If I'm asked, "Do you believe Jesus can do physical healing today? I always say, 'Yes! He's the same yesterday, today and forever!' Then when I'm asked if He can deliver the homeless addict on the street? I drop my head and mumble something like, "They have to be at their bottom, and we can't make them get clean until they're ready, they have to be willing."

But that’s what everyone says, but we never know when that moment may come, and when it does it will be because many before us had hope and ministered to them; and maybe, just maybe, we will be the one that adds the final word and they repent.

 

 

 

 

 

  "Love, where it is unobstructed, is always a joy. It is the deepest of all joys - the joy of the heart. 

And yet who can fail to see that this love is a species of death? It only exists by reason of a complete surrender of the very thought of self; the man loses himself in the being of another. The joy of love is the actual fruit of sacrifice, and would have no being apart from sacrifice.  It is the joy of a spirit that has ceased to behold itself in the glass of consciousness. It is the joy of a spirit which has lost its personal care in taking up the care of another, and which has found it's own burden to fall in the lifting of a burden which is not its own. (What parent cannot see this principle in sacrificing for one's own children? The principle is the same with all those we sacrifice for.) 

Jesus said, "Take my yoke upon you, and you shall find rest." The yoke which He asked his followers to take was the burden of humanity. He told them to enter into His own spirit of universal love. He did not conceal from them that this yoke would bring a load of universal care, but He said that the universal care would destroy the individual care and to the personal life bring rest: the new yoke would be easy and the new burden light. This thought pervades the parting utterances, "These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full." Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives give I unto you."

Jesus bequeathed to His followers a peace He possessed; Christ's peace was in the Cross, and it was in it for this reason that His Cross was made, not of wood, but of love. The cause of His suffering was the source of His individual rest. He had become oblivious of all personal pain, because love had given Him a pain that was impersonal; the throbbing of the pulse of humanity still His own.

  The object of Christ's love was humanity itself; not intellectual humanity, not aristocratic humanity, but suffering humanity, in every grade and of every order. The class to which He appealed was that of the laboring and heavy-laden, a category which, comprehending as it does the whole family both of active and of passive sufferers is absolutely coextensive with the universal life of man. It is as if He had said: you think that my kinghood is disproved by the burdens that I bear. I tell you that it is the bearing of these burdens that makes me a King. The new power which I bring into the world is a power of love, and therefore a power of sacrifice. This cross I carry, so far from being an obstruction to the realization of my kingdom, is itself the very scepter of that kingdom. That which I have won, that which I offer to My followers, is not the power to avoid the calamities of life, but the power to lift these calamities.

I offer to make each man king in proportion as he becomes a priest, bears witness in his own life to the truth of sacrifice. He shall be free and fearless and independent in proportion as he has died to self interest, lost the thought of self in the thought of another, succumbed to the burden of love; that is the power which has made Me king!" 

George Matheson - "Landmarks of New Testament Morality." 

  "Whether we realize it or not, most of us that struggle with much of Christendom today are trying to distance ourselves from religious hostility. By hostility I mean opposition, the sense that the other is the enemy. Hostility makes one unwilling to be a host. The other must be turned away, kept at a distance as an unwanted outsider, not welcomed in hospitality as a guest or friend. Hostility is an attitude of exclusion, not embrace; of repugnance, not respect; of suspicion, not extending the benefit of doubt; of conflict, not sociability or conviviality."

  How do we disassociate from the hostility without abandoning the identity? How do we remain loyal to what is good and real in our faith without giving tacit support to what is wrong and dangerous? How do we, as Christians, faithfully affirm the uniqueness and universality of Christ without turning that belief into an insult or weapon?

How do you distinguish yourself from those who need enemies to know who they are?" 

Brain McLaren from the book "Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road?" 

    "There is something real and good in my faith -- a call to love God and neighbors that I can't abandon without feeling a pang of betrayal. There is also something wrong with my faith: a vague hostility toward the cherished religions of my non-Christian neighbors that I can't exactly support without feeling an equal and opposite pang of betrayal. To accept and love God, must I betray my neighbor of another religion? 

The stronger this internal conflict grows, the more certain is my sense of calling to imagine and strive for something better. I'm seeking a way of being Christian that makes me more hospitable, not more hostile... more loving, not more judgmental; more like Christ and less (I'm sad to have to say this) like many churchgoers I have met."

Brian McLaren. 

   "Is it possible to be both faithful to the Christian faith and charitable to other faiths? 

I've struggled with this: I feel two opposing realities churning within me. On the one hand, I feel the pull of Jesus' words "Blessed are the peacemakers," or Paul's words about the gospel being a message of reconciliation, or Jame's assertion that God's wisdom is first pure and then peaceable. But on the other hand, I keep noticing how my religion has, over its first 2,000 years of existence, spent too little energy making peace and too much erecting and perfecting walls of separation, suspicion, and hostility. In the Bible I read about love, love, love, but in various Christian subcultures in which I've participated, I keep encountering fear, superiority, and hostility. In a wild array of forms, the message comes to me from the centers of religious power: I can't belong to our 'us' unless I am against 'them.'" 

Brian McLaren.

 

 

 

  "To give our views of God in one word, it is Father. 

We believe in His Parental character. We ascribe to Him not only the name, but the disposition and principles of a father. We believe that He has a father's concern for his creatures, a father's desire for their improvement, a father's equity in proportioning His demands to their powers, a father's joy in their progress, a father's readiness to receive the penitent, and a father's justice for the incorrigible." 

William Ellery Channing.

Christian Truth is Infinite. 

  "Who can think of shutting it up in a few lines of an abstract creed? You might as well compress the boundless atmosphere, the fire, the all-pervading light, the free winds of he universe, into separate parcels, and weigh and label them, as to break up Christianity into a few propositions. 

Christianity is freer, more illimitable, than the light or the winds. It is too mighty to be bound down by man's puny hands. It is a spirit rather than a rigid doctrine, the spirit of boundless love. The Infinite cannot be defined and measured out like a human manufacture. It cannot be reduced to a system. It cannot be comprehended in a set of precise ideas. It is to be felt rather than described. The spiritual impressions which a true Christian receives from the character and teachings of Christ, and in which the chief efficacy of the religion lies, can be poorly brought out in words. Words are but brief, rude hints of a Christian's mind. His thoughts and feelings overflow them." 

William Ellery Channing.

Internet sins

Internet sins; let's talk about the most common Internet sin in light of Galatians 6:7-10. 

  We know the "Law of Christ" is to love others and encourage them as they face the obstacles of life; to help them, to be a faithful friend and advocate; to show kindness and patience, and while we still have opportunity, because the time is short, and to do good to all people, especially fellow Christians. But if we shirk our responsibility, and withdraw, isolate and neglect to do all the good we can, this is "mocking God and sowing to the flesh", meaning: violating the "Law of Christ" by putting our self first by neglecting our opportunities to do good. And if we do this we will reap a corruption within; that corruption may cause a quenching of the Spirit, it may breed an exaggerated fear of people; a melancholy spirit and loss of joy. 

So let me suggest a way we frequently commit Internet sin; each time we read the attempts of others to bless us, or ask for our prayers, and you read and pass by the post, without responding, you are taking but not giving. Paul urges us to not lose heart in doing good, even the small good of acknowledging the efforts, or needs, of someone who posts. 

So, bear one another's burdens and take advantage of the countless opportunities, every day, in every post, and do some little act of kindness, even if it's simply clicking on "like".     

Discouraged?

 Discouraged? Will you take a minute and be encouraged by one of God's great soul surgeons? Let this old Puritan use his Bible scalpel to bring you healing and lift you up. 

"Behold says the Lord, I will allure her (that is the church, His people) and bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfortably to her, and I will give her vineyards from there, and the valley of Achor for a door of hope." Hosea 2:14 

But you say, 'a wilderness condition is a lost condition, so what comfort can one have in a lost, condition?' True says God, you cannot, in and by yourselves, but here I will speak friendly and comfortably to her, and of all the times that I choose to preach the gospel to a poor soul, I choose to do it in a wilderness and lost condition. But you say, though the Lord does speak comfortably to us, yet if we are in a dry and barren wilderness where no food nor comfort is, how can we be anything but discouraged? No, says the Lord, but "I will give her vineyards from there." But you say again, if we sin and murmur in the wilderness, as the Israelites did, the Lord will cut us off as He did them, and a wilderness is a place of trouble, wherein we are apt to murmur and be discouraged. No, says the Lord, "But I will give her vineyards from there, and the valley of Achor for a door of hope." Now understand, the valley of Achor was the valley of anxiety, trouble, and of great discouragement, when the men of Israel fled, and fell before the men of Ai, for the sin of Achan, Joshua 7:26; yet it was an inlet to the land Canaan, to the land of rest. Now, says the Lord, see how it was with them, through the valley of Achor was a valley of trouble and anxiety, yet it was the door by which the Israelites come into the land of rest; so shall it be with you; I will make your troubles and discouragements the very door of your hope! The valley of your discouragements shall be the door and inlet unto all your rest and comfort. 

God takes the same way with the members (church) as He took with their Head; Christ's cross was an inlet to glory. 

Where is the Gerasene Demoniac in your city?

 In Mark 5:1 Jesus shows us the downcast He seeks is often on the "other side". The other side of the tracks, the downtown skid row, the homeless camps, the "byways and hedges." He will be dwelling among the dead, not the physically dead, but those who have lost all in life worth living for. 

Those places where no one is able to reach him with the tug of matrimonial bonds, in fact he has even broken the chains of relationship with his own children. No love is strong enough to bring him to repentance. You see him constantly, day and night, walking among others that share his fate or hidden away from all in the lonely places of isolation. There he drinks away his bitter tears and lives in self-destructive patterns; sometimes displayed by addiction, or cutting or other self destructive behaviors, sometimes wailing and crying out in a drug induced psychosis, or deep and relentless anguish of heart. 

What can save this wretch of a man? Violent, lost in addiction, repugnant: no reason to live and no hope but further torment. 

Oh but there is one! 

One has made a long trip over rough seas into the heart of hell just to find this poor abandoned and neglected soul! The drama for his soul begins when he meets Jesus in the depths of his addiction, the years of demonic torment, emaciated in body and mind, he meets the Master face to face! 

Only Christ's power is able to subdue and breath life back into this repulsive looking man! But we are left with the parting scene where we see this man sitting down, clothed and in his right mind as Jesus sends him to share what He did for his soul. 

Who has a message so divine? Who knows a power that knows has limits? We do! The ambassadors of this Mighty Savior's love! May we never see anyone beyond His reach!

 

I was reading Luke 6:35-37 today and Jesus explained that God the Most High loves His enemies and is kind to ungrateful and evil people. 

He then explains further by saying; 

Be merciful to ungrateful and evil people 

Do not judge ungrateful and evil people, 

Do not condemn evil and ungrateful people 

Pardon evil and ungrateful people, and in so doing we will be sons and daughters of God. 

Surely the "law of Christ" explained here is why we love Him so. 

I chose this photo because she has an unapproachable appearance; she may well be a saint.