" HEAR MY VOICE"

If man was created in the image of God and we know that God is three persons i.e. the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, is there a place in their fellowship for us? Can we experience an intimacy to hear God's voice again?  The intimacy that man lost in the Fall of Adam?

Jesus said,"My sheep hear My voice and they fellow me."  How can we hear God's voice? Is He speaking to us today?

I don't believe that He has ever stopped speaking. Man lost his spiritual ears and eyes, when he willfully chose to disobey God's commandment and elected to serve himself.  His once close relationship with his creator was taken from him. Adam and Eve were cast out of God's presence. Man was lost: spiritually lost.  His ability to spiritually see and to hear His God was gone. Only his conscience was left to discern good and evil. We know how that has turned out.   Now everyone is doing what is right in their own eyes. 

The question is asked,"Is there hope to hear God's voice again?"
Thankfully there is. What we lost in Adam, we have gained back in Christ. Through the good news of the gospel, we can repent of Adam's sin as our own.  Our human nature is no different than Adam's. It just manifests itself differently through our personalities. 
When we repent, we  receive God's forgiveness through the precious blood of Jesus. The power of the cross justifies us as if we had never sinned. God's forgiveness is an incredible gift of love from the merciful, gracious heart of God. Our spiritual eyes and ears are opened and we can begin to hear God's voice again.

Today, the voice of God comes to us through the person of the Holy Spirit.  He will convict us of sin, righteousness and judgement. He will lead us into all truth and speak only what He hears.  He is our teacher and confirms everything He says by the Word of God.  He is the person of the Godhead who releases the grace of God to overcome the World, the Flesh (our lower nature) and the Devil. 

The Person of the Holy Spirit comes to apply the blood of Jesus to our hearts to enable us to once again, hear God's voice. His is the most gentle, thoughtful,  generous, faithful, caring voice I have ever heard and it has never changed.  Even when He corrects me, His voice is kind and I want to repent. He has captured my heart to pursue Him  and follow Him forever.

A MYSTERY REVEALED

How does the Lord take a man and a women and make them one flesh?  Have you ever noticed after years of marriage how a husband and wife often look alike? They know each other,s thoughts before they even speak.  How does this amazing mystery develop?  I don't know.  It just happens.

My husband and I have been a part of this GREAT MYSTERY for 55 years, and more is still being revealed to us. We have our problems, discouragements,and misunderstandings,  but the Lord has preserved our covenant of marriage.

We were NOT believers when we were married in 1958.  By the grace of God we were born again in 1970 and our whole marriage began to change.  We had so much to learn. But the Lord was faithful to bring us year by year into a greater love for each other. 

There are many good books written about marriage. But, this one truth that is often quoted at weddings, we have valued the most. It is Ephesians 5:32. "This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.  However, let each one of you LOVE his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she RESPECTS her husband."    This has been the key in our relationship that has turned our heart more and more to each other.  Men need to be RESPECTED and women need to be LOVED. 

The world has this upside down.  It can not possibly understand God's ways, (1Corinthians 2:14, 1John 2:15). The world wants everyone to be equal and fair in their own eyes. Selfishness  reigns in the center many marriages, which only leads to failure.  But when the wife respects her husband, with a growing sense of gratitude in her heart, her husband will respond in love. The children receive the overflow of their parent's love for each other and are emotionally more mature. 

If you are a Christian and believe in holy matrimony between a man and a woman, your marriage is special.  You have entered into a holy covenant of marriage with Almighty God. He will keep HIS covenant through the many storms of life, even when you think you have failed.  He is faithful when we are faithless. (2Timothy 2:13).  His forgiveness will heal many wounds of the heart and His love will restore lost affections.

We would  like to recommend to you a great book, which we believe will help you understand more of this great  mystery of marriage.  It is called  "LOVE AND RESPECT" by Dr. Emerson Eggerichs. I know you will be blessed.

Born to Die

For the past three weeks the phrase, 'Unto us a child is born and unto us a SON is GIVEN" has been running through  my mind. I have read it, sung it and shared it. It has been on Christmas cards and in songs on the car radio. Christmas is a joyful season of year, to celebrate the birth of our Savior the Lord Jesus Christ.

 "Lord," I said, "I love all the singing and the songs, but, I sense that there is something more that You would like to share with me this Christmas." And indeed there was something, MUCH more.

I have felt, just a 'pinch' of what the Father might have felt when He had to forsake His Son on Calvary. But, I had never really thought very seriously how the Father must of felt when His son was born. In my world, when a baby is born there is great rejoicing and anticipation of its future. But, to deeply feel the Father's heart the day His Son was born, caused me to ponder these thoughts.

"That day, Father,when you saw your only begotten Son lying in the manager.  He wasn't just a baby.  He was your Son. On that day, you saw the fulfillment of Psalm 40:6-8 saying 'Sacrifice and offering, you have not desired, but you have given me an open ear. Burnt offering and sin offering you have not required. Then I said, behold, I have come; in the scroll of the book it is written of me: I desire to do your will, O my God, your law is written in my heart.'" Then later in Hebrews 10:5-7, the writer quotes again Psalms 40:6-8, but this time God adds "Sacrifices and offering you have not desired, but a BODY YOU HAVE PREPARED FOR ME. In burnt offering and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure. Then I said, "Behold, I have come to do your will, O God, as it is written of me in the scroll of the book". Jesus Christ was the only BABY EVER BORN TO SUFFER AND TO DIE!

Christmas is meaningless without the whole story.  Lord Jesus Christ, God Almighty, one with the Father and the Holy Spirit, humbled Himself to become a human being, to live a perfect life where Adam had failed. I believe that the baby in the manager was not only the Son of God, but the Son of Man. When Jesus humbled Himself and became a man,  He gave up His rights as the Son of God, to IDENTIFY with mankind. Mankind was lost. Adam had failed.  The world was under condemnation and there was no escape from judgement.  There was NO other way to redeem man, (you and I) back to our Father, except for Jesus to exchange His righteousness for our unrighteousness, by taking our sin upon Himself. "For He who knew no sin became sin for us" " It is finished," was His cry.

There is no greater LOVE in this whole world than the love of the Father and His Son Jesus. Their great sacrifice for each other brought about our salvation. Today, Jesus still relates to us as the Son of Man. He alone knows each of us personally and desires a deeper relationship with Him. Because Jesus (God) became man He can relate to all our infirmities, joy, and suffering. He experienced life here on earth, as we know it.

It is so easy to caught up in all the Christmas activities and never take the time to ponder that the babe laying in the manager is Jesus, a BODY PREPARED , and a FATHER'S LOVE GIVEN FOR SIN OF THE WORLD; A BABY BORN TO DIE.

It All Hangs On God

Have you ever thought how much our salvation hangs on God's faithfulness to keeping the covenant He made in His Son?  Our whole salvation hangs on God the Father, when He made an eternal covenant with His Son Jesus Christ. We by faith receive the finished work and ENTER into THAT new covenant with the almighty God through Jesus Christ.  Our God is a God of covenant. He will NEVER break a covenant that He has made.  Man is the covenant breaker, not God.  That is why God the Father could never make an everlasting covenant with anyone else except His own Son, Jesus.

 The first Covenant ever made on man's behalf was right after the sin of Adam.  In it, God announced what He would do to save the race that was potentially in the first couple.  He announced the very first PROMISE of their salvation and deliverance from the bondage of sin.

                   "And I WILL put enmity between you and the woman,  and between your seed and her Seed;  He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heal." Genesis 3:15

 Notice that this promise contains NO REFERENCE to humans' part in bringing it to pass. It refers only to the "I WILL"  of God.  He was the guarantor of the covenant salvation that He announced.  He COMMITTED HIMSELF to placing a supernatural enmity between humankind and the serpent that would culminate in the coming of a certain seed (Jesus Christ) who would utterly defeat the serpent, crushing his head .  There were no "ifs," no conditions, that humans must fulfill if this wonder were to come to pass in their history. There was only the unconditional announcement that hung on the covenant oath of God.

One of the most important truths that I have learned about the new covenant  is that Jesus, the Son of God, is the NEW COVENANT IN HIMSELF. It is a covenant made by God the Father with God the Son.  The Father guarantees the divine side of the covenant, and the Son guarantees the HUMAN side having taken our humanity as us and for us.  It becomes ours individually, as we believe on the Lord Jesus and are JOINED to Him.  The new covenant is out of our hands (praise the Lord) and beyond our ability to break. It is guaranteed by the Triune God and, therefore, is unconditional and unbreakable.

Jesus Christ is the representative Man of the new covenant.  As the Son of God, he stands in an eternal, infinite love relationship with the Father. As the sinless Man, He is worthy to enter into covenant with Him.  He makes the covenant solely for us. As the eternal object, of the Father's love and delight, He does not need to enter into covenant with Him. He has NO NEED of any of the promises and blessings of the covenant.  In limitless love for us, He has joined Himself to us, never to leave us. We are inseparable from Him. He ACHIEVES the new covenant and earns all of its blessings NOT for Himself, BUT FOR US!  When the Holy Spirit joins us to Him, all the promises of the covenant made to Him become ours.

Jeremiah 31:33, 34 tells us, "But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I WILL put my law in their minds, and write it on their hearts;  I WILL be their God ,  and they WILL be My people . No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying 'know the Lord',' from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the Lord.  For I WILL forgive their iniquity, and their sin I WILL remember no more."

Ezekiel 36:25-27 says,"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 you flesh and give you a heart of flesh.  I WILL put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes. You will keep My judgments and do them"

I would like to continue this "Thought to Ponder" in another posting. I believe that the more we understand the new covenant that Jesus made in His blood,the more that it will strengthen our relationship with Jesus Christ. We will know who we are in Him and who He is in us. It is all about WHO we know NOT WHAT we know about Jesus that validates our relationship with Him.

New Beginnings, According to God's Math

Recently I was reading an article on numbers in the bible. I found it very interesting and I thought you might find it fascinating also.  God does nothing by accident nor has he created an accident. You and I are NOT accidents no matter what we think about ourselves or what others tell us.  God has a purpose in all that He does and creates. But what about why He created mathematics?


God's mathematics is amazing.  Take the number 8 for example. Often the number 8 stands for new beginnings which seems to be the case in the first place we find the number 8.  It is with reference to Noah--there were 8 people on the ark and of course they were the seed stock of the new population.  Another 8 reference
to new beginnings is found in Leviticus 8 when the first high priest was consecrated. Afterwards he was commanded to stay in the tabernacle for seven days and then go out on the 8th day to begin his priestly duties. The next time we see evidence of  8 being symbolic of a new beginnings is when Samuel anointed Jesse's 8th son and that was David.

 Some say that the number 8 not only stands for new beginnings but also can symbolize divinity.  When the name Jesus is assigned Greek numerical values, the total is 888.  Considering that "Jesus" in Hebrew means salvation (new birth), we see both divinity and new beginning.  It's interesting to me that the Transfiguration was 8 days after speaking to the disciples about the coming kingdom (Luke 9), and that God spoke to Abraham on 8 occasions, It was also 8 days after the resurrection that Jesus allowed Thomas to touch Him and this was probably about Thomas taking on new faith and starting a new empowered life.


Then we come to Romans Chapter 5:1-11. We find 8 new conditions that come to the believer as a result of the new birth. (Interesting to read)  2 Peter 1:4-8 also describes 8 promises to those who have become partakers of God's grace.  Two more instances that are interesting are found in John 2 where the word "born" is used 8 times in the first 8 verses and finally in John 4 where the word "water" is used 8 times in verses 7-15.

Other 8's include the fact that the Israelites were encamped in 8 specific groups around the taberancle while they were out in the wilderness. There are 8 instances where people were raised from the dead mentioned in God's word. The feast of tabernacles is 8 days long. Elijah  performed 8 miracles, (and after Elisha prayed for a double portion, he performed 16 miracles). There are 8 references to the Old Testament in Revelation chapter 1. There were 8 writers of the New Testament, and Jewish boys were commanded to be circumcised on the 8th day. I am sure that if an in-depth number study was done, the biblical number eight would become even more intriguing.

We all know that 666 is the number for man and that one day the Anti Christ will demand that number to be placed on our foreheads,
and we as believers are to reject it.  God's math is fascinating, but only one number is really important, the number 3.  Just think about that!!

 I received this information from an article written by Les Feldick Ministries, "Through the Bible".  He is a dear brother and a faithful bible teacher.

A Murmuration, a Divine Mystery

This is 2 minutes long.  It is another mystery of Creator God, Elohim:  No one knows why they do it.
Yet each Fall, thousands of starlings dance in the twilight above England and Scotland.  The birds gather in shape-shifting flocks called murmurations, having migrated in the millions from Russia and Scandinavia to escape winter's frigid bite.  Scientists aren't sure how they do it, either.  The starlings' murmurations are manifestations of swarm intelligence, which in different contexts is practiced by schools of fish, swarms of bees and colonies of ants.  As far as I am aware, even complex algorithmic models haven't yet explained the starlings 'aerobatics, which rely on the tiny bird's quicksilver reaction time of under 100 milliseconds to avoid aerial collisions-and-predators-in the giant flock.


Despite their tour de force in the dusky sky, starlings have declined significantly in the UK in recent years, perhaps because of a decline in suitable nesting sites.  The birds still roost in several of Britain's rural pastures, however, settling down to sleep (and chatter) after their evening ballet.


Two young ladies were out on a late afternoon canoe ride and fortunately one of them remembered to bring her video camera.  What they saw was a wonderful murmuration display, caught in the short video.
I couldn't help but think, "Lord, you created theses starlings to praise and dance before you to express your glory."  ENJOY!!

                                                 http://vimeo.com/31158841