At the Foot of the Cross

The Spirit calls me today, understanding my sorrow as I reflect on the crucifixion of our Savior. He reminds me again of the necessity of the sacrifice. Today is "Good Friday". 

From the human accountability position, it is anything but good. This day represents humanity in it's darkest hour, demonstrating the very reason God sent us His Savior.

 Unfettered power in the hands of the human, exacting ultimate justice for the "sake" of society. The shocking depravity and cruelty of the cross in itself is a stark reminder of why we needed a Savior. Justice the human way, exacts it's toll on the condemned evil-doer, but does nothing to change the inner man. Even if the guilty serve a prison sentence or are required to do penitence, the end result is usually a promise to "try" to do better and if that fails, find a way not to get caught. But even the most law abiding citizens go over the speed limit sometimes. To say no one is perfect is the understatement of eternity. Yet God's requirement hasn't changed. The penalty for sin is death. 

The law of the speed limit is 55 MPH, just 1 MPH over and I am a law breaker. The fact that I know I am (or could be) a law breaker should drive me to the foot of the Cross. Even if the "law" of the speed limit doesn't apply, there is a greater set of laws as a human for which I am accountable before God as a lawbreaker. 

These are set forth by a Holy God and compliance is mandatory or else the sentence of death will be executed. Wow, to think that I would get a death sentence for driving 1 MPH over a speed limit is shocking especially when the penalty for murder is the same. Here is where the difference in God's justice comes to light: The goal in God's justice is to destroy the sin within. The ultimate goal is found in His love for His creation, devastated by the fall, to bring the lawbreaker back unto His righteous standard of Holiness and into fellowship with Himself. To execute the punishment of death for sin on all guilty flesh, would leave no man standing on merit..."for all have sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God" Rom 3:23

 All of us are guilty as charged. The fact that driving 1 MPH over the speed limit would receive the same punishment as murder hardly seems fair, yet when Holiness is the standard, any infraction constitutes an unacceptable violation. The point, to me, is that God sees all sin the same. There is no gradation for law breaking. To fail on one point of the law makes one guilty of failure. In the eyes of justice, 1 MPH over is the same as 100 MPH over and we are guilty of violating the "law" of the speed limit. God's justice must be equal to all and it is so, that no man can boast. Man's lesser-sin-status or merit-on-works claim, has no audience in the presence of Holiness. This is God's mercy. The end of God's justice is to condemn sin within and change the inner man. 

 Whether our depraved sin nature placed us at Calvary driving the nails into the hands and feet of an innocent or whether it places us in a vehicle driving 56 in a 55 MPH zone, we are all lawbreakers in God's eyes. Equal justice for all means the penalty for any law breaking is the same. Understanding this accountability is the important first step leading to the foot of the Cross. Judging God's justice to excuse our lesser sins is a no-win place to live and die. 

 Therefore we plead, "Come to the Cross and live". Let the powerful Blood of Jesus and the justice of our Holy God poured out on the Cross deal with your sin within. Be thankful that we don't ever have to wonder if our "good" works are enough to save us. Because on this "Good" Friday, Jesus paid the price for our sins and took the penalty for all who accept Him as Savior. For the "gift" of God is eternal life and forgiveness of sin. The glorious "Good" about "Good" Friday is in this amazing Truth: John 3:16-17,"For God so love the world that He gave His one and only Son (to die in the place of every human for we are lawbreakers all), that whosoever believes in Him (as the Savior who bore God's ultimate judgement and justice for the lawbreaker) shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him". 

Have you made it to the foot of the Cross? 

 The Holy Spirit is calling. Can you hear Him?

We are God's Workmanship

The Spirit calls today after a retreat to the ocean with women from my fellowship. The time was a much needed break but not like one normally would expect. My much needed break was to get away from comfort zones and safe routines. To venture out into the dark unknown world of other women. To be stimulated by thoughts outside my own head, exposed to opinions not flowing from my own life experiences and dealing with potential rejection always wondering about acceptance if people only knew the "real" me.

I have noticed over the course of my life that there is a fine line between not caring what others might think about me and not allowing what others might think to distort who I am.

The Spirit calls me to sweet fellowship. The retreat was wonderful, the women warm and welcoming, the message was straight from God's lips to my ears. But I sense that in thinking about my own feelings of awkwardness and fear of rejection, there is a bigger message to be gleaned from this experience.

We each have our own unique identity and calling, known since the beginning, not of our life, but since the beginning of time itself.

Psalm 139:13-16 says, "For You created my inmost being and knit me together in my mother's womb....your eyes saw my unformed body, all the days ordained for me were written in your book"

Ephesians 2:10 says, "For we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do".

There it is laid out before us: The Sovereign God of all creation, the One who saw us before we could even begin to reckon time, has a plan and a calling for us and has infused our being with the gifts, strengths and talents to fulfill that calling as He watched over our development in our mother's womb.

We are no mistake! We are not just a random bunch of cells that collided and stuck together. Our passion and interests are at base, God designed and God ordained.

The Holy One calls us to trust Him to reveal who we were created to be, not just to the world around us, but more importantly, to ourselves. In the long process, we must not listen to outside voices trying to make us into what they want us to be. There is the temptation to live up to "expectations" that have been imposed over all of us for all of our lives, but not by our Maker.

The Holy Spirit is calling to each one of His Chosen to think about our passion, for therein lies our gift; the gift that we were created to develop and share, anointed and empowered by the One who "knit us together while we were in our mother's womb". The Spirit is calling and asking us to allow Him to reveal our unique glory.

We have been taught so much about original sin and how it has distorted our entire existence. But we never have been taught to think even a little bit about the original glory of having been created in God's Glorious image.

Jesus came to restore the broken lineage between us and our Creator. Through Him we can have the legacy of glory restored. By the death and resurrection of our Savior and the subsequent release of the Holy Spirit, we have the potential to live in the Holy, Glorious conforming image of the Son of God.

While we are yet trapped in our decaying flesh, to walk in the Spirit and live out our "calling" under the anointing of the Holy One is our potential on earth. Awkwardness and fear of rejection must be overcome by confidence in the One who has created us and called us and ordained us for good works that flow through our gifts.

The Spirit is calling. Can you hear Him?

Deep Calls To Deep

This morning the Spirit calls and the message is "listen in the depths of your soul. My voice bypasses the intellect and calls to what I have placed in your core. If you ignore My voice you will be at risk".

This lesson has been given by Holiness to train me year after year. That "Voice" spoke to me long, long, ago when I was young. I have heard His voice, and now I "know" His voice.

His voice has spoken into the darkness of my circumstances and brought comfort when I needed comfort, courage when I needed courage, knowledge when I needed knowledge, discipline when I needed discipline. His voice has spoken of things not yet visible to me, then confirmed those things I heard in the reality of them "happening".

His voice has been my lifeline in dark places when it was so dark I couldn't see the pathway in front of me. As I moved toward the voice I knew to be His, the darkness gave way to the exit sign and I emerged once again into His light. Deep calls to deep. I have learned to listen, straining to hear that "familiar Voice" to my soul.

People ask "how do you hear God's voice and how do you know it's His?" I can only say, "listen" with your soul. In the desperation of your circumstances, stop running. The Good Shepherd finds you. As His voice speaks, the authority becomes undeniable.

While the Good Shepherd has a unique and creative way to train each one of in the recognition of His voice, one thing is always the same and that is the authority of His Voice. When He speaks, things happen. The enemy would have us think on those things as "coincidence" or luck (whether good or bad), but as we listen and follow His Voice, comfirming signs will always be present.

John 10:27, "My sheep listen to my voice; I know them and they follow Me." The Palestinian shepherd leads his sheep, he doesn't drive them. Voice recognition is, therefore, very important for the individual shepherd's sheep. They will only follow their personal shepherd.

Can we ignore the voice of our shepherd? Yes, and over the years I have and wound up up on cliffs of peril. The great news is that He always came looking for me and found me before I fell off the cliff. I have had a few "broken legs"; some due to personal clumsiness and some due to a rebellious heart (The Good Shepherd will sometimes break the leg of the wandering sheep, Himself, to prevent further risky adventures).

With the chaos and confusion of the enemy all around us in this fallen world we inhabit, we desperately need to hear and respond to the Voice of our Good Shepherd.

Deep is calling to deep and I must listen deep within my soul to what He is saying, then follow His voice.

The Spirit is calling. Can you hear Him?

A Brick of Truth

I am so thankful to have the Holy One on board to point out the ways I "blow it", yet in a gentle manner that is gracious and forgiving. Yesterday, as I was trying to share Truth from God's Word, I was met with a less than receptive ear. In fact, I guess if posturing could be described, I was actually speaking to the south end of someone going north. The backside, and not the side we normally like to see if we are engaging someone in conversation.

The Holy Spirit called me this morning to discuss the incident further.

He told me that the Word of Truth is like a brick, necessary for each person's faith wall. The He told me that in yesterday's conversation, I was throwing the bricks at their head rather than laying them down gently for the other person to pick up and use in their faith wall. I got the picture.

Then, He took me to 2 Timothy 2:15. "Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the Word of Truth." A brick of truth hurled at another person can hurt..big time, whereas a brick of truth gently laid before them can be picked up and added to their faith wall.

The Word of Truth, "correctly handled" is powerful and must not be thrown carelessly into the face of those who oppose us. 2 Timothy 2:24 goes further into this instruction, "and the Lord's servant must not quarrel, instead he must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful. Those who oppose him, he must gently instruct in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the Truth."

The fruit and manifestation of the Holy Spirit is patience and long suffering not just in the arena of our personal hardships and difficulties but also patience in waiting for others to come to the knowledge that we now have. How patient the Lord is with me when I am so hard-headed and cannot seem to "get" what He is showing me.

When I act out fleshly impatience with the "ignorant" and hurl the bricks of truth at their head, (or backs) the Holy One is quenched from within and His flow of grace outward is interrupted. Point well taken and prayerfully "lesson" learned.

Holy One, please forgive me for past failures and may I always handle the "brick of truth" correctly so as not to dis-grace the One who calls me to lay it down for someone else to accept and use.

The Spirit is calling. Can you hear Him?

The Amalekite King

Today the nation is is such a state of distress and the Holy Spirit has some things to say to me. The buzz is all about the administration's push for the passing of a bill that will impact our nation and our people for generations to come.

Politics aside, the Spirit warns as only the Holy Spirit can. But the warning has to do with me and my heart not the world outside. Today's call is a more urgent warning because it is the second one on the same issue lately.

The Holy One has been talking to me through the account of King Saul in I Samuel 15:18 and his treatment of the Amalekite King, Agag. To summarize; God told King Saul through the Prophet, Samuel, that he was to attack the Amalekites for what they had done to waylay Israel as they came out of Egypt. This was a Divine Decree that the enemies of God and His people were to be completely destroyed, wiped out, obliterated. Saul was told to spare no one, not even their livestock.

Saul undertook the assignment but made the decision to spare the life of the King of the Amalekites to take him captive and keep the best of the livestock, in direct violation of the Lord's command.

So how does this become a warning to me? The "Amalekite King" is a symbol of things within me that have waylayed my spiritual journey. I.E. sins that have stalled or hindered my forward progress. The Spirit is saying that the things he has been revealing to me as sin in my life must be completely destroyed, annihilated once and for all. Show no mercy...take no prisoners. Saul made the mistake of allowing the King to live under his "control" and in "captivity". In doing so, Saul lost his Godly anointing as King. The same is true of us. If we allow or tolerate personal sin, we too will lose our Godly anointing.

I must guard myself against a similar mistake. The Holy Spirit will provide me with the wisdom to know those things that "King Agag" symbolizes in my life, and then He will give me the power to destroy those things.

With regard to our nation and how this warning ties in; we, the people, God's chosen, must begin to deal with the rebellion in our own hearts so that the Holy One will come and heal our land. The ills that plague our nation are the ills of our individual hearts. The cure, for those who are called by His name, is to repent and turn (completely) and pray:

I Chronicles 7:14 "If my people, who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from Heaven and forgive their sin and will heal their land." I truly believe that the "land" God promises to heal is not just the nation but also marriages, families, ministries, businesses.

While we often quote this part of I Chronicles 7 we must not stop at VS 14 but we really need to go on to read and listen to VS 19 because herein lies a warning: "BUT, if you turn away from the decrees and commands I have given you and go off to serve other gods and worship them....THEN I will uproot....."

The unheeded warning and the promise of healing ignored, will result in a very dire consequence to our life. In this passage we love to quote, there is a "but" and a consequence should we choose to refuse God's merciful promise of intervention. I can only assume that this is so important in the eyes of the Lord that there is no neutral ground possible as He always acts in my ultimate best "interests".

Oh Holy One, I am all ears. Show me any "Amalekite King" that remains alive in my life ever before You. Give me the courage to slay without mercy any sin that remains and poses a threat to the Godly anointing You have over my life.

May we all seek what the Spirit seeks to reveal in us.

The Spirit is calling. Can you hear Him?

Losing an Hour?

The Spirit calls. The time change has wrecked havoc on the body. My wake up call didn't advance like the clock....I lost an hour.

Time is a precious commodity in my relationship with the Holy One, yet even now He speaks comfort, "I am always here with you, not just in the early morning or late at night but all throughout the day, even as you sleep, I am with you". (Deut 31:8)
"The Lord Himself goes before you and will be with you; He will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged."

As the sun rises and the day of "duty" encroaches, it's good to be reminded that He inhabits the whole of my life not just a few hours just before dawn. Lately, life has been crazy for all of us. I don't need to know the details of your personal story to understand that life has been crazy for you too.

Losing an hour seems to have accelerated the pace of this life. Winter is drawing down. The time change heralds the beginning of spring and springtime brings the delight of new life; the Celebration of the Resurrection of our Lord. The winter of the last year brought many hours of darkness over my heart and now I can anticipate and look forward to the springtime and a renewal.

The Spirit of the Risen, Living Savior has been my constant companion in the dark days of the winter and now He gives the hope that He is bringing renewal, resolution, and revival to things that have appeared to be "dead".

While I fight the loss of this "hour", I begin to realize all that I gain, and it becomes a very easy transition to make. The lost hour is symbolic to me like lost opportunities. But with the promise of resurrected life, I know the Holy One will make up for any time lost on my clock........ for His Will for me and His will for all of us is TIME-LESS.

The Spirit is calling. Can you hear Him?

Life After Death

Just as the Holy Spirit is calling to each one of us, we have the great privilege to call out to Him and know He will answer. Darkness fills the family as we keep a vigil over a life about to translate into eternity. I cry out to the Holy One. He is here and speaks truth.

When death comes knocking and it is time for the "tent" to fold in preparation for wonders beyond our imagination, it's easy to get lost in the sorrow of the final good-byes here on earth.

Born again believers in Jesus Christ have an edge over others for we know the One who holds our eternity and we love Him. We do not mourn like those who have no hope yet the "death" experience is no respecter of persons and externally, physically we all must proceed through that corridor to life beyond our limited view.

Death is where the rubber meets the road in a person's belief system. The rich die, the poor die, the wise die, the foolish die, the young die, the old die. Up to this day, no one is exempt from the death of our flesh bodies except 2 men spoken of in God's Holy Word, and even those accounts leave so much to our imagination, we can only ponder what that was like.

Since all things inevitably come to an end, you would seem to think that people would be more inclined to prepare for the next destination point beyond this life. The Bible says, Ecc 3:11, "He has also set eternity in the hearts of men, yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end".

In the whole spectrum of history, there is only One who claimed to be the Eternal Holy One, with evidence to back it up. Many voices have been heard promoting philosophies, even codes for good moral behavior but only One voice speaks with Eternal authority, and that is the Only Begotten Son of God, Christ Jesus.

Why do men follow the pathways of dead "gods"? Could it be that dead "gods" and their prophets are easier to follow as they place no "enforceable" requirements on the living?
Christians are the only ones who follow a living Savior. Our God lives!. Jesus is the only resurrected Savior.

When confronted with the super-natural fact of the Resurrection, everything else we might believe in falls away. Good men, and their moral codes live for a while in our memories but then they are placed in a casket of dead things. Certain men or women who live reputable lives may be wonderful to follow for a season but then we all have to admit that not one hero of any other "religion" or belief system ever conquered death.

The Resurrected One deserves all our attention, all our honor, all our respect, all our loyalty, all our worship. None can compare to our "Champion". No other theology, philosophy, or belief system can truly claim a life beyond death except the One who came back physically to prove it. To such a One we must pay close attention and if we desire to live eternally, we must follow Him as He has led the way. Jesus is the only true Messiah. His life, death and resurrection is a historic fact.

And this is the reason for our hope.

When death happens here on earth, we are ushered into a new place with different dynamics, but our soul lives on. For the followers of Christ, this is a wondrous welcoming place where we will be face to face with our Savior. But for those who never cared to prepare for eternity through the Truth of God's Word, there is the foreboding finality spoken in Revelation 20:11.

Jesus talked about the "narrow road that leads to life. "Enter through the narrow gate for wide is the gate and broad the road that leads to destruction and many enter it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life and only a few find it." Matt 7:13-14.

This broad vs narrow road is not the "law" or rules upon us that are hard to live by. The way is not narrow because of legalistic requirements or regulations. The way is narrow simply because Jesus Christ is the ONLY way provided by the Father to have relationship with and access to Heaven's Throne, where all judgement is executed against sin.

God's ultimate judgment over sin was already poured out onto the Savior on the Cross. We either accept it or not. We either receive and believe that Jesus Christ died in our place having paid the price for sin that must be judged and condemned or not.

But for those who believe they can get to the Throne of Heaven any other way, whether by good works, sweet disposition, or following the tenets of Buddha, Mohammad, Joseph
Smith or others, however "good" they may sound, are entering through the wrong gate and unto their ultimate destruction.

In the face of the ultimate equalizer of all men who ever lived, which is the death of our earthly existence, we can rejoice in faith that the One who was crucified in our place is alive and well. His tomb is empty and He lives. Because He lives, all of us who follow Him will live on as well.

Followers of Christ can celebrate...even in the face of death. How about you?

The Spirit is calling. Can you hear Him?