Intimacy of the Church

I can’t say that this is an original thought because it isn’t.  I shamelessly ripped it off from a facebook post by Elizabeth C.  She posted, “I don’t pretend to know what loving others is like for everyone, but I can tell you what it is for me; to love others is knowing everything (good and bad) about someone, and still wanting to be there for them!”

So, why am I even writing this?  Well, it could be because a couple of days ago I didn’t even know who Elizabeth was.  Had I seen her picture or seen her in person, I would have known her face as someone who has recently started coming to the same church I go to.  I remember looking into one of the classrooms this past weekend and seeing a new, dark headed volunteer in there working with my children, but I didn’t know her name.  Can you imagine that, someone working with my kids and I don’t even know who they are.  Then, this morning, she asks to be my friend on facebook.  I had to ask my wife who she was because I didn’t know her.

So, that got me to thinking off and on as I sat at my desk this morning about how we know those around us, yet we know so little about them.  The older I get, the more convinced I am that the only way we as a church are going to shine the light of Christ to this lost and dying world is to be more involved with those around us.  I’m not saying that we have to conform to the lifestyle of the world, but there is a huge separation of those in the Church and those outside of it.  There is a pastor I know who says, “found people find people!”  The only way to find those people is to get involved in their lives and personally minister to them.

Now it’s confession time!  I don’t get involved with people very well.  I used to, but along the way, I’ve been injured, hurt, stomped on and a whole host of other things.  So, I’ve pulled myself into a little shell and drawn up boundary lines that will only allow people to get so close to me.  Yet, the funny thing is, I crave the closeness that can happen when people open themselves up to another.  You read in the Bible about Jonathan and David how they were so close to each other.  You read about Jesus getting into the lives of his disciples.  I mean, think about it, he literally spent 3 years with 12 men, traveling the countryside, teaching, talking, eating, and sleeping beside these men.  I realize that the Bible talks about the inner 3, Peter, James and John, but I don’t think for a minute that when Jesus rebuked Peter, He did it privately (Mark 8:33 kind of bears that out).  So, the disciples all knew each other’s business.  They knew Matthews good points and bad points as well as the rest of them.

So, my question is why is it so hard for us to “Do Life” like that today?  Why are we so easily offended or put off when someone starts opening up to us with the hurts and trials of life?  Sure, we love it when they share the triumphs and highs they experience.  But we don’t want to hear about the lows.  I am so guilty of this!  Here is the sobering thing about all of this.  Sure, Jesus went to the cross to be the sacrifice for our sins, and I’m not making light of that, but he also gave his life to his disciples before He went to that cross.  He “Did Life” with them so that when He was gone, they would believe in Him and continue what He started.  Why in the world would they go on putting themselves in danger if it wasn’t real?  They saw what happened to their leader.  Some of them stood at the foot of the cross, and I really believe that others hid amongst the crowd that had gathered.  They saw the agony; they saw the shredded body; they saw the blood; they heard the anguish; they watched the life leave Christ.  Why would they continue on after having seen that?  Because it was real.  They had experienced a life that was real when they walked with Jesus.

I believe that our enemy wants to keep us, at all costs, from having those kinds of relationships because if we do, God will be freed up in our lives to move in ways that we can’t even begin to comprehend.  I heard it said not long ago that if we will just do what the Bible says, God will begin to entrust us with more.  While I have found nowhere in the Bible where it says, “Thou shalt have close relationships with those around you,” the implication is there.  God chose a heathen by the name of Abraham to have fellowship with.  What?  Abraham a heathen?  Yeah, take a close look in the book of Genesis and see for yourself.  In Genesis 11, the people all came together to build a tower.  God intervened and caused a language barrier to come upon the people and scattered the people over the face of the earth.  Now, I may be wrong, but I’m not thinking that God did that because he was happy with what was going on.  So, Abraham descended from one of the dispersed groups.

Then, in Genesis 12, God chose Abraham.  Can you imagine that?  The God of the entire creation coming and choosing one man!  That is astounding to me.  He didn’t need to, He wanted to.  He desires close intimate fellowship with us.  We are His creation and from the limited account in Genesis 3, God appears to make it a habit of coming into the garden and “Doing Life” with His creation.  He wants us to have real life.  Our enemy does not want us to have that real life, which is why we struggle with it so much.  It is definitely why I struggle with it so much.

Maybe it’s just me, but this struggle confirms my belief in who God is.  It seems like I always try and look at the why of the struggle.  If some part of me wants to have close relationships and another part of me doesn’t, to me, that somehow bears out the Bible as being true.  I know that sounds crazy.  But put your mind into it a moment and ask yourself a few questions.

1.       Why do I desire close relationships?

2.       Why do I struggle with them when they are available to me?

I have never yet seen a baby that after a couple of months of life didn’t reach it’s tiny hands up to it’s mother and signal in a way that is impossible to miss that it wants to be held.  That child wants to be near it’s mother or father.  That child craves the attention, the affection, the closeness.  Studies have shown that children that are neglected have major issues later in life (read more here:  http://www.childwelfare.gov/pubs/factsheets/long_term_consequences.cfm).  So, that makes me wonder why it is later in life we push back so hard and don’t want to have that closeness, that intimacy.  Oh, but I don’t have that problem, I desire that closeness and intimacy, you might say.  Really?  Seriously?  Have you been divorced?  Have you had sex with someone outside of marriage or someone other than your spouse?  Right there is proof that you don’t really mean that.

Now before you go jumping off the deep end, don’t think I’m condemning you for any of these things.  Matter of fact, I’m divorced myself, so don’t think I don’t have a little bit of insight into this issue.  If you think about it, the reason divorce takes place is because of sin.  What?  Yeah, sin!  Divorce stems from sin because it is a lack of intimacy with God first and your spouse next.  Seriously, strip it all away and you know I’m telling it like it really is.  Maybe you didn’t want the divorce, but can you not see the lack of closeness that lead up to it. And sexual relationships before marriage and outside of marriage are just our attempt to find intimacy that will never be found outside of God.

So, to wrap this all up, our relationship and intimacy with God has to be solid before we can develop close, proper relationships with those around us.  But, this kind of leads to circular logic because we don’t develop a closer relationship with God without developing closer relationships with those around us.  Those around us help hold us accountable so that we can grow closer to God, which in turn, helps us grow closer to them.  By choosing not to develop close intimate relationships with those of like faith, those we are supposed to “Do Life” with, we are basically snubbing our nose at God and telling Him we don’t want a relationship with Him.

Wow, sometimes I hate thinking out loud and putting fingers to keyboard because I just made myself accountable for what I have written.  What about you, are you accountable for what you have read?

 

Condemnation

Romans 8:1-11(ESV)
¹There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. ²For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.  ³For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, ⁴in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.  ⁵For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.  ⁶To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.  ⁷For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot.  ⁸Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. ⁹You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.  ¹⁰But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness.  ¹¹If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.

‘Condemnation’ is a word of tremendous import; and it is well fairly to look at its meaning, that we may the better understand the wondrous grace that has delivered us from its power.  Echoing through the gloomy halls of a human court, it falls with a fearful knell upon the ear of the criminal, and thrills with sympathy and horror the bosom of each spectator of the scene.  But in the court of Divine Justice it is uttered with a meaning and solemnity infinitely significant and impressive.  To that court every individual is cited.  Before that bar each one must be arraigned.  “Conceived in sin, and shaped in iniquity,” man enters the world under arrest – an indicted criminal, a rebel manacled, and doomed to die…He lies down and he rises up – he repairs to the mart of business, and to the haunt of pleasure, a guilty, sentenced and condemned man.  And should the summons to eternity arrest him amid his dreams, his speculations, and his revels, the adversary would deliver him to the judge, the judge to the officer, and the officer would consign him over to all the pangs and horrors of the “second” and “eternal death.”  “He that believes not, is condemned already.”  My dear reader, without real conversion this is your present state, and must be your future doom.

But from this woe all believers in Christ are delivered.  The sentence of death under which, in common with others, they lay, is absolved; the curse is removed; the indictment is quashed; and “there is, therefore, now no condemnation.” – from No Condemnation in Christ Jesus by Octavius Winslow

I read this that I have quoted above yesterday and my heart was just filled with thanksgiving to my God who has saved me by His awesome power.  And what a wonderful time of the year to be thankful.  Also, since reading this, two hymns of the church have flooded my soul ever since.  “Amazing Grace” is one that just about everyone knows.  I am so thankful for His Amazing Grace.  Those of us who have called on Him and have been delivered from the condemnation we used to live under have so many reasons to thank the One who brought us new life; a life without condemnation.

The other hymn that came to me has the following lyrics:

1. When I survey the wondrous cross
   On which the Prince of glory died,
   My richest gain I count but loss,
   And pour contempt on all my pride.
2. Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast,
   Save in the death of Christ my God!
   All the vain things that charm me most,
   I sacrifice them to His blood.
3. See from His head, His hands, His feet,
   Sorrow and love flow mingled down!
   Did e’er such love and sorrow meet,
   Or thorns compose so rich a crown?
4. Were the whole realm of nature mine,
   That were a present far too small;
   Love so amazing, so divine,
   Demands my soul, my life, my all.

-Isaac Watts – When I Survey the Wonderful Cross

This song was written 303 years ago and it still holds true today.  It is packed full of so much truth and I just stand in awe that the God of all creation loved me enough to reach down into my life and love me.

Has he touched your life?  Even if you don’t acknowledge Him, he has.  Every day that you live is a gift of His graciousness.  We so often think that to acknowledge God requires us to give up so much, and it does!  But what we gain is far greater.  Eternity is a long time and spending it in the presence of God is a much better reward than what we have to give up in these few short years of life here in this world.

Won’t you call on him?  Won’t you reach out and survey the wondrous cross?  I realize that it is foolishness.  It makes no sense.  Somehow we think that we just need one more thing in our lives to make it to heaven.  We are good people.  All we need to do is a little more and we will make it to heaven.  But that just isn’t the case.  What is that ‘one more thing,’ that little bit more?  No matter how much we ‘do,’ it will never measure up to perfection which is what God is.  That is why He came into this world and died upon the cross.  He became the sacrifice to bring us back to Him.

I’ll admit that for me the hardest part of coming to Christ was admitting that there was nothing I could do to reach God.  That is what makes Christianity so different from all the other religions of the world.  All the other religions make heaven, enlightenment, nirvana, etc, something that man can obtain by doing something.  Mankind will never reach that perfect state by anything he does and if we will take a deep look inside, the condemnation we feel when trying to do that thing makes it abundantly clear that that is the truth.  Elvina Hall wrote a hymn in the mid 1800′s that sums it up:

Jesus paid it all

All to Him I owe.

Sin had left a crimson stain

He washed it white as snow.

When you survey the wondrous cross, you will begin to see that the sacrifice that God made that day thousands of years ago, paid our debt.  He is the one that came to us and made a way for us to come back to him.  He took all the guilt and shame and condemnation upon Himself to allow us to live free.  If you already have this freedom, thank Him for it!  If not, all you have to do is ask Him for it.  It is a free gift.

 

The Mist of Life

James 4:13-16

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.

For some reason, I seem to come around to a lot of math when I think about my faith.  Can’t say why that is because math wasn’t something I was really good at when I was in school.  Anyway, yesterday I got to thinking about eternity on my way home from work and how long that is.  I didn’t have to think very long before I heard an exchange between my granny and I from years gone by.  She would tell me to do something, and me, being the kid I was, would answer her back, “Granny, that will take forever for me to do.”  “Son,” she would patiently answer me, “forever is a long time.”  How true that is.  And somehow, I always got done what she asked me and it didn’t take “forever.”

So, my point in all this boiled down to a way of looking at life.  Let us say I was a man that was extremely rich.  Let us say that I made you an offer that went something like this:

I’ll give you 1 billion dollars, a house like nothing you could ever imagine and the ability to travel anywhere you want to with one catch.  The catch is that you have to live on a deserted island and you will start with nothing.  You have no shelter, no food, no water,  just the clothes on your back.  You have to survive on this island for 1 year.  If you do that, I’ll give you the reward.

Now, how many of you would take that challenge.  Talk about the ultimate “Survivor” show.  I bet you people would line up for days to take a shot at doing this.  A billion dollars is a mighty big motivator, don’t you think?  I personally hate coconuts, but I think I could learn to like them for a payout like that.

So, how does all this relate to eternity and the scripture I started with above?  Here is where the math comes in.  According to Answers.com, the average life span worldwide is a little over 66 years.  This statistic is from 1998 so it’s a bit old, but we can use it for my illustration.  One year consists of 365.2422 days.  So, if a person lived 66 years, they would encounter 24,106 days in their lifetime (I rounded up).

How does 24,106 days compare to eternity?  Lets set it up like this:  1 year of eternity equals 1 day of your life of 66 years here on earth.  At the end of 24,106 years in eternity, it would equal your entire lifetime of days here on earth.  But, eternity goes on.  At the end of 48,212 years in eternity, using the same formula, those years would equal 2 lifetimes of days here on earth.  I could carry the math out quite a bit, but I think this makes my point.  Compared to eternity, our span on this earth is pretty short.

The problem is, we don’t think that way.  We say that someone who has lived 100 years has lived to a ripe old age.  I submit that in the grand scheme of things, they are literally a baby.  Is it any wonder that the passage of scripture above says our life is just a mist.  Our physical life is kind of like when you exhale into cold air.  You see it for a moment and then it just disappears.

So, let us go back to my illustration about the contest to win 1 billion dollars.  People don’t want to give up their lives to God in this life because it costs too much.  Many would give up a year for a billion dollars, but not many will give up an earthly  lifetime for an eternity of the greatest joy, happiness and love that you can ever imagine; actually, if God is infinite, His love, joy, and happiness are infinite, so we really can’t imagine it.  But why is it that we won’t give up a small amount of time in this life to enjoy eternity?  Why are we so shortsighted and only look at today and what we can get out of it.  John says it in his gospel:

When Jesus had said these things, he departed and hid himself from them. Though he had done so many signs before them, they still did not believe in him, so that the word spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled:

“Lord, who has believed what he heard from us, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?”

Therefore they could not believe.   For again Isaiah said,

“He has blinded their eyes and hardened their heart, lest they see with their eyes, and understand with their heart, and turn, and I would heal them.”

Isaiah said these things because he saw his glory and spoke of him.

(John 12:36-41ESV)

Here Jesus was doing things that nobody had ever seen before.  He was raising the dead, causing blind eyes to see, causing sickness to be healed, and nowhere in Scripture does anybody ever prove that Jesus didn’t do that.  Well, you might say, the Scripture was written by people who liked and followed Jesus.  Yes, that is true.  But look at the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts.  Both books were written by someone who did his homework and was not refuted in his day.  Now, in his day means when it actually happened.  Luke talked to eyewitnesses, people who had been there and seen with their own eyes what actually happened.  How in the world can we refute him today when we were not there and have no eyewitness testimony to go on?  Yet many of you believe the bible is untrue because someone just said it was.  Yet, Jesus is still doing miracles and signs and wonders today.  Yes, there is a lot of falseness about the Gospel, but if one will take the time to look a little deeper than just the surface, if one will take the time to find out for themselves, God will honor that and reveal Himself to you.  He is not a calloused God who wants nothing to do with you.  He desperately wants to touch and change your life because he knows what is in store, for eternity mind you, for those who reject Him.

Please, if you have questions, send me an email, post something here on my blog, get a bible out and begin reading it for yourself (start in the Gospel of John), but most importantly, just get down on your knees (figuratively) and with transparent sincerity, just ask God to open the shades that are on your eyes.  I believe that any open and honest inquiry of God will not go unanswered.  He longs to spend eternity with you.

God, in His son Jesus, died so that you don’t have to spend eternity apart from Him.  He stands at the door and knocks and how many times have you heard that knock in a moment of fear, or disaster in your life.  All you have to do is open the door.  It really is that simple, not easy, but simple.  Once you open that door up to Him, a whole new life begins; A life of the hardest joy (now there is an oxymoron for you) that you will ever know.  Just call on him soon because you don’t know when that breath on the cold winter morning will fade away and be gone forever.  Once this life is over, the choices you have made determine your eternity.

 

Crutch’s Opposed to Faith in God

When I was younger, I gave no thought to my health.  I was a long distance runner in High School and regularly ran 3-5 miles at least 4 times a week while in the service.  I always got “Outstanding” on my Military Physical Fitness Tests.  Even after I got out of the military, I had a 12 speed bike that I rode everywhere.  It was no big deal for me to get on it and ride 15-20 miles at a time.  And I never rode at a casual pace either.  I always rode in such a manner that if I had of had an accident, I’d probably still be rolling.  My blood pressure was always within a point or two of 100/60 with a resting heartbeat of 55-60 beats per minute.

But now I’m in my mid 40’s and these past two years have not been kind to me from a health perspective.  I had a gall bladder attack that made me think I was having a heart attack.  That happened almost two years ago and I’ve been without my gall bladder for the past year and a half.  About this time last year, I went in for a CAT scan and found out I have a bulge in one of my lower disks that is causing numbness in my left leg.  And recently, I’ve had something happen to my stomach and am currently taking medications for it.  I’m not sure if it is a beginning ulcer or a irritable bowel syndrome.  Whatever it is, my stomach has not been happy with me.

Why do I bring all this up?  Because for years I trusted in my health and the fact that I had no problems other than the occasional cold/flu.  I have not spent any time in the hospital, no broken bones, no surgeries, nothing.  Not until two years ago.

But something stuck me at work a couple of weeks back.  I was talking to someone about the reliability of computers and the fact that it is amazing that they work as good as they do as long as they do.  Whenever you install a program or an Operating System, data gets written to your hard drive.  In its simplest form, that data is either a “1” or a “0”, positive or negative.  All it takes if for one of those “1’s” or “0’s” to be out of place and your computer is toast.  Think about it, there are trillions of those little bits of information on your computer at any given time and if just a couple of them are wrong or out of place, your computer either won’t boot or doesn’t function correctly.

Now, lets turn that analogy over to the human body.  Think about it like this, above I said that my resting heart rate was 55-60 BPM at rest.  That means in one hour my heart would have beat around 3500 times, or about 84,000 times in one day, or 30,485,000 times a year.  That is just at rest.  Your heart rate speeds up during physical exertion and when you are frightened.  Take a thin piece of metal like a coat hanger and bend it back and forth a few times and the metal develops stress fatigue and breaks.  Yet, your heart continuously beats year after year.  During a 75 year lifespan, your heart will beat over 2.2 billion times.  2.2 billion, isn’t that an amazing number?

But the craziest part is, all it takes is one little electrical misfire, or one blood clot, or one electrolyte imbalance and your heart can go into an arrhythmia and that is the end of your life.  What I’m trying to say is that it is totally amazing, even more so than anything a computer can do, that your life is as long as it is.  Do you not begin to see that your next breath is totally dependent on God?  Can you not see that your next heartbeat is dependent on God?  Imagine with me as I write this that me even finishing this that I am typing is dependent on God.  My life, and yours too, is totally dependent on His future grace.  There is no guarantee that any of us will be alive 30 minutes from now, much less 10 years from now.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that so much of our lives are nothing more than a house of cards apart from God’s grace and faith in Him.  I’m just asking you to think about this and to realize that God loves you so much that he will begin to knock the crutch’s that we use to get through life out from under us.  One of my crutch’s was the belief that I was generally healthy.  Maybe your crutch is your job.  In today’s economy, even that is uncertain.  You could show up one day and find out your company is closing the doors, and yes, I’ve had that crutch ripped out from under me too.  Maybe your crutch is your spouse.  Maybe they decided they wanted something different and left.  There are thousands of “crutch’s” that we all rely on to get through our lives, but the only thing that matters is faith in what Jesus did for us on the cross.  Nothing else matters.

For those of you who read this blog and are believers, I just ask that you examine your life and look at the things that you rely on apart from God and begin to allow Him to strip those things away.  I can hear the arguments that doing that is so hard.  When you do it yourself, it surely is!  Of that I have no doubt.  Augustine of Hippo stated this about God about 1700 years ago:  “Give what you command and then command whatever you want.”  God gives us the grace to love, to be obedient to His word, and countless other things, and then He commands us to do it.  Don’t you see that He gives the provision to do what He commands of us.  It’s when we try and do it in our own power and strength that we run into trouble and fail miserably.

For those of you who read this and don’t follow Christ, I just ask that you ponder over what I have written and at least give it some honest thought.  I realize that a lot of people would consider what I have written the ravings of a lunatic, but it is not unreasonable.  In the book of Acts, Paul the Apostle is before Festus pleading his case.  Here is what the Luke writes as he gives an account of the proceedings:  “And as he was saying these things in his defense, Festus said with a loud voice, “Paul, you are out of your mind; your great learning is driving you out of your mind.” But Paul said, “I am not out of my mind, most excellent Festus, but I am speaking true and rational words. For the king knows about these things, and to him I speak boldly. For I am persuaded that none of these things has escaped his notice, for this has not been done in a corner.”  (Acts 26:24-26 ESV emphasis mine)  I’m just asking you to consider what I have written and compare it to the Words of God found in the Bible to see for yourself if what I’m saying is true or not.

 

The Weeping Prophet

Part of my just wants to wail aloud right here where I sit.  Why?  I’ve been reading the book of Jeremiah and I can totally understand why he was called “the weeping prophet”.  I have always been drawn to the prophetic books.  I have always seemed to find the prophetic utterances of judgment to be comforting.  Doesn’t that sound strange?  I’ve told people for years that I am a strange one and this confession of mine probably helps solidify that.  Let me tell you why I find it comforting.  God has stated that He will not allow anyone or anything to have His glory.  All of His judgments are due to the fact that we as a race won’t give Him the glory due to Him.  My comfort comes from knowing that He says what He means and means what He says.  If He didn’t, He would not be a God I would want to serve.

So, let’s get back to why I want to just burst into tears.  In Isaiah’s day, Jerusalem was under siege from Senacherib.  The siege failed and the people thought they were safe.  Their thoughts were that if Jerusalem, the temple, and the royal house of David were still standing, they, as a nation or people, would never be destroyed.  Jeremiah, on the other hand saw the total destruction of all three.  God used Nebuchadrezzar to totally destroy the grounds of Israel’s confidence.  The city, the temple and the palace were destroyed.  But what got me was that God told Isaiah that the people would not listen to the words he spoke, but He told Jeremiah to not even pray for the people.  If Isaiah was the “11^th hour” guy, then Jeremiah was the guy who saw the door close and there was no more hope.  All of this lead me to wonder where “the world” is at right now.  I have very few doubts that we are in the 11^th hour, but how close are we to the door closing for good on this age?

Preachers today don’t want to preach a message that makes people think about this.  All we seem to hear is that peace and prosperity are here to stay.  Just reach out your hand and take hold of God and all the blessings He has to offer.  Yes, He does offer blessings, I don’t dispute that.  But those blessings don’t always mean a life of ease and prosperity.  To hear most preachers today tell The Gospel story, it would seem that if you are poor and downtrodden, you aren’t saved.  Only those who are financially well off and living a life of ease are experiencing the blessings of God.  I’m not sure how they can square that with the statement that Jesus made when he told the scribe, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head” (Matt 8:20).  Jesus never came to this world to build an earthly empire.  But today’s average preacher sure makes it sound like that was the goal.

So my question is where are we in the timeline?  How close are we to the door closing on this age?  Why is it we think that we have all the time we need?  When I look around at the lack of reverence for God in those around me, I can’t help but wonder when the axe is going to fall.  But, let’s look at this from another angle.  The fact that the axe hasn’t fallen shows the richness of His mercy and grace.  If God gave us what we deserved, none of us would be here today.  One sin, just one, separates us from Him.  He was under no obligation to give as anything but judgment, yet He went so far above and beyond.  He paid the price for our sin.  He, in the person of Jesus Christ, went to the cross and paid a debt for what He did not owe because we owed a debt we could not pay.  How much longer will he show us patience, mercy and grace.

Make no mistake about it, His judgment is coming.  I don’t care who you are or whether you “believe” in God or not, you can feel it.  There is this innate sense that this world around us is not like it is supposed to be.  The next time you want to say that this world is perfect, you just think back to the last time, which probably was only minutes ago, that someone said or did something that offended or hurt you.  If this world was perfect, why would you be offended when someone didn’t “return the favor” that you did for them?  The fact that we as a race adhere to morality shows that there is a higher law written on our hearts.  It is our ability to be totally dishonest with ourselves that causes us to be blind to God.  All you have to do is look around and you can’t help but see His handiwork.

Call on Him.  Call on Him soon!  Time is winding down and His wrath will fall.  I can remember as a child getting into trouble and having to face the wrath of my earthly father.  No matter how bad it was, I always knew it would eventually end.  Not so with God.  Once His wrath falls upon you, it will be eternal.  There will be no second chance, there will be no escape, there will be no relief.  Call on Him.  Send me an email, find me, I’ll answer your questions and point you the One who can save you.  He will and He wills that you be saved.  My prayer, my cry is that you will head this warning and fall before Him, ask Him to save you, and then glorify Him.