Talk of JESUS .com

Tag: salvation

  • Endurance Toward the Cross

    Endurance Toward the Cross

    …let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,

    looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, 

    who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame…

    Hebrews 12:1b-2a

    Jesus had walked… for three years (by comparison to eternity, a blink of an eye).

    Having been handed the baton of faith after more forty years of my race on the wrong path, I have walked with the Lord toward the cross a mere twenty years. Though I have endured the hardship of the race (a sprint in terms of time), a marathon of pain and suffering have not yet brought me in view of the finish line.

    By our certain faith we must press on toward the crown given by Christ Jesus our Lord until our time is come to pass on the baton of faith.

    Jesus has his face set toward Jerusalem. The crowds have followed. Many have fallen away. Some have been saved. Some have endured.

    Yet as in the life of the faithful widow; as in the life of the resurrected (Lazarus and others); as in the life of the weary Disciples and worn-down flesh of our Savior, the race is not finished.

    The race is not finished for Jesus as He looks upon Jerusalem. His race is not finished until the Cross.

    Neither has our race reached the finish line of faith until we, too, have drug the Cross of Christ to the sanctuary of the Holy Place of our rest.

    Luke 9:23 And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.

    As we approach the HOLY WEEK of our Christian faith, I invite you to take sanctuary in our Lord Christ Jesus.

    Take a fresh look at the GOSPEL, the Good News of our Salvation in the Cross by the Sacrifice of the Blood of our Lord.

    READ once more the entire story of JESUS, through the witness of the Apostles John and Matthew; or the early witnesses of the church after Jesus’ resurrection: Luke and Mark.

    It may be helpful to some of you if I share a portion of my own witness, although your personal time in the Gospel is a better witness.

    We have begun the penitent season of Lent with a call to the church and a personal rebuke to many of us to get right with Christ Jesus in our relationships with others.

    I would be remiss to neglect my own history of sinfulness by contrast to the great grace, love and righteousness of our Lord in leading me into the path of His eternal blessings.

    Those who know me from the first two decades of my life have witnessed how I was raised in the church family. We all worshiped faithfully with Mom and Dad every Sunday. Then, like in most teens, rebellion. Like in most families, brokenness of relationship with each other followed. Most of us were isolated from God, set on our own paths.

    Those who know me from my twenties know that I participated in ‘church’ every Sunday, while I sinned greatly. I was married, as many once did in our twenties. (I did the right thing, though most do not bother with such commitment any more.) The wife of my youth broke her vow and ran back to her daddy. I thank the Lord that she became a Christian later and pray that she has remained faithful to the Lord and to her husband.

    Those who know me from my thirties know that the Lord led me to a faithful wife, a virgin, a Roman Catholic in belief, faith and practice. We married. She lived as a saint worthy of note in all her witness, while I attended church with her and all-to-frequently became enticed by several sins of the world. She remained faithful also to me, as I would never have been unfaithful to my wife in any desire for anyone else.

    By the continued grace of God, we had our only child, now a grown young woman of faith much like her mother (and also like her yet unmarried at just twenty-one).

    I will share the story of my salvation with you, God willing, during Holy Week on Good Friday.

    Viewing the race nearer the present: after the death of my wife I remarried a woman introduced to me by mutual friends. Though she claimed to be a Baptist, she had no relationship with Christ and with other Christians. (It should have been a warning sign, but I did not heed it.) She divorced me. I continued to hold onto the Lord.

    The Lord then led me a long way (from Florida to Pennsylvania) to my present Blessing, my wife Lissette. Lissette was a practicing Christian, member of a local mega-church. (We later moved, at my urging, to worship at a different church. As I said, the church is the people worshiping the Lord together in a place.)

    My wife stood beside me and raised her hands in praise to Jesus (something I only rarely did in my upbringing of ‘traditional, worship). She owned Bibles (English and Spanish). She had women’s devotional books. Lissette is a Christian… as I was a christian before I was born again in the Lord in my mid-forties.

    One more thing (about my wife): while we were dating (long distance) she discovered that she had cancer.

    I immediately prayed to the Lord, “WHY ME?” ( a most selfish question, for it was Lissette who had the cancer). The Lord had taken my beloved wife Becky from me after just twenty-three years. I loved Lissette. “Why me,” I asked the Lord… and the Lord’s answer was immediate and clear answer to my prayer:

    “Who better?”

    As God is my witness, I had prayed unceasingly on the bed of my grief in February, 1999. I had asked the Lord “Why?’ I had asked the Lord for proof of the continuing life of the soul of my beloved wife.

    I contended with the Lord. I wrestled with the Lord until He would give me proof of her resurrection. The Lord gave me clear and immediate signs and assurances three times.

    Finally, after three days, I let go of her soul; torn from me by the interruption of the death of one body, made one with mine.

    Life is a great mystery, death even more mysterious. Marriage is a great mystery, love even more mysterious.

    Praise the Lord, for healing my wife, Lissette, of her cancer!

    The indwelling of another soul with ours is incomprehensible to this finite mind of flesh.  The outpouring of the Holy Spirit of God into the soul of the redeemed sinner is a mystery too wonderful and a love so amazing!

    I love my wife, Lissette. I love the Lord.

    Jesus Christ and my wife Lissette Harned are one with me. I cannot explain it.

    Divorce cannot separate us (though it is a good illustration of our unfaithfulness to God).

    As a grand ceremony in a place of worship or an authorized signature on a marriage license do NOT make a marriage; as a claim of a lawyer and signature of a magistrate do NOT make a divorce; a baptism, a catechism, a confirmation, an attendance star, a claim, a communion, a contribution, and MANY other things do NOT make a Christian.

    No work or law or righteousness will guarantee that a christian will receive the crown of glory at the concluding celebration of Christ Jesus.

    Only the Lord can save you.

    Will YOU ask Jesus, once more, to fill you with HIS LOVE?

    Only Christ Jesus can keep you… can keep my wife (and your beloved spouse)… can keep our children, our beloved family and beloved friends…; ONLY Jesus can save our loved ones; only Christ Jesus can save you for the joy and blessings of His love.

    Please pray for me, my wife, and our three beloved children (all young adults).

    As Jesus Christ approaches, the time and the place of the Cross are near.

    Which way will you turn?

    To whom will you look for the finish line of your faith?

     

  • Redemption

    Redemption

    I want to tell you a story of an old woman and one of a young woman; a story of relationship and temptation.

    2 Samuel 5:7 Nevertheless David took the strong hold of Zion: the same is the city of David.

    Scene I is in Jerusalem, about a thousand years or ten centuries after this record of Samuel from scripture.

    Luke 2: 36 And there was a prophetess, Anna, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was advanced in years, having lived with her husband seven years from when she was a virgin, 37 and then as a widow until she was eighty-four. She did not depart from the temple, worshiping with fasting and prayer night and day. 38 And coming up at that very hour she began to give thanks to God and to speak of him to all who were waiting for the redemption of Jerusalem.

    The woman was married as a young virgin to a man named Phanuel (which means: the face of God). After seven years her husband dies and she has lived several decades as a widow. She was known to be a prophetess. She would not have been allowed at the Temple in the City of David as a Jewish widow had her prophecies not been shown to have been from God. As a Priest might speak at the bidding of God and as a male Prophet might obediently convey God’s words to God’s people, Anna spoke prophesy.

    The Lord had spoken through the Prophets of old during the time of the 1000 years (these 10 centuries before Christ), but God had kept silent while a captured people (conquered this time by the Romans) awaited God’s long-sought redemption once more.

    Jesus is brought to the Temple and Anna also confirms the identity of the Redeemer of God.

    Scene II is in Jerusalem at the same Temple not centuries later, but just three decades, only 30 years.

    Luke 4:  And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness 2 for forty days, being tempted by the devil…

    9 And he took him to Jerusalem and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, 10 for it is written,

    “‘He will command his angels concerning you,
    to guard you,’

    11 and

    “‘On their hands they will bear you up,
    lest you strike your foot against a stone.’”

    pinnacle of TempleAgain, this is thirty years after the Prophetess Anna had thanked God for this same Son of Man, Jesus.

    Satan took Jesus, a man, human like you or me; born to Mary, descendant of David, to the pinnacle of the Temple and said (in effect), “Jump. God will protect you.”

    Jesus is hungry and has already refused to turn stones into bread as Satan tempted him to do as the Son of God, not just a righteous son of man.  Satan had already asked this Son of Man to bow down to him and promised Jesus power over the Kingdoms of the world IF only he, Jesus, the Son of Man would worship the fallen angel of God. Again, Jesus did not seek the power of this world, as many of us do.

    We will return to Jesus’ answer to Satan (which you may know); but first we fast forward beyond the Cross of the Hill of Calvary and the grave and the Resurrection and the Ascension back to the glory of God the Father and the early days of the church and His several appearances to many sons of men to the present.

    Scene III takes place in Mount Zion National Park, USA, twenty centuries later, 8 February, in the year of our Lord 2014.

    The young woman tempted at the pinnacle is just two years younger that the Son of Man of our earlier scene. Her relationship to her new husband is not one of a virgin to a man of God’s leading, but rather a relationship of sharing in his sport of tempting God for the temporal experiences of living life to its fullest.

    She jumped from the pinnacle of Mount Zion. Her parachute did not open. Angels did not catch her. Her body and life were broken on the cold stone below. Her husband witnessed her choice to tempt God, as he so dearly loved to do; and now he is a widower.

    On this very day (10 Feb. 1999) fifteen years ago, I, too, became a widower; yet not by my choice or by intentional choice of my godly wife. As God tears many a wife from her husband and many a husband from his wife, I became a widower when the Lord took my wife after a many month struggle against cancer to hold onto this precious life.

    Though God has joined many a man to his beloved help-mate, his wife; in almost every instance one will die before the other. A wife will become a widow, as had Anna; or a husband will become a widower, as has the poor husband who just witnessed the death of his wife.

     What does it mean that this man who did not jump would later willingly allow Himself to be lifted up on the Cross to die for you and for me?

    Jesus Christ, in fulfillment of the scripture (by which He would answer Satan, Pharisees and those who would manipulate God’s word to their own ends) became our redemption. What does that mean to you personally? What does it mean when Satan has lead you to the pinnacle of the choice of your action of life or your action of death?

    It is a question of slavery.

    God chose Abraham. God chose Isaac (and not Ishmael). God chose Jacob, who He named Israel.

    Jacob had twelve sons, sons (tribes or families) of inheritance of the land of the promise to Abraham and to Isaac and to Jacob. However they betrayed their own brother, Joseph, and sold him into slavery for a price.

    Joseph was bought and sold into Egypt, where the Lord saved him and lifted him into the office of Prime Minister only under Pharaoh. Yet Joseph remained faithful to God. He asked his father Jacob’s blessing on his two Egyptian-born sons for his share of the promise of Abraham in a land now ruled by Pharaoh.

    Joseph’s land, given to the Israelites in Egypt, was not paid for or an inheritance. In fact, the price of redemption for Joseph had never been paid and by the generation of Moses, sons of Abraham; and the sons of Joseph (descendants of God’s promise) were once again slaves in the land of Egypt with no man to pay the price of their freedom.

    God saved them and forced Pharaoh to let His people go. Moses did not save them, but spoke for God, obeyed God, and gave God’s own people God’s own Law to obey; as they had once had to obey every law of Pharaoh. Still, even in the time of David and Solomon centuries later, God’s Chosen People had not had the price of their slavery paid. God’s Chosen were not yet redeemed in any way.

    Psalm 49 speaks of the sons of Korah (of the rebellion against God and Moses) stating:

    5 Why should I fear in the days of evil,
    When the iniquity at my heels surrounds me?
    6 Those who trust in their wealth
    And boast in the multitude of their riches,
    7 None of them can by any means redeem his brother,
    Nor give to God a ransom for him—
    8 For the redemption of their souls is costly,
    And it shall cease forever—
    9 That he should continue to live eternally,
    And not see the Pit.

    To rescue a sinner

    You must pay the price.

    Who can redeem the sinner?  (And we are all sinners, you and me and all sons of men of every time and place.)

    If you stand at the pinnacle of choice between life and death, what is the answer?

    Scene IV Returning to the Pinnacle of the Temple and the answer of the Son of Man two hundred centuries before this year of our Lord, 2014.

    Luke 4:12 And Jesus answered him, “It is said, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’”

    And Christ Jesus began His three-year mission on earth as the Son of Man, calling men and women to repentance and grace, living and breathing the love of God our Father for His chosen family of the promise and of His chosen Bride, the church.

    Luke 4: 

    17 And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written,

    18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
    because he has anointed me
    to proclaim good news to the poor.
    He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
    and recovering of sight to the blind,
    to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
    19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

    20 And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. 21 And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

     “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

    And of His fulfillment of scripture, this is what Jesus said: I AM the price paid for your sin and for the sins of all who are joined to Jesus as our Lord, our Savior, and our Redeemer.

    Satan will tempt you before God until the day your flesh will die.

    Who will you bow down and worship?  What is your answer:

    I will gladly follow your worldly temptation, lord satan…

    OR Jesus IS LORD?

    Do NOT put the Lord your God to the test. Trust ONLY JESUS CHRIST, who paid the price of redemption for your sin and for mine. He IS the one who taught us to pray (Luke 11:2-4):

    Our Father

    Who IS in Heaven,

    HOLY IS your Name.

    Your Kingdom will come.

    May Your will be done on earth, as it is in Heaven.

    Give us day by day our daily bread

    And forgive us our sins; for we also forgive every one that is indebted to us.

    And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil.

     

  • Esau I Hated

    Esau I Hated

    Malachi 1:2 “I have loved you,” says the Lord.

    But you say, “How have you loved us?” “Is not Esau Jacob’s brother?” declares the Lord.

    “Yet I have loved Jacob 3 but Esau I have hated.

    We pray to God: ‘Give me a blessing.’ ‘I cannot do this alone?’ ‘Please help me, Lord.’ We acknowledge God as our Father and as our Lord. The Lord, our Father in heaven then blesses us. He provides a loving mate. He provide godly guidance for our misguided children. He heals a dreaded disease. He provides job after job and puts food on our table. He places us in the congregation of Christians who care for our needs and for our soul. Again, and again, the Lord brings us blessing and not curse when we are not in the low place and do not even pray for blessing.

    And what is our thanks? What is our offering to the Lord? Do we cleave to our beloved husband (or wife)? Do we stand as example of Jesus in our instruction of our children? Do we give thanks to the Lord for healing our body? Do we witness at work of the Lord’s unfailing love? Do we thank Him for the food on our table as if without Him we could not be fed? Do we thank Him that someone does not have to feed us for our inability of health to hold even a spoon? Do we joyfully worship with our loving brothers and sisters in Christ on the Lord’s day? Do we gently guide our children to the house of the Lord?

    We fall back into our sins. We slide back toward the pit. We revel in the ways of the world and witness against Christ as our Lord. We witness against God our Father. We offer the sacrifice of our tithes and offerings to the gods of chance, the gods of addiction and the gods of our evil desires. We bow down and worship the gods of sin!

    But you say, “How have you loved us?”

    Do you understand as you trespass the blessing of the Cross that you sell forever His blessing and grace and love?

    Don’t you know that we are ALL lawbreakers? Don’t you remember what you were before you were adopted into the family of faith, the Household of God our Father and Christ Jesus our Lord?

    God is NOT your Father and Christ Jesus is NOT your Lord (for no one will lord it over you) IF you witness against the love and sacrifice and blood of the Cross.

    You reject the Lord. Why, at the Day of your judgment, should the Lord not reject YOU?

    Some of us reject a God that could hate Esau… a God who would hate us. (I spoke to this earlier.) We think of Esau as just a man who lived long ago. We think of Israel as only a land and not a people chosen once by God who rejected God continually and rejected Christ Jesus forever.

    Paul, the Apostle to the gentiles, was once a man of Jacob, chosen by God over Esau.  He hated Christ Jesus, the Messiah of Promise and Blessing of the gentiles. God so loved the world; yet Saul of Tarsus hated the church.

    What if Saul of Tarsus had not finally bowed down to Christ Jesus as Lord? Would he not also be judged with Esau?

    Abram was changed to Abraham. Jacob was changed to Israel. Saul of Tarsus was changed to Paul the Apostle.

    Has God changed you for all eternity by the Cross of Christ Jesus?

    Or do you ask for God’s blessing, then quickly turn from the Lord?

    The books of the Bible, which we so carelessly neglect along with the armor of our salvation, point us so diligently toward salvation (being saved from our great curse of sin and death). Over and over the books of the Bible instruct us in that which we ought to have instructed our children and heeded in our own lives.

    GOD IS a Person. God our Father may hate, but most certainly God our Father does love those who truly love Him.

    Genesis 4: And the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, 5 but for Cain and his offering he had no regard. So Cain was very angry, and his face fell. 6 The Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen? 7 If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.”

    10 And the Lord said, “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground. 11 And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand.

    Does the Blood of the Cross not cry out against you when you offer to your sin that which is the Lord’s?

    13 Cain said to the Lord, “My punishment is greater than I can bear. 14 Behold, you have driven me today away from the ground, and from your face I shall be hidden…

    Deuteronomy 11: 26 “See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse: 27 the blessing, if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God, which I command you today, 28 and the curse, if you do not obey the commandments of the Lord your God, but turn aside from the way that I am commanding you today, to go after other gods that you have not known.

     Joshua 8:30-35 

    Joshua Renews the Covenant

    30 At that time Joshua built an altar to the Lord, the God of Israel, on Mount Ebal, 31 just as Moses the servant of the Lord…

    34 And afterward he read all the words of the law, the blessing and the curse, according to all that is written in the Book of the Law. 35 There was not a word of all that Moses commanded that Joshua did not read before all the assembly of Israel, and the women, and the little ones, and the sojourners who lived among them.

    The Seven Bowls of God’s Wrath

    7 And I heard the altar saying,

    “Yes, Lord God the Almighty,
    true and just are your judgments!”

    15 (“Behold, I am coming like a thief! Blessed is the one who stays awake, keeping his garments on, that he may not go about naked and be seen exposed!”) 16 And they assembled them at the place that in Hebrew is called Armageddon.

    James 5:16 Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.

    3 John 1:2 Beloved, I pray that all may go well with you and that you may be in good health, as it goes well with your soul.

    Colossians 1:3 We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you…

    Pray also for me, that the blessings of God our Father, the Son Christ Jesus, and the Holy Spirit will continue through His work in me, and that His own Blessings to my life may be renewed in His Spirit, obedience, faithfulness and love.