Surrender Your Will to Christ

The deep disease of the human heart is a will broken loose from its center, like a planet which has left its central sun and started to revolved around some strange body from outer space which may have moved in close enough to draw it away. When Satan said, "I will," he broke loose from his normal center, and the disease with which he has infected the human race is the disease of disobedience and revolt. Any adequate scheme of redemption must take into account this revolt and must undertake to restore again the human will to its proper place in the will of God. In accord with this underlying need for the healing of the will, the Holy Spirit, when He effects His gracious invasion of the believing heart, must win that heart to glad and voluntary obedience to the whole will of God.

The cure must be wrought from within; no outward conformity will do. Until the will is sanctified the man is still a rebel just as an outlaw is still an outlaw at heart even though he may be yielding grudging obedience to the sheriff who is taking him to prison.

The Holy Spirit achieves this inward cure by merging the will of the redeemed man with His own. This is not accomplished at one stroke. There must be, it is true, some kind of overall surrender of the will to Christ before any work of grace can be done, but the full mergence of every part of life with the life of God in the Spirit is likely to be a longer process than we in our creature impatience would wish. The most advanced soul may be shocked and chagrined to discover some private area within his life where he had been, unknown to himself, acting as lord and proprietor of that which he thought he had given to God. It is the work of the in-living Spirit to point out these moral discrepancies and correct them. He does not, as is sometimes said, "break" the human will, but He does invade it and bring it gently to a joyous union with the will of God.

To will the will of God is to do more than give unprotesting consent to it; it is rather to choose God's will with positive determination. As the work of God advances, the Christian finds himself free to choose whatever he will, and he gladly chooses the will of God as his highest conceivable good. Such a man has found life's highest goal. He has been placed beyond the little disappointments that plague the rest of men. Whatever happens to him is the will of God for him and that is just what he most ardently desires. But it is only fair to state that this condition is one not reached by many of the busy Christians of our busy times. Until it is reached, however, the Christian's peace cannot be complete. There must be still a certain inward controversy, a sense of spiritual disquiet which poisons our joy and greatly reduces our power.

[Tozer, A.W., God's Pursuit of Man
(formerly published as The Divine Conquest),
Chapter 8, pg.107-109]

The Wonder of It All

Show the wonder of Your great love, You who save by Your right hand those who take refuge in You.

Psalm 17:7

Several years before his death, a remarkable rabbi, Abraham Joshua Heschel, suffered a near-fatal heart attack. His closest male friend was at his bedside. Heschel was so weak he was only able to whisper: "Sam, I feel only gratitude for my life, for every moment I have lived. I am ready to go. I have seen so many miracles during my lifetime." The old rabbi was exhausted by his effort to speak. After a long pause, he said, "Sam, never once in my life did I ask God for success or wisdom or power or fame. I asked for wonder, and He gave it to me."


I asked for wonder, and He gave it to me. A Philistine will stand before a Claude Monet painting and pick his nose; a person filled with wonder will stand there fighting back the tears.


We should be astonished at the goodness of God, stunned that He should bother to call us by name, our mouths wide open at His love, bewildered that at this very moment we are standing on holy ground.

Let us ask God for the gift He gave to this unforgettable rabbi. And let us pray: "Dear Lord, grant me the grace of wonder. Surprise me, amaze me, awe me in every crevice of Your universe. Delight me to see how Your Christ plays in ten thousand places, lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not His, to the Father through the features of men's faces. Each day enrapture me with Your marvelous things without number. I do not ask to see the reason for it all; I ask only to share the wonder of it all."

--Brennan Manning

Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence

Flowers for the Crown

The Flowers for the Crown

“In that day the Lord of hosts will become a beautiful crown and a glorious diadem to the remnant of His people”
(Isaiah 28:5)

George MacDonald (1824-1905), a Scottish preacher and teacher who was considered one of the most original of nineteenth century thinkers by his contemporaries, wrote this poem:

"I said: 'Let me walk in the field;'
God said: 'Nay, walk in the town;'
I said: 'There are no flowers there;'
He said: 'No flowers, but a crown.'"

"I said: 'But the sky is black,
There is nothing but noise and din;'
But He wept as He sent me back,
'There is more,' He said, 'there is sin.'"

"I said: 'But the air is thick,
and fogs are veiling the sun;'
He answered: 'Yet souls are sick,
And souls in the dark undone.'"

"I said: 'I shall miss the light,
and friends will miss me they say;'
He answered me, 'Choose tonight,
If I am to miss you, or they.'"

"I pleaded for time to be given;
He said: 'Is it hard to decide?
It will not seem hard in Heaven,
To have followed the steps of your Guide.'"

"I cast one look at the fields,
Then set my face to the town;
He said: 'My child, do you yield?
Will you leave the flowers for the crown?'"

"Then into His hand went mine,
And into my heart came He;
And I walk in a light Divine,
The path I had feared to see."

That poem is our story. We draw back from giving ourselves to the Lord because we fear what might happen. He may send us someplace we don't want to go and we might lose control, which is exactly what we need to do! When we let Him have utter control, we will discover that the place we did not want to go is the place we should have been, all this time. If you win (in relation to God) you lose. If you lose control and give yourself to Him, you win.

The poem, in another way, is the story of our Savior. He was in the paradise of God and did not need to experience the awfulness of this "nest" we have fouled. He was completely without sin and remains so - forever! The Innocent One gave up everything and died for the world. All those "sacrifices" in the Book of Leviticus were advance "pictures," parables of what the Son would do for you and me.

Christmas! We think of the baby in the manger, and we should! The Lord of Lords, King of Glory, gave up even His ability to speak, to control bodily functions - everything; that He might become utterly a part of this human race. He and Mary cooed at one another, in Bethlehem, one night so long ago. He was a human child and she had just birthed the Savior of all mankind. As Isaiah the Prophet had foretold, so long ago, "Behold the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel" (God with us - Isaiah 7:14). If you don't think such a thing occurred, you’re looking with only human understanding. It truly happened because of the power and love of God.

Millennia before, He had stretched forth His Hand, and the interstellar vastness of outer space came into being, but now He was carried, for He could not walk even a step. Did He play with His toes? He who had breathed comfort into the hearts of Abraham, Moses and David - could He lift His blanket to ward off the cold?

The "crown" Jesus took, when He left the "flowers" of eternity, was a crown of thorns. There were not only thorns in the “crown” when He was on the cross, but also thorns in the words of those who spoke against Him, and in the many actions taken against Him.

Coming from eternity, He brought us the "flowers" of His love. Are you receiving His gift, right now? Do you love Him? Or, secretly, are you irritated because of something “unacceptable” in your life? Inside, you KNOW God is sovereign in all things. He could change your life in an instant. Why is it not changing? Have you ASKED Him? If not, you should. Have you asked Him and He did not answer? Perhaps HE wants something of YOU, and that is why the answer is delayed. Do you have pride, thinking that somehow YOUR solutions are better than HIS?

There is a cross for you, also, and it is the key to receiving the crown. Look prayerfully at what He did on the cross, and you will begin to see the flowers of His love. Reach out to Him who had become a Babe in a manger, the Man of sorrows on the Cross of Calvary who died for your sins.

In Isaiah 28:1, and forward, we read. “Woe to the proud crown of the drunkards… and to the fading flower of its glorious beauty…” Our works and efforts will fail, but “The Lord of hosts” Himself has “become a beautiful crown” (Isaiah 28:5) – for you.

Lord, thank You for becoming a human child, a Man, and our Savior, the Substitute who died for the sins of the world. Thank You for becoming our cross and our crown, making us acceptable in the sight of a Holy God. Our flowers are fading, but Yours are forever, and we are made new in You. Forgive us our sins. We praise Your Holy Name, and place our faith in You now. In Jesus Name. Amen.

Ron Beckham, Pastor
Friday Study Ministries

Are you seeking God's Presence or His presents?

You can learn a lot about what you want simply by examining what you are praying for.

King David said, One thing I ask of the Lord ... (Psalm 27:4). He had just one thing that was important to him -- just one thing! Are you begging God for many things, or are you asking Him for just that one thing: ... that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to seek him in his temple" (Psalm 27:4)?

In that psalm, David was praying that he would dwell in God's presence and seek Him. Notice that his prayer had nothing to do with getting more worldly things from God.

So, instead of begging God to give you more worldly things, pray that you would dwell in the house of the Lord, knowing that when you seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, ... all these things will be given to you as well (Matthew 6:33).

When you seek God, He promises to take care of all the things you need! Start seeking God's presence, and He will give you His presents.

[Weekly Wisdom - ChristNotes.org]

Death

Knowledge of the Holy, Chapter 23 (A.W. Tozer)

I recently finished reading The Knowledge of the Holy by A.W. Tozer. What's largely been forgotten today, Tozer illuminates -- God's attributes -- His eternity, infinitude, immutability, omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence, divine transcendence, wisdom, faithfulness, goodness, justice, mercy, grace, love, holiness, and sovereignty. It's by understanding God that we worship and praise Him in spirit and in truth. Let's honor and extol Him for who He is. The last chapter of the book, titled The Open Secret, encourages the reader to seek the greater thing, which is to lay down the things of the world and seek the Lord. I encourage you to check out the book. It is one of a few books that I know that truly describes God for who He is and seeks to point the reader to Him, not to oneself, not to the world, but to the One who gives us all things good.

The Open Secret

When viewed from the perspective of eternity, the most critical need of this hour may well be that the Church should be brought back from her long Babylonian captivity and the name of God be glorified in her again as of old. Yet we must not think of the Church as an anonymous body, a mystical religious abstraction. We Christians are the Church and whatever we do is what the Church is doing. The matter, therefore, is for each of us a personal one. Any forward step in the Church must begin with the individual.

What can we plain Christians do to bring back the departed glory? Is there some secret we may learn? Is there a formula for personal revival we can apply to the present situation, to our own situation? The answer to these questions is yes.

Yet the answer may easily disappoint some persons, for it is anything but profound. I bring no esoteric cryptogram, no mystic code to be painfully deciphered. I appeal to no hidden law of the unconscious, no occult knowledge meant only for the few. The secret is an open one which the wayfaring man may read. It is simply the old and ever new counsel: Acquaint thyself with God. To regain her lost power the Church must see heaven opened and have a transforming vision of God.

But the God we must see is not the utilitarian God who is having such a run of popularity today, whose chief claim to men’s attention is His ability to bring them success in their various undertakings and who for that reason is being cajoled and flattered by everyone who wants a favor. The God we must learn to know is the Majesty in the heavens, God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, the only wise God, our Saviour. He it is that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, who stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in, who bringeth out His starry host by number and calleth them all by name through the greatness of His power, who seeth the works of man as vanity, who putteth no confidence in princes and asks no counsel of kings.

Knowledge of such a Being cannot be gained by study alone. It comes by a wisdom the natural man knows nothing of, neither can know, because it is spiritually discerned. To know God is at once the easiest and the most difficult thing in the world. It is easy because the knowledge is not won by hard mental toil, but is something freely given. As sunlight falls free on the open field, so the knowledge of the holy God is a free gift to men who are open to receive it.

But this knowledge is difficult because there are conditions to be met and the obstinate nature of fallen man does not take kindly to them.

Let me present a brief summary of these conditions as taught by the Bible and repeated through the centuries by the holiest, sweetest saints the world has ever known:

First, we must forsake our sins. The belief that a holy God cannot be known by men of confirmed evil lives is not new to the Christian religion. The Hebrew book, The Wisdom of Solomon, which antedates Christianity by many years, has the following passage: “Love righteousness, ye that be judges of the earth: think of the Lord with a good heart, and in simplicity of heart seek him. For he will be found of them that tempt him not; and showeth himself unto such as do not distrust him. For froward thoughts separate from God and his power, when it is tried, reproveth the unwise. For unto a malicious soul wisdom shall not enter; nor dwell in the body that is subject to sin. For the Holy Spirit of discipline will flee deceit, and remove from thoughts that are without understanding, and will not abide when unrighteousness cometh in.” This same thought is found in various sayings throughout the inspired Scriptures, the best known probably being the words of Christ, “Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.”

Second, there must be an utter committal of the whole life to Christ in faith. This is what it means to “believe in Christ.” It involves a volitional and emotional attachment to Him accompanied by a firm purpose to obey Him in all things. This requires that we keep His commandments, carry our cross, and love God and our fellow men.

Third, there must be a reckoning of ourselves to have died unto sin and to be alive unto God in Christ Jesus, followed by a throwing open of the entire personality to the inflow of the Holy Spirit. Then we must practice whatever self-discipline is required to walk in the Spirit, and trample under our feet the lusts of the flesh.

Fourth, we must boldly repudiate the cheap values of the fallen world and become completely detached in spirit from everything that unbelieving men set their hearts upon, allowing ourselves only the simplest enjoyments of nature which God has bestowed alike upon the just and the unjust.

Fifth, we must practice the art of long and loving meditation upon the majesty of God. This will take some effort, for the concept of majesty has all but disappeared from the human race. The focal point of man’s interest is now himself. Humanism in its various forms has displaced theology as the key to the understanding of life. When the nineteenth-century poet Swinburne wrote, “Glory to Man in the highest! for man is the master of things,” he gave to the modern world its new Te Deum. All this must be reversed by a deliberate act of the will and kept so by a patient effort of the mind.

God is a Person and can be known in increasing degrees of intimate acquaintance as we prepare our hearts for the wonder. It may be necessary for us to alter our former beliefs about God as the glory that gilds the Sacred Scriptures dawns over our interior lives. We may also need to break quietly and graciously with the lifeless textualism that prevails among the gospel churches, and to protest the frivolous character of much that passes for Christianity among us. By this we may for the time lose friends and gain a passing reputation for being holier-than-thou; but no man who permits the expectation of unpleasant consequences to influence him in a matter like this is fit for the kingdom of God.

Sixth, as the knowledge of God becomes more wonderful, greater service to our fellow men will become for us imperative. This blessed knowledge is not given to be enjoyed selfishly. The more perfectly we know God the more we will feel the desire to translate the new-found knowledge into deeds of mercy toward suffering humanity. The God who gave all to us will continue to give all through us as we come to know Him better.

Thus far we have considered the individual’s personal relation to God, but like the ointment of a man’s right hand, which by its fragrance “betrayeth itself”, any intensified knowledge of God will soon begin to affect those around us in the Christian community. And we must seek purposefully to share our increasing light with the fellow members of the household of God.

This we can best do by keeping the majesty of God in full focus in all our public services. Not only our private prayers should be filled with God, by our witnessing, our singing, our preaching, our writing should center around the Person of our holy, holy Lord and extol continually the greatness of His dignity and power. There is a glorified Man on the right hand of the Majesty in heaven faithfully representing us there. We are left for a season among men; let us faithfully represent Him here.

[Tozer, A.W., Knowledge of the Holy, Chapter 23]

Relationship Between the Shepherd and the Sheep

Palestine has always been known for large flocks of sheep, and the people of the Bible lands have been largely dependent on sheep for their living throughout the centuries. Read the following description of the relationship between a shepherd and his sheep and see if you can see why Jesus calls himself the Good Shepherd and us His sheep.

In selecting pasture for the flock, it is an absolute necessity that plenty of water is provided too. Flocks are often stationed near a stream of running water, but the sheep can be afraid of water that is running to quickly or that is roiled up with mud. The shepherd looks for pools of water or provides some quiet place where the sheep can quench their thirst.

More than one flock may be kept in the same fold. Often flocks are even mixed while being watered at the well. No attempt is made to separate them. When it is time to separate the sheep, one shepherd after another will stand up and call out: "Tahhoo! Tahhoo!" or a similar call of his own choice. The sheep will lift their heads, and after a scramble each one will begin following his master.

The Eastern shepherd has a personal relationship with his sheep. Not only does the shepherd often know his sheep by name, he never drives them, but leads them instead. This does not mean that he is always in front of them. He may walk by their side or sometimes follow behind.

The shepherd is so acutely aware of each of his sheep that often he doesn't even need to count them. He is able to feel the absence of any one of his sheep. When a shepherd of Lebanon was asked how he could keep track of his sheep if he didn't count, he replied, "If you were to put a cloth over my eyes, and bring me any sheep and only let me put hands on its face, I could tell in a moment if it was mine or not."

The shepherd plays with his sheep to pass the hours. A shepherd does this by pretending to run away. The sheep will soon overtake him and completely surround him, jumping and twisting with delight. The sheep know their shepherd will not leave them or turn them away.

[Jerry MacGregor and Marie Prys, 1001 Surprising Things You Should Know about the Bible, 213-214]

The State of Religion (from Foxe's Book of Martyrs)

The religion of Christ, meant to be spirit and truth, had been turned into nothing but outward observances, ceremonies, and idolatry. We had so many saints, so many gods, so many monasteries, so many pilgrimages. We had too many churches, too many relics (true and fake), too many untruthful miracles. Instead of worshiping the only living Lord, we worshiped dead bones; in place of immortal Christ, we worshiped mortal bread.

No care was taken about how the people were led, as long as the priests were fed. Instead of God's Word, man's word was obeyed; instead of Christ's testament, the pope's canon. The law of God was seldom read and never understood, so Christ's saving work and the effect of man's faith were not examined. Because of this ignorance, errors and sects crept into the church, for there was no foundation for the truth that Christ willingly died to free us from our sins -- not bargaining with us, but giving to us.

Although God allowed His Church to wander for a long time, at last it pleased Him to restore it to its original foundation. And here we must admire God's wisdom, for just as the church fell into ruin because of the ignorance of its teachers, God gave man the art of printing, which restored knowledge to the church.

Through the grace of God, men of wisdom were now able to communicate their thoughts accurately and widely, so others could distinguish light from darkness, truth from error, religion from superstition. Knowledge grew in science and in languages, opening a window of light for the world and clearing the way for the reformation of the church. Still, many were left to suffer before that reform would be complete.

[the state of religion in the middle of the second millenium and in some part, the state of it today.]

Rosette and Polar Ring

Rosette Nebula

Polar Ring Galaxy NGC 660

Click on the photo and zoom in to see the details.
Is not the handiwork of God beautiful?