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Tag: Christ

  • Ashes of Ash Wednesday + a Preparation of Repentance

    Ashes of Ash Wednesday + a Preparation of Repentance

    Ash Wednesday

    We pause momentarily today [AD 2022] from consideration of God’s love to prepare for the season of Christ’s Blood of Sacrifice.

    Consider your own unrighteousness to receive any grace.

    Bow down in the dust of your crumbling bones; cover with ashes your sin-consumed flesh.

    Will the LORD not have mercy on me, a sinner?

    Who will pay any ransom for your many sins? Who has redeemed the faithful who fall short of righteousness? Who only can cleanse the soul of sin and the heart of continual iniquity?

    Jeremiah 6:26

    O daughter of my people, put on sackcloth,
    and roll in ashes;
    make mourning as for an only son,
    most bitter lamentation,
    for suddenly the destroyer
    will come upon us.

    Mark 1

    14 Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, 15 and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”

    The Revelation of Jesus Christ to John 3:3

    Remember, then, what you received and heard. Keep it, and repent. If you will not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come against you.

     2 Peter 2:

    But false prophets also arose among the people… And many will follow their sensuality… And in their greed they will exploit you with false words. Their condemnation from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep.

    For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell… if he did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly; if by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes he condemned them to extinction, making them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly… then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment…

    Repentance Of Sinners: v.12

    But these, like irrational animals, creatures of instinct, born to be caught and destroyed… They count it pleasure to revel in the daytime. They are blots and blemishes, reveling in their deceptions, while they feast with you…

    Peter is warning the church here of those CLAIM to be christians, but actually are wed to Satan the master of their sin.

    Is this not a timely loud caution for our contemporary church?

    14 They have eyes full of adultery, insatiable for sin. They entice unsteady souls. They have hearts trained in greed. Accursed children! Forsaking the right way, they have gone astray…

    20 For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first.

    21 For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them.

    Remember in ashes and dust, the turning of Judas from Jesus Christ, our only Lord and Savior.

    The ashes of Ash Wednesday traditionally come from the burnt palms of the prior Palm Sunday, a day with the crowds shout, HOSANNA! The KING, our LORD Jesus approaches the gate.

    Yet how quickly we turn on HIM, when we see the CROSS we must also bear to follow Jesus.

    In this season of preparation for Easter, less than 40 days until the dark celebration of our own sin for which our Lord suffered and died on Good Friday, let us repent in dust and ashes before the Lord our God. Let us bow down to Christ Jesus, who suffered all for our sins that we might be redeemed by His grace to the Light of Eternal Life.

    Hebrews 3

    7 Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says,

    “Today, if you hear his voice,
    8 do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion…

    12 Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. 13 But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. 14 For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end. 15 As it is said,

    “Today, if you hear his voice,
    do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.”

    Are you prepared to meet the LORD your GOD Face to face?

    Are you prepared to face Jesus should today bring your last breath of life before eternal Life or prior to Christ’s triumphant return and Judgment?

    Like Job, do you repent in dust and ashes before God?

    Like Peter, do you come before Jesus Christ confessing, I am a sinful man?

    Christians hanged in Egypt 2015

    Do you confess Jesus Christ as your Lord in these troubling times?

    Mark 8: 34 And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.

    35 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it. 36 For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? 37 For what can a man give in return for his soul?

    38 For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”

    edgar-cayce-time

    Yes, false Prophets will come, but the time is not yet.

    isis-beheading-21-coptic-christians-in-libya-resized

    No man knows the day or the hour. Some claim tolerance with darkness and Jesus.

    Churchill Islam quote

    He is NOT Christ to them. They twist truth into lies with self-serving sinful false prophesy!

    Some proclaim loudly choruses of peace, while they proclaim God’s lands for the destruction of evil.

    Our United leaders of this world excel as the Chamberlains of peace, rather than admit evil’s destruction of the truth and the truth of evil’s destruction.

    Some sing loudly a Hallelujah Chorus to Jesus, while they lead astray softly in the sin of their hidden ways.

    Are you a secretive christian, tolerant of those who hate Christ and the Cross?

    REPENT in dust and ashes! For in these last days the signs are many and the Day and hour you do not know.

    Prepare and wash your soul in the Blood of Christ Jesus, in preparation for the Good Friday of the Cross and our only hope and joy, the Resurrection and Victory of the love of God celebrated in 40 days (God willing) on Easter.

    Revelation 7

    A Great Multitude from Every Nation

    9 After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, 10 and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”

    13 Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, “Who are these, clothed in white robes, and from where have they come?” 14 I said to him, “Sir, you know.”

    And he said to me, “These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation. They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

    16 They shall hunger no more, neither thirst anymore;
        the sun shall not strike them,
        nor any scorching heat.
    17 For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd,
        and he will guide them to springs of living water,
    and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

    Revelation 11

    The Seventh Trumpet

    15 Then the seventh angel blew his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven, saying,

    “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever.”

    HALLELUJAH! CHRIST OUR LORD IS! JESUS CHRIST IS RISEN. HE WILL RETURN ON THE CLOUDS IN VICTORY OVER ALL SIN. HE WILL PUNISH ALL UNRIGHTEOUSNESS.

    Repent, therefore, and worship Christ Jesus our Lord. Bow down only to Christ in the dust of your flesh and the ashes of your sinfulness. Christ Jesus IS and will judge you and me and all.

    Remember you are dust and into dust you will return.

  • My Love – 6 – If I have not love

    My Love – 6 – If I have not love

    ‘I’m not happy.’

    ‘I met someone’

    IF you claim to be a follower of the Bridegroom of the church, Jesus Christ and things don’t go quite your way, would you tell Jesus to ‘get out’?

    Would you look for someone better, who might make you happy in this world?

    (Did God really say, “Don’t eat of the fruit of that tree?”)

    IF you are unfaithful to Christ’s love, would it not be adultery?

    christian whoreThough you claim to be a follower of Jesus, so had Judas!

    This is the unfortunate false witness of some with a cross in front of their home, ‘christianity’ claimed before ‘friends’ as religion, their stamp of approval before the world. These claim many things by the ‘Blood of Jesus,’ yet their more bold witness of worldly sins again crucifies hope in His body and true Bride, the church.

    Some have heard the following, even at weddings, known as the ‘love chapter.’

    IF Jesus Christ is your love, listen then to true love, you adulterers of Christ!

    1 Corinthians 13

    The Way of Love

     If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.

    I have heard in churches the noisy gongs of ‘single moms,’ divorced grandmas and others clanging the noise of their own ‘higher’ worship, ‘tongues of angels,’ God’s messengers; as if we should follow these women, rather than Christ Jesus as Lord. Will they who are not bowed down to their husband or any man in Christ not lead the faith astray with their babel?

    2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.

    I have heard prophesy given in the church. Is it from God? Why then did the church not record the very prediction of God given? Is the prophesy confirmed and witnessed to the glory of our Lord, Christ Jesus? Yes, sometimes; but believer beware of the wolves in our midst.

    Have you not endured some claiming such superior knowledge and understanding of mysteries who would teach us of their ‘faith to remove mountains’ in their Sunday school class or church small group?

    Did you experience the embrace of Christ’s love in their Pharisaical instruction? Did you hear love for you in their teaching or prophesy?

    I, too, have received prophesy and spoken it. The revelation of the Lord is a terrible and awesome thing!

    Some prophesy has not yet come to pass. For all I know, I may have been given some spirit of deception to accomplish the Lord’s overpowering purpose. Yet in these last days we must fear the Lord, always listening for the approaching trumpet of truth over the blaring cries of some claiming ‘understanding.’

    Read your Bible and pray for revelation by the Spirit of Truth in scripture.

    3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

    ‘And though I bestow,‘ states the King James; bestow, an interesting word more related to charity as we understand it – charity, agape love of God, used in application throughout these verses of the love chapter.

    Bestow: to feed by putting a bit or crumb (of food) into the mouth; of infants, young animals etc.; to feed, nourish to give a thing; to feed someone, feed out to

    Feed on God’s word in scripture. Nourish your spirit in prayer.

    Does this not also bring to mind the love a father and a mother, given to their child, their teen, their grown adult children, even their spouse given in marriage into your own family? Is this not also the gift of adoption given by our Heavenly Father through Christ to gentile believers (like most of us)?

    Are we not all poor and needy, dependent on our Father’s forgiving gracious love?

    Though I give to the poor, but have not love…

    Is that our charity of witness?

    Now that I have shared the seriousness of God’s love for us, allow me to share the more familiar actions of love often and appropriately shared at weddings:

    4 Love is patient and kind;

    love does not envy or boast;

    it is not arrogant 5

     or rude.

    Are you patient to your spouse, to whom you are joined to each other and God by your vows?

    Is your husband (or wife) patient with you – patient for you?

    Is your love for your beloved partner until death – kind?

    Are you, dear father, and you, dear mother, kind to your son – kind to your daughter – kind to each and all of your children (obedient and faithful, or rebellious and hateful)? Are you kind to your adopted child, your step-child, your child (even an adult child) given into your nurture by God to raise and guide in the Lord, Christ Jesus?

    Is your love patient and kind even to your prodigal teen?

    Is your love for your spouse, your children, your brothers and sisters in Christ ALWAYS patient and kind? Lord help us, impatient and unkind sinners!

    It does not insist on its own way;

    it is not irritable or resentful;

    it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.

    Are you just another ‘spoiled child’ of God in your relationships with others in your daily life?

    7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

    Lord: Convict us and forgive us, for the sake of your Son, our loving Savior, Jesus Christ. Help me – help us to love you more and more; help us, miserable saved sinners, to love those you love with your overflowing agape love.

    8 Love never ends.

    To be continued…

  • My Love – 4 – a Love Feast

    My Love – 4 – a Love Feast

    “There is a love of God inexplicable, except by our inclusion in His love feast.

    This love of God is to be sought and treasured, though none can earn this highest of all loves. It is the upward call well-known to the world, yet rejected by the worldly.

    John 3:16 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

    God gave us Jesus Christ! His love is sacrifice for our sins – and we are ALL sinners.

    Agape – (pronounced: ag’-a-pe) The name Agape or “love-feast,” as an expression denoting the brotherly common meals of the early church… 

    Agape is much more than this, common meals and communion being just one visible evidence of God’s love in the community of the church. This “agape love” appears throughout the New Testament, again the evidence of Christ Jesus in the life of Christians as part of the lives of believers:

    • affection, good will, love, benevolence, brotherly love, charity and other Spirit-given practical application of the benefit of Christ in the lives of the body of believers, His church.

    Hear the caution of Jesus, you cautious or straying believer:

    But I know that you do not have the love of God within you.

    – John 5:42

    Agape is the word for love Jesus uses here.

    Would you have this be our Lord’s judgment on you unless you repent? Jesus continues:

    How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God? – John 5:44

    God is love; but each of us must accept God’s love and be part of the love feast of Christ’s overflowing love for us shared in His Blood of the Cross.

    C.S. Lewis addresses five loves: the first being our ‘liking and loves for the sub-human:’ animals, the beauty of nature, food and the like. The other four are human loves for humans.

    I have reordered Lewis’ treatment of The Four Loves. We have already spoken of friendship (between equal humans) and affection (between humans unequal in their relationship: parent and child). I have left Eros and specifically the love between a man and a woman (man & wife) until last. Lewis concludes his book with this highest and most important of loves: agape. I cannot focus our thought here on this love any better than Lewis.

    “For most of us the true rivalry lies between the self and the human Other, not yet between the human Other and God. It is dangerous to press upon a man the duty of getting beyond earthly love when his real difficulty lies in getting so far.”

    Love one another. A familiar challenge? Yet Lewis states the difficulty of us experiencing this highest love of God when we cannot get beyond loving others as God loves all of us.

    Lewis points to the moral of a story of St. Augustine after grieving over the death of a dear friend.

    “This is what comes, he says, of giving one’s heart to anything but God. All human beings pass away. Do not let your happiness depend on something you may lose. If love is to be a blessing, not a misery, it must be for the only Beloved who will never pass away. Of course this is excellent sense. Don’t put your goods in a leaky vessel. Don’t spend too much on a house you may be turned out of.”

    Do you believe, then, in God? Why would you not trust God with the love of your soul? God IS. Christ Jesus IS. Would you not also have your love last for ever?

    Lewis concludes “The Four Loves” as follows (after which I will have a little to add):

    “Perhaps, for many of us, all experience merely defines, so to speak, the shape of that gap where our love of God ought to be. It is not enough. It is something.

    If we cannot ‘practice the presence of God’ it is something to practice the absence of God, to become increasingly aware of our unawareness till we feel like men who should stand beside a great cataract and hear no noise, or like a man in a story who looks in a mirror and finds no face there, or a man in a dream who stretches out his hand to visible objects and gets no sensation of touch. To know that one is dreaming is to be no longer perfectly asleep. But for news of the fully waking world you must go to my betters.”

    Love & Charity – Connection between God & feast in His love

    John 15:9-11 As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you.

    Abide in my love.

    10 If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.

    11 These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.

    Jesus commands: Abide in my love (agape).  Learn the application of living in this agape love of God by reading the linked definition and scriptures of ‘abide,’ a word falling from use in our temporal fleshly culture.

    The Greek word for love with which Jesus begins by saying the Father has it for Him and He has is for us is: agapaō. By definition: to welcome, to entertain, to be fond of, to love dearly. 

    WELCOME to the feast of GOD’S LOVE.

    We do NOT deserve an invitation. God loves Jesus. Jesus loves you. (This I know, for the Bible tells us so.) A message of love so simple and profound, yet so clearly unattainable by anyone lacking a trusting and child-like faith in Almighty God, our loving Heavenly Father.

    “IF, you keep Jesus’ Commandments” our Lord says.

    Do you keep and abide and live in the Commandments of Christ Jesus?

    In fact, it is agape love Jesus gives to the lawyer’s of “What is the greatest Commandment?”

    Matthew 22:37-38 And he said to him, “You shall love [agapaō] the Lord your God with all your heart [kardia] and with all your soul[psychē] and with all your mind [dianoia]. This is the great and first commandment.

    God loves. God provides the banquet of love.

    It is by the charity of God that we sinners saved have been invited into the joy and celebration of the love of God in Christ Jesus.

    Let us not forget to extend this love of God in Christ Jesus into our loves for all others in this brief life in the flesh and lasting joy of God’s eternal feast.

    And remembering the words of our Teacher to His learners (disciples) prior to the love feast by which He set His example and remembrance – communion:

    “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love [agapē] for one another.” – John 13:35

    O, the joy of LOVE awaiting us at the banquet table of heaven with our Lord and King, Christ Jesus!