Mirror, mirror on the wall...

March 28th, 2012, 5:00 AM
   I lay in bed this morning thinking about the need to be thankful. I thought about the Old Testament sacrifices and their connection to the giving of thanks to GOD. I  recalled how GOD struggled so with His people, after bringing them out of generations of captivity as slaves in Egypt, to get them to be a thankful people. Weren't their four decades of desert wanderings meant to get slavery out of the hearts and minds in order to restore them to believing, thinking and living as the children of GOD?
   I wondered why so few couldn't or wouldn't make this transition. Why couldn't they make the move from captivity to freedom? After all GOD had done to get them out of slavery, why wouldn't they trust HIM to get slavery out of them? Why did they so often seem to have one eye back on Egypt, and seem so ready to turn around and go back to where GOD rescued them from? Why couldn't, wouldn't they see the indescribable work of grace and strength GOD exercised to set them free? Why does it seem that so few ever made the leap from discontent and resentment, to authentic, heartfelt, unshakeable, deep-down, desert-surviving, GOD-honoring, authentic thanksgiving? Maybe they couldn't see the big picture. Maybe they couldn't look ahead to what GOD was doing because they were so preoccupied with the looking back.
   I remember a time when I would go out of my way to walk by a mirror, now I try hard to avoid them. The older I get (now 56) the less impressed I am by what a mirror reflects back to me. Well over their forty years, on my own spiritual journey, trying to follow where GOD is leading, (made obvious by the miles long set of heel-shaped furrows in the sand), and I don't have to right either. Oh, how I hate mirrors. "Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who the dumbest guy of all..."
 

The Danger of Spirituality

Deut. 30:19
I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live:



The danger of spirituality is not knowing if it is authentic spirituality. Authentic, Biblical spirituality, takes the words of God (Father, Son and Holy  Spirit), and then sets out to literally apply them to our lives. In the case of Deut 30:19, when God told His people to choose life, He meant it literally. God wasn't asking for mental assent or correct knowledge. It wasn't that He was looking for the Israelites to agree, memorize and then parrot the words back to Him. God, quite literally, set life and death before them and told them that they had to literally go to work every day, in every situation, and choose life. False spirituality is satisfied to read, to know, and even to teach God's commands, without taking them literally and applying them to own own lives.  It was this kind of spirituality that Jesus blasted the scribes and pharisees for having. Jesus told those following Him that it was the wise man, who after hearing Jesus' sayings, went to work to build his entire life upon them. To do otherwise, Jesus said, is as useful as building a house upon sand. That house may look good, and the average person might never be able to tell the differences between it and the house next door that was built on a foundation of rock, but those differences will soon be as clear as day when the black clouds of a significant storm bring damaging winds and pounding waves. 

   Authentic spirituality is hard work. It requires love that is willing to pay the costs attached to discipline and determination. And anyone who has decided to practice authentic, Biblically spirituality, knows this very well.    

Choose Life

Deut. 30:19

"I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live."

   The trouble with humanity is, that as a race, it keeps choosing death. In Romans Chapter 8 the Apostle Paul give an extraordinary revelation of the two principal laws that govern the world we live in. It is hard to come to terms with, but difficult to deny, the reality that the presence and power of these two laws, though they are spiritual in nature, actually govern the physical world we are so attuned and accustomed to. Writing under the inspiration of the Spirit of the Living God, the Apostle Paul pulls back the covers on what is really going on the physical world around us. Is it possible that the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, and the law of sin and death, through the powers that each law holds, power that is exercised by humanities choices, actually influences the physical world? 

   In Deut 30:19 God makes it crystal clear that He has set life and death before His people, but He has not dictated which they much choose. Clearly the moral choices we make, everyone of them, fall into one of these two categories, since God does not reveal that there is a third. Think about the moral choices you have made, then look at the results. I'm confident that you will see pretty quickly whether your choices produced life or promoted death. Did they bring you joy and peace or leave you with regrets and sorrow. 

   There are only two choices and God has set them clearly before us. The trouble with humanity is, that as a race, it keeps choosing death, and death has power because it is tied to a law. It is law that has power, just like the law of gravity has power. Both are unseen, but both are irresistible. Both can be denied, but denial doesn't have any affect on reality. In his brillant revelation about the existence of the Spirit's law of life in Christ Jesus, and the law of sin and death, Paul uncovers an extraordinary thing. He explains that though both laws exist and both have powers, that their powers, no matter how they are compared, are by no means equal. Read the chapter and you will see that God has condemned sin and in doing so He has established the Spirit's law of life in Christ Jesus as the predominant power over all things visible and invisible. Why is this critical? Well beyond the obvious, it means that if we stop making choices that give the law of sin and death a right to operate in our lives, and begin to purposely choose life, then the greater power of the Spirit's law of life in Christ Jesus will start to transform our lives. How? By the power that God has given to the law of life that is found only in His Son. The force and power of the Spirit's law of life in Christ Jesus will begin to reproduce His life within us. How? How it is possible that an invisble law could have that kind of power? How does the law of gravity have so much constant and consistent power that it holds you to face of this planet?

   Granted it will not be easy to begin to change, especially when we have been making bad choices for so long, but you have to ask yourself if its worth it, which do I desire? I am tired of being under the bondage of the power of the law of sin and death? I am tired of not having a life to live, since the power of the law of sin and death is really controlling me? Do I desire life and all that it means to me and those around me, or do I desire death and it's continuing effects? God lays the choice at our feet and then says to us "choose life".

"I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live." Deut. 30:19

         

The Catholic Church and This White House.

Today I submitted the following to the editor of the Press & Sun Bulletin, Binghamton, New York........


"What is at stake is by no means whether our German members of congregations can tolerate church fellowship with Jews. It is rather the task of Christian preaching to say: here is the church, where Jew and German stand together under the Word of God, here is the proof whether a church is still the church or not." Bonhoefer, Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy," by Eric Metaxas


After listening to and weighing what appears to be going on between this White House and the Catholic Church, it is hard not to conclude that the Catholic Church is in the middle of capitulating its long held doctrines in ways that are both strikingly and frighteningly similar to what took place in the early days of Hitler's Germany, with the then strong German Protestant Church. Democrats, it seems, have decided to recast abortion rights issues in different terminology because they are going into an election year. While the Catholic Church has been a strong advocate pro-life advocate, they have not stood their ground in regards to their church's supposed position on contraception. Knowing that abortion is no longer an issue to run on, Democrats are swapping out language. Abortion is being substituted for "contraception", and in doing so have subtly invited the Catholic Church to stand beside them in this "compromise". This is exactly the kind of political shell games that took place in Hitler's Germany, a planned strategy that had one end in sight - to draw certain key church leaders into its utopian dream, and to invite them to share in the power and glory.
Well, they did!

Alyssa Bustamante - What's the word I'm looking for????

   Yesterday, Alyssa Bustamante, now 18 yrs old., was sentence to life in prison for killing her neighbor three years ago. When Elizabeth Olten was 9 yrs old., Alyssa lured her into the woods, strangled her, stabbed her in the chest, slit her throat, then buried her in a shallow grave Alyssa dug a few days earlier. Why? Alyssa told a Missouri State Trooper than she wanted to know what it felt like to kill someone. An experience she later described as "pretty enjoyable." It is being reported that her journal read:"I strangled them and slit their throat and stabbed  them now they're dead." "I am kind of nervous and shaky through right now, Kay. I gotta go to church now... lol."

   What can we conclude from from this? Is the "why" asked earlier, and the answer Alyssa gave, good enough? Is it acceptable? Does her reason go deep enough to allow us to arrive at some kind of conclusion that give us closeure? I think not, and I bet you agree. Something is missing! Something is wrong! Something else is going on that we don't understand, something we do not want to face, but deep in our hearts we know. It is a word we do not want to hear, one we are desperately trying to eliminate from our vocabulary and conversations. (Warning, I have careful shown the word to which I am referring by coloring it blue. If the word offends you, you can easily identify it and avoid reading it.).

  Events like these, and a million others, drive us to admit, if we have the courage to be honest, to the presence of a force in our beings we can't control, evict or medicate. Without the honesty required to face the truth, we arrive at the only other conclusion we can,  that some people (Alyssa; Hitler; Stalin; Bashar Al-Assad, President of Syria; Islamic terrorists, etc) are just victims of their environments, who, when placed in different ones, can become better people, like the rest of us, fit for society. If the latter is your conclusion, I have a couple of questions. How does that seem to be working out in the society we are living in today? Are we making progress toward a better, more peaceable and understanding world? The vile or violent thoughts you have from time to time, where do they originate from? Do things seem to be getting better or worse? 

   The conclusion I keep arriving at when I hear of things like this senseless, brutal murder of Elizabeth Olten, is that the biblical doctrine of sin is not only accurate but is also as relevant and applicable as ever in this the twenty-first century of humanity. 

   Without the biblical doctrine of sin it is impossible to satisfactorily answer questions like, "Why?" and "How?" Without an acknowledgement of the presence of sin in every human heart, and some level of understanding about what sin is, where it originated from, and what its' objective is, the heinous acts that man perpetrates upon man become unexplainable, alluding any rational diagnosis, laughing at every man made attempt to provide a cure.

    Hobart Mowrer, who was a president of the American Psychological Associate and Johns Hopkins University, as well as a professor at Yale and Harvard talks about the presence and the problem of sin, and what has happened since modern man has concluded that sin, as a rational explaination for man's deepest problems, is just an old myth that needs to be discarded, no longer having any place in the vocabulary of modern man. Reads the words of this respected educator, who at 76 yrs of age, took his own life. 

   "For several decades we psychologists have looked upon the whole matter of sin and moral accountability as a great incubus and we have acclaimed our freedom from it as epic making. But at length we have discovered to be free in this sense to have the excuse of being sick rather than being sinful is to also court the danger of becoming lost. In becoming amoral, ethically neutral and free, we have cut the very roots of our being, lost our deepest sense of selfhood and identity. And with neurotics themselves, asking, "Who am I? What is my deepest destiny? And what does living really mean?" In a later article he wrote: “If we merely call it wrong-doing, we do not understand the gravity of what it is to violate some of these moral laws from which we are trying to break ourselves away.”

   Like it or not, the biblical doctrine of sin is actually good news because it alone provides not only the the answer to questions like: "How could Alyssa do such a thing?", "Why would she do it?" "Where did her such thoughts begin that encouraged her to do such a heinous thing?", but a remedy as well.   

   When we refuse to turn and face the possibility of the presence of sin, we end up at the same place the  atheist educator Hobart Mowrer, kept coming to, a conclusion that eventually caused him to start considering the possibility of a malady in humanity that science wasn't qualified to diagnosis or heal. In other words, deny the reality and presence of sin in every human heart, and the "How?", "Why?" and "Where?" become impossible to answer.

   When sin finds a willing host, someone to convince and manipulate, there is no end to the heinous, senseless acts that humanity is capable of committing against itself, and there is no worse or more concluding proof of this than the 20th and 21st Centuries of humanity.     

God’s Grace is......


A mighty rushing wind,
An unseen force,
A still small voice,
Deep and quiet waters.

A torrent of love,
Shattering strongholds of sin,
A balm on the heart,
That heals from within.

More than just favor
That no one deserves,
But power from heaven,
The Spirit, the Word.

What God supplies
That changes the heart,
That sets prisoners free,
A light in the dark.

Not just answers to prayer,
But the origin of pleadings,
My longings for God,
Compelled by His leading.

The Son on a tree
That the Father let grow,
Thorns driven into the brow,
And the blood they let flow.

Much more than just favor
That no one deserves,
God’s grace is the power
Behind every word,
That makes every promise
Living and true,

God’s grace is the way
God’s love gets to you.

Copyright, Gary Little
February 3, 2012

Exceeding and precious...

   Lately I have been receiving a lot of personal benefit from taking a specific verse, one that is very familiar to me, and doing a word by word study of it. It has been nothing short of stunning, and also alarming, to discover what I do not know. When you have been around Christianity as long as I have, it is easy to become so familiar with the lingo that you miss the meaning, and therefore the benefit of applying God's promises to your life. If the promises of GOD are no longer "...exceedingly and precious..." (2 Peter 1:4), if you can speed-read through passages without standing in awe or falling before GOD in worship, it may be that we are in the place of no longer treating as sacred and precious what GOD has declared is.   

   This morning I took a fresh look at 1 John 1:9, breaking it down word by word, looking up each word, so I understood each word, which allowed me to understand the meaning of the entire verse as I never have. Here is the verse as many of you already know it. "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." (KJV). After my brief study I wrote the verse in a way that is helping me better grab ahold of the precious significance of it. Here is my uneducated version.

  

   "If we will bet on God by believing and acting on what He has said, and will say about our rebellion and failures what He says about them, He will then immediately act according to what He has covenanted to do, observing His own divine and unchangeable laws, which allow Him justly to separate our sins from us, thereby making us morally and spiritually clean before Him."

  

   Yes, I know it is wordy, but does it help? Does it give you a better grasp on the exceeding and precious reality of the verse? Does it encourage you to believe it? Does it help you to see the benefit of confession, while inspiring you to run to God for forgiveness and cleansing He offers, rather than away from Him. Does it inspire you to fresh faith in God, your heavenly Father and His Word, to once again view His promises as fabulous and extravagant? Did I hear you just say, "Yes!"? "Exceeding and precious", "Fabulous" and extravagant". Really? Do we even know what those words means? Among all the other things we have, do the promises of God stand-out as extraordinary and priceless?  I believe that there are places in the world today where, without a single doubt,  they do.

   Maybe this devotional exercise is just for me, and not so much for you. Maybe! However, if the Word of God has lost its' majesty, if you can burn through scriptures or repeat memorized passages without weeping at the wonder of what God has given to you, may I suggest a change in approach? It isn't that the promises of GOD have the ability to be exceedingly precious, but that they always have been, truly are, and will forever be. Amen! I am preaching myself happy!

          

    

I Will Never Need Jesus

I will never really need Jesus until the moment I realize that I truly do deserve to die for and in my sins. Until I see my heart as it really is, and as it is before GOD, I will never truly need Jesus. Until I see that He truly did die in my place, because He really did receive the just punishment for all my hideous and obvious sins, those known and unknown by other people, and the things in my heart that I pretend are not sin, but are, I will never really need Jesus. The hiker lost in the mountains never really needs to be found while he still has water, shelter and food. It is only when he is out of all three that he comes face to face with the fact that he is really lost, genuinely in  trouble, having no idea where he is, where to go or what to do. Few of us get really serious about the state of our souls until we have run out of the our own supplies.       

Mankind has no enemy but itself

Mankind has no external trouble,
No memesis, no enemy, no rival.
There is only himself to blame,
Only the race to improve,
To fix, to rise above.

What absurdity.
What folly.
What pride.
What proof of our enemy's presence,
And confirmation of their cunning.
  

But For Grace...

   I woke this morning to the realization that I was not alone. An all too familiar guest entered the room, and slipping into the bed managed to find a place between my wife and me. Soon after, the voiceless, but recognizable dialogue began again with my unseen, and I hope, uninvited caller.

   All of us are visited and revisited by unseen and unexpected company. Who doesn’t struggle with uninvited guests? Who hasn’t sensed their presence, even if the only evidence is the familiar, but barely decipherable, wispy flow of suggestions, akin to whispers embedded in a passing breeze that overtakes the mind?
   To some the guests bring thoughts of grandeur so high that they tempt to lift those they visit far above reality, luring them into an extraordinary world of fantasia that has not, does not, and can not exist. Their guest woos them to escape, leaving behind the disappointing or tragic present, to deny and dismiss the past, in order to paint on the blank pallet of their vivid imaginations a far-fetched future to fly off to. But as is always the case, the winds that carried them away will also let them fall, jolting them back to reality, by the disappointing impact of being brought back down to earth again.
   Others, who could never imagine such juvenile and impracticable imaginings, are visited with an invitation to envision things having to do with prominence, power and pride. These winds are not so wispy and subtle, for with them comes not just suggestions, but plans. These stronger winds have enough force behind them to lift up those they visit, enabling them to lie in their beds as if they were sitting upon a throne, molding the world into what it should be, according to some distorted, divine calling,. These “stronger winds”, these “more than just suggestions”, can be highly destructive, and are the winds of change that tyranny and despotism come in on. These tempt us to believe that we can be more than just lifted up, we can be exalted.
   Then, there is my guest, and maybe he is yours too. If he is, then “ours”, I think, must have a very low assignment. His mission is not to lift up with subtle praise or exalt with forbidden glory, but to bring down, to discourage and depress. By now we should know his game. By now we should be trained to sense the cold chill of his encroachments into a previously warm and comfortable, but now chilly and crowded bed. But thoughts, like invisible breezes, are mysterious things, and as such, it is difficult, at best, to discern their comings and goings.
   So as I laid there in bed, I found myself unexpectedly thinking about what a sinful and worthless life mine has been. As far as I could tell, from the perspective of laying flat on my back, there has been little if any, real fruit that demonstrates a vital, Biblical connection to Christ. I hear from the visitor beside me, “I talk a good game, and have a constant flow of spiritual thoughts and prayers, but all ends there. What significant difference has my life had on that of another’s? I have one genuine friend, who truly pursues me, who calls to talk, who regularly seeks me out. My career is falling down around me, even as the Manufacturer’s warranty on my physical body seems to be running out. We have no substantial savings and therefore no good outlook as regards retirement. All is boiling down to this...I am nothing, I have nothing, I’ve done nothing, I’ve come to nothing.”
   But then, in the misty fog of the all too familiar discouragement that predictably precedes an intruding depression; from deep within the jejune and insipid perceived realities of my life, a fresh, perfectly nourished, well-watered, vitally alive sign of life appears. A thought I would have dismissed had it not appeared so abruptly and with such substance. From deep within a crack upon the surface of what feels like an arid and drought-ravished heart, appeared the impossible! In the midst of hints, implications and accusations, suddenly there is this reality, a bright green sprout standing-up like an ensign. In the midst of the blurred and feathered outlines of uncertainty, stands the undeniable and irrefutable evidence of what was always there but could not be seen... grace.
   When all feels lost in a fog of discouragement, when all our thoughts insist that perception is reality, that life is winding down to a thing devoid of substance and significance, the grace of God appears. Bursting up and out of places where we would have bet the farm that nothing living exists, appears a confirmation of reality. God is. He is present, and because He is, life is there too. The moment this reality appeared, the instant the spring-green shoot was shown to me, I sensed a chill passing by as if my visitor were returning to where he came from, leaving my heart in a calm. It was as if someone with infinite authority, stood in the middle of my little boat, which was being tossed around like an empty two-liter soda bottle in an angry ocean, and had commanded my thoughts to lie down and be quiet. Then once again it was my wife and me in our bed, warm, comfortable and not so crowded.
   There is something so allusive and supernatural about the grace of God that it tends to render those who have genuinely experienced it, nearly speechless when they try to describe it. Like John the Revelator, they stand before that which defies comprehension, revealing the limits of their languages, leaving them to use their best comparative and descriptive phrases to illustrate what they have received, but do not understand. How do we explain this attribute of God’s nature, which has the power to bring those down who have given in to the temptation to exalt themselves; or to so transforms the present as to make temporary excursions into wild imaginings, pal in meaning and substance? And how do we put into words, what it is that lifts us up out of a pit of discouragement, delivering us from oppressive thoughts and relentless memories of failure, not because we are the saddest case of all, but because we are worth more than a million stars and a thousand galaxies to Him who alone possesses that which lifts us? Is it any wonder that those who experience the reality of God’s grace, His absolute undeserved favor, are left astonished whether being rescued from fantasies, brought down when they allowed themselves to be dangerously exalted, or lifted up out of the pits of discouragement and self-pity?
   How do we explain it? I do not know, but this I do know. God loves me not because of who I am, what I have or have not done, but because of Who He is. And of all He is and all He possesses, this thing called grace, this indescribable gift, this unfathomable manifestation, is worth exceedingly and abundantly more than all we could ever think or ask for. What God holds out to fallen humanity, far exceeds the most romantic and idealistic dreams that a lost humanity has ever yearned to escape into. In humbling the proud and arrogant, bringing them low, God offers the repentant a place at the table of the King, in the Kingdom of Heaven. In lifting those who have been brought down by years of discouragement and disillusion, God promises that none who put their trust in the Him will ever be put to shame. This thing called grace, this beautiful attribute that speaks to the very nature of Almighty God, so surpasses and satisfies the deepest hungers of our hearts that it should come as no surprise that it defies language.
   With it, a life, whether lost in dreams, exalted in a lust for pride and prominence, or cast down in despair, may be completely transformed and made ready for eternity. Without it in this life, we would shrivel-up in a moment and be blown away by a single gust of the winds that come and go over the face of the earth, and our souls forever lost by our own refusal to accept what we can not describe, but may truly experience.

Gary Little, January 14, 2012

Willing to Love

   This morning I have been thinking about something I am calling, "the will to love". The thought is this. God created humanity with the unique gift and responsibility of free will. Equipped with this, mankind was and is placed in the midst of choices, Eden being an example of this with a thousand blessed and wonderful options, a single forbidden one, and a devil to tempt and test mankind's will. In the midst of a million choices, what will we will to choose? Will we will  to love and serve God, or to love and serve ourselves?

   If we are looking for an example to follow we do not need to look further than to the life of Christ. No one  demonstrated more clearly the decision to determine to love the Father than Jesus did, and nowwhere in His life is this more observable than during the hours of His passion. While locked in that quintessential battle with the forces of hell, He resigned Himself completely to the absolute will of His Father. Here we see Jesus' will at work, willing Himself with drops of blood to love His Father, even while knowing that soon His Father would, for the sake of humanity, turn His back on him and crush him, because "he who knew no sin, became sin for us.", becoming a curse for us. John 8:29 records Jesus' words and will when, at an earlier time he said, "The One who sent me is with me. He has not left me alone, because (don't miss that word for it ties two things together - the presence of God and the determination to do His will. ) I always do what pleases Him."  (emphasis added).

   The bottomline is this, there simply is no other test of Biblical love than to see what we are determined to do in the midst of a thousand idols, and in the pitch of our own daily battles with our own still "all too alive" sin natures. Will I will to love/serve God and others? Will I turn away from all other gods because I  have decided that, with the eternal and inestimable gift of my God-given will, I will worship God alone? In a land where the horizon now displays the hard-edged and grotesque outlines of cultural idols as large as skyscapers, or as tiny as the chip inside this week's most captivating trinket of technologies; where our hearts now hide the lust for soft and sultry appearence of skin deep beauty that lures its' victims into beds of wanton and insatiable need for the pills and shots and creams, once labeled what they are,"Snake-Oil", that now promise for a price to hold at bay keep on the other side of the mirror, the inevitable demons of wrinkles and age, whom will I will to serve?

   Is not this the greatest test of love? Was it only to former Hebrew slaves beginning their journey to a new land of promise, that God said: "Thou shalt have no other gods, before Me." "Thou shalt not bow down to any graven images."

   The proof that it is the greatest test of love is that the One who prosesses the greatest love, God, willed Himself, to give Himself, to and for us, to redeem us. This willingness of God, to give all, to die, may be a price Satan bargined that the Almighty would never be able to pay. Since God is spirit, and man is flesh and blood, perhaps Satan posited, that even if God was willing, he could not save the creature He so loves. Who better than Satan knew that though man the creature could die, could be deceived, God the Creator can not, so the two can never be reconciled. "Anyway", Lucifier, chief of all the fallen angels, may have thought, "this man thing, its' just another creature, and it will be little more than collateral damage in my quest to reign over the planet where I and a third of heaven's spirit warriors, have been exiled to!" But, it seems, Satan greatly underestimated God and His love for us. Because in His foreknowledge God had already seen the whole fall played out, and before the foundations of the earth were laid He set that redemptive, saving love in motion. As the old chorus goes: "Oh how we loves you and me. He gave His life, what more could He give? Oh, how He loves you. Oh, how He loves me. Oh, how He loves you and me."

   When Christ was born, the whole plan of redemption, which God had long been keeping sealed up in the scroll of redemption, (see Rev 5:1), was made known, and you can bet that all hell trembled and shook at the angellic announcement of Christ's birth, that through Jesus, this babe born in a manger, God's good will to come to men. Extraordinary! While all the other religions and faith expression of the world explain what we must to do get to God, Christianity proclaims the message that God has come to us.  

   So, in light of this, isn't it right to ask ourselves what are we doing with our wills? Have we truly come to that place where we are, as an act of our wills, offering ourselves completely to God? I am willing, have I set my will to love and serve God by loving and serving my neighbor, and do I do these things because I love God? Have I determined to lay down my life for others? Am I willing myself to love because God willed Himself to love me? "Behold, what manner of love the Father has given unto us..."  Am I willing to love?      

Only God Can Preserve The Truth

   I don't know what it is about the particular way I am put together but there are times when, seemingly out of the blue, I am moved to worship and praise while listening to music. Oddly, the music does not have to be "spiritual" by origin or necessarily in content to stir up, from deep in my heart, thoughts, words and phrases of praise and thanksgiving. At time it seems as if the LORD is very near me and chooses to use music as the vehicle or means by which He conveys that nearness.

   Such was the case a few moments ago. I was listening to some "Easy Listening" instrumentals via my iPhone, when I suddenly found myself filled with praise and thanksgiving. I quickly rose out of my office chair and dropped to my knees because it felt like the only appropriate response. What happened next surprised me just as much as the sudden and unexpected sense of God's presence did. Almost as soon as I went to my knees I found that I was praying, thanking God for something that was a complete surprise to me. Unexpectedly, I found myself thanking GOD that through all the centuries and generations of mankind that He had managed to keep the truth protected and pure. Despite all the darkness and despotism of man made governments; all the evil and ego's of rulers and self-proclaimed prophets, and all the attempts of the Devil to bury, ban and burn God's truth, God found a way to not only keep it safe unto every generation, but He also saw to it that its' influence continued to expand, covering the whole earth. Imagine it. If left to man alone, even our best attempts to steward the truth of the Gospel would have twisted and tarnished its' pristine beauty, sapping it of its glorious and holy power. Who but the Trinity could ever be entrusted with such a task? 

   Though the time on my knees wasn't that long, the impact of what had so quickly come over me and filled my heart reduced me to tears, for in a moment I knew afresh that if God hadn't preserved His truth, the truth about Himself, His Son, the Spirit, our sin & salvation, etc, et al, none of us would ever have known the glorious reality of His forgiveness and the promise of a sinless, Christ-ruled eternity.

   Like Pharaoh's magicians in Egypt, who in trying to prove their powers only managed to increase the effect of certain of God's plagues, it must vex the Devil into something akin to convulsion, knowing that regardless of what he has done and does that "He who sits in the heavens laughs.." knowing that His truth will continue to arise and prevail. Hallelujah!

 

I Am Forgiven

   One of the great troubles with past failures is that they don't seem to know their place...which is in the past. Everyone knows what it is to struggle with past failures, those many times we fell way short of what was best. Everyone also knows what it is to have that sense that fallen angels, hell's dark emissaries, are lingering in the shadows of our memories, croaching along, ducking in and out of our conscience, watching for just the right moments to remind us of who and what we use to be; who and what we use to do. 

   While doing my devotions this morning I found myself confronted, no assaulted, with past failures. I am not talking about the past as in yesterday or last week, but five, ten and twenty years ago. It seems that demons and devils have a hell of a good record keeping system. (That's meant as a play on words, so take your hand away from covering your month, and start breathing again). 

   Clearly this was an immediate and real interruption in my devotional time, as I thought to myself, "Why is it that there is always this stark awareness of past failures but seldom a recollection of past victories? Hmmm", I thought, calling-up all my unusal, keen, well-honed, almost super-human gift of discernment, "Perhaps this is war! Perhaps it's time to grab my sword, the double-edged one, and run this time at, instead of away from the battle!" 

   This poem then, for that purpose. I am forgiven, and so are you, provided you've followed the Biblical prescription for God's forgiveness. 

Forgiven!

Get behind me, in Jesus’ Name.
I am forgiven! I am forgiven!
His cross, his blood, his death, my claim.
I am forgiven! I am forgiven!

Though hell assaults God’s truth with lies,
And tries to cloud the sapphire skies,
Like Christ, God’s Word can not but rise,
I am forgiven! I am forgiven!

So clad in armor God supplied,
To those forgiven, those forgiven,
I kneel before my King who died,
As one forgiven, one forgiven.

Then with the Word, that two-edged sword,
I rise to face the demon horde,
And in the name of Christ the Lord,
Proclaim, the truth,
I am forgiven!

Gary Little
January 6, 2012

The Kingdom Within

Luke 17:20-21 "....Jesus replied, "The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation. nor will people say, 'Here it is' or "There it is", because the kingdom of God is within you."

   The inner self must be protected at all times because it is the place of unions. All that a man or woman joins them self to, sooner or later, is done on the inside, within them. Union with the Trinity is not a mental thing. Mental assent never really joined anyone to anything else. A common bond can be made in sharing like thoughts, but unions, these are inner things, things of the heart, which may be why the wisest man in the world wrote: " Guard your heart above all else, for it is the source of life." Prov 4:23. So, in God's eyes do our hearts look like His kingdom where His Son rules or a democracy where a majority does?