God is the Gospel - Day 3-4

Day 3
Isaiah 64:4
From of old no one has heard or perceived by the ear, no eye has seen a God besides you, who acts for those who wait for him.

2 Chronicles 16:9
For the eyes of the lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to give strong support to those whose heart is blameless toward him.

Acts 17:24-25
The God who made the world and everything in it, being lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.

Mark 10:45
For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.

What is the truth that runs through all these passages? God is the giver of life and the supporter of those who wait blamelessly for Him. God works for us. He doesn't wait for us to work for Him.
What is the danger of twisting this truth? We begin to lose responsibility for our actions. We blame God for our failures and expect Him to spoon-feed us all our successes.


Day 4
Do we only desire God?

Psalm 73:25-26
Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.  My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
Is there any place for a desiring anything other than God? God gives His children good gifts. If we take those gifts and look to them as the giver of please they become idols, but if we accept them as gifts from God, give Him glory and thanks, and enjoy them as the expression of God heart, then they are truly good. Taking pleasure in a gift is not wrong. Looking to the gift as the source of pleasure, rather than the giver of the gift, is wrong.
Augustine - “He loves Thee too little who loves anything together with
Thee, which he loves not for Thy sake.”

1 Timothy 4:4-5

For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving,  for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer.

God is the Gospel - Day 1

http://dwynrhh6bluza.cloudfront.net/resources/documents/1738/sggg.pdf?1282936541
What's so great about heaven?
Q1: What will heaven be like? Why will it be enjoyable? How does my perception of heaven differ from popular opinion?
Honestly, I haven't really thought about heaven much. If I know anything of God's nature it will be not only better than anything I can imagine, but completely different than anything I can comprehend right now.
Why will I enjoy it? Because the best, highest Good will be there. And I'll see Him face to face and be like Him. That is what I was designed for. That is the greatest satisfaction and enjoyment I could ever experience.
How does my view differ from what's commonly understood about heaven? It seems that most people think of heaven as an escape from hardship. They get to leave everything unpleasant behind and live in a gold-filled, cloud city spa. In a huge mansion. Probably with a harp and angel wings. But regardless of whether or not there are gates made of pearl, it's going to be luxurious and nobody will ever be sad or have to do anything they don't want to. Oh yeah, I think God might be there too...
So could I be satisfied in heaven without God? I'll up the stakes. I think a better question is: If God were in hell (eternal torment) and sin and Satan were in heaven (eternal luxury) where would I rather be? The answer is, I would rather be where my treasure is. The only reason my heart desires heaven is because everything I treasure is hidden in my Father. I don't care where He is, I want to be with Him.
Q2: Why do I believe in Jesus?
The same reason I choose to believe in anything else. Because it's true. Because it's real. I cannot believe in something or someone simply because I believe the belief will be good for me. I cannot believe a lie that I think will help me. God help me, I believe in Him because I believe He is TRUE, not because I think I'll be blessed with a nice life and a get-out-of-hell-free card.

Open Hands

There are things God gives us that we can grasp tightly. In fact I believe that every promise is meant to be taken for fact and held with a vice grip. The more we are challenged, the tighter our grasp should be. Conflict should make us close our fists on the promises of God and hold on for dear life.
There are other things God gives to us that are meant to be help with open hands. Usually these things are specific blessings or hopes. When we lift our hands to God he pours His torrential deluge of blessing out on us. We hold our hands up and they are filled.
The problem comes when we claim these blessings as our rights. We try to catch the flood of  gifts but, like water, as we grasp for them we find our hands are empty.
God delights in giving His children good gifts but when we claim the gift as our own by our own right, and not as a gift of God (which by definition is something we don't deserve), it usually is not long before He shows us that He can indeed give and take away. And not only that, but many of the gifts we are given, by their very nature slip through our fingers the tighter we try to hold on to them.
The gifts of God have some very unique qualities. Specifically they are unique in their ownership. By that I mean this: When God gives us is gift it is completely ours, not because we earned it, but simply because God says that it is ours. However many of these gifts, or specifically the blessings, are only ours so long as we accept them as gifts and we don't believe they are our rights. In point of fact, we deserve none of the gifts that are so freely giving to us. The things we do deserve look much different than the things we receive.
As an example think of a friendship or any relationship. When we accept it as a gift of God and hold it with an open hand it goes smoothly, just because of the laws on human nature God has established. When we begin to close our fist on a relationship we find the other person slipping away. That rule seems to apply pretty universally. The more controlling we try to be, the less control or influence we have.
Another example is grace. By definition grace is God unmerited favor toward humans. We don't deserve it. And when we recognize that and live in the light of the gift we have been given we live in grace. However when we forget that grace is only ours because it was given to us we lose the ability to live in that grace which is critical for victorious living.
This is a special showcase of the perfect love of God. If we could earn blessings we would become self righteous. And when we lose control we have more freedom than when we try to control everything. God's perfect design requires dependence on Him, in the same way that a child is dependent on its father. More accurately, a child's dependence on it's father is a picture of every humans dependence on God.
So I'm trying to live with open hands.

The end of a season. But the beginning of a new one. A mysterious season. Yet an exciting season. I'm really not sure what to think right now. I don't have any plans past the end of February. And I don't have a job.
That's a big one for me. I haven't been jobless without a new job lined up for years. To be honest it scares me. But at the same time it excites me. I am at an extremely unique place in my life right now. Most likely I will never again have this much free time on my hands, never again have these few responsibilities. I have no one who is depending on me. No one who is requiring my presence. I could disappear off the face of the planet and no one's life would be ruined. No one would starve. No one would be forever unloved.
That's not to say that nobody cares. But I don't have a God-given responsibility to protect a family. I don't have  friends who would be lost without me. I don't have obligations to a boss or a company. I don't have any debts. I don't even have any secrets.No obligations. It's an odd kind of freedom. Nothing to tie me where I am. Nothing but relationships.
Ah, relationships. People. People I have been given to love. To encourage. That is what keeps me here. That, and the fact that I have no idea where else I would go.
In a way, it scares me, this lack of responsibility. It makes me wonder what I should be doing. Does the fact that no one is depending on me show a lack of dependability in me? Or is  it simply God's way of ending a season of life. His way of moving me forward?
What could I be doing? In the realm of the hypothetical there are so many options. I could be almost anybody, anywhere, doing anything. I could be that gypsyish person everyone always dreams of being. The person who travels wherever he wants to go. Does cool stuff and learns cool things. He's seen it all. You know, a few months in Germany working for some random company. Six months or so in El Salvador teaching English or something. A couple weeks in Peru searching for ancient treasure. maybe some time  documenting penguins or studying the social condition of some tribe in a county in Africa that nobody has ever heard of. Been there, done that. But is that really what I want to do? really who I want to be? I don't think so. Somehow through all the exotic interest of a life like that, with all the stories, all the lessons learned, sights seen, even with all that I would miss the relationships.
That's what really matters anyway. People. Those eternal creations, each one unique. That's where the true adventure lies. Exploring the human soul. That's what I really don't want to miss out on. Lives. Love. Somehow everything else seems empty.
So the real question is which people am I going to explore. Who am I going to love? Who am I going to invest my irretrievable and therefor invaluable time in?
Oh, the answer. So simple yet so hard to accept. To embrace and live. Relationships are given by God. Orchestrated by God. I really don't have to answer any of these questions. he already has the answers. All of them. All I have to do is ask Him for them. And He tells me. A couple at a time. Not enough to let me think I've quite got it figured out. Just enough for the next step.
So all this rambling and I come to my answer. Ask.

Fear Love Grace

1Jn 4:18  There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear, because fear has punishment; and the one fearing has not been perfected in love.
Fear. It's everywhere. Fear of the future. Fear of the past. Fear of a person. Or a creature. Or an idea. Fear of the unknown. It's controlling.
Why do we fear? What is it about human nature that makes us fear?
What if we were designed to fear? I believe we were designed to have that healthy awe, that shake-in-our-socks respect, that fear of God.
But like every other sin we twist God's design. We manipulate His perfect plan until our version is hardly recognizable as a mutilation of the original. We forget the truth about the nature of God and His promises and convince ourselves that we have a reason to be afraid of something other than our God.
We don't trust Him. We don't believe that He is who He says He is. We don't love Him the way we were intended to love. And we tremble. We feel the knot form in our guts as we forget who we are in Christ. We hide in our dark corner and begin to think that nothing can make our lives better.
Then God reaches out and picks us up from where we are hiding. He wraps His arms around us and whispers His truths in our ear. It's grace. God's unmerited favor for us. Nothing we have ever done or could ever do would make us deserve it. And we begin to understand. And we begin to see God with the awe we should always have. And our love grows.
The more we love, the less we fear. The more we love, the more we understand the One we love. And our love is perfected. And perfect love casts out fear. That irrational, cowardly, pathetic, doubting fear cannot live alongside real love. That's grace.

Romans 14 In Verse

Romans 14

Let him who loves God love his neighbor
And serve 'long side his brother
For each will answer to our Lord
And not to one another

Let not, with condescending thoughts
The weak in faith despise
The Master judges every man
And sees with perfect eyes

So rather let us give support
For those whose knees are weak
For God is able to to provide
The strength for those who seek

Never causing friends to stumble
The good of others seek
Each man must crush his Flesh, his Sin
The strong uphold the weak

God's kingdom comes with peace and joy
With bowed knee and bowed heart
With life or death each man will say
"I serve because Thou Art"

That day each man in faith will live
In truth he will rejoice
The saints will live in harmony
And praise God with one voice

No Injustice in God

It is the divine right of God to do as He pleases.
Romans 9
...I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers... But it is not as though the word of God has failed...
This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise... though they... had done nothing either good or bad--in order that God's purpose of election might continue...
What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God's part? By no means! For he says to Moses, "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion."
You will say to me then, "Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?" But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, "Why have you made me like this?"

What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory...

Paul is saying he wishes he could take the place of his fellow Jews who are rejecting the Christ. He wanted to be a substitute for them, being cut off from God so that they might have access to Him. But then he recognized that God extends His promise and election to whoever He chooses.

There is a theme throughout this chapter. Something that doesn't seem to quite add up. Why would God allow His chosen people (the Jews) to reject Him? Why would He choose Jacob over Esau even before they had done anything to set them apart? It sounds like Paul hadn't completely come to terms with this. He still wanted to  change what God had chosen and take the place of the Jews who God did not choose. But he recognized that God has the divine right to do whatever He sees as best. God chooses who He will, elects who He will, and we have no right to question/accuse our maker. 

So the next question is, if we cannot resist the will of God can we really be blamed for what we do? The interesting thing to me is that Paul doesn't directly answer the question he poses. Instead he says, who are you to answer back to God?

And then he poses a what-if. What if God acts in this seemingly inexplicable way in order to make known His power and glory? What if there is a bigger picture than we, as the vessels of clay, can see. But God the potter knows what is best?

So I come back full circle. God has the divine right to do as He pleases.