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I ask you to please bear with me in my rambling rabbit trail thoughts here.
I woke up this morning early at 3:15; I didn’t need to be up until at least 5:15, why??
It was another flash back, (horrible memory) or maybe as I am sensing, the tremendous cleansing, and restoring (reconciling) love of my Father bringing the wine and oil into my very needy soul.
Didn’t Jesus say, he leaves the ninety and nine healthy and safe ones, to seek the lost one, and that He came to seek and save that which was lost? Yes Father, you’re speaking to me.
The King James bible is the only one I know of that uses such strong language in such often and great, but caustic and disturbing words, such as ‘bastards’!
It was this word which was spoken to me in my flashback, which jerked me up straight and wide awake.
Some quick renderings of that word:
A child born out of wedlock.
Something that is of irregular, inferior, or dubious origin.
And especially this one, Resembling a known kind or species but not truly such.
It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. (But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons.) Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live?
But doesn’t the bible say, ‘If any man be in Christ Jesus he is a brand new creation (species)?
If the best any of us has ever known is conditional (acceptance) love, ‘do good get good, do bad get bad’, is it any wonder we are such twisted and pressed out of shape (undergo a change; become different in essence; losing one's or its original nature) creatures?
Maybe in this unfolding continuous work of grace what is being awakened in us is a newly discovered depth and awareness of how much we have been forgiven, and maybe that’s why Jesus said, “He who has been forgiven much, is empowered to love much”.
If I am becoming aware of anything, it is what I was born for, what I was created for, to BE loved with no strings attached, no ulterior motives, totally accepted as His son.
I see this being played out when Jesus said to his disciples, show me a coin used for paying your taxes, and taking the coin he asked, ‘Whose likeness and inscription (an imitative appearance; a semblance) is on this coin’?
Behind that likeness was the power of Rome, but that power had no ability to define who people were then, nor does it do any better today. Although on some coins, it tips its hat by saying, “In God we trust”!
Definitely there was a likeness of the supreme power of Rome on that coin, but it was lacking any true substance (image) or any Life.
It is God the Father’s love and it alone that will bring forth in us not just a likeness, (not just an imitative appearance or semblance) but His very image in us, as us.
It is the Father’s greatest desire to press, stamp deeply into the core of our being, who we were created to be. It is only His love that can define us and our eternal worth in this moment we live in.
Maybe in so doing we will be the currency of His economy, e.g. “Silver and gold I have not, but what I have, I freely give to you, rise up and be made whole”.
“It wasn't so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. You let the world, which doesn't know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, (by nature, children of wrath) all of us in the same boat. It's a wonder God didn't lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us. Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, he embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did all this on his own, with no help from us! Then he picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus, our Lord.”
“Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It's God's gift from start to finish! We don't play the major role. If we did, we'd probably go around bragging that we'd done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.”
For those interested in further thoughts that I read this morning after finishing what I wrote here from Oz…
http://www.heartlight.org/cgi-shl/my_utmost/utm.cgi
It Is Finished
Rich
I woke up this morning early at 3:15; I didn’t need to be up until at least 5:15, why??
It was another flash back, (horrible memory) or maybe as I am sensing, the tremendous cleansing, and restoring (reconciling) love of my Father bringing the wine and oil into my very needy soul.
Didn’t Jesus say, he leaves the ninety and nine healthy and safe ones, to seek the lost one, and that He came to seek and save that which was lost? Yes Father, you’re speaking to me.
The King James bible is the only one I know of that uses such strong language in such often and great, but caustic and disturbing words, such as ‘bastards’!
It was this word which was spoken to me in my flashback, which jerked me up straight and wide awake.
Some quick renderings of that word:
A child born out of wedlock.
Something that is of irregular, inferior, or dubious origin.
And especially this one, Resembling a known kind or species but not truly such.
It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. (But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons.) Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live?
But doesn’t the bible say, ‘If any man be in Christ Jesus he is a brand new creation (species)?
If the best any of us has ever known is conditional (acceptance) love, ‘do good get good, do bad get bad’, is it any wonder we are such twisted and pressed out of shape (undergo a change; become different in essence; losing one's or its original nature) creatures?
Maybe in this unfolding continuous work of grace what is being awakened in us is a newly discovered depth and awareness of how much we have been forgiven, and maybe that’s why Jesus said, “He who has been forgiven much, is empowered to love much”.
If I am becoming aware of anything, it is what I was born for, what I was created for, to BE loved with no strings attached, no ulterior motives, totally accepted as His son.
I see this being played out when Jesus said to his disciples, show me a coin used for paying your taxes, and taking the coin he asked, ‘Whose likeness and inscription (an imitative appearance; a semblance) is on this coin’?
Behind that likeness was the power of Rome, but that power had no ability to define who people were then, nor does it do any better today. Although on some coins, it tips its hat by saying, “In God we trust”!
Definitely there was a likeness of the supreme power of Rome on that coin, but it was lacking any true substance (image) or any Life.
It is God the Father’s love and it alone that will bring forth in us not just a likeness, (not just an imitative appearance or semblance) but His very image in us, as us.
It is the Father’s greatest desire to press, stamp deeply into the core of our being, who we were created to be. It is only His love that can define us and our eternal worth in this moment we live in.
Maybe in so doing we will be the currency of His economy, e.g. “Silver and gold I have not, but what I have, I freely give to you, rise up and be made whole”.
“It wasn't so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. You let the world, which doesn't know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, (by nature, children of wrath) all of us in the same boat. It's a wonder God didn't lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us. Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, he embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did all this on his own, with no help from us! Then he picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus, our Lord.”
“Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It's God's gift from start to finish! We don't play the major role. If we did, we'd probably go around bragging that we'd done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.”
For those interested in further thoughts that I read this morning after finishing what I wrote here from Oz…
http://www.heartlight.org/cgi-shl/my_utmost/utm.cgi
It Is Finished
Rich
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