Who is God? All hail the power... (part 10)

God has anointed Jesus to bring healing and justice and to bring comfort and show all the beauty of the LORD. (Isaiah 61:1-3) In fact, Isaiah is the book of Jesus and the Church and our relationship with him and God the Father, or I should say, our true relationship with God the Father. The whole book describes what God wants of us in a relationship, what Jesus will bring to my relationship with him and with God, the unity that I have with God, Jesus, and His people, and who His people are. So filled with love is Isaiah, it is beyond comprehension. God’s son Jesus cares for me, as a bridegroom cares for His bride. He creates a new creation, just as he did at the beginning of this world, so that all who hear and follow may be saved. (Isaiah 62:1-12) He promises to gather me to Him, that no more will it be desolate, but in a land that is full of promise, hope and is fertile and all this begins on earth when I totally accept Him and His son’s teachings. Does this mean physical and emotional/ It could but it means so much more, in order to bring others and myself peace.

Who is God? All hail the power... (part 9)

Just like Christ was allowed to be bruised for humanity’s iniquities (Isaiah 53:10-12), God doesn’t promise me a rose garden, either. He does promise He will provide me with wisdom (Is 30:20) and that He will lift me up when I am humbled before Him. (Is 44:3-5). At that point, I will have grown in Him and my attitude will be as in Isaiah 59:19-21: “From the west, men will fear the name of the LORD, and from the rising of the sun, they will revere His glory. For He will come like a pent-up flood that the breath of the LORD drives along. The Redeemer will come to Zion, to those in Jacob who repent of their sins, declares the LORD.” The humble and penitent heart, that is what Jesus wants, that is what God wants. And Christ and God provide me with a way to come to Him, as He does all peoples. That is via Jerusalem, not a physical one, but one which God set up prior to the first one, the one God rules from in His mercy seat. The Jerusalem that is Heaven. God has chose Jerusalem to be the central holy point, (Jer 3:17) as He did physically so He now does spiritually with the formation of His church on the day of Pentacost. Isn’t God a wonderful God who has my future, my parents’ futures, my friends’ futures all in the palm of His hands, and Who knows what each and everyone of us need to live on? It is hard for me to know what to accept word for word and what to understand as a parable. Does Christ, when he tells Peter that upon this rock he shall build his church mean a literal rock, which would mean the physical seat of the church? Or does he mean upon the rock of faith, the Rock of Salvation that David refers to in Psalms? Is it a spiritual kingdom or one here on earth? Does the writer of Revelation mean Babylon in actual terms or a figurative one? Is Jerusalem figurative in the above case? So many times Christ spoke in real terms, and then at others figurative. And that is where communication comes in. How well do I connect with my Savior so I can understand his meanings? Not that I’ll understand them always, but I will love him and serve him by faith because of what I do know of him and his Father, who is also my Father.

 

Jesus is the final word in prayer, the Amen (Rev 3:14). If I find myself trying to improve God’s Word or worship in a way more suitable to what meets my needs, I am not worshipping God. I am worshipping my image of God. I am not in worship, then, with the sole purpose of bending my knee or bowing in reverence and I am doing something wrong and unnatural.

Who is God? All hail the power... (part 8)

God describes who I am and how I become His, besides in Acts 2:38 and in John 1. In Isaiah, He tells me through His prophet that I am from an oppressed race. The Israelites were from a physically oppressed race, but me? How can that be? Satan does everything he can to bind me into my temptations and make me feel there is no way out as he does with all those in the world. But in Isaiah 18:7, His children come from any oppressed nation that call to Him and plead and beg for His mercy. In Isaiah 19:24,25 He calls to all His children, even those that are in “Egypt” and “Assyria” in bondage. So when I make the conscious decision to sin, He still calls me out of that, and should I be submissive to His will and act as His child, like the Israelites, He will give me His inheritance. Interesting that while there are those who He chooses to bless, only His children are His children. Only those that have come in full obedience to Him, those who bear His seal, those of the promise and covenant.

Who is God? All hail the power.... (part 7)

Not only this, but what happens when I bear something against my brother? There is of course the standard answer by repeating what Jesus said, about laying the gifts at the altar and making it right with my brother before bringing it before God. (Matt 5:23) And of course these are true words to live by, that if I bear something against my brother, I am no different than if I had killed my brother. And this involves being angry with my brother. Anger is a part of my life, as it has always been in the lives of humans. Anger is how world wars start.  Grudges and anger lead to terrorism, division, hurt feelings, separation, because frankly people would rather fight than change and they would fight then have an open mind. I myself would rather show that I am right. I really don’t like being angry. I don’t like the little red-faced person I become. I like things to run smoothly, no waves, and I am resentful if someone disrupts that. My anger doubles. And then I begin to blame God for what is happening to me. Adam did. (Gen 3) Why can’t I? Didn’t Adam blame God for what happened in the garden to Eve and for his own nakedness which he eventually wind up hiding with leaves provided by God? But Adam was fleshly and I am so godly or supposed to be.  So I shouldn’t show or even feel anger, should I? Ah well, wasn’t Adam created in God’s image? If that were the case, wasn’t God a very real part of this man? If that is the case, why should I not think of God as being capable of being angry?  God is a wonderful God, but anger is definitely part of His personality….there are many examples of Him being slow to anger, but also how fearful it is to be in the hands of an angry God. It was that part that Adam hid from, because he knew God would at least be disappointed with him. The part that was angry with Eve and angry with himself for believing Eve and angry with God because had He not gone Eve may not have been tempted. Don’t human beings do that with illness, or what’s called displaced anger? Leaves come in all shapes and sizes, cattiness, gossip, walls against anyone with other ideas, self-righteous smiles. My personal leaf is to build walls. I may try and work it out with the person I am angry with at first, but for the most part I will not talk to the person I am angry with, mostly because I will not be trapped into saying something I shouldn’t, but also because I want to stew, I want to hold it against that person. I build the walls, and rant and rave behind those walls and then it builds up and then --- boom !!!---- look out for whoever is in my wake. But when I admit to God that I am angry, and most of the time it is because of myself, then God can work with that and diffuse the bomb within me. God sees the free will in me, and  He leaves me alone, much like He left Adam and Eve alone to grow to understand that a free will doesn’t mean having everything their way all the time. He teaches me through my anger that my free will, while a wonderful thing, is something that is selfish, self absorbed, and really something that requires the fruits of God’s Spirit for nourishment. Thank God for His image that I put on in Christ when I decide to be submissive to God.