Talk of JESUS . com

Tag: God

  • Interrupting Jesus – a series on the people of our mission

    Interrupting Jesus – a series on the people of our mission

    ‘Go into all the world and proclaim the Gospel.‘

    • Have you ever thought about how you should do it?
    • Have you ever considered how Jesus spread the Gospel in just three years of His earthly ministry?
    .. He will tell us all things.
    .. He will tell us all things.

    We know the stories. We proclaim the miracles. We know the ending (the Cross) which our Lord’s hearers did not know during Jesus’ three-year mission. We barely understand what the Apostles witnessed first-hand in the fifty days after Christ’s resurrection.

    This series from the Gospels is my brief attempt to look at the people who encountered Jesus Christ during His mission on earth – the people who interrupted God Incarnate.

    They are the very people to whom Jesus was sent by God the Father. These are the reason for His mission, the gospel of the real flesh and blood human beings like Jesus who received the grace of God the Father first hand and in person.

    Jesus’ mission was God’s Personal love for the people who interrupted the brief days of His life on earth.

    Our mission for Christ Jesus, the Living God, is also brief; perhaps not a mere three years, but our mission to preach the Gospel and Good News remains.

    Jesus IS and our sins are forgiven in Him. God loves you and me. God loves sinners. God our Father loves those who humbly repent and accept His unconditional love, mercy like Jesus showed to so many people during His brief earthly ministry and mission.

    To be continued…

  • Mission 2 – Vision of your end

    Mission 2 – Vision of your end

    Is your mission a path to a vision for your life?

    Is it a vision of your own only? Will you accomplish what you alone have planned?

    What if something goes wrong and your mission becomes impossible. What then?

    A righteous man lived a long and blessed life, yet near the end of his path of years calamity struck.

    Job 10: KJV

    My soul is weary of my life;

    I will leave my complaint upon myself;

    I will speak in the bitterness of my soul.

    Is that you, old man (or woman), who has given up on your mission? Perhaps your years are young, yet your soul longs for the eternity for which it was created.

    In a moment of despair you appeal to a God who seems far from you. In a time of defeat, a timeline of diminishing life, you remember the words familiar from the passing of failing flesh and bones before you.

    Job 10: 

    8 Thine hands have made me and fashioned me together round about;

      yet thou dost destroy me.

    9 Remember, I beseech thee, that thou hast made me as the clay;

      and wilt thou bring me into dust again?

    Oh God! Their days have finished. At the graveside our loved one is lowered into the ground. The dirt is handled and tossed upon the depths which will hold their beloved bones and flesh.

    From clay you were formed

    To dust you will return;

    Ashes to ashes

    Dust to dust.

    Is your mission in life only making the most out of your path to the grave?

    What is missing when your days are done? What of your mission then?

    Every mission involves someone other than your self.

    Job’s mission and the path of a righteous man did not reach the vision he had for his family. Yet his own end was not a life lived in vain.

    Why?

    Who else matters in the life of a righteous man (or woman)?

    GOD – the Person of God.

    Job’s conversations and prayers were with the Person of God.

    In the end, at the graveside of your loved ones and as your loved ones will stand at your graveside: the LORD GOD matters.

    The LORD gives life. The LORD takes away life. Blessed be the LORD.

    To be continued…

     

  • What do I do with this? – Law

    What do I do with this? – Law

    “You shall therefore love the LORD your God and keep his charge, his statutes, his rules, and his commandments always. Deuteronomy 11:1

    Think of our everyday life as a brief journey to a place of which we have only dreamed. How do I get there? (I don’t even truly know where I am now?) I know God wants me in a different place today than where I failed so miserably in sin yesterday.

    Adam failed to follow just one law in Eden. Abraham obeyed God to become a sojourner to a promised land, a sort of new Eden from where the chosen people of God would be fruitful and multiply from a place of a new righteousness.

    Moses, raised as an Egyptian prince, lived a comfortable life and at a comfortable time in life (80 years old) God commands, ‘Go back to Egypt. You will lead My people to the land I promised to Abraham.’

    Again, suppose you are Moses in that ‘comfortable’ place in life; or suppose you are no prince at all and slave away in that terrible workplace so out of your control. You struggle to find a way to lead your loved ones through this drudgery – you have just what you need, but your daily life is far distant from a dream of promise.

    God says, ‘Get ready to follow my chosen leader to the place of impossible dream.’ (Of course with God, all things are possible for those who believe. Mark 9:23) Moses returns and says, ‘The Lord says, ‘Follow me. I will make a way for you.’”

    Will you do it?

    Miracles in the land which convince even unbelievers, then the sea parts and you escape. The LORD IS all-powerful. It is the LORD, “I AM,” who leads.

    Exodus 3:13-16 KJV

    And Moses said unto God, Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them?

    And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.

    And God said moreover unto Moses, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, The LORD God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you: this is my name for ever, and this is my memorial unto all generations.

    Now that we have GOD on our side – we have followed the LORD through the sea, of reeds and have HIS POWER – we will do great things for God.

    Let’s take the short cut. We will lead GOD to our promised land.

    Isn’t that how we would do it? Yet would the place of promise not then be polluted with that same sin of ours (never mind the evil of our enemies we will defeat)? Wouldn’t the promised land then be no different than when Israel (Jacob) led us to Egypt only to have the generations of promise enslaved?

    The LORD has a plan for the faithful: 

    God’s LAW and COMMANDMENT of righteousness.

    I AM,  ‘el yĕshuw`ah Yahh Yĕhovah

    Seven generations (of 60-year lifetimes, 430 years) the Hebrew people had lived in Egypt with scant knowledge of God and NO LAW of God to guide them.

    The righteousness expected by GOD of man made in His Image is forever etched in stone to be spoken into our heart. TEN WORDS – Ten Commandments.

    How can man live in righteousness? How can man live in community? How can we live as family in marriage?

    How can I be God-like without knowing the high standard of the Judge of all men, the Ruler of all creation? What is the will of God?

    “Oh that they had such a heart as this always, to fear me and to keep all my commandments, that it might go well with them and with their descendants forever! Deuteronomy 5:29

    Instruction in Righteousness

    Deuteronomy 5: HCSB sinai GOD speaks

    1. Do not have other gods besides Me.
    2. Do not make an idol for yourself…
    3. Do not misuse the name of the LORD your God…
    4. Be careful to remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy as the LORD your God has commanded you. You are to labor six days and do all your work… (not 5; not 7)
    5. Honor your father and your mother, as the LORD your God has commanded you…
    6. Do not murder. (Includes babies created and conceived in the mother’s womb.)
    7. Do not commit adultery. (Includes women, though scripture points to the man.)
    8. Do not steal.
    9. Do not give dishonest testimony against your neighbor. (Against anyone. Do not lie: as a witness in your words or by the witness of your life.)
    10. Do not covet your neighbor’s wife or desire your neighbor’s house, his field, his male or female slave, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.

    Ten Commands – Laws of the Land – God’s righteousness by which to judge.

    Are these not applicable in your household, your state, our nation?

    “If in this time of evil and place of slavery to sin, Supreme Justices of a land of promise add immorality to the covenant of Sinai, will we not perish in a wilderness of our disobedience?

    In our homes and our personal lives we fail to keep the Commandments, especially those which put the LORD GOD first and above all other things.

    You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your mind, all your strength and all your soul. – Deuteronomy 6:5 (and other instructions in the books of Scripture)

    “Be careful to do as the LORD your God has commanded you; you are not to turn aside to the right or the left. – Deuteronomy 5:32

    To be continued…