True Love Never Fails

Valentines Day is behind us now, and many of our hearts have been affirmed that somebody loves us. How long will that last? A day, a month, a year or to the next disagreement.  Human love is so fickle.  It loves you one minute and hates you the next. Is there another LOVE that will accept us for who we are and not force us to change, but to draw us to itself?  Is there a LOVE more powerful than human love, to miraculously  change us into new creation? A loving creation that has never been before created for eternity?


As much fun and joy as Valentines Day brings to our hearts, I have found  a LOVE that continues day after day, through trials and tribulations. It reaches out to be believed and received. It never changes. It is the always the same, yesterday, today and forever. It is never tired of expressing itself, even if it is rejected or pushed away. This LOVE will pursue it's object endlessly, until it finally captures a heart to confess, "I am LOVED by the very ONE who created me."


 To admit that to yourself, may not be the easiest fact to acknowledge, but it is true. You may look at yourself and say,"Who could love me? I am a failure, a loser, a disappointment to my wife, my husband, my parents and my whole family." All that may be true, but I would like to share with you the other side of your story.


Before the foundations of the earth were laid, when the great Elohim, the Creator God, created the heavens and the earth, He had you and me in His mind.We were not an afterthought,or a mistake. We were created out of His LOVE, because that is who He is.  God is Love. (1John 4:26) He had a plan for us to glorify is name and to enjoy Him forever. The creation of man was the greatest, most magnificent thought that God ever designed. Adam and Eve were two perfect human beings until that grave day, when they both decided to live for themselves without their Creator.  


It is so easy to believe that when Adam and Eve sinned that God stop loving mankind, but that is not true.  God is Love.  It is His nature.  It is who He is and He can't change. His great unconditional LOVE for us was so clearly demonstrated at the cross. (Romans 5:8)  God did not just SAY He loved us. He DID something that no man could do for himself. He sent His only begotten Son to earth to pay a debt He did not owe for a debt we could not pay.  Jesus in ONE extraordinary act, liberated mankind from the penalty of sin of Adam. (John 3:16,17)


 If you, like me, have ever had the thought," I didn't ask to be born or why should I be blamed for Adam's sin?" FORGET IT.  We didn't create ourselves and whether we like it or not, we all were created in sin in our mother's womb (Psalm 51:50). That is the TRUTH, and there is only ONE way out of this dilemma. LOVE, demonstrated on the cross for you and I is waiting for us, if we only accept it.  To reject the cross is to reject  LOVE, as if to say, " God I don't need you .  You and I will never be unconditionally accepted as we are in the Beloved. (Eph.1:6)"


Religion is dead and apart from LOVE we all are dead.  LOVE  expressed in the man Christ Jesus is the only human being, who really does loves us. We knows our talents, our gifts and desires.  He knows our future. He knows our every thought.  We don't have to perform to earn His approval of how good we are.  We are loved simply because He created us and He was willing to be judged in OUR PLACE in order to bring us back to Himself. I have to ask myself, honestly, "I don't know one person who really would die for me."  They might say they would, but, be honest ,the WILL to LIVE is far stronger than we might think. ONLY JESUS really cares for our soul.


It is His love for me that blows me away, not my love for Him.  Repentance is no longer a long drawn out process, because His love is so attractive that I don't want to sin. But, when I do, I know I have my Lord Jesus Christ as my advocate in Heaven, who says, " I am for you, my daughter and not against you. My blood is enough. Go and sin  no more."


Brothers and sisters, we are so blessed to be loved by God.  There is no one like Him in the Universe. The love of the early church for each other demonstrated to the world at that time, that Jesus lived, died and was resurrected. May we as God's children today, surrender to our Lord and allow His resurrected love, once again, to flow through us to a dying world.

Something to think about

How many times have you heard  this verse? The Lord spoke to His disciples saying "Come unto me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.."Matthew 11:28:29. Over the years it has brought much comfort to many weary souls, who struggle in this life, and who reaches out to God for comfort and peace. How faithful He is to meet our deepest need. This verse has comforted me many times. However, I would like to share something that I have recently thought about and I would LOVE your thoughts on this.

I have been pondering this verse for some time,wondering about the possibility, could Jesus be talking to His disciples about releasing His people from the burden of the law? When the Lord first spoke this to His disciples, the Nation of Israel was still under the ceremonial laws and the moral law  It was a HEAVY YOKE and a great BURDEN on the people, striving to keep the law 24-7. Every year on the day of atonement the High Priest would sprinkle the blood of a perfect lamb on the mercy seat in the Holy of Holies. For one whole year the sins of the Nation were covered by the blood, but the people were still were under the burden of the law. But what has interested me is when Jesus says, "Take MY yoke  upon you and learn of Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find REST for your soul." Was trying to help His disciples to understand that He was the the promised Messiah ,who would take away their sin and give them REST from all their striving? 1 Cor. 15:56 says "the sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.  BUT, thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ."  

The one thing I LOVE about Scripture is how relevant it is and that it continuously speaks to life in every situation. Isn't it wonderful that the law of life in Jesus Christ has set us free from the law of sin and death (Romans 8:1). We no longer have to struggle to keep the law or condemn ourselves when we sin.  Jesus has invited us to repent, (change our minds) come to Him and He will give us rest.  Could the REST that Jesus is speaking be pointing to Hebrew 4:9 "there remains therefore a Sabbath rest for the people of God. For the one who has entered His rest has Himself also rested from His works as God did from His.  Let us therefore be diligent to enter the rest, lest anyone fall through following the same example of disobedience."The rest of God is really something that I want to pursue to understand more and more. Perhaps, we could discuss this together in another post.
    

The Challenge with Unbelief

If we honestly believed in our hearts that Jesus really took our dirty, filthy, stinky clothes as His own in exchange for His beautiful, clean, perfectly white robe of righteousness, how can we continuously want to sin or live in unbelief? If we believe that this is true, and it is, what kind of an effect would it have when we get sick? Do we just roll over and accept the sickness?  If the very God who created us, lives in us, would He not know how to fix what He created?


Of course He would.  Jesus did not die in vain for His church.  He took on His body every sin, sickness and disease that was the result of Adam's sin. We No longer live in Adam.  We are children of the most High and we live in Jesus Christ.We have HOPE,in this world, His name is Jesus.  Our healer is alive. He is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow.  The only sick day He had on this earth was when we made Him sick at Calvary with all our sicknesses and diseases.  By His stripes we have been healed, past, present and future. When Jesus rose on the third day from the grave, all of our sin, sickness and disease were no longer on Him.  He was free and so were we. We have to hold on to this truth when we get sick and have any health problems.  He is our health.  


There was a king in the O.T.named Asa, who when he got sick first went to the physicians instead of the Lord.  The Lord was not pleased and the heart of God was grieved.  His sin was not that he consulted the physicians , but that he consulted them first (2 Chronicle16:12). Praise the Lord we are NOT under the LAW but under GRACE. We already have been punished in Jesus' death for our disobedience. But, I believe the principle is still the same.  God does not change. The only difference is that under the gospel of grace, we are unconditionally forgiven  all the times we have gone to the doctors without first praying.


I remember when this truth first hit me. I was sitting in a doctor's office waiting for him to come in, and this thought came to my mind, "Lord, why do we need doctors, if you have given the doctors everything they know to bring healing to your people?" I felt like He whispered my ear, "It is My MERCY daughter, for their  unbelief.  I love my bride and I want her well."  About that time the doctor entered the room  and the thought left me.


Later that day, the thought came back to me and I have to admit that I was in unbelief. I didn't  understand at the time that He really wanted me healed..  I was like Israel, wandering in the desert of unbelief for years, afraid of the giants in the promised land. I was allowing sin, sickness and disease to be bigger than the BLOOD  and RIGHTEOUSNESS of our Lord Jesus. I didn't believe that God was "GREATER IN ME THAN HE WHO IS IN THE WORLD." (John 4:4)  The first thing I would do was to run for the pill bottle and pray afterwards.  I did not seek out the Lord nor my church family, unless I thought my illness was very serious. Honestly, I was living in unbelief and deceiving myself that God wasn't interested in my illnesses. It never occurred to me that the Lord might have a better plan for His glory through my trial.. I never felt condemned.  It just felt good to repent, receive His unconditional forgiveness, remembering that He paid an unfathomable price for my sin of unbelief.


Since that day in the doctor's office, I am still learning so much about His healing. Even in the bible, Job         was healed after his horrific trial with the devil, but he still had to suffer. I love the end when Job says, "Once my EARS heard ABOUT You, but now my EYES SEE You".  Sometimes the Lord has used an illness to draw me into a deeper intimacy with Him.  It doesn't mean that He doesn't want to heal me.That is a LIE from the enemy.   It is ALL about His glory and my relationship WITH Him.  He is my blessing, my health and wholeness. He is the lover of my Soul and He ever lives to make intercession for His bride, you and I.  To God be the glory.

Accepting Unmerited Favor

I don't know how it is for you but, I had for many years made "grace", God's unmerited favor, more of a doctrine, than a reality. Yes, it is a wonderful doctrine to acknowledge, but I have found that God's unmerited favor is not a subject, it is A PERSON, AND HIS NAME IS JESUS. When I  have Jesus, I have unmerited grace. Jesus and unmerited grace do not exist separately.  His unmerited favor is fulfilled  in His entire being and you can not separate Jesus from His finished work on Calvary.

When I began to see JESUS  as He really was, grace (unmerited favor) began to flow like a mighty river into every dry and empty area of my physical body, marriage, career, and finances.  The more I increased in the knowledge of  our Lord Jesus Christ and His finished work at the cross, the more God's unmerited favor was multiplied into my life. Honestly,  I have to admit,  before then, I was living in unbelief.  I believed for salvation.  I knew that I was a sinner and that  Jesus died for my sins, but I wasn't in faith for how much God truly loved me. I kept His love at arm's length.

 I had stopped at the cross and continued to live my Christian life repenting of sin, but never enjoying my salvation, until I found out that I was under the LAW and not under GRACE.  What a horrible place to be, always feeling judged and having to do, do, do.Then, one day my eyes were opened to what Jesus had done, done, done! I was a new creation that had never existed before. I no longer just looked at the cross but believed the gospel and came to experience my new life. I believed that I was hidden in Christ,when he died, was buried and raised again.  My identification in Christ set me free from the LAW.  Praise be to God! Condemnation was over and  the resurrected Lord was alive in me. Satan may try to  roar like a lion, but Jesus has kicked his teeth out!

I would like to tell you a story. I think you will get the point.  During the Koren War, a little orphan girl had captured the heart of an American GI. AS his love grew for her, He and his wife wanted to adopt this little orphan and raise her in the United States. Now, remember, this little orphan only ever knew the sounds of guns, army tanks, airplanes and rockets exploding . Her whole life had been lived in a war zone. After the war, the GI brought her back to New York to live with them in the city. The adjustment for her took several months before she would trust her new parents and new home.  It was too unbelievably beautiful and totally foreign  to her old life.  Every time the noise of a fire truck or police serine sounded off, she would run and  hide behind the living room couch.  She was so riddled with fear, that it was all most impossible for her to feel loved and accepted . Her emotional memories of Korea were still present and  hindered her from believing the best of her new parents. This continued for months, before the orphan believed that her mommy and daddy really did loved her and would protect her from harm. She wasn't able to emotionally grow until she believed and accepted her parent's love. Once she did believe and receive their love, she was able to respond and grow up as a normal little girl.

I don't know about you, but for years, even after I was a believer, I felt like that little orphan girl.  Every time I sinned, I felt condemned and wanted to hide. It was hard for me to believe that God really loved me, even when I sinned. I still fell short of His glory. I believed that Jesus had died for my sins, was buried and rose again, but FEAR kept me in the prison of my mind.  After years of this struggle, my heart finally believed that the Lord not only loved me, but was delighted in me.  He doesn't see my sins.  They were all on Jesus and He had dealt with them.  Praise the Lord, He ONLY sees the BLOOD of His dear Son. The more my eyes were fixed on Jesus and not my sin, I sinned less and less. I can now thank the Lord and receive by faith His  UNCONDITIONALLY FORGIVENESS.  Today, I understand how God is changing  me. It is from faith to faith, strength to strength and from glory to glory. The more that I see my glorious Lord, the more that I am changed AND SIN LESS.  He alone is worthy of all my worship.