A personal revelation.
Too often, we (Christians) live as though God's love for us is merely some kind of tolerance. As if he's sitting up in heaven, some very great distance away from us, murmuring to himself, "Oh, bother, they've slipped up again. Good thing I'll work that out for good, eventually!...." or "WHEN will they ever LEARN! Good thing they'll die and get to Glory, eventually! I can't wait to finally make them holy; THEN they'll be acceptable...."
This is INSIDIOUS!
As if our God is somehow surprised by our weakness and failure? As if the price of Jesus' blood was somehow insufficient to accomplish the work of securing us in the affection of God for all eternity? Has he not known ALL from the beginning? To the extent that when we see Jesus revealed in his glory, he is described as appearing "as a lamb SLAIN FROM THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE WORLD!" (see Rev. 5:6, 13:8) In God's economy, the cross was already a FINISHED work. We just didn't see that manifest until Jesus made the declaration, hanging there ~ ("It is FINISHED!" see Jn 19:30) ~ the ultimate agony for ecstasy! (see Heb. 12:1-3)
(Or do you think perhaps that "insidious" is too strong a word? Ah, but how much of a prison it has been to me, thinking that I only ever continue to FAIL to please my Father? What is my snare? if not the fact I have failed to realize and receive his LOVE? GOD DOES NOT "TOLERATE" HIS CHILDREN! If God "tolerates" anything, it could be said he TOLERATES evil, he TOLERATES the evil-doer. But God LOVES his children, and in them he is WELL-pleased, because of Jesus! This is absolutely STAGGERING! If we would but grasp it, even if unsee-ingly! nevertheless by Faith! Thank you, Lord!)
No WONDER we continue to give ourselves over to sin as though it still has a death-grip on us! We haven't really reckoned ourselves as dead to sin (see Romans 6), and why? Could it be that we haven't been captivated by the UNFAILING, SUPERCEDING, CROSSING-ALL-SPACE-AND-TIME TO PURSUE AND WOO US LOVE of our Father, God.
Our awareness of our weakness is only intended to fan the flame of our JOYFUL dependence! Our Father does not condemn us; he HIMSELF took on our condemnation, so we are not just free FROM sin, but free TO love HIM!
It's not just "the greatest story ever told." It's the greatest LOVE story ever told!
Oh, Lord God, my good Father, help me ALWAYS remember, I am not merely tolerated, I am dearly BELOVED! because of Jesus ~ for HIS sake, for YOUR glory, and for MY joy!
27 December, 2011
Yes, only Jesus!
Simple and well-put by Bonnke on his FB account, earlier today. Please read slowly and deliberately:
"The Gospel is like breathing - there's no future in the alternative. Everybody has a right to choose, but the options are pretty limited - live or die. People think they have found alternatives; mind-power, meditation, Buddhism, New Age, healing cults, but they are no more alternatives than a game of chess. They are no answer to the crippling power of sin and do not deliver us from guilt. People need saving and ONLY JESUS SAVES. You may look where you like – there is no other Savior. Yes, only Jesus. God bless you." ~REINHARD BONNKE
"The Gospel is like breathing - there's no future in the alternative. Everybody has a right to choose, but the options are pretty limited - live or die. People think they have found alternatives; mind-power, meditation, Buddhism, New Age, healing cults, but they are no more alternatives than a game of chess. They are no answer to the crippling power of sin and do not deliver us from guilt. People need saving and ONLY JESUS SAVES. You may look where you like – there is no other Savior. Yes, only Jesus. God bless you." ~REINHARD BONNKE
19 December, 2011
"...Correct but COLD."
I may have posted on this before, but today's quote by Bonnke on Facebook is worth requoting, with this side-note:
David Martyn Lloyd-Jones once made a similar remark, to the effect that "right doctrine" IS essential; it's equivalent to us building the altar. But we must ALSO call on God to send the FIRE from heaven! Thank you, Lord! ~L
Evangelist Reinhard Bonnke:
"Unless we are burning we can never set anybody else on fire. We can be so orderly, doing everything with dignity and decorum but … without fire! Correct but cold. On Mount Carmel the pagans laid everything correctly on the altar ready for the sacrifice but the devil could not bring a spark from hell to light it. Elijah then rebuilt the altar, stones, wood, sacrifice, everything according to the book, and called down fire from heaven. And it came! And it comes!"
David Martyn Lloyd-Jones once made a similar remark, to the effect that "right doctrine" IS essential; it's equivalent to us building the altar. But we must ALSO call on God to send the FIRE from heaven! Thank you, Lord! ~L
Evangelist Reinhard Bonnke:
"Unless we are burning we can never set anybody else on fire. We can be so orderly, doing everything with dignity and decorum but … without fire! Correct but cold. On Mount Carmel the pagans laid everything correctly on the altar ready for the sacrifice but the devil could not bring a spark from hell to light it. Elijah then rebuilt the altar, stones, wood, sacrifice, everything according to the book, and called down fire from heaven. And it came! And it comes!"
"The Spirit of God is Arousing Us Within"
....
24 I've tried everything and nothing helps. I'm at the end of my rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me? Isn't that the real question?
25 The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does. He acted to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind, but am pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different.
1-2 With the arrival of Jesus, the Messiah, that fateful dilemma is resolved. Those who enter into Christ's being-here-for-us no longer have to live under a continuous, low-lying black cloud. A new power is in operation. The Spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has magnificently cleared the air, freeing you from a fated lifetime of brutal tyranny at the hands of sin and death.
3-4 God went for the jugular when he sent his own Son. He didn't deal with the problem as something remote and unimportant. In his Son, Jesus, he personally took on the human condition, entered the disordered mess of struggling humanity in order to set it right once and for all. The law code, weakened as it always was by fractured human nature, could never have done that.
The law always ended up being used as a Band-Aid on sin instead of a deep healing of it. And now what the law code asked for but we couldn't deliver is accomplished as we, instead of redoubling our own efforts, simply embrace what the Spirit is doing in us.
5-8 Those who think they can do it on their own end up obsessed with measuring their own moral muscle but never get around to exercising it in real life. Those who trust God's action in them find that God's Spirit is in them—living and breathing God! Obsession with self in these matters is a dead end; attention to God leads us out into the open, into a spacious, free life. Focusing on the self is the opposite of focusing on God. Anyone completely absorbed in self ignores God, ends up thinking more about self than God. That person ignores who God is and what he is doing. And God isn't pleased at being ignored.
9-11 But if God himself has taken up residence in your life, you can hardly be thinking more of yourself than of him. Anyone, of course, who has not welcomed this invisible but clearly present God, the Spirit of Christ, won't know what we're talking about. But for you who welcome him, in whom he dwells—even though you still experience all the limitations of sin—you yourself experience life on God's terms. It stands to reason, doesn't it, that if the alive-and-present God who raised Jesus from the dead moves into your life, he'll do the same thing in you that he did in Jesus, bringing you alive to himself? When God lives and breathes in you (and he does, as surely as he did in Jesus), you are delivered from that dead life. With his Spirit living in you, your body will be as alive as Christ's!
12-14 So don't you see that we don't owe this old do-it-yourself life one red cent. There's nothing in it for us, nothing at all. The best thing to do is give it a decent burial and get on with your new life. God's Spirit beckons. There are things to do and places to go!
15-17 This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life. It's adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike "What's next, Papa?" God's Spirit touches our spirits and confirms who we really are. We know who he is, and we know who we are: Father and children. And we know we are going to get what's coming to us—an unbelievable inheritance! We go through exactly what Christ goes through. If we go through the hard times with him, then we're certainly going to go through the good times with him!
18-21 That's why I don't think there's any comparison between the present hard times and the coming good times. The created world itself can hardly wait for what's coming next. Everything in creation is being more or less held back. God reins it in until both creation and all the creatures are ready and can be released at the same moment into the glorious times ahead. Meanwhile, the joyful anticipation deepens.
22-25 All around us we observe a pregnant creation. The difficult times of pain throughout the world are simply birth pangs. But it's not only around us; it's within us. The Spirit of God is arousing us within. We're also feeling the birth pangs. These sterile and barren bodies of ours are yearning for full deliverance. That is why waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting. We, of course, don't see what is enlarging us. But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy.
26-28 Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, God's Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don't know how or what to pray, it doesn't matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans. He knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our pregnant condition, and keeps us present before God. That's why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good.
29-30 God knew what he was doing from the very beginning. He decided from the outset to shape the lives of those who love him along the same lines as the life of his Son. The Son stands first in the line of humanity he restored. We see the original and intended shape of our lives there in him. After God made that decision of what his children should be like, he followed it up by calling people by name. After he called them by name, he set them on a solid basis with himself. And then, after getting them established, he stayed with them to the end, gloriously completing what he had begun.
31-39 So, what do you think? With God on our side like this, how can we lose? If God didn't hesitate to put everything on the line for us, embracing our condition and exposing himself to the worst by sending his own Son, is there anything else he wouldn't gladly and freely do for us? And who would dare tangle with God by messing with one of God's chosen? Who would dare even to point a finger? The One who died for us—who was raised to life for us!—is in the presence of God at this very moment sticking up for us. Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us and Christ's love for us? There is no way! Not trouble, not hard times, not hatred, not hunger, not homelessness, not bullying threats, not backstabbing, not even the worst sins listed in Scripture:
They kill us in cold blood because they hate you.
We're sitting ducks; they pick us off one by one.
None of this fazes us because Jesus loves us. I'm absolutely convinced that nothing—nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable—absolutely nothing can get between us and God's love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us.
Romans 7:24-8:39 from THE MESSAGE
24 I've tried everything and nothing helps. I'm at the end of my rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me? Isn't that the real question?
25 The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does. He acted to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind, but am pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different.
1-2 With the arrival of Jesus, the Messiah, that fateful dilemma is resolved. Those who enter into Christ's being-here-for-us no longer have to live under a continuous, low-lying black cloud. A new power is in operation. The Spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has magnificently cleared the air, freeing you from a fated lifetime of brutal tyranny at the hands of sin and death.
3-4 God went for the jugular when he sent his own Son. He didn't deal with the problem as something remote and unimportant. In his Son, Jesus, he personally took on the human condition, entered the disordered mess of struggling humanity in order to set it right once and for all. The law code, weakened as it always was by fractured human nature, could never have done that.
The law always ended up being used as a Band-Aid on sin instead of a deep healing of it. And now what the law code asked for but we couldn't deliver is accomplished as we, instead of redoubling our own efforts, simply embrace what the Spirit is doing in us.
5-8 Those who think they can do it on their own end up obsessed with measuring their own moral muscle but never get around to exercising it in real life. Those who trust God's action in them find that God's Spirit is in them—living and breathing God! Obsession with self in these matters is a dead end; attention to God leads us out into the open, into a spacious, free life. Focusing on the self is the opposite of focusing on God. Anyone completely absorbed in self ignores God, ends up thinking more about self than God. That person ignores who God is and what he is doing. And God isn't pleased at being ignored.
9-11 But if God himself has taken up residence in your life, you can hardly be thinking more of yourself than of him. Anyone, of course, who has not welcomed this invisible but clearly present God, the Spirit of Christ, won't know what we're talking about. But for you who welcome him, in whom he dwells—even though you still experience all the limitations of sin—you yourself experience life on God's terms. It stands to reason, doesn't it, that if the alive-and-present God who raised Jesus from the dead moves into your life, he'll do the same thing in you that he did in Jesus, bringing you alive to himself? When God lives and breathes in you (and he does, as surely as he did in Jesus), you are delivered from that dead life. With his Spirit living in you, your body will be as alive as Christ's!
12-14 So don't you see that we don't owe this old do-it-yourself life one red cent. There's nothing in it for us, nothing at all. The best thing to do is give it a decent burial and get on with your new life. God's Spirit beckons. There are things to do and places to go!
15-17 This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life. It's adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike "What's next, Papa?" God's Spirit touches our spirits and confirms who we really are. We know who he is, and we know who we are: Father and children. And we know we are going to get what's coming to us—an unbelievable inheritance! We go through exactly what Christ goes through. If we go through the hard times with him, then we're certainly going to go through the good times with him!
18-21 That's why I don't think there's any comparison between the present hard times and the coming good times. The created world itself can hardly wait for what's coming next. Everything in creation is being more or less held back. God reins it in until both creation and all the creatures are ready and can be released at the same moment into the glorious times ahead. Meanwhile, the joyful anticipation deepens.
22-25 All around us we observe a pregnant creation. The difficult times of pain throughout the world are simply birth pangs. But it's not only around us; it's within us. The Spirit of God is arousing us within. We're also feeling the birth pangs. These sterile and barren bodies of ours are yearning for full deliverance. That is why waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting. We, of course, don't see what is enlarging us. But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy.
26-28 Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, God's Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don't know how or what to pray, it doesn't matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans. He knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our pregnant condition, and keeps us present before God. That's why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good.
29-30 God knew what he was doing from the very beginning. He decided from the outset to shape the lives of those who love him along the same lines as the life of his Son. The Son stands first in the line of humanity he restored. We see the original and intended shape of our lives there in him. After God made that decision of what his children should be like, he followed it up by calling people by name. After he called them by name, he set them on a solid basis with himself. And then, after getting them established, he stayed with them to the end, gloriously completing what he had begun.
31-39 So, what do you think? With God on our side like this, how can we lose? If God didn't hesitate to put everything on the line for us, embracing our condition and exposing himself to the worst by sending his own Son, is there anything else he wouldn't gladly and freely do for us? And who would dare tangle with God by messing with one of God's chosen? Who would dare even to point a finger? The One who died for us—who was raised to life for us!—is in the presence of God at this very moment sticking up for us. Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us and Christ's love for us? There is no way! Not trouble, not hard times, not hatred, not hunger, not homelessness, not bullying threats, not backstabbing, not even the worst sins listed in Scripture:
They kill us in cold blood because they hate you.
We're sitting ducks; they pick us off one by one.
None of this fazes us because Jesus loves us. I'm absolutely convinced that nothing—nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable—absolutely nothing can get between us and God's love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us.
Romans 7:24-8:39 from THE MESSAGE
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