, and those of us with a burden for someone or some group, we know there is a simple truth that is basic to all of us…”WE HAVE TO SEE MORE TO TELL MORE.”….We cannot tell what we do not know….we cannot proclaim a hidden message.

Let’s pray for each other that in these times of great darkness we will see more visions, dream real dreams, hear truth in revelation, share in a deeper light, so we can rescue those slowly dying souls around us…….with my soul I desire Thee in the night…Amen

 

Knowledge, Not Opinions

Jesus, entering the region of Caesarea Philippi, came to His followers - and more specifically, His disciples who had been with Him for, at this time, about three years- and He asked this question, “Who do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?”

Jesus didn’t ask this question as a man who needed to be informed. A.B. Bruce, the great Christian mind who learned Christ, said it wasn’t from “some morbid sensitiveness such as vain men feel, respecting the opinions entertained of them by their fellow contemporaries.”

Several disciples enthusiastically shared the opinion of the people around them. They were quick to be able to tell the Lord what the public had to say…Jesus waited till all the blabbing stopped and He looked them square in the face and said….”But who do ‘you’ say that I am?

Jesus did what He did so often throughout His ministry…He used a question to locate the position of their hearts - of their faith. He made each man come to a true realization of what they did or did not believe!  These men are like many of the people in the church today. They’re living off of someone else’s thoughts, songs, clichés, belief’s…But not their own convictions—which come from a knowledge of God Himself and His Word.

Peter said, “Thou art the Christ”, and Jesus told him “upon this rock I will build my church”. That rock wasn’t Peter, the person, it was the revelation faith given him from Jesus’ Father. The Holy Spirit told him who Jesus was. It was revealed knowledge. Wisdom from the Father. When you have that revelation knowledge, you are indestructible, and that kind of faith the gates of hell will not prevail against.

What is faith?

NLT 1 Tim 6:12-13 - "Fight the good fight for the true faith. Hold tightly to the eternal life to which God has called you, which you have confessed so well before many witnesses."

Just what does it mean to fight the good fight of Faith? What do I mean as ‘the faith’? This will be part #1 of our article….

In Luke 4 we have Jesus in the desert fasting for 40 days and nights. The devil comes to Him in His hour of great and severe weakness and begins to question Jesus. The whole of the Devil’s interrogation is centered around, “If Thou be the Son of God…’

What then is ‘the faith’? It is all summed up into one great phrase, “the Son of God”. He is Jesus Christ, the Son of God - -that is, the deity of Christ. Remember the announcement made from heaven when He was baptized? “ This is my beloved Son” (Luke 3:22).
Then, into the wilderness, and to the challenge of Satan He went. The devil pressed him again and again… “If thou be the Son…” and so intense was the battle that it took angels from heaven to minister to Jesus after the great conflict.

Jesus is standing against the Sanhedrin that dreadful night and what is it that they press Him on??  “Are you the Son of God.” There whole challenge is on Jesus’ son-ship, Him being the Son of God….Matt 8:28….When Jesus was come into the country of the Gergesenes, who met Him there? Two men possessed with devils, who had been living in the tombs, (and they were exceeding fierce, the scripture says) They were so tough that no one would go past that way. What did the demons inside these two men yell out? Here it is as recorded by Matthew himself….”What have we to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God? art thou come hither to torment us before the time?

This proclamation speaks for itself and is noteworthy.

What did John the Baptist say the day he saw Jesus along the Jordan River for the first time, “And I saw, and bare record that this is the Son of God.”

So the whole question of what is ‘the faith’ that Paul is talking about in our opening scripture, is that Jesus IS “the Son of God”….

I could go on and on with this, but let’s begin to wrap this up with a scripture given to us by the apostle John who says it quite well, in John 20:31 “But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name.”

And the apostle Paul adds for our edification, “Because ye are sons, God sent forth the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father.” (Gal. 4:6).

Galatians speaks to all of us throughout the ages who believe in Jesus Christ as their Savior. He was ‘the son of God’ come to pay the ransom for our souls & because of that, we become ‘sons’-- one scripture verse says “joint heirs with Christ.”  Isn’t that great!
Let’s build on this in part two….

 What an awesome thing it is to be an “heir”.....not of earthly things, but of Heavenly!

Best Affections

KJV 1 John 1:9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Just learn’t this term the other day…had to look it up after I heard it to figure out what was meant…. “best affection”…I immediately understood it and could see it’s application…So often I have seen people repent of sin and feel a real sense of forgiveness.  They leave a place of prayer satisfied with their spiritual condition only to find themselves repeating the same sin, and then needing the same forgiveness. God’s way is to forgive us, then cleanse us so we won’t continue in the habitual pattern of besetting sin. We are to get freed from it…
In today’s society people are really hung up on things…
…and they are looking for the truth! And truth must be spoken in love to be effective.

I’ve met scores of people who think they’re doing right by being very outspoken. Then, they put a veneer of respectability on what they say by commenting, “Well, I believe in telling the truth. You will always know how I feel.” Sometimes I want to say, “Who cares?”

On the other hand, some people are afraid of the truth. They are afraid of hurting others or of losing their love. They don’t realize that truth, spoken in love, is the only way to show real love.  This type of behavior is a backward type of love…This is called “best affections.”

Let me illustrate it for you…If I am preaching and someone hands me a note in the middle of the sermon, and the note says that a member’s house is burning down-at that very moment-what should I do?  That person is in danger of losing everything. But if I interrupt my message and tell him about it, I am going to startle and upset him and possibly make him feel bad. It might even hurt him. Because I do not want him to be distressed, hurt, or upset, I withhold the information. Later after church, the frantic parishioner comes crying, “My house burned down.” “Yes,” I respond. “I know.” The distressed man looks wide–eyed at me. “?You know.” “Yes,” I say, “Do you remember the note that was handed to me in the middle of the service? It said your house was on fire.” “Well if you knew why didn’t you tell me?” And my simple reply is – “I didn’t want to tell you because I knew I would make you feel bad.”

It is ridiculous…Yet we see it being done every day.

We don’t tell people the truth because it hurts them….we don’t tell them they are in sin, we don’t tell them that God will surely forgive their sin…we don’t tell them that they can confess that sin that they don’t have to stay in sin and that that sin can cease and its power be broken….Yet how many people are going without hearing the Word of God…. because someone doesn’t want to make them feel bad, or cause them to be upset by talking about sin and hell? 

Come on. Really?

The Thrill of Seeing and Hearing

 This past Sunday my Son and Daughter-in-law stopped over for a visit, and time for Nanny and Pappy to love on their little granddaughter. We were in the kitchen carrying on and laughing, and while all of us adults were just plain carrying on, I just happened to look in the other room and caught my granddaughter sitting up with her eyes wide open. I mean they were as big as an eye can open and her little body, which is just now learning how to stay stabilized while sitting up, was bent in the direction in which her ears could hear everything that was fascinating her. It is a fact that little kids at that age learn most by hearing and seeing…

    Sitting under my pole lamp studying later that night, I got to thinking on what I had seen with that wide-eyed granddaughter and still getting a heap of delight from that look on her face….. I thought of Jesus and how He trained His disciples; especially the twelve, for the work of apostleship. Hearing the words and seeing the things He did played an important part in their preparation for ministry life. Their eyes and ears witnessed the facts of an unrivaled life and were an essential pair of tools necessary in the preparation for their future testimonies.

    Seeing things first hand and hearing things right from the mouth of Jesus, the apostles could add credence to the miraculous and unbelievable stories of Christ because they were able to say, “That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you” (1Jn 1:3). No one would have believed their report, save those who, at the very least, were satisfied that it emanated from men who had been with Jesus. So it is with the third evangelist who was not an apostle but a companion of the apostles, as he presents his Gospel to the generations as genuine history, and not just some collection of fables, because its contents were witnessed by men who “from the beginning were eye witnesses and ministers of the word.”

   In the early period of their following Christ, ‘listening’ and ‘seeing’ seemed to have been the main occupation of the twelve.  They were like the granddaughter I was telling you about at the beginning of the article; full of big eyes and wide open ears. The things which the twelve saw and heard were amazing things. Jesus was quick to impress on the guys the magnitude of their privilege. “Blessed,” said He to them on one occasion, “are the eyes which see the things that ye see: for I tell you, that many prophets and kings desired to see the things which ye see, and saw them not; and to hear the things which ye hear, and heard them not.”(Lu. 10:23-24)

    But other generations saw great things as well. Some of them saw the wonders of the Exodus, others witnessed the thunderings at Sinai and still others witnessed the parting of the river. Many saw Elijah and Elisha’s great miracles and successive generations had the privileged to listen to the not-less-wonderful oracles of God spoken by David, Solomon, Isaiah, and the rest of the prophets. But the things witnessed (seen) by the twelve eclipsed the wonders of all bygone ages; for a greater than Moses, Elijah, David, or Isaiah, was here, and the promise to Nathanael was now being fulfilled. Heaven had been opened, and the angels of God - the spirits of wisdom and power and love were ascending and descending on the Son of man.

   This holiday season, let's all ask the Lord to open our eyes and ears to Him more than ever - even more so than our eyes and ears will be filled with wonder at the new gadgets aimed at separating us from our money!!

What a Privilege

KJV 1 Sam 12:23:
   “Moreover as for me, God forbid that I should sin against the Lord in ceasing to pray for you: but I will teach you the good and the right way”

As I was sitting enjoying a cup of hot apple cider out on the deck the other morning my mind was captured by the thoughts of the misery I knew someone was going through. In those few minutes of wondering I was moved to praying for that single heart the Lord had laid upon my soul. I thought of what a privilege it was as children of God to not be limited to only “thinking” about a dear one, but how we as believers could pray for them. In my reasoning I realized that being concerned for someone is kind, sincere, caring and a proof of our awareness and concern for their wellbeing….but thoughts do nothing for them…they may never even know you were thinking of them unless u follow the thought up with some rescue or act of compassion. That thought may go the way of many thoughts and eventually it will drift away or be forced out of your thoughts by the more demanding routines of life. Or it may just plain be eclipsed by some other great wondering, or the thought runs its course and fades away in the great abyss of the mind. Maybe a more urgent distraction will replace it or some other “something” will usurp it.
  BUT when we pray; that wonderful privilege permitted us by God, we can do more than merely think of a person and their problems, instead, we can HELP them when we lift them up to the LORD in prayer. May it be so set in our heart to pray for others, that we can say as Samuel said, “God forbid that I should sin against the Lord in ceasing to pray for you”…..because Samuel knew when he prayed for the people of Israel, God would work on his behalf for them….. and that is the same assurance we have when we pray for others…..