Powerball Dreams, Fireman Ed and Forgiveness Flowing From Love

 

 

A few years ago I was in Asia in a restaurant that served western style food. A wealthy local family entered and were seated. They were very westernized Asians. They all wore all name brand expensive western clothing. They had several children with them and also a poorly dressed young woman, the family slave. She watched them eat and waited on the kid’s every whim. When they had finished eating, she was allowed to finish their unwanted scraps. At 15, she was their slave. She had no rights. She had no right to express her indignation. She had no recourse but to do exactly what she was told, exactly when she was told to do it. In a nation like America where many are focused today on small white Power Ball lottery tickets that will award someone $500,000,000 (pre-tax) and how we would spend that if we won, it is hard to relate to the notion of one human owning another.        Peter reminds those who were slaves in the natural who belonged to Christ that they were to, by voluntary submission to Christ, also submit to their masters, whether good or evil. Servants, be submissive to your masters with all fear, not only to the good and gentle, but also to the harsh.(1 Peter 2:18 NKJV)

  

  There is almost nothing as likely to bring me charging from a submissive state of mind than when I suffer an injustice and the accompanying feeling of humiliation at the hands of another person. I feel the need to voice my opinion and fight back. Slaves do not enjoy that right. Peter lived in a world where often nearly half the people he saw were slaves. I might more easily agree with this verse if he had written — If your master treats you well, respond well. His instruction for Christian response to harsh unjust treatment was to voluntarily carry the burden that is unfairly being heaped upon you. Fireman Ed, the New York Jets most famous super fan, resigned his fanship this week because the indignation of supporting a losing team was more than he could bear. Really? We live in a country with very high class injustice.  
 

   Peter’s words make me consider my own reaction when I suffer harsh unjust treatment. In the very next verse he says — For this is commendable, if because of conscience toward God one endures grief, suffering wrongfully.
 

    The issue of my reaction to harsh treatment and suffering because of conscience toward God lands fundamentally in my faith. Do I trust God to care for my rights and my honor or do I let my hurt feelings reign and determine that I must fix the problem myself? God will always treat me more than fairly. My salvation testifies to the Grace of God in this regard. Christ’s revenge on me for my sin was expressed not like I would have expressed it, but instead with forgiveness flowing from love. Is it possible for me to follow Him to a place where I can respond to injustice with forgiveness flowing from love? What if I react instead of with revenge or even quiet separation, but with forgiveness flowing from love? What if the greater the harsh injustice, I meet it with greater forgiveness flowing from love?
 

   Jesus often leads me to places where I cannot take another step until I surrender to suffering for His name’s sake and trust Him to lead me through it. When I submit, the issue is settled and I have peace (even if my tormentor is still flailing away). People may call that losing, but it is in fact a mighty spiritual victory. It exalts Christ. I cannot lift the name of Jesus by refusing to suffer injustice like He did. There can be victory in submission to suffering that the world will never understand. I need to revisit these thoughts daily, submit, pick up my cross and follow Him.

Copyright 2012 Mission of the Master Ministries, Inc. Can be quoted in whole of in part without prior written permission if a link is provided to http://wordwrokswednesday.blogspot.com

Hebrew Roots, the iPad Mini, Lance Armstrong, and an "I will" God...

Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them. Then you shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers; you shall be My people, and I will be your God. (Ezekiel 36:26-28  NKJV)

 

Behind the Word – and cause – (Hebrew) – ‘asha (pronounced aw-saw’) – to produce, to make, to accomplish with effect, to ordain, to bring about. 

 

   I went back and read what God told Moses in Exodus as He dictated the ten commandments. God prefaced His commands with – if you… Mankind saw that if you... and said sure, I will. The statement was not a lie repeated with no intention of following through, but rather a hope with no ability to be carried out. Lance Armstrong didn't set out to win with an illegal advantage, but was so obsessed with winning that he was willing to cheat to win. Christians should not judge him. We have all tried to win with God but found ourselves unwilling to carry out our plan without sinning. Our attempts to live within God's rules always fail until we receive God's Spirit who begins to cause us to be sanctified.

 

   God sent these commands knowing the predicament in which I would find myself – willing to obey, wanting to obey yet unable to fully obey. Was this a flawed strategy on the part of a flawless God? Hardly! It was a strategy designed to get the precise effect God intended. Paul wrote to the Galatians -- Therefore the law was our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith. (3:24) God knew He had to first prove beyond all doubt to me that I was incapable of willing myself to live a sinless life.

 

      Christ came and died and I found Him (really He found me) and so found relief from the weight of my sin. Then God sent His Holy Ghost to my heart that had received Him by faith in Jesus, and His language changed. The Old Covenant, The Law, The Commandments came with the – if you language, but through Ezekiel and Jeremiah, my loving Father changed His New Covenant mood and tense saying -

 

I will give you a new heart…

I will put a new Spirit within you…

I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh…

I will give you a heart of flesh…

I will put My Spirit within you…

I will cause you to walk in my statutes…

 

    When I became a Christian, I had a well tuned swearing tongue. I tried everything I could to quit swearing and failed. Abruptly one day the Holy Spirit confronted me. I confessed immediately that I had proven myself incapable to stop swearing. I had tried many times but I had failed. The Lord said to me, You are right. Now release all that effort and receive the power of My Spirit. Immediately and effortlessly, my thirty year career as a high level cursor was over. Unlike the iPad, I didn't receive help from a new improved Holy Spirit Mini. I received help from the original full sized Holy Spirit. He's not new and improved. He can't be improved. He's perfect. He's the same yesterday, today, and forever. Fully capable of causing sanctification where we have failed to cause it.

 

    The fullness of the New Covenant arrived with sufficient power to accomplish what God intended. The Holy Spirit resides in my inner being. He is continuously coaching, counseling, witnessing, and generously empowering.

 

I will put My Spirit within you…

I will cause you to walk in my statutes…

 

   God does not leave us as unarmed and unprotected warriors in our battle with sin. He will cause us to be sanctified once we are His children. Righteousness is an imputed blood bought gift.

But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.  (1 Corinthians 6:11 NKJV)
   I cannot commit the sanctification of my life, but I can submit to it as I submit each day to the work of the Holy Spirit in my heart.

   The spirit is willing.....

 

 

 

Copyright 2012 Mission of the Master Ministries, Inc. May be quoted in whole or in part without prior written permission if a link is provided to http://wordworkswednesday.blogspot.com

  

 

The Big Bang Theory, The Yankees vs the Tigers, and How can 3=1?

"Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one! (Deut 6:4 NKJV)

    When I was first exposed to physics in the 1960’s, science ridiculed the idea of an initial point of creation by a Creator. Science now settles solidly on the “Big Bang Theory” which actually aligns itself with the biblical account (but still ridicules it). In an interesting choice of words, physicists had to define the "infinite energy source" they say had to exist to explode into all matter that exists in the universe at the moment of the Big Bang. They call this infinite source a singularity. I agree. I call the Infinite Source of Energy that created everything a singularity named God. Today’s verse reminds me –The Lord our God, the Lord is One.

  Is it possible for 3=1? Not in math, and not in last nights MLB playoff game where the Yankees learned that 2 is greater then 1 as they lost to the Tigers 2-1, but maybe in Hebrew. In Genesis 22:2, God instructed Abram to take his only son to the mountain and sacrifice him. The one son spoken of is described by the Hebrew word yacheed, meaning absolutely the only one (a singularity).  Abram had one son given by God, and the Hebrew is screaming, Isaac is the only son. From the singularity of Abram’s one son God has kept and continues to keep His promises that (the now renamed by God) Abraham would be the father of many nations and his progeny would be as numerous as the stars in the sky. Of course his son Isaac was a type for Jesus, Gods (1=1) only son. Oops…. if Jesus(1) is God and the Father(1) is God and Holy Spirit(1)is God too, how can the scripture be true – the Lord is one?

   These verses appear alike in English, but they are not at all alike in Hebrew. Many Christians have struggled trying to understand the mystery of the Trinity. How can we avoid confusion with typical explanations telling us – one God in three persons….. What?....  Who really understands that explanation? Today’s verse, in its original Hebrew, brings perfect clarity. This verse does not say the Lord is yacheed, (an absolute singularity), but says the Lord is echad  In Hebrew this word describes a compound unity, one thing comprised of more than one thing that still results in one thing.  Trinity = a compound Unity - The Lord your God is One (3=1, echad). In Genesis 1:5 we read – God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. So the evening and the morning were the (echad) first day, a single day made up of multiple parts.

   The word used as God in today’s verse is Elohim. It always speaks to a singular God, yet it is written in Hebrew in a plural form and all adverbs and verbs which attend it are also plural.  One God, multiple parts.   

  God didn’t leave us searching the Old Testament alone for this explanation. It is clearly declared in 1 Corinthians 8 -- ⁴Therefore concerning the eating of things offered to idols, we know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is no other God but one. ⁵For even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth (as there are many gods and many lords), ⁶yet for us there is one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we for Him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and through whom we live.

  The Lord our God (Elohim, plural), the Lord is One (echad - one compound God made of multiple parts –Father, Son and Holy Spirit).


Copywrite 2012 Mission of the Master Ministries, Inc.  May be quoted in whole or in part as long as a link is provided to http://wordworkswednesday.blogspot.com .