“I am God alone”

You and I know that this is an easy concept to grasp and understand – most of us growing up as children in the church would recognize this a million miles away and those of us, who each Easter are faithful in watching the Ten Commandments, who also be well attuned to this.

Teaching this subject to about 15 teenagers was looking to be quite a simple task and they answered beautifully and wonderfully.

So the time to go deeper came up quickly and were they ever shocked when they discovered that there were other gods in their lives and that God was more like a monarch in their lives as opposed to the absolute leader – God alone.

I am afraid that as an adult, I too fail to realize that what I know in my head is not true necessarily in my heart.  A quick look at my checkbook, my daily planner, and my attitude when talking about the future and I know without a shadow of a doubt that God may not be my absolute, one and only, that I have served this day.

So each day as I enter a new post, I see the title of my blog and remember that it was God who laid the foundations of the earth, it was the palm of His right hand that spread out the heavens above and it was Him speaking the Word, and what did not exist came into being.  Then He turned the stewardship of all of this to you and I.  We serve an awesome God, the one and only – there is no other.

http://youtu.be/oYCcFtFwcxo

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Doing what you said you would do

Imagine how difficult this is between things we have agreed on – but imagine an agreement that we have made with God.

Many of us did just that during the preparation prior to Easter – getting our hearts and lives ready to come into the Easter season celebrating the sacrifice of Jesus to give His life, to die – be buried – and rise again on the third day.

I think that just like our New Year’s resolutions, our vows or oaths or commitments that we declared get messed up a bit and we lose our way.

Because I am one that has found myself doing the same, I am very aware of the opportunity to lie or be a hypocrite when it comes to the fulfilling of my promises to God. Knowing how I have failed God in my relationship with Him, keeps me from doing such rash vows and promises.

That is why I stopped with making my own promises – that seemed to be always contrary to the will and mind of God, and ended up not bringing glory to God, to other followers of Christ, to the Church, to myself or the people involved in my promise. Now I wait for God to call me to something and when He calls I then respond.

For example, this New Year, God called me to fast for 21 days and offer the year to Him.  I did and I can tell you that I was never hungry in those 21 days and never broke the fast at all.

I pray that your time of commitment during this Easter season has been more of a spiritual journey called of God into your life and that you are enjoying the preparation of your heart towards the things of God.

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The Law of Celebration

This one is tough – it makes no difference how much I “want” to celebrate, it just seems impossible to do it right – hence my desire to go with the fact that there should be a law for such things that are so important.

I think we have the idea of celebrating events from the past – birthdays, anniversaries, Christmas, Easter, graduation, baptism etc.  They are commemorative and in many cases, sacramental ordinances of perpetual obligation, if not in a practice in observation.

It is quite possible that I have already misled you with this photo.

I mean, what if I wanted to celebrate God – who He is?  His intensity and goodness, or His justness and mercy? What does that look like – probably more like a solemn religious joy – right?

It is my pleasure to engage in many of the celebrations in our Christian community – namely Christmas and Easter being the two clearly visible ones.  In the past twenty-five years here is the trend I have seen – Christmas is about gifts and Easter is about Spring.  Talk about the fact that Christmas is about the coming of God to earth to show us the way to Him or the fact that Easter is about God dying to take our sins upon Himself so that we could spend eternity with Him and you get a “no reaction.”

I mean how can you not celebrate the coming of the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world; whose sacrifice will endure while time itself lasts; and to whose merits the salvation of our soul shall be ascribable throughout eternity. We are adopted into His family, a spared and redeemed people into the fellowship of His house, and He sustains us and  refreshes our souls.

The Lord makes all things new to those whom He delivers from the bondage of Satan, and takes to Himself to be His people. The time when He does this is to them the beginning of a new life. Having received Christ Jesus the Lord, we must continually delight ourselves in Him. No manner of work must be done, that is, no care admitted and indulged, which does not agree with, or would lessen this holy joy.

So long as we live we must continue learning, growing and reflecting Christ, rejoicing in Him always, with thankful mention of the great things He has done for us.  By the way, my niece made a decision to follow Christ on Sunday – inside I am going out of my skin, the angels in heaven are having a party because the one sheep that was lost has found her way home – how am I too celebrate such an amazing event?

 

 

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