HE IS GOD! God…the one who created ALL things and beings…who with small demonstrations of power brought out his captive people Israel from the land of Egypt…the most powerful nation on Earth at that time…I say small demonstrations of power because they were nothing mighty in the eyes of God. God…when I read again and again of how he caused a whale…a mindless…senseless creature to swallow Jonah…and then spit him out at His own precise designated location…I sensed the awesome inexhaustible limits of his power… I became alarmed when I read in Job how even Satan was POWERLESS to go beyond the bounds that God had set him…Job could not be touched until God gave him the go ahead and even then…he could not go beyond the harm God had PERMITTED him to do. God allowed the devil merely to SHOWCASE the most righteous man in the world in that he KNEW the kind of man Job was, having walked with him for a long time…JOB SIMPLY WOULD NOT BEND OR YIELD TO COMPROMISE UNDER ANY KIND OF PRESSURE WHATSOEVER! Yeah…God must have been so proud of him and so sure of him to have risked being humiliated by Job should Job have compromised and cursed God the way his wife wanted him to, Rejected by both friends and family, he was a true type of Jesus the Christ. I guess it was more of a demonstration to Satan that there were still men and women who would do ANYTHING to PLEASE God…but out of love…not out of fear…which is the way Satan rules. So you can imagine how ‘tired’ I instantly became when I read about how Daniel, Meshach and Abednego answered the most powerful King of their era, after being queried as to why they did not bow before the graven image of the king like everyone else…they did not quake with fear and trembling as to what the king would do to them…they did not try to be diplomatic in their answer…they simply said; “Oh king, we are not careful to answer you in this matter…in other words there is only ONE way to say this…”Whether our God delivers us from the fiery furnace or not…IT IS SIMPLY NOT AN OPTION TO BOW DOWN…(and then beg God for forgiveness later!). He may choose to deliver us somehow from the 7 times heated up fire…or he may choose to let us ‘perish’ within it…it is His prerogative because… HE IS GOD! It was with this same spirit that Peter and some other apostles answered the Jewish Council of Elders when they were brought before them for preaching the gospel of Christ…there answer was so similar…”You have a right to your opinion as to whether or not we should preach the gospel of Christ…but as for us…there simply is no option no matter what happens to us, because….HE IS GOD! You may dislike me for it…yet I cannot but feel some small sense of admiration for those misguided suicide bombers who have been so brainwashed that they actually believe that they will wake up from the dead in some delusional paradise, but the point is…THEY DO NOT LOVE THEIR LIVES SO MUCH SO THAT THEY ARE AFRAID TO GIVE IT UP FOR A ‘JUST’ CAUSE! Oh! If only I could say with all certainty that I too do not love my life unto the death…but I guess perhaps a time of testing may come… perhaps it may not even be death itself…after all Job did not die…but he lost ALL things that were dear to him…so indeed we might say he ‘died’ to those things… Until a person is not afraid to give up ALL things that he/she holds dear…he/she has not yet died to self…he/she is not yet standing on resurrection ground in reality…only legally by the work that Christ wrought for us…there is always an outworking of the ‘in-worked’ work that Christ has done for us in every instance of life. So now I have come to understand that God is not a sentimental God….for he is way above human emotion…he will not understand if I COMPROMISE in anything for he has said: Hebrews 12:6-7 For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth , and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. 7 If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not? God disciplines his people when they err…he doesn’t just forgive! We must KNOW that, and learn how to discern when we are being chastised of God! He says: Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin. Hebrews 12:4 This last scripture alone suggests that it is possible God may require that we resist sin and compromise, even to the point where we may have to shed our blood for it...Joseph gave up several years of his life incarcerated in a dungeon under the ground for a crime he didn’t even commit…why…because he refused to compromise his right standing before God…he said; “ how can I commit this sin against my God?” He was horrified at the thought! How much more we who live under a far better Covenant and promises? Surely God requires a much higher standard from us! Yet sadly our standard comes far short of what was practised in the days of Joseph…or Abraham who gave up his only son…or Daniel and his friends who made it clear that their lives were not worth a grain of sand if that was what God was requiring of them…or Peter and James and John who thought that it was definitely far safer to take a beating than to incur the displeasure of God. He says to men and women alike: Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong. 1 Corinthians 16:13 He wants us to grow up and behave in the spiritual like tough…flea bitten men who have endured stormy weather year after year on the sea…or farmers who have laboured daily for hours under the blazing sun…or shepherds who daily are exposed to wild animals as they care for their flocks…nah…he definitely does not want weak…wimpy…cry-baby Christians who compromise at the slightest pressure and then run back in tears into the arms of a ‘loving God’ who will simply say to them; “Never mind my dear, we will simply start over again”…yeah…no wonder only a few are CHOSEN…the ones who do not love their lives unto the death…the ones for whom sin and compromise is not an option… When I put all these scriptures together, I began to see a new side to God that I had never seen before…he is raising sons…not pampering babies that never want to grow up…ever learning and never coming to the knowledge of the truth…he wants us to live our lives as though they were not indispensable but in fact very dispensable to him… That’s why when the devil throws danger…threats…and all manner of scary things at me…I MUST learn to say…”I am not careful to answer you in this matter”…(go on…I know you want to say it with me)….”HE IS GOD! PERIOD!!!”
Posted on: Wed, 12 Mar 2014 13:36:08 +0000
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