The glory of Your people Israel (Luke 2:32)

            First and foremost, let it be said that God loves the Jewish people.  However, we must not glorify a group of people beyond their importance.  He chose Abraham, rejecting the rest of the human race.  Then Abraham had two children, one chosen, one rejected.  Isaac had twins, only one of whom was chosen by the Lord.  Jacob became Israel and his sons the tribes of the Hebrew nation.  Was there something special about these individuals?  Yes, but not really.  They were special in that God chose them, but they were just as broken and messy as any one else on the planet.  There was no merit of qualification.  Their importance lied in their distant Descendant and original Ancestor.

            Ultimately everything comes back to Jesus, in every situation, always.  The tribe of Levi was only important because they ministered to God, their First Ancestor.  The tribe of Judah was only important because the Last Adam would be born of their father Judah.  In the case of both Levi and Judah, their importance certainly did not come from the righteousness of the tribes’ namesake.  Rather, their importance was derived from their relationship to the One to whom all creation and history point, the Son of God.  Jesus is what makes the Jews different, He had to be incarnated into a group of people and He chose the Hebrew nation.  The whole of Judaism points to the Messiah.

            At the end of the day, Jesus is what sets anyone apart.  He is the glory of the Jewish people.  He is the star in the human drama.  He is what we are waiting for, longing for, hoping for.  It is only because His Spirit has called our carcasses “home” that we are set apart as different from the rest of the inhabitants of the earth.  God is not done with Israel.  Just because they rejected the Messiah the first time He walked the earth does not mean that He will show Himself unfaithful to them simply because they were faithless.  The reason that Jesus has to first be a light of revelation to the Gentiles is that it is in the Gentiles that the Jews will be provoked to jealousy and return to Jehovah.  No other way.

            When the illuminated Gentiles shine with the unapproachable light of the Almighty, all men will be drawn unto the exalted Christ.  The Gentiles will carry around the dying of Christ in their bodies and the fragrance of the Lord will remind the Jews of their ancient roots.  Like the Lord in Jeremiah 2, the Jewish people will remember the love of their betrothal to the Bridegroom God by seeing what they once had in the Gentiles.  As an army of believers rises up to put flesh and blood on the resurrection, the chosen nation will see their God in the eyes of their neighbors.  They will become lovesick for what was once possessed by their ancestors and now see in the un-chosen, uncircumcised Gentiles.  The two brothers will be made one and the glory of the former and later houses of the Lord will shine together as one great torch of divine affection.

            Jehovah was once the boast of Israel.  He will again take His rightful place as the object of their affection.  His people will praise Him, He will be the subject of their praises and the target of their adoration.  Regardless of ethnicity, the people of God will find glory in Him and Him alone.  All other glories are vain replicas mimicking a matchless Glory.  All honor is His.  All power is His.  All glory is His.  He is what makes Israel look good.  He is what makes Christians look good.  The only thing any of us has going for us is that the Almighty has fought to the death for our love.  Churches, movements and individuals get off track when they forget the epicenter of our faith, the Messiah.  When we lose Christo-centricity we gain only frustration and distraction.

*Spirit, help us to set our minds, hearts and lives set on the One who sits above.  Amen*

A light of revelation to the Gentiles (Luke 2:32)

            As Simeon was growing old or at some point in his life, the Lord had revealed to him that he would not die before he saw the Messiah.  This could not have been revealed to him by the Scriptures.  Simeon could have known the birthplace, nationality and even tribe as well as many other things that are revealed in the Scriptures, but he could not have known when He would come, when he would die and how those two events would coincide.  The Lord is a Light of revelation; He speaks to all people regardless of race.

            Jesus did not say, “Those Jews that seek will find.”  Nor did He say, “Blessed are the Jews that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they will be satisfied.”  The tendency of humanity is elitism that puts people in order of importance.  First the Jews did it to the Gentiles, and now the church does it to unbelievers.  We are all under the same curse, both Jew and Gentile.  We both badly need the Spirit to reveal Jesus to us.

            Revelation comes to those from whom something has been hidden and not yet been revealed.  This is a crucial issue in understanding the character of God.  He hides things.  He has mysteries.  The difference between Jehovah and other “deities” is that He hides His mysteries so that they can be found rather than to exalt Himself beyond human grasp.  The things that He hides He hides for us, not from us.  He wants to be found, that is why He says that those that seek find and also the purpose of parables of the Kingdom.

            The major difference between a Jew and a Gentile is one has had the Law presented to them and the other has not.  One has the revelation of revelation of righteousness and the other does not.  Jesus is the Light that reveals to the blind Gentile His own righteousness and how to receive it.  We need the illumination of the Holy Spirit to understand where we are in relation to the Creator.  In Nehemiah’s day, the people were read the whole Law and came to understand that they were not in right relationship to God and they wept.  When they wept it was evidence that they understood their position.  This understanding is one of the most important steps to coming before the Lord.  Apart from our acknowledgement of our depravity, there is no repentance of sin.

            Jesus came into the world to convict it of sin and of righteousness and of judgment.  Bill Johnson once said that condemnation and conviction are different in that condemnation leaves you where you are and conviction pulls you out when responded to.  The understanding of our desperate need for salvation from ourselves is a revelation that brings the joy of the Lord.  When the priests saw that the people were weeping over their condition before the Lord, they told the people not to mourn that they had transgressed, but to rejoice that they now know that they need God and they know how to get Him.

            Nothing is shown to us that the Lord did not initiate in some way, shape or form.  It is in His light that we see light; and when we walk in the light as He is in the light we increasingly see ourselves rightly, see our world rightly and see each other rightly.  He dwells in unapproachable light.  As a great preacher once said, you don’t walk through His Light like you do other lights; His Light has things in it, His glory is tangible.  He comes and reveals Himself to us and we become like Him as we behold Him as He is.  We love Him only because He first loved us, likewise, we respond to Him by exposing our weaknesses only because He first exposed to us the surpassing greatness of His power.  When Moses asked to see His glory, He showed him His torn flesh.  He displayed His weakness so that we would know Him in His suffering, thus granting access to the power of His resurrection.  His Light doesn’t embarrass us, it embraces us

*Light of Revelation, may Your face shine upon us, imparting Your peace.  Amen*

The Baby (Luke 2:16)

            Far too often we have made the Christmas story so much like a common fairytale that we forget what being one of the shepherds was like.  But we do that with most of the Bible, we treat it like a story book and not like a historical account from a human perspective, like it is.  The shepherds were young men that were watching the sheep that it is believed to have been for the Passover sacrifice.  They were watching the Passover lambs and got an angelic visitation about The Passover Lamb that would put an end to the yearly and daily sacrifices.  Like unsuspecting shepherd boy David, these young shepherds were just doing their duty and all of a sudden they become the first invited guests to a divine birthday party.  The Lord honors diligence in some major ways.

            When the angels appear to the shepherds, they were greatly afraid.  It seems like every time an angel shows up in the Scriptures they have to say, “Don’t be afraid.”  Most of the time, when someone says, “Don’t be afraid”, it is too late.  The shepherd is not a glorified position, we think with honor towards the shepherd as though it were only logical that they would be chosen to receive the announcement.  They were scared, just like any one of us would have been.  After all, they very glory of the Lord was shining all around them.  When a humble person gets a great experience, they do not think that they got it by the nature of who they are, they are thankful receive it as a blessing.  Those that lack humility think that being blessed is evidence of how great they are.  The Lord does actually honor the humble because of their meekness, because they are like Him.

            Having received a great encounter, the shepherds didn’t sit back and say, “Wow, that was cool.  Wait until we tell everyone what we saw.”  They responded to the visitation and treated it as an invitation.  They figured that they would not have been told this information unless they were supposed to respond to it in some way.  This is where we miss it some times.  We think that a revelation or realization is for us to sit on and ride the fame that will come in from having heard God, when the truth is that He talks to us so that we can respond to what He has said.  Knowledge puffs up, love builds up.

            The religious leaders knew all the prophecies concerning the Messiah and could not bring themselves to walk down the road three miles – downhill – to find out if this Baby was truly the Messiah.  These shepherds probably risked their jobs to see if the angels were telling the truth.  Notice that the priests, Pharisees, Scribes and elders didn’t get an angel sent to them, they thought that their knowledge of the Scriptures was enough (sound familiar?).  So the Lord gave them what they wanted, as is His custom.  If Bible knowledge is enough for you, that is likely all you will get.  But those that hunger and thirst after righteousness are satisfied, and what is more righteous than visitation?

            When the shepherds finally got to the stable, a place in the Christmas story that has been greatly glorified, they found a Baby.  They were not disappointed.  They were not surprised.  Why?  Because Heaven had told them what they were looking for.  The religious leaders knew what they were looking for, too, but they missed it because of their pride.  Great things come in small packages, including the Messiah apparently.  It did not offend them that the Christ was a Baby, because they hadn’t been twisted in their understanding by religion that requires everything to be perfect.  Life just doesn’t work like that.  The Son of God was coming to earth whether the earth had a place for Him to lay His head or not, because He would not have a place to rest His head until He bowed His head at the crucifixion.  The Baby would reign the earth His way, offensively.

*Lord, You confound the wisdom of the wise, keep us unoffended in You.  Amen*

The Mighty One (Luke 1:49)

If you have the choice of who you want to be your Savior, the best choice is the One who makes lightning (Jeremiah10:13) and weeps when a friend dies (John 11:35).  A weak savior is unable to save except under the correct conditions, and an emotionless savior is merely a security system or a body guard required to accomplish a duty.  Thankfully, our Savior is God, who made everything, holds all things together and will destroy and remake Heaven and earth.  Likewise, we have a Savior who knows the inconvenience of human frailty, is sympathetic to our struggles and emotions.

            He is mighty, meaning He is the full of the Spirit of Might.  The English language messes a lot of things up some times.  The Spirit of Might that Isaiah the prophet speaks of that Jesus has is not the Spirit that might do something.  This is not the spirit of “maybe if I feel like it”; this is the Spirit of Strength, of Power and of Dynamic Ability.  The declaration of the Mighty One is this, “I can, I will, I AM.”  His arm is not too short that He cannot perform mighty works of salvation, deliverance and restoration.

            Just as Jesus is not just a son of God, but is The Son of God, He is not merely one of the mighty ones, He is The Mighty One.  His might is so outstanding that no can match it.  He is the undisputed Mighty One.  The demons know it, that is why they begged Him not to torture them and did all they could to get out of the risky business of being in conflict with Him (Luke 8:28).  It seems that the only beings in all creation that are willing to dispute His might in disbelief are the very ones that He is most willing to empty Himself of His of might to save.  We are not quite the most foolish beings, for the demons had no redemption available to them at their fall, but we are definitely unwise as we presumptuously live as though we could save ourselves if we wanted to.  We cannot.

            The first time the Lord is called “The Mighty One” in the Scriptures is when Israel is blessing his sons.  He gets to Joseph and says that the strength of Joseph came from “The Mighty One of Jacob”.  The Mighty One is not stingy with nor protective of His might, He is the Source of might to His people.  When those with divine patience wait silently for the Mighty One to fight on their behalf, He shows Himself mighty and endows them with His strength with which to war.  Having been anointed with the Spirit of His Might, we can run and not grow weary, walk and not faint, fly like eagles.  We can fly because His Might in us comes from Heaven and is used to a higher perspective.  In fact, the word by Israel to describe the Mighty One comes from a root word that means to fly or soar above.  In battle, the high ground is the most victorious position.  If we set our minds on things above, we are treasuring His Mighty Throne and walk in His authority.

            When the Lord is called Names like this, it gives the sense of a legend.  It is almost as if the tribes of Israel were real people – novel thought – in real life in the east where legends and folk lore hold more weight.  “There is One who came, the Mighty One,” they would say, “who saved our fathers and who will save us in our time of need.”  Then their prophets would say, “This Mighty One who was with our fathers will come again, sending a Man that will redeem us and liberate us.  When He comes He will make all things new, defeat all our enemies, take our stone-cold hearts and give us hearts of flesh that will love Him with all our strength.”  The reason the world has a problem believing the Bible sometimes is that it sounds like a bunch of myths, legends and epic lore.  The problem the church has is that we have forgotten how unbelievable the truth of the Gospel is because we have neglected the epic nature of our God.  Let’s believe again.

*O Mighty One, strengthen us with might in the inner man unto Your fullness.  Amen*

God my Savior (Luke 1:47)

We have a curious tendency to rely on leaders to change things that they have no ability to change.  As a pastor once said, “If politicians could fix everything, don’t you think they would have done it already?”  What the world needs, what every individual on the planet needs, is not another leader, politician, author, inventor or philosophy of life.  What we need is a Savior.  What we need is Someone who can overpower, overtake and overcome circumstances, no matter how deep, dark or complicated.  Salvation is a state of being that is possessed by that which has been salvaged.  Truly the human race has shipwrecked itself sufficiently enough to need salvaging.  We need our Savior badly.

From what or from whom must we be saved?  It is not from the world, Jesus was sent to die to save the world.  The world is not our enemy.  Neither are we being rescued from the “big bad devil”.  The serpent of old is not our greatest enemy.  We are our own greatest enemy, not one of us to another but us to our own individual selves.  We are being redeemed and set free from the bondage of our own fleshly desires and mentalities.  But we are sure to win, we have all of Heaven on our side to overcome our own selves unto full salvation.  We must see salvation as a completed process we must walk through.

When He saved us, He didn’t do an incomplete job of it.  When we are saved, we receive the Spirit.  As Paul explained to Timothy, we did not receive a spirit of fear but of power, love and discipline.  Salvation is not true salvation if the saved one is still afraid of that from which they were saved.  Salvation is not a rescuing, but an empowering.  Love casts out all fear and as we walk in the Light of His Love we are increasingly confident as we grow up into the fullness of Christ.  Don’t let the word “discipline” intimidate you, some translate Paul’s word as “sound mind”.  The third aspect that Paul attributes to the Spirit that we receive with salvation is a word that comes from two words meaning “salvation” and “understanding”.  When we are born again we are empowered over our former fears by the perfect love of God, but that same Spirit of saving Resurrection gives us understanding of salvation and we change the way we think.

This is called repentance.  When we repent, we stop thinking wrongly and start thinking with a redeemed mind.  We stop seeing sickness as a problem for God to overcome and begin seeing it as an opportunity to take back the ground that God our Savior purchased with His own beautiful Blood.  When we come to understand our salvation, we realize that our world is not as it has seemed.  The Scriptures say that when satan is bound up, we will walk by him and be astonished that we were so afraid of him.  That is true even now.  After we take what seem to be huge steps of faith, we look back and wonder why it was so hard to make the decision to step out.  Hindsight is 20/20.  It is those who walk faith-filled confidence that joyfully accomplish much for the Kingdom.

The bottom like is that we can trust Him.  He is abundantly able to do far more than we could even imagine or make up on our most creative day.  He saves us to the uttermost and His plans for us are for a hopeful future.  If we will walk through life making decisions based on what He has revealed to us, we will do great things.  But sometimes we don’t have a clear direction.  My suggestion is to live like my friend who made it his philosophy of life to do things that will give him a good story to tell.  The annals of Heaven are filled with stories of saints didn’t have faith in their faith but faith in their God.  He is faithful.  He is strong.  He is mighty to save.  He is good.  He saves.

*God my Savior, give Your body understanding of her salvation.  Amen*

The Holy Child (Luke 1:35)

Holiness is not a humanly transferable quality, it is a supernatural characteristic that is irrevocable and spiritually hereditary. Actions do not make us holy or unholy, if that were true then right-standing with God would be based upon performance and faith would be obsolete. In Luke 1, before Jesus is even born or even conceived, He was called “holy” by a heavenly messenger. Not only had He not done anything that could have made Him holy, if holiness were based on works, but He had not even yet been incarnated yet as a zygote or a fetus. For all intents and purposes, He didn’t exist yet.

This is good news. This is part of the Gospel of the Kingdom. The Kingdom is coming and the earth will be conquered by its rightful King, but first the Kingdom will come in the hearts of men. The Gospel of the Kingdom, as it pertains to the hearts of men, is that the Spirit comes into a believer at the new birth and changes the very nature of their humanity from sinner to saint. This is why it is called being “born again”, we are transferred out of the dominion of darkness into the Kingdom of Light. We are citizens of a New Jerusalem, with a new nature and new tendencies toward righteousness. The New Creation Race is a real group of people that were once mere men, as Paul put it in his first letter to Corinth. We must resist our tendency as the ambassadors of the New Covenant to make the church a sin-management agency, we are the redeemed bride.

The angel could confidently declare Jesus “holy” because Jesus would be born again before He was born originally. He was born of the Spirit, the Holy Spirit. Because He had the supernatural seed of the Holy Spirit in Him from conception, He was holy from the very beginning. Therefore, the angel said, He would be called the son of God because He was born of the Spirit. We, too, who have faith in Jesus as the Christ, are sons of God, which Paul explained to the Galatian believers. But Jesus was the Firstborn of the New Creation Race, thus He was the Son of God and not just a Son of God.

If, therefore, holiness is not based on actions, then it must be granted by One greater than the recipients of said holiness. The Holy One grants holiness. It is by heavenly declaration alone that we receive holiness. Certainly that holiness will manifest itself in real life through practical righteousness and loving obedience and devotion, but those are fruits of proof that irrevocable holiness of Heaven has filled a formerly broken vessel. Unredeemed pagans can act holy, but they are not holy. They are acting as though the God that they profess to not believe in does in fact exist and thereby condemn themselves by proving that there is an innate moral standard built into their hearts.

Holiness is spiritually hereditary, inherited through the bloodline. Lack of holiness is likewise spiritually hereditary. The first Adam traded the holiness of his Father for the knowledge of good and evil, thus surrendering the authority connected to God’s holiness. The Last Adam had the same Father and by retaining the holiness of His heredity for 33 years He redeemed the sons of His brother Adam, offering adoption into His Family to all that would trust Him. When we are reborn, we receive the Blood of the Lamb and enter into a new bloodline, with new benefits, new responsibilities, new nature and new abilities and begin to regain the authority forfeited and lost in disobedience.

Tribal legends will have epic stories of a holy child that will be born and bring great change, we have found the Holy Child. As the Spirit of the Resurrection overshadows the Bride, we will birth a new, true holiness movement, not of striving through rules but of faith and adoration resulting in a Kingdom of obedient priests.

*Holy Child, declare holiness over Your Bride that we may be like You. Amen*

Power (Mark 14:62)

            One of my favorite teachers I’ve ever sat under once said that what you say betrays what you believe, and everything that he would say in or out of class was very intentional.  I believe that he was much like the Lord in this respect.  Jesus said things that make the smart people upset and yet helped the uneducated understand the things of the Kingdom.  He told parable specifically to conceal truth from the wise and make it readily available to the hungry in heart.  Truly, blessed are those unoffended by Him.

            Imagine the scene, the King of Creation is being interrogated by a Podunk priest in a dusty city on a small planet in a small galaxy that He created and measured the universe using the breadth of His hand.  When accusation comes against Him, He is disinterested because they cannot even get their lying accusations straight and when the chief leader among them pipes up He only confirms the truth.  They didn’t want the truth, though.  They were so persuaded by greed, fear and envy that they just wanted to get rid of a Nuisance and get back to life as usual.  Their whole lives centered around the coming of the Messiah and as soon as He comes and they can ask Him flat out if He is the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed God, He tells them and they don’t believe Him.  Tragic.

            When He confirms His identity, He also adds that they will one day see Him seated as a Man at the right hand of Power.  After the Resurrection and Ascension, Peter would preach that Jesus ascended to the right hand of God.  Jesus did not refer to the Father as God before the religious leaders, He simply called the Father “Power”.  Again, Jesus knows what He is saying, He doesn’t waste words.  He had not commented when accusations were flying about Him, but when He did speak up, He was intentional in what He said.  The Old Testament “Thus saith the Lord” and New Testament red letters are the most dissectible words ever, the wise are students of these words and find life.

            Jesus knows the Father better than any other man.  He calls Jehovah “Power”.  He is the Source of all power.  He is the Origin of all authority.  In Luke we see that all the people were crowding around Jesus to touch Him because “Power was coming from Him and healing them all.”  The Trinity is a difficult thing to understand.  We know that Jesus did all His miracles because He was born full of the Spirit, but we also know that the Godhead is inseparable and so it was just as much His connection to the Father as it was the indwelling Spirit.  Just before Luke tells that Jesus had Power coming from Him, he records that Jesus had stayed up all night praying to God.  He had Power because He had been in the Presence of Power for hours.  He was supernaturally radiating His Father’s Presence.  Thus He could say to Philip, “If you have seen Me, you’ve seen the Father.”

            There are people that exude the Power and Presence of the Lord.  These are the people that walk into the room and you just feel different, you feel safe even if you are being exposed.  These are the dwellers of the Secret Place, where they see Him and are transformed into His likeness.  What people want in fame and celebrity is the counterfeit of what comes with being not just an image-bearer but a Presence-bearer.  This is the power that man wants, the reverent excitement of carrying something from another age.  No one wants to be ordinary.  We innately know that we something is wrong in our lives when power is not present, this innate sense is called “boredom”.  I heard a joke where a patient came to a doctor and said “Doc, it hurts when I do this.” And the Doctor said “then don’t do that.”  Just like pain is a natural clue that there is something wrong in your body, boredom is a supernatural emotion that tells us that we lack power and need Him.

*O Power Source of all things, plug us into Yourself so we don’t burn out bored.  Amen*

The Christ, the Son of the Blessed One (Mark 14:61)

            Like Father like Son.  The Christ, being the Son of God, is just like His Father.   Yesterday we saw how the Father supernaturally overflows with every spiritual blessing to all of mankind regardless of repentance.  This does not mean that everyone walks in the fullness of the blessings of the Spirit, just like someone who is adopted into a wealthy royal family does not automatically step into use of the resources that they have access to because they may not be fully aware of everything available.  We have realms and realities at our fingertips that we may never walk in because of ignorance or unbelief.

            The Christ was not adopted into the Divine Family as we are, He has ever been the Heir of the full inheritance of the world He created.  His great joy, the inheritance that His heart has desired is unbroken fellowship with His brethren.  In my short life, thus far I have been in many weddings.  Weddings cost a lot of money, but both the father of the bride and the groom are more than willing to spend their savings to make the bride’s day perfect and memorable.  It is astonishing to me that I am so blind to the parallels of life in the normal flow of life and the spiritual principles of the Kingdom.  The Father and Jesus will not hesitate to give the Bride everything she needs to walk in godliness and live the life that Jesus made available in His death.  We are in the cross hairs of the Blessed One.

            The Son learned everything He knows from His Father.  The resources that Jesus accessed while living on earth the first time were from the Father’s own blessed storehouse.  All that was the Father’s was the Son’s.  So also, as His bride, we have access to the very same storehouse of blessed resources.  When Jesus needed a prophetic word, there were trillions of them waiting to be given.  When healing was in order, the Great Physician had the antidote.  So also, we have the same access to all the resources of Heaven.  But just like Jesus had to grow in favor with God and man, we must learn how to access the resources available to us through the Spirit that Jesus sent at the Ascension.

            It is Jesus’ heart to give us all what He had when He first lived among mankind.  He said that we would do greater things than He did, how could we do such great works without the same access that He had?  He said it would be better for the us if He went away to Heaven because He would send the Spirit.  Apparently the Spirit is our access key to the resources of Heaven.  It is by the power of the Spirit, living inside us, that we can use the gifts of the Spirit and thus re-presenting the King by displaying the power of Kingdom living to a world that doesn’t know it will be overtaken at the Second Coming.

            The word that the high priest uses in Mark 14:61 to describe Jehovah means not just “blessed”, but “One who is worthy of adoration”.  There is a level of worship and a degree of praise that has mostly been lost in the Church called “adoration”.  Our worship services and worship songs have ceased to be Christo-centric and have become more about massaging our souls than about expressing our awe of the One worthy of all our adoration.  The word “adorable” has been reduced in our vernacular to meaning something like “cute” or “emotionally warming” when it ought to invoke the sense of awe and the tendency to receive intense emotional and verbal praise backed up by actions that display loyalty and devotion.  Puppies are not adorable, Messiahs are adorable.  The Father has blessings to give.  The Son made the blessings fully accessible to the human race, particularly to the New Creation Race.  The Spirit is our Key to heavenly treasure.

*Spirit, train us in the ways of the Father so that we can access the Kingdom.  Amen*

The Blessed One (Mark 14:61)

            In Paul’s introduction to his epistle to the Ephesian church he says, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in the heavenly places with every spiritual blessing.”  The word that pops up three times in this one verse, “bless”, is a vital key understanding of who the God we serve is.  The word can be translated “gift” and is used as an adjective, a verb and a noun in this one verse.

            First, as an adjective, Paul states that the very nature of the God and Father of Jesus is that He is “blessed”.  The Father is One who is blessed, gifted, possessing many gifts.  He has an endless storehouse of blessings.  These blessings are not merely physical blessings, things that He has been given, but they are spiritual realities that set Him high above all others as well as characteristics that prove His impeccable character and divine nature are praiseworthy.  It would do us all some great good to see that His as the One who possess all good things, content and not in need of anything.  Every good thing comes from Him, every perfect gift comes from His hands out of His blessed storehouse.

            The logical next step is that a truly blessed person overflows with blessings to others.  The curious thing, though, is that He blesses everyone.  The question that many people ask to try and refute the existence of God is “Why do bad things happen to good people?”  Most of the time, those that ask this think themselves to be in the “good” category.  The reality is that we are not good; an honest person will say that they are not basically good – apart from Christ we are dead in our transgressions, slaves to unrighteousness.  They never stop to ask the reverse question “Why do good things happen to bad people?”  That is called grace, receiving what we do not deserve, whereas mercy is not receiving what we do deserve.  God pours out grace on all people, giving blessings to the undeserving.  One such blessing is called the offer of salvation, something that no one deserves or could earn, it is by an offer from Almighty to frailty.

            But the divine nature of blessedness supernaturally overflows with blessings to image-bearers regardless of repentance, for the gifts and callings of God are without repentance, irrevocable to the uttermost.  So when the eternal Blessed One comes in contact with frail humanity, even in a very small capacity, the lesser party of the covenant comes out with the better end of the deal.  When God established His covenant with Abraham, it was only He who went through the ceremonial sacrifice, meaning that if either party broke the covenant He would be the One to pay the price or restoration.

            So having blessed us with salvation, fulfilling both ends of the covenant, the Blessed One does not stop with restoring relationship, abolishing the enmity between God and man, but He blesses us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.  Every, that is quite the all-inclusive word.  We have access to all things pertaining to life and godliness, Peter says, by the power of His divine nature.  The power behind His divine nature is His love that transcends our comprehension.  Not only do we receive from Him His blessed gifts that we need to live in godliness, but we receive them in the heavenly places where no one can steal them.  The Word of the Lord is settled in heaven (Psalm 119:89), so when He says that we have all blessings, we have them eternally.

            God is the Blessed Bless-er of eternal blessings to needy mankind.  This is the God we love and serve.  He is not a Scrooge, He is not selfish, He thinks of us more than we realize.  He so loved the world that He sent the Christ, the Son of the Blessed One.

*Oh Blessed One, thank You for being the proof that it is more blessed to give.  Amen*

The one whom you are to seize (Mark 14:44)

            Your mission should you choose to accept it is as follows: seize the Lord.  Fortunately this is not an impossible mission, it is the mission that all of humanity has and is the very purpose of life on this planet.  God made man to encounter God, to apprehend God, to touch God and having seized Him, to hold on for dear life – for holding onto the Creator, His Son and Their Spirit is like trying to ride a Tsunami.

            Jack Deere used to say “there is nothing in your life that more of God wouldn’t fix.”  Take a minute, let the profundity sink in.  It’s true.  If we have financial issues, more of God in our lives will result in Kingdom finances.  If we have marital problems (problems within a marriage or problems getting a marriage), having more of God will release the Love of the Bridegroom, fulfilling that which is His to fulfill and bringing those whom He wishes to fulfill through into the lives of those needing their love.  The bottom line is the age old bumper sticker “Jesus is the answer.”  We need Him and we need Him now.  The longer we go without having obtained Him, the worse off we are.

            If we get honest with ourselves, we will find that a lot of what we are going after in our time, energy and resources are secondary and tertiary in importance.  Not that they are bad things, they may even be things that God has mandated us to accomplish, but they are neither our purpose nor our calling.  Do you want to know your calling?  Absolutely, you do.  Your calling is to know God, to encounter Him dramatically and intimately.

            In my minor exposure to the ministry world of the United States, I have made dozens of friends who have so devoted themselves to knowing God that when given the option of doing “big ministry” they opt out.  This puzzled me until someone explained it one day.  These friends of mine are intercessory missionaries at the International House of Prayer in Kansas City.  They have a grasp on the reality that they talk to God and change the course of human history.  The question that pops up in their minds when given the chance to do a conference is this “Why would I talk to hundreds of people when I can talk to God?”  And they are not trying to be noble and epic, they really have it in their hearts that talking with God is more effective in changing the world than multiplying words before church leaders.  They have what we need: eternal perspective.

            What better activity do I have than to be with the Emperor of the Existence?  What greater endeavor have I discovered than to read the writings of His friends?  And with what have I wasted space within myself that could have been occupied by the Spirit of the Resurrection?  He is our best option, always.  Obviously this is not to say that our time is wasted if we are not locked in a room talking to Him and Him alone.  But the more time that we spend with Him, the more we will be transformed into His likeness and will find ourselves aching to bring others to Him and Him to others.  Lone ranger Christianity just does not work.  He loved the world so much that He went to it, if we become even a little bit more like Him we will also want to carry His Presence abroad.

            Jehovah is our great reward.  Jehovah is our destination.  He is not a good thing to fit into our tightly packed schedules; He is the centerpiece of our lives.  He is the point of every breath we breathe.  He is the reason.  He is “all in all.”  The most miserable people on the planet, those that ought to be pitied above all others, are those who have Him right in front of their faces and don’t realize it.  We have access to the Source of Pleasure and have called it worthwhile to invent new pleasures that never satisfy.  Let’s not miss Him.

*Make us seekers who run hard after the Prize, pursuers of the Divine Stalker.  Amen*