day no. 16,547: good news for dark days

Psalm 9:15

The heathen are sunk down in the pit that they made: in the net which they hid is their own foot taken.

The wicked dig a pit only to fall into it. They step in their own traps. They never fail to forget God in their accounting. They always forget to include sovereignty. They never budget for Someone else's omnipotence and always assume their own.

Psalm 35:8

Let destruction come upon him at unawares; and let his net that he hath hid catch himself: into that very destruction let him fall.

It is right and fitting that the vile should be struck by their own villainy. Conspirators deserve betrayal. They are paid in the coin by which they do commerce.

Psalm 141:10

Let the wicked fall into their own nets, whilst that I withal escape

The powers that be are never as powerful as they seem... or believe themselves to be. This is good news for dark days like ours. The godless can never rig the system for they always fail to account for God. Their arrogance is an ignorance. Stupid isn't a strategy. Insanity is incoherent. Sin does not work. Praise God.

day no. 16,426: the power of magnification

Psalm 34:3

Oh, magnify the LORD with me,

and let us exalt his name together!

Because we live in an age of science, we tend to imagine microscopes and magnifying glasses when we think of the word, “magnify.” In other words, we imagine blowing a small thing out of proportion in order to get a better look at it. So when we think about magnifying the Lord, we smuggle in the idea of making a big deal out of a rather trivial thing. We think we are making much of God by making a big deal out of His idiosyncrasies which can only be seen by those with special equipment. However, when we magnify the Lord, we are not blowing Him out of proportion, we are merely playing catch up. He is infinite and our worship is microscopic by comparison. He must squint to see it. We magnify the Lord by increasing our appreciation of the scope of His glory.

Ephesians 1:17-23

May the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which He has called you, what are the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His great might that He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And He put all things under His feet and gave Him as head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.

day no. 12,838: on a need to know basis

Deuteronomy 29:29

 

The hidden things belong to the Lord our God, but the revealed things belong to us and our children forever, so that we may follow all the words of this law.

 

I don’t particularly wrestle with doubt.

Not because I’m lazy, but because I just don’t really.

 

And it’s not that I have everything figured out.

I’m just somewhat comfortable knowing that I don’t get everything.

 

That doesn’t stop me from trying to mine from God’s Word truth and knowledge on which to build confidence.

 

Just the opposite.

 

I love reading my Bible and studying the texts for rich soil on which to walk.

 

I wonder if we have a morbid obsession in our society with needing to know stuff.

 

We have a tendency to be suspicious of any one or situation where someone knows more than we do.

 

So we wonder about vaccines, raw milk, smoking cigarettes, using cell phones, red meat, raw meat, weapons of mass destruction, left wing, right wing, buffalo wings and everything else in between.

 

If someone is an expert on something or has knowledge we don’t also get access to, we get suspicious.

 

And rightfully so.

Good assessment.

 

People should not be trusted with information.

They will use it for profit, power, prestige and whatever else that gets their pulse pumping.

 

But we can’t use the same rationale to excuse our suspicion of God.

 

He isn’t like us.

 

He already has all power, prestige and possession imaginable and unimaginable.

You can’t outthink His ability to provide you with creativity after all.

 

It is OK that we don’t know everything.

No one ever said you had to in order to believe.

 

It’s not that belief is in contrast to thinking and/or knowing, but that it is not contingent upon it per se.

 

St. Augustine famously said, “therefore do not seek to understand in order to believe, but believe that thou mayest understand.”

 

There are some things you don’t need to know.

You may never know why.

 

Do you trust and rely upon the One who does know, however, that is the question.

 

Can you love a sunset without understanding every element required to produce it?

You don’t demand a rainbow to be boxed in before you appreciate it.

 

You know how to admire that which is beyond your grasp.

Do not then require God to produce evidence in the court of your opinion.

day no. 12,824 continued... do you find fear or freedom in finding out that God is everywhere and knows each and every thing?

Yesterday morning we had old school/new school church. We sat in the living room with the Sabinos and their children and watched a Cornerstone sermon on Biblical sexuality on-line.
 

In discussing the passage afterwards, the following verse and idea occurred to me.

 

Proverbs 5:21

 

21 For a man’s ways are before the Lord’s eyes,
and He considers all his paths.

 

It is a terrifying proposition to consider that God knows everything about me. This idea produces fear and discomfort because I know enough about me to know that I am often ashamed of the thoughts that occur to me. Even if I have the restraint to forego working out that which my mind works in, it is still haunting to consider that God knows that. It is not hidden from Him.

 

I then considered how great and marvelous and all-knowing God must be to know with such detail the motives and thoughts of each person He creates. This capacity is exclusively Divine.

 

But then I considered that this same capacity that produces fear when coupled with assessment is the same capacity that produces confidence when coupled with Christ.

 

If He can judge me thoroughly, with no detail escaping His glance, He can free me entirely, with no sin left for which to account.

 

He can count each and every sin without missing a single one.

 

This is horrifying if each one adds to the weight of my punishment.

This is liberating if each and every weight is being removed to free me to move in Him.

 

That means, I can with full confidence, be assured that the full weight of my sin is known, accounted, paid for and forgiven.

 

Colossians 1:19-20

 

19 For God was pleased to have
all His fullness dwell in Him,
20 and through Him to reconcile
everything to Himself
by making peace
through the blood of His cross—
whether things on earth or things in heaven.

 

I then read My Utmost for His Highest which reinforced this reality.

What are you haunted by? You will say – By nothing, but we are all haunted by something, generally by ourselves, or, if we are Christians, by our experience. The Psalmist says we are to be haunted by God. The abiding consciousness of the life is to be God, not thinking about Him. The whole of our life inside and out is to be absolutely haunted by the presence of God. A child’s consciousness is so mother-haunted that although the child is not consciously thinking of its mother, yet when calamity arises, the relationship that abides is that of the mother. So we are to live and move and have our being in God, to look at everything in relation to God, because the abiding consciousness of God pushes itself to the front all the time.

 

If we are haunted by God, nothing else can get in, no cares, no tribulation, no anxieties. We see now why Our Lord so emphasized the sin of worry. How can we dare be so utterly unbelieving when God is round about us? To be haunted by God is to have an effective barricade against all the onslaughts of the enemy.

 

"His soul shall dwell at ease." In tribulation, misunderstanding, slander, in the midst of all these things,if our life is hid with Christ in God, He will keep us at ease. We rob ourselves of the marvellous revelation of this abiding companionship of God."God is our Refuge" – nothing can come through that shelter.

let's not and say, "we did."

Romans 10:9

…if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

There are more people who say they have done this than there are those who actually confess Christ and believe in His life, death and resurrection unto salvation.

Luke 6:46

“Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you?

Good question Jesus.

Why do we want to disobey while wanting others to think that we want to obey?

Why pretend to follow Jesus if you are not actually going to follow Him?

Do we think we can fool Him?

Do we think we can fool others?

Depending on our talent for treachery, we may be fooling some (even many).

But NOT Him.

And what does a man gain if he gets good will from men and yet forfeits his soul to obtain it?

A nice eulogy and a date with Deity.

Bottom line: we want all the benefits of going to heaven without the burdens of dying to get there.