For Dying Friends (and we are all dying)
In Luke 17:11-19 we read of the ten lepers who were cleansed of their disease, one of whom came back
The Christless does his good deeds on a horizontal plane, whereas the Christian does his good deeds Christwardly,
If you were to give me morphine to cover the pain of my terminal cancer
Believing deeply about or in something does not make it true.
Father, that we would not despise You by passionately thinking that death is our ticket to heaven, or relatedly, that entrance to heaven is gained by being nice in a strictly human way and in a strictly horizontal direction.
—————————————————–
How sad that we all desire heaven but few of us would be troubled if You were not there Jesus. A staggering inconsistency lost on most of us.
—————————————————
Is there a holy, unbreakable weld at the junction of our vertical experience with God and our horizontal experience with people, or does it only look like there’s a connection?
Meaning, is our love for God a mere pretense and shown to be so by a lack of love for people?
The unbeliever becomes angry at the person who has sinned against them, or against a loved one, but remains willingly oblivious to the fact that the sinner is merely the lackey in the employ of a much darker foe.
However, we do not rage against the hand that steals candy from the store we own or against the legs that bear the thief away; the hands and legs are only instruments in the sinning. The real issue is the heart of the wrongdoer, the inner corruption, the hidden darkness within, which is why the psalmist cries out, “Clear me from hidden faults” and “Search me O God and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts.” (Psalm 19:12 and 139:23)
We ought to despise the devil and his work (“love what is good and hate what is evil” Romans 12:9) far more than we do the instruments of his wickedness, his small and frail human agents, who are after all, not so unlike us.
After you have woken up from a normal sleep, having fasted from food, thus allowing your tastebuds to rest and regenerate, notice how good the 1st sip of coffee tastes (I am assuming there are some coffee lovers among you).
The western Christian, perhaps the North American in particular, inundated with the steady drone of television, is more prone to have his spiritual tastebuds so frequently tuned to the banal, that he cannot hear the music of God. He is like the person who wakes up in the morning, has a few pieces of cold pizza, and wonders why the coffee doesn’t taste very good.
John Piper has it right in saying that the modern Christian stuffs himself with so much white bread of contemporary culture, that he has no hunger for the feast of God in Christ. This is true. We would therefore do very well to turn off the television and ask God to begin a deep restoration in our taste for Him.
In Matthew 9:27-31 Jesus heals two blind men, giving them sight. He warns them with, “See that no one knows about it. But they went away and spread His fame throughout all that district.”
Out of what? Out of the heart’s overflow of seeing and knowing something of Christ’s glory shining upon them and overpowering their blindness.
In their delight they could not help themselves.
Jesus, come upon the blindness that remains in us and move us into increasingly glad proclamation of Your worth.
“In the afternoon I felt, in secret prayer, much resigned, calm and serene.
Volume 1, Page 9
1. A large pile of snow (the effects of sin) sitting in 100 degree heat will still need