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Thursday, March 20, 2008
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THE CROSS AND MY TOOLCHEST
The Cross of Jesus Christ requires that I have a tool chest handy!
"Take up your Cross and follow me." "I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless, I live. . . "
The best tool in the tool chest for crucifixion is a hammer. Get it out. You will need it for this experience!
I honestly carried a 'hammer' around for years . . .trying to find a way to crucify myself to the Cross spoken of in the Bible. Jesus died on one. I was supposed to die, too. Have you ever tried that? Take out your trusty hammer. Find a big nail! Get a good grip on that tool of great skill in previous times and see how it works.
Lay your hand on the cross (obviously on the ground where you are lying on top of it!) Put your hand where a good nail can get into the place where your hand will hold and not rip when the weight of your body has to hang on it.
Now take that nail and poke it a little ways into the skin so it will stay while you hang on to the hammer to pound it in all the way. Forget the agony of the pain. It is nothing compared to dying on the Cross. The best is yet to come when it comes to intense pain!
Take the hammer firmly in your hand and get a good grip on it. . .for you HAVE to hit that nail very hard the first time or you won't be doing it again. The pain will be too agonizing.
Got it?
Not swing it with all your might -- wait, wait, wait! ( I might suggest that if you have not yet done this and are just reading the instructions that you use the hand which is not your writing hand to put against the wood of the cross. The hammer should be in your hand that has the most dexterity. You do not want to miss the nail. . .and if you are right-handed you will want the nail to go into your left hand, the hammer in your right hand to swing accurately in pounding in the nail.
Still not got it?
If you prefer, you could simply stand the wooden cross againt a building, propping it there while you nail yourself to the cross. It will work either way. You choose.
The maximum moment of stress comes when you realize you are hanging by one hand and the other hand which is supposed to help with the nailing of the hand left is already stuck to the cross and you are not even fixed to the foot piece with nails, let alone the other free hand.
How on earth is one supposed to complete this bloody process?
I really do want to obey the Bible and do things I am told to do. But, honestly now, how does one crucify himself?
I nearly killed myself trying to do that!
Spritual vitality can drain out of you --forever -- if you miss the whole point of the Cross of Jesus Christ.
There was this "once-and-for-all" crucifixion on a Cross in Jerusalem, Israel. It happened 2,000 years ago. It is the moment of crisis which divides all history. The God of the Universe, the One and Only Creator God, was put to death on that wooden Cross standing on the roadside outside the city walls of Jerusalem. He looked like an ordinary man, one of three crucified that day.
It was a public place of execution. The crosses were close enough for people to spit on the crucified. They could pluck out the beard of the one on the cross. There was nothing but scorn, disgrace and shame in this kind of death. It was a Roman thing to do and the soldiers who put the victims of the death sentence there were really making sport of the criminals being crucified.
Yet, there was somehthing about that day that gets lost in the story of the famous man on the center cross. How do we know he was on the center cross. . .because the Bible speaks about criminals on both sides of him speaking to him about their situation. The middle man had to be the most important one hanging there.
A known thug, or criminal had been released instead of the middle man on the cross. Barabbas was his name. That name was on the lips of people in Jerusalem after that mob scene before Pilate. The crowd had cried, "Crucify Him! Crucify Him!"
A casual observer would have thought Barabbas was about to get the Cross at the cry of the mob.
But the crowd was not calling for Barabbas's crucifixion. They were calling for the crucifixion of the Jewish man standing there silently before Pilate. The mob screamed their taunts louder and louder until Pilate gave in. The Romans released Barabbas and they took quiet man to prepare for his crucifixion.
Once the three were on the crosses, the mocking crowd subsided and the few mourners left gathered around the cross of the center man.
Jesus, the Son of God, looked down from that Cross in the center of that street scene. The mobs were now satisfied. The scourging of Jesus left him bloody and in agonizing pain. The death watch would not be one any would want to view. . .unless it was because it was your son or your leader who actually hung there.
That could be the only explanation for the fact of Mary, Jesus mother, hanging around to watch the blood drain out of Jesus body.
It was the sudden expulsion of blood and water that brought agonizing cries from Jesus. The final cry, "It is finished" took your breath away as you watched Jesus die on that Cross.
If it were only Jesus on that Cross, that center cross, we would be eternally grateful. For He took our sins in His own body on the Cross. He, being God incarnate, paid for the sins against Himself -- the sins of all humanity for all time.
That is not the whole story. The Cross of Jesus Christ had more than just one man hangin there. There also was in His body the sin of the whole planet. But there was also the fact of the sinners of the whole planet.
Jesus had to die in order to take us all to the Cross in His Body -- His sinless Body. He took us with Him to the Cross in order that we die to sin as sinners. Without crucifixion, we cannot please God. For it is the shedding of Blood by a sinless sacrifice which cleanses all our human sin. We must accept Jesus' sinless sacrifice and place our faith in Him as Savior which gives us reconciliation with God.
But what about our nature to sin. . that tendencey which we cannot tame or bring under subjection to right doing? What do we do about that problem we all have. We are sinners -- self gratifying creatures with no ability to restrain from sinning, no hope of ever becoming our own sacrifice for sin.
Even if I could crucify myself and die for my own sin, my own death will not justify my sin in God's sight. It must be by a sinless lamb -- which Jesus was.
Jesus took me and you to the Cross in order that the power over us which sin held would be broken by our death with Him. We are given the right to not only die with him, but to live with Him.
The Resurrection of Jesus Christ was our resurrection as well. We died with HIM because we were in Him, in His loins, so to speak, as people to be born by His Spirit through faith in His death as our sinless sacrifice.
Only in His crucifixion and my being "in Him" when He died can I ever hope for an end to the power of sin which has ruled over me -- that is, until Christ now is Life within.
Resurrection Life is what I have received through faith in Christ's death on the Cross.
I don't have to carry a hammer with me to try to kill my body every time it wants to sin. That was done for me on Calvary. I have only to trust in Christ Jesus and receive Him as the Savior for my sin, for dying in my place and taking me with Him to His Cross.
Next Sunday I will celebrate Resurrection Sunday -- the day Jesus brought me out of death and into eternal life . . .I was in Him when He died, was buried and rose again.
Because of this, I say with the Apostle Paul, I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless . . .I Live!
More later. . . After Resurrection Sunday --
We Call it Easter Sunday.
P.S. I forget where that trusty hammer is. . . Don't need it any more! The Roman Soldier used His. . . that did it for me, too.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
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Male vs Female -- The Box Issue!!
The "box" issue created quite a discussion at Sunday dinner following our Palm Sunday drama.
The whole "box" conversation came from considering the difference between male and female brains. You see, the conversation at the table was lively between our two grandchildren, one male and female. Both are great talkers. But neither of them relent in their desire to be the 'focus' of all our interests~! Typical 9 and 6 year olds. They are darling and wonderful, but given to differing perspectives on life.
Grandpa sided with our 9 year old, of course. The gender is the same. At nine, you don't know that the male brain is made up of 'boxes' and there is one box for each of the many categories of interests in a man's life. Also, there is the most important box of all . . .the one which has nothing in it. Nada! Zip! Zero! (A big fat O. . .nothing at all!) Yet when a man is in that Nothing Box, we all know it -- the women and girls, that is. We are clearly shut out of the world where a guy is at the time.
In order to get into that world of totally internal focus (the Nothing Box) we women enjoy asking leading questions: "What are you thinking about?" "What do you think about this or that?"
When we get "DUH?" or total silence in response to our question, we are clearly seeing the intensity of focus by the buy who is in his Nothing Box!
Believe me, I am very experienced with this whole "Box" idea. It was a recent introduction to a pastor who is traveling the country giving instructions to the people in churches about the difference between the male and female brain. You see, I didn't realize the full truth about the male Box, therefore I was expending much energy trying to entice my precious husband into taking a leap out of the box into the world of my thoughts and interests, only to see, repeatedly, the futility of that effort at certain times.
It was Mark Gungor who cleared up the dilemma for me.
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/1059025/tale_of_two_brains/
He explained the difference between my brain and my husband's. Mine is hot-wired for every possible connection and link in the communication of interests and ideas which pass through the air in every moment of time. There are thoughts and ideas and creationary agendas which cover the entire spectrum of human interest and life experience. The maze of wiring which are interconnected and crossed over are more than any individual could possibly trace and track through my thinking. . . but those thoughts are clearly interwoven in a pattern, system and plan of expression just waiting to interact with my best friend, my husband.
My only problem is to figure out how to keep him out of his Nothing Box. He much prefers that box to anything of interest on any level at times. Of course, there are ways and means of getting his attention. . . but having to resort to those methods becomes old hat after a while. You really do prefer that once in a while the march out of the box will come about with a gusto -- ready for interaction on any level of interest I may want to introduce at the moment.
There are questions I store up, just waiting for the moment to instigate a great discussion on a serious topic of concern to our society right now. However, the Box is preferred to any possible engagement on any serious topic of anything other than the proper way to watch Tiger's latest golf exploit as he is playing the Arnold Palmer most recent tournament. An old classic golf tournament is much preferred to getting out of the box, so to speak.
It is possible to click away through 350+ TV channels without ever coming out of the box! Of course, there is the perfunctory answer to my question, " Would you like a diet coke with ice or in a can?" I don't need to ask. I know the answer. "Honey, thank you, a can will be just fine." And back into the box!
Something about this must have some deeply spiritual significance, and it really does. For at the very root of our relationship is this fact: Our marriage is to be a picture to the watching world of the relationship of Jesus Christ and His love for His Church. My love for my husband is to be a picture of submission to Christ by His followers who are His Church, His Body in this world today.
This whole "box" idea seems silly in comparison to the serious nature of the Ephesians passage of scripture about marriage representing the relationship of Christ and His Church.
Yet, it is the very core of the matter.
None of us realized when we married that we were going to be dealing with Nothing Boxes in our relationship.
Just now, this explanation about male Vs. female brains makes me realize how much God knew we would need to die to ourselves. . .giving us Christ's example to follow.
Have you ever tried to pry a Nothing Box off the head of a contented husband? You can really do a lot of damage to a lot of his body. . . particularily his ears. Seems like every time I try to do that, he loses his hearing. ~~
(Certainly NOT THE END!)
Sunday, March 02, 2008
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Will the REAL JESUS-FOLLOWER please obey Him!!
The title was not so deeply spiritual this morning: FOLLOWING JESUS IS NOT ROCKET SCIENCE, FOLKS~!
That is the message my pastor gave today!
His text: "If you love me, do what I tell you to." (Words of Jesus and the meaning in common English!
The consideration of Christ-followers may be clearly focused on messages that fill the blogging pages of the internet.
Recently, I decided to give up the foolishness of blogging in the forest, so to speak, with no one near to read anything you write. Seems such a waste time to me.
One of the faithful pastors on the blogging circuit convinced me I should continue. . .perhaps a change of venue would be helpful to the hits. . . but then, I realized, I am here. . . I will stick it out until GOD says something to me about leaving XANGA. After all, I follow His directives. . .and I definitely felt led to begin blogging for the sake of passing on His Message.
Getting sidetracked, trying to attract readers, I recall I spent some weeks on the pictures of giraffes available for use. That gave me new Xanga friends. All were Christians. That season opened up some new readers -- but I was engaging no one.
Now that I have a handle on some things in the blogging world, I realize that most of my time is spent talking to trees who can neither respond or do anything with what I say.
So, I am pondering the choice of 'hanging in there' for the duration. Hoping for some 'heavenly revelation' which will spark more readers.
Who cares? That is the main event question in most of our lives. Do we really care who reads what we write and who responds to what we write?
The options for people to come into contact with Jesus Christ on the Web are amazing in number. The question is this: Is anybody talking about Jesus Himself or are we all talking about the systems which support His work on the planet -- or about ourselves and the various aspects of our interests as Christ-followers, our hobbies and ideas about life.
Is anyone actually speaking about Jesus and what Jesus is doing today, this very hour?
Does anyone hear Jesus speak?
Jesus said, "My sheep know my voice."
Do you know the voice of Jesus? And how could anyone actually hear the voice of Jesus today when He died on the Cross 2,000 years ago?
That historical fact remains. If Jesus died, how can we hear Him speak today?
Maybe that will be the next Xanga Blog for me. I have had my children ask that as they were growing up. "Mommy, how do you hear Jesus speak to you? I don't hear anything."
That could be the most important question anyone answers. . . at least about the REAL JESUS -- the Jesus of the Bible -- Jesus Christ, Son of God.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
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The Stranger in the Forest
The whole political scene is marked with change! Change, Change, Change. . . everyone wants change. But, what is the C word's implications?
Change is Obama's unifying call. But he is not the first to call for change. Neither is Hillary. Or even John Mac. Certainly it was not any of the other candidates or any of the presidents previous to George W. Bush.
Change is something desired by the best of all who spoke their mind -- the best of all the debaters and orators on any panel of candidates for any position or office in the whole world.
It is the common desire of any speaker to effect change. With Sudanese warriors taking aim at the helpless who are unable to combat the war taking place every day -- those who battle for their lives and for the stability of the right to live in the realm of decency and order -- a divine gift to any people who fall under the command of God's law and order instigated from the beginning.
The Garden of Eden provided the paradise we all want. Yet, that place of promised euphoria for the first man and woman created in the image of God, became a closed region to them because they had a metaphysical change which altered their inner being beyond repair.
Oh, the repair was possible. . .but not in the way they could bring it to pass. God had "edicted" the rule of the Garden: No touching the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In spite of that command given Adam and Eve directly by God, their desire to get out from under the Divine Order for them was greater than their desire to maintain a Spirit-to-spirit relationship with their Creator God.
Oh well, they got change! Their spirit died to their inner link to God Himself. They died to God and began to live in the awareness of the knowledge of Good and evil. The law of trying to to good and trying not to do evil.
This stunning fall from an open relationship with access to God at will was traded for some moments of giving in to temptation. Their desire to have a change (having something they were forbidden) becoming greater than their desire to stay in connection to God. They wanted to change gratify themselves and began a habit of instantaneous gratification so as to effect change in the scheme of things in the Garden. Lucifer had defied the God of heaven and was cast out of heaven. He now defied God again in changing Adam and Eve's status with God. In so doing, they had to be cast out of God's Garden!
They preferred to be autonomous in their behavior -- totally disconnected to God-- now dead in their spirit with no open access to God's presence. Their sin separated them from God.
That big change in things is called THE FALL of MAN!
You and I are stuck there and cannot get out of that drastic change in human relationship with God. Only when Jesus Christ becomes our very life are we able to have the substance of faith -- a gift of God.
Reversing the curse! Stalling the FALL! Restoring lost favor! Buying back His own creation! Making right the mammoth wrong, God intended to offer Jesus as the redeeming price for mankind out of the fall.
When we are fixed in our purpose to continue to bring Christ's LIfe to change every situation created by sin's consequence, we are able to impart life through our words.
Should someone be convinced to listen to the Life-changing words, you will find the Change we so desperately need in our world.
In Jesus Christ resides all the vast wealth of God's gift of everlasting Life -- eternal meaning forever, yes, but also the quality of God-Life imparted to all who receive The One WHO IS LIFE -- Jesus Christ, Son of God.
There is no other who is Life given to all generations for all time.
So, come with your heartaches and cares. . .come to the Mercy Seat. Leave them there.
Jesus has permanently made the ULIMATE CHANGE REQUIRED BY GOD for that eternal status lived in the reality NOW as New Creations.
The desire to MAKE CHANGE permanent through God-intervention in the lives of all people -- that's the work Christ Jesus does through those who are this generation's Change-Makers -- a work that is eternal in duration, yet filled with all the God-given benefits inherit with Salvation.
God changes your heart -- giving a new heart, free from having to sin.
God changes your destination -- openly offering eternity in heaven and an open relationship with Him through Jesus Christ.
God changes your spirit -- imparting resurrection Life to your innermost being -- changing your designated status from 'sinner' to 'saint'. . . instantly!
God changes your mind's capacity to know Him -- through transformational thinking -- enabling the activities of the emotions to become harmonized with God's desired status for you: unconditional surrender to the will of God.
God changes your heart's desire for Life -- a sudden impulse to respond to God is actually the work of God Himself.
Want CHANGE that suits you with a Capital C. . . Get into God's World of Transforming Change! There is nothing like it -- no benefits go beyond all boundaries. . . exploding the chains of death, stagnation and deprivation.
Who else could re-create what God made out of nothing in the first place? Yes, Change is good -- when God Himself makes CHANGE that cannot be taken from us and will last forever!
God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes on Him will not perish , but have everlasting Life. John 3:16 THE BIBLE
God did not send Jesus to condemn the world -- but that the world, through Him might be saved! (CHANGED!) ~ ~ ~
Thursday, February 14, 2008
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JESUS, MY ONE TRUE LOVE!
TRUE LOVE
What a wondeful journey life has been for 51+ years with my darling husband. He knows how to do it! His love for me has been amazing.
He is the one who allowed me to grow enough in God to become proficient in Living From the Life of Christ and not from my limited resources of my own self-life.
Dan is the one who demonstrated the true love of Christ for me, like the kind of love Jesus has for His Church, His Body.
Dan demonstrates the love we find characterized by Jesus's nature and described in 1 Corinthians 13:4-9:
1 Corinthians 13:4-10 (The Message)
3-7If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don't love, I've gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I'm bankrupt without love.
Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn't want what it doesn't have.
Love doesn't strut,
Doesn't have a swelled head,
Doesn't force itself on others,
Isn't always "me first,"
Doesn't fly off the handle,
Doesn't keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn't revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.8-10Love never dies. Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit. We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete. But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled.
Even though I feel very complete within my husband's love, I know it is not perfect love. Only one person in the universe loves perfectly. That is God.
While we are talking about love -- let's talk about the Divine Lover -- Jesus.
Jesus is God in a human body, living a perfect sinless life, taking us to the Cross with Him (in Him) so we could live in resurrection power His very saving Life. That's love at it's best!!
Please understand that I realize none of us live perfectly out of the saving Life of Jesus Christ -- but you should have seen us before Jesus Life invaded our bodies! We were hopeless and had to do things our own way. We were ruled by selfish ambition and wanted nothing to do with anyone telling us anything differently.
When we received Jesus as our Savior, we didn't know He was to BE our Life. We just thought He would Help us feel better and get our lives straightened out so we could get along better with others. We wanted Him to fix us, to make us happy, and to let us go our own way without all the maladies of our past.
Jesus had other things in mind. He intended to Life HIS Life through our mortal bodies, giving us the privilege of yielding to His design for our lives.
That fact is the basic difference in those who call themselves Christians.
It is the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus which is joined to our human spirit and is the energizing, life-giving factor which makes us alive to God. Born in sin, and being spiritually dead to God, we are in need of someone to save us from our situation. We are not taught to sin. We just do it instinctively. It is the root of sin which has to be destroyed in us -- that of personal autonomy from God.
Jesus comes to take us captive out of the enslavement of self and sin. There is a better way. It is the way God designed our bodies to operate -- with Him as our 'inside us" God, making His home in our innermost being.
That is not possible unless there is a supernatural impartation by God Himself -- putting Himself into us. . . and making our bodies containers for God-Life. It is exactly that which happens when we place our faith in Jesus Christ and recieve Him into our bodies as the Christ of the Spirit.
No longer the Christ of the Flesh- Jesus in human form- we are the ones who have acknowledged Him as the Crucified Savior for our sins and have acknowledged that we cannot possibly do away with our rebellion against God's Kingdom without His intervention.
Most of us tried.
We did everything the Bible says to do to make it work.
But, if Jesus is going to be our Lord, it has to be an inside job on His part. He does not rule from elsewhere. He must have reign over our internal beings -- and He comes to live in our spirit where He can rule over the body, mind, soul and spirit as we allow Him Lordship status in actual time.
Jesus, the Perfect Love of the Universe, comes to Love us perfectly. He loves us like none other can, because only God is perfect love.
All other loves pale in comparison to Jesus' love to us.
All other loves pale in comparison to Jesus' love through us.
All other loves pale in comparison to Jesus' love -- period!!!
If you want to know love. . . know Jesus and let Him love you as you are. Let Jesus love you into becoming what you were designed to be as a lover of people around you. Let Jesus love you into becoming what God knew all along would be your most intentional living for His glory. . .accomplishing what only you can accomplish in the hands of a Perfect Lord!
Having a husband love me through the stages of my growth in Christ, I am eager to maintain this incredible relationship we enjoy in life serving Jesus. There is no other directive in our life which guides us other than that of being His and His alone . . .and fulfilling His Divine Command to take Him to the nations in order that they come to obey all His commands -- thereby allowing people to experience the lavish love of God and the unforced rhythms of God's abounding grace.
Have a Happy Valentine's Day! Enjoy Jesus. He is Perfect Love! Out of His Love comes our love for each other in our marriage. We are still growing and maturing in our love for each other and for our family and Christ's church - here and worldwide. Until He comes -- we will enjoy Jesus! Life in Him is fabulous!
OumaB
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- Name: Darlene
- Gender: Female
- Member Since: 4/4/2005
Unforced Rhythms of Grace
About Me
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Love GOD. Love my family. Love our church family -- here and scattered around the globe. Learning to love the world of people everywhere -- like God does -- with pure and extravagantly lavish love. Learning the "unforced rhythms of grace" -- the way Jesus does things! Enjoy: time to write, read, play piano/organ, golf, walk SW Florida's white sandy beaches--English flower gardens -- open meadows with wildflowers in the Ozark mountains and Swiss Alps, Snow-capped Rockies, Silverthorn's lakes and log cabins, Petra's treasury, Austria's hills 'alive with the sound of music' -- the Galilee -- wild animals of South Africa -- Lighthouse Children's Shelter's hope for AIDS and abandoned babies of Africa -- Master's Commission hope for our world -- memory of my godly father, CT, a man to emulate thru the ages-- Grandma Beem -- our international family pix --the promise of eternity with God--the actuality (now) of Christ's Life as a life to live from. . . Learning to obey His explicit dir
Love's Lavish Worship to God
Pulse
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Repositioned for His glory!
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Completing every last detail of Christ's command!
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Never late in '08 -- always right on time with Jesus and His amazing Life and Love!
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