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This will happen on the day when the Lord Jesus comes to receive glory because of his holy people. And all the people who have believed will be amazed at Jesus. You will be in that group, because you believed what we told you. 2 Thessalonians 1:10 (NCV)
What does Jesus look like? Many artists have tried to give us a glimpse of what he may have looked like to satisfy our curiosity. In the pictures I grew up with he looked like some frail little Scandinavian guy with feminine hands knocking gently on a huge door or kneeling by a rock. He was surrounded by a halo and looked ‘other worldly’. Later, some tried to portray a more ‘Jewish looking’ Jesus with more masculine features.
The prophet Isaiah brought a message of repentance to a stubborn people. He thought he knew God. He thought he knew himself. But when he saw God for who he truly was (Isaiah 6) he fell to his knees and cried ‘Woe is me!’ God was so much more than he could have imagined and this view of God caused him to see himself for what he really was. I think when we finally get to see Jesus it will be a similar effect. When we see him as he is our first response will be a gasp because we will see how magnificent he truly is.
Those of us who are Christ-followers will see him differently than others. We will see our coming king dressed in regal robes that signify power. We’ll see him as a high priest. That has a different meaning for us today than it did in Jesus day. The priest, in some ways, held more ‘awe’ than the king. It was the priest that showed us all the way to the Creator God.
I’m looking forward to seeing Jesus in all his majesty, but it won’t be the robes that draw me to him, it will be his eyes. You can tell a lot by looking at someone straight in the eyes. When I see Jesus on that day I think that rather than showing power and majesty his eyes will show love and compassion…and grace.
When I see those eyes I’ll know for certain that all my hopes have been satisfied. Those sins I confessed really are gone. The emotional pain of yesterday will melt into the joy and peace of eternity. The physical stress of wondering how I’ll get through this next project, or make the money last another week will become insignificant. The inner longing I’ve had to know…to REALLY KNOW I’m okay will disappear. I’ll know for certain that I am loved by the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
I have questions of course. And so do you. All those things you and I have said flippantly about “When I get to heaven I’m going to ask Jesus why he did this or allowed that”. But in reality, those things will seem so insignificant that I’m quite sure I’ll completely forget about all those questions for at least a million or two years.
Remember the story of the woman who anointed Jesus with oil? She forgot about her social standing. The cost of the oil was insignificant. The reaction of the crowd didn’t matter. All that mattered was that she was with Jesus. I’ll be there with her.
I can’t wait until Jesus comes.
PRAYER: Jesus, son of the living God, King of Kings, Lord of Lord, friend of the downcast and lifter of those who have fallen. Great healer, provider and passionate lover. I am so thankful that you love me. I’m so grateful for the forgiveness you’ve given me and the life I have here on earth. But with all you have given me, my greatest joy will be when I can look into your eyes and be amazed. Come quickly Lord Jesus. Amen.
For we are co-workers in God’s service; you are God’s field, God’s building. 1 Corinthians 3:9
I had an uncle who lived the American Dream. After the sixth grade school seemed meaningless to him so he quit school to help on the family farm. When he was about 16 he headed west from the northern Minnesota farm he’d called home all his life. Back in that day, such an event wasn’t unheard of. He landed in Seattle and took work at a ship building yard. Slowly, over the years his hard work and leadership abilities were noticed. When he passed away at the age of 70 he was owner of that shipyard and a very wealthy man!
That’s the stuff we always dream of. We want to grow wealthy. We want to be rich. We want to attain to the top level of our area of expertise. While there is nothing at all wrong with wanting to succeed in life, our view of success: [richer, more powerful, and higher social standing] isn’t in God’s business plan.
When the Apostle Paul writes his letter to the Corinthians he is writing to a group of people who’d gotten caught up in the deadly game of comparison. Some followed this man. Others followed that man. They began compartmentalizing and grading the work of each person in the church. They weren’t comparing apples and oranges. They were making a decision about which apple was the biggest and best. Paul tells them, basically, to knock it off! In God’s kingdom business as usual isn’t business as usual.
Whether you are a ditch digger or pastor; whether you are a recovering addict or squeaky clean; whether you are a financial planning guru or deep in credit card debt; regardless of your past or where you are now in life, in God’s workplace you never work alone.
In God’s workplace there is: no seniority or tenure; no ‘right hand man’; no organizational chart or chain of command; no ‘working your way up the success ladder; no bonuses (in life, but the retirement benefits are out of this world); no ‘overtime’ and no performance reviews or quotas to reach.
Paul says we are co-workers with God. He’s not the boss. He’s the kind of guy who works right alongside you. And if God is our co-worker then who can be above us in importance?
Jesus said, “I don’t call you slaves. I call you friends. Friends let you vent. Friends don’t order you around or demand that you follow them. They are there to help, to comfort, to encourage and to guide when you need them the most. That’s the kind of God we have a relationship with. A God that wants to come along side you no matter where you are on the journey. That’s grace. That’s love. That’s our God!
PRAYER: Father God. Once again you have amazed me with your love for me. Why would the Creator God of the universe choose to be a co-worker with me? It can only be due to grace. Thank you for loving me so much. In Jesus name, Amen.
“Let us go right into the presence of God with sincere hearts fully trusting him. For our guilty consciences have been sprinkled with Christ’s blood to make us clean, and our bodies have been washed with pure water.” Hebrews 10:22 (NLT)
The little girl let out a piercing scream that brought both parents running to her rescue. She had been playing on her grandparent’s farm and building a ‘fort’ in the wooded area behind the barn. Unfortunately, she’d chosen to build her fort in the midst of a nest of wood ticks! Her parents spent nearly an hour picking ticks off the scared and crying little girl.
After a thorough inspection, a warm bath and a bowl of ice cream on Grandpa’s lap she felt much better. She got down to play but decided to stay near the house and play with her dolls.
“A little scared to go play in the woods?” Grandma asked her gently.
“A little maybe,” was her reply, “But mostly I still feel itchy, like the bugs are still crawling all over me.”
We can all, no doubt, identify with the little girl in the story. We walk through a spider web or discover some insect on us and for some time later still feel it’s ‘presence’ on us.
The same can often be true of sin. We fail to do what we should, or do something we know we shouldn’t. We may even wander far from God and live a lifestyle we know is wrong or become addicted to drugs, alcohol or lust.
Like the Prodigal Son, we come crawling back to God. We confess our sin. We work hard at cleaning up our act. But deep in the corners of our mind is this sense of guilt and shame that we can’t shake. We pray about it. Read Scriptures. We talk to counselors, pastors or trusted friends. Still we are haunted, sometimes day and night by the feeling of guilt on our lives. Much like the little girl continued to feel the wood ticks on her body.
So, why is that? Is God so angry with us that he won’t let us forget? Are the reminders of our past signposts to make us be sure we were sincere? Does God’s forgiveness fall short of our expectations because our ‘sin was so bad’ that he’s going to haunt us for the rest of our lives?
The simple answer to that is a resounding NO! The Bible is very clear in several places that once we confess our sins to Jesus and ask his forgiveness those sins are forgiven. The moment you asked, the blood of Jesus cleansed you from the penalty of that sin. We can still feel guilty though for a variety of reasons.
If you have asked sincerely for your sin to be forgiven and still feel guilty it could be a matter of healing and healing takes time. Sometimes that healing is made longer because people keep bringing up your faults. Sometimes it can be due to constant ridicule. Religion is a great source of guilt as well with constant reminders that we are bad.
The biggest culprit in our struggle with a guilty conscience though is Satan. That great enemy of Christ-followers wants nothing more than to keep you in the prison of guilt and remorse. He’ll lie to you. He’ll use other people to lie about you. He can even use religion to keep you captive. Don’t listen to him. Listen to the words of Jesus. “Neither do I condemn you, go and sin no more”. No matter how many times you come sincerely to Jesus he has promised to forgive you. Tell Satan to take a hike. Tell him to get lost. In Jesus Christ you are NOT GUILTY because of the blood he shed on the cross for you.
PRAYER: Dear Jesus. I’ve been carrying this load of guilt long enough. I now realize that the guilt I feel is a false belief that I’m not forgiven. I renounce the efforts of Satan to keep me in the prison of my soul. From this day forward I’m going to live in the freedom of your forgiveness. Amen.
“For it is: Do this, do that, a rule for this, a rule for that; a little here, a little there.” Isaiah 28:10
Nobody likes rules. When we are young we yearn to be free of rules and then we get older and find ourselves making more and more rules! Rules tend to confine and control us. Rules take away our freedom. Yet, in our more mature moments we have to admit that the world would be in big trouble if it weren’t for rules. Although rules control us, they can also guide us and protect us from…well, rule breakers!
When the Prophet Isaiah was ministering to the Israelites one of the complaints he and the other prophets heard was that they said the same things over and over again. The Prophets constantly stressed the basics. Later, in Jesus day, the Pharisees took rulemaking to new heights by burdening the people with rules to help them obey the rules. The problem was, those rules eventually, and I think unintentionally, replaced the real rules!
One of the reasons the Prophet Isaiah and his cohorts continued to stress the basics of the Godly life and didn’t move on to deeper things is that the people weren’t following the things God had already required of them.
The same is true today. We have conferences on seeing God’s power. We have books about seeing God’s power. There are some who make money off the ministry of telling people how to see God’s power. But nothing seems to help. For many of us we go through life hearing about God working in magnificent ways overseas or in the lives of others, but fail to see his power evident in our own life?
The thing each of us needs to realize is that our Heavenly Father is desperate to do things in our lives, but he can’t give us the deep things he has for us until we get the basics down. Other religions say you have to follow a multitude of rules to gain ‘divine power’. Not so with as Christ-followers. From the moment you accept Jesus you have all the power of God at your fingertips. His rules are simple. Get into a love relationship that holds him as number on and you will see mighty things.
So why don’t we see mighty God-power in our lives? God doesn’t expect big things from us until we master the little things in life. What are those ‘little things’? It starts with getting rid of all the stuff that keeps you from God. Anything that keeps you from holding God as number one in your life hinders your love relationship with him.
A love relationship with God means we take time out of our busy schedules to pray, read his word and fellowship with him. Those seem like little things but those little things are all God expects from us in order to show his power. It’s not about all sorts of rules like religion will tell you. Following God’s rules is all about freedom to be you.
PRAYER: Father God. I want to be desperate for you. There are so many things that keep me from seeing your power in my life. Empower me with your spirit to focus on the simple things of prayer, Bible reading and fellowship. Let your life shine powerfully through me to others, in Jesus name, Amen.
He says, “Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.” Psalm 46:10
A storm moves through in the middle of the night. The windows shake from the wind. The yard is as light as mid-day from frequent lightning. On one particular crash of thunder small feet are heard running down the hall. As if with one motion she snuggles in securely between her mom and dad. ‘Safe from the storm’ she soon falls back asleep completely oblivious to the raging storm outside.
What was it that drove the little one to the arms of her father and mother? Were they able to save her from the storm? Should a tornado have wiped out the neighborhood would she have been spared because she was in their arms? The storm certainly didn’t let up. It wasn’t any quieter in their room.
What drove her to the arms of her parents was the calm assurance in her mind that safety rested there. In the arms of her father the lightning became a nothing more than a light show. The sounds of the wind, rain and thunder became music to lull her to sleep. The storm could be weathered just fine when she was in the arms of her father.
When we rest in the arms of our Heavenly Father there is calmness in the storm. He is God. He is holy. The word ‘Holy’ is a word that means set a part. One notch above the rest of the world. Unaffected by circumstances.
Because he is a holy God, the things that frighten me have no effect on him. The things that pull me down won’t contain him or change his focus or actions.
When I fail it affects how I view myself. It affects how I react to other people. It changes my outlook on life. Small problems seem bigger. Mole hills become mountains. But when I fail it doesn’t affect how God views me. Not with Jesus by my side.
When I struggle with sin I feel hopeless and defeated. But with God there is no such thing as hopeless. Defeat isn’t in his vocabulary. When life takes different turns for me and I don’t understand how I got in the situation I’m in, I get confused and discouraged. God never gets discouraged, never gets sidetracked, never gets distracted by simple, mortal earthly things. He is on a higher plain which is unaffected by humans.
I can’t control everything that comes my way. I can’t change decisions that I’ve made in the past that haunt me now. I can’t see the future so that my choices today will guarantee my comfort or safety. I can’t control everything that comes my way…but my God can.
PRAYER: Holy Father. As the storms of life swirl around me today there will be times when fear grips me like an iron fist. Times when confusion clouds my ability to choose wisely. Times when I want to lash out rather than listen. Empower me by your Spirit during these times to be still. Even though life may be loud around me, help me to be still in your arms of safety and love. In Jesus name I pray, Amen.
Mike Fisk & Built with Grace 