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)?
The Lord had already put on my heart to write from Job’s experience as continuation for our Lenten preparation in consideration of the cost of the Cross. And then I had yet another ‘bad day.’
Job was angry and frustrated with what GOD had allowed to happen to him after all of his faithful worship and righteousness in every part of his life. GOD had always rewarded Job’s righteousness. GOD had always brought blessing into Job’s life.
Blessing or curse: Is it from God?
WHY! Job asked?
Why ME! we ask?
Why, Lord, have you brought me very low to this place?
I know that I am a sinner. I know that I do not deserve your grace in Christ Jesus. I know that.
But you have done all these things to me. You have afflicted me with my own sin and the sin of those I love. WHY?
Prior to Job’s complaint (and God’s eventual answer and restoration): Job 2:
9 Then his wife said to him, “Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die.”
10 But he said to her, “You speak as one of the foolish women would speak. Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?” In all this Job did not sin with his lips.
It’s OK to have an argument with God; Job did. It’s called prayer, private petition; and you had better be ready to brace yourself for God’s answer, if you have ears to hear as our Lord would instruct.
It is a fearsome place… to be alone in the place of God… no wife (or perhaps, husband) to support you in your love of the Lord and care for your over-abiding love for her by God’s grace. It is a lonely place to sit among friends (even so-called ‘christian’ church friends) who feel sorry for you and fill your wearisome ears with misguided uncompassionate advice.
Prayer for yourself
Just between you and God
Waiting to hear
The answer of the Almighty
Should bring us to our knees
And bow down our sinful souls
Into the dust and ashes
Of repentance.
Let you with ears to hear hear, before you would speak so boldly into the ear of the One who hung upon the Cross for your sins.
Yet we have questions. And we have an Advocate in Christ who knows our pain. Jesus hears and will answer if only we will hear Him. Allow the Holy Spirit to speak to your heart.
In our strong will to tell GOD what to do, will we hear His answer?
Job 6:11 What is my strength, that I should wait?
And what is my end, that I should be patient?
12 Is my strength the strength of stones, or is my flesh bronze?
13 Have I any help in me,
when resource is driven from me?
14 “He who withholds kindness from a friend
forsakes the fear of the Almighty.
15 My brothers are treacherous as a torrent-bed,
as torrential streams that pass away,
16 which are dark with ice,
and where the snow hides itself.
17 When they melt, they disappear;
when it is hot, they vanish from their place.
Yes, prayer with the Almighty, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, is a fearful place. Prayer is a fearful place for battered flesh and broken heart of one so continually refined by the fire of the Holiness of GOD.
Yet the grace of His love comes at high cost. The ransom paid for our continuing sin is more than sufficient before the King for Him to be gracious to those He loves.
Let us repent once more and listen. Let us this time obey and follow His Cross without turning or regret.
4 But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (he who was about to betray him), said…
23 And Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified…
27 “Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’?
40 “He has blinded their eyes
and hardened their heart,
lest they see with their eyes,
and understand with their heart, and turn,
and I would heal them.”
(Are you praying, you with ears to hear?)
Jesus Came to Save the World
44 And Jesus cried out and said, “Whoever believes in me, believes not in me but in him who sent me.45 And whoever sees me sees him who sent me.46 I have come into the world as light, so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness.47 If anyone hears my words and does not keep them, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world but to save the world.
48 The one who rejects me and does not receive my words has a judge; the word that I have spoken will judge him on the last day…
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.
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.
“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?
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.”
Yes, false Prophets will come, but the time is not yet.
No man knows the day or the hour. Some claim tolerance with darkness and Jesus.
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.
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.”
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.
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