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About lamptofeet

I specialize in pushing the “Michael Jackson” drug followed by a paralytic agent into the veins of my anesthetized patient to ensure respiratory arrest so that I may then ever so gently insert a curved metal object between their teeth and into the throat as I expose their airway that I might subsequently push a piece of cuffed sterile PVC pipe through their vocal cords, into their trachea to supply them oxygen and breaths as a “sadistic surgeon” cuts away diseased anatomy. I am successful when you wake up, look at me and say, “When are we going to get started?” God was the first Anesthetist to Adam in His creation of Eve. An honorable profession!

“He is Not a Tame Lion”

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Abimelech had in an ignorant innocence of a sort taken Sarah, the wife of Abraham, into his harem and as such incurred swift judgment from God. Abraham and Sarah were each complicit in this potential disaster and threat to the godly seed. Abimelech repents as God comes to him in a dream for clarification of the danger he has placed he and his nation in since his enlistment of Sarah as a member of his Philistine entourage. Abimelech pleads ignorance and declares innocence since he has not touched Sarah, who at 90 is apparently still a gorgeous and desirable woman.

Here is the Scriptural content and then the end game with a thought toward present day application.

Genesis 20:6-7

Then God said to him in the dream, “Yes, I know that in the integrity of your heart you have done this, and I also kept you from sinning against Me; therefore I did not let you touch her.

“Now therefore, restore the man’s wife, for he is a prophet, and he will pray for you and you will live. But if you do not restore her, know that you shall surely die, you and all who are yours.”

Genesis 20:17-18

Abraham prayed to God, and God healed Abimelech and his wife and his maids, so that they bore children.

For the LORD had closed fast all the wombs of the household of Abimelech because of Sarah, Abraham’s wife.

Application:

When the prophets of God and the people cease to be all God has called them to be, and when the message of God is lost in transition because of fear or deception or other human frailty, the purposes of God are endangered. The judgment of God falls upon any and all in the vicinity in such cases. God “carpet bombs” on rare occasion. (Reference Egypt and God’s judgment upon the nation for Pharaoh’s sin. Also, ask yourself when you last ran into a card-carrying Philistine…)

The Lord God is a jealous God. He is not to be trifled with; His purposes will advance with or without our pursuit of His glory, but never apart from the zeal of the Lord Most High for His own name’s sake. The earth would cease if God submitted his purposes to the whims of men, yet He marvelously shares His glory and shows His lovingkindness to multitudes who do His will and heed His word as they advance His glory in humble steps of faithful repentance. 

“…who works all things after the counsel of His will.”


I hope the correlation between this Biblical example and the failure of leadership in the church today and in the nation at large is clear enough. God’s purpose and God’s kingdom will advance and come; our participation is optional from eternity’s perspective. God will raise up a faithful people. He always has. 


“He is not a tame Lion.”

Lewis

  

Spittle and Dust, Light from Darkness

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“As He passed by, He saw a man blind from birth.”John 9:1

  

So here is a blind man. He has never seen the faintest flicker of light in the totality of his life. Not even a shadow. Not one ray of sunshine though he stared straight into the full noonday sun. No twinkling stars, no bright and full moon. Nothing. Blackness. Darkness is his dungeon and he has ever been swallowed and imprisoned therein. He is lost as any man apart from the illumination of divine Light. 

Unbeknownst to him in his blindness the Light of the world passes by in resplendent display of eternal glory, seen by some, yet missed by most. The Glory pauses to make clay of spittle and dust. The paste is applied to flawed eyes which were purposefully created imperfectly for this most perfect moment of the glory of God revealed. Something unseen happens, but not yet. Amazed wonder must sweep the crowd as the Ancient of Days advances His purpose. This feeble, fundamental obstacle of blindness becomes the vehicle of the works of God declaring Immanuel is with us. 

Do you see how this expands? Isn’t it absolutely stunning how visible hope, light and life are freely imparted to the hopeless, to the blind, to the dead? Help Personified comes to the helpless as a great Light dawns in the midst of our fading darkness… a Light of revelation, a light of hope. 

 “What causes you to differ?” Aren’t you formed of the same stuff? The same clay? What flaws and imperfections has God built into you that scream for His touch, His power, His glory in repair? Has He purposed to pause before you, to touch you, to heal you that your imperfections might manifest His glory through your weakness as He makes you strong in the strength of His might? His power is perfected not in your strength nor by your strength but through your exposed weakened frailty. If God scooped up a handful of dirt “in the Beginning” and created Man, then isn’t it reasonable that the Lord of life may be pleased in this case to take another handful of dust turned to mud and heal sightless eyes? Or heal whatever? He is not doing something new here. His act is not without precedence. “The works that the Father does, these I do.” The process of light from darkness is His way. “Let there be light.” Need He say more, for what He says is. His word is our command. 

When we look in the mirror each morning we see reflected flaws and little imperfect irritations of our creation. Did God err? Cry to Jesus! More significantly when we stop and listen to the voice that speaks to us from the Word of God, we hear God speak of our true need and our brokenness calls for His healing touch. Fly to Jesus! I think our right response ought move toward imitation of the Centurion who said, “Lord, I am not worthy of You to come to me. Just say the word and my servant will be healed.” I like that. The clay and spittle are optional, thank you very much… His mercy and grace and glory in His word and touch are non-optional; they are essentials. “He was born blind not for his sin, nor for his parents sin, but for the glory of God.” That’s a principle I suppose I need claim every day. What of you?

This blind man in obedient, unseeing but trusting faith responded to the command of Christ and went submissively to the pool of Siloam to wash his eyes. He returned seeing. After his subsequent rejection by the suspicious, hypocritical, unbelieving, religious professionals of the day, Jesus comes to him again. Jesus seeks him out. We need to learn something there. God seeks man, man in blindness cannot seek nor find that which is hidden from our eyes. “Christ is hidden too far in God for man to see Him unless the Father reveals Him.” (Bunyan in Pilgrim’s Progress)

Prayer: God reveal my life purpose then to me as that which is hidden with Christ in God. Show me the Son that the Son might show me the Father. Lord I come. (Col 3, Matt 11)

For the first time ever the blind man who now sees gazes upon the Light of the world, who further discloses His identity as the Son of Man. He who was blind now truly sees, he believes and he worships the King of glory. 

Our imperfections and struggles in this life call to the Light of the world. We need his touch now more than ever. We need light to see our way through this dark world as sin and stumbling stones abound and hinder. Thank God for our High Priest who understands, sympathizes, then heals and helps the downcast broken-hearted. Lord, you need not make the clay of spittle and dust, but that’s okay too. I really need you to just say the word and make me whole.


As the leper made request, “Lord, if You are willing, please heal me.”

“I am willing” and He stretched forth His hand and touched him. And he was made well. 


Photo courtesy of the modern adventurer and friend George Dobbs.  

Do I Worship an Icon or God?

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The ever-present danger of intellectual formalism is its capacity to woo me to comfortably tolerate a cold reductionism of saving religion to signs and symbols. In an icon-driven society we can stealthily become “icon-worshipers” rather than a people who are preeminently relational in our religion. We can discover the value of form and practice as paramount to and the equivalent of walking with God as His imitators. We imitate a practice rather than God. Putting to death the deeds of the flesh can become a mission of dealing out retribution to those who disagree with me over my icon. (An icon sure sounds similar to an idol.) Jesus said it simply and concisely to the Formalists of His day, “You search the Scriptures, and it is these that testify of Me, but you will not come to Me that you may have life.” My Bible can be my idol or icon I substitute for my God. 

If my good habits, my disciplined duties and even zealous religious practices are not enhancing my entry into the close proximity of His actual light and presence, to the end of a required and desired change of my heart and essence, then I need to abandon the form that hinders and simply start over. I must come to Christ for life. I must do that every day. That is not once-for-all… “I die daily.”

My religion when functioning near the Biblical norm is intensely personal and obligatory to a supremely worthy and intrusive God who demands my good through His nonnegotiable Lordship of even the most insignificant details of my life. (If the hairs of my head are numbered… what can possibly be insignificant to this God?) Furthermore, His dominion of my life is perfectly reasonable to me and my supreme desire lived our in response to His call to be His disciple. Discipleship requires a ransack of the old to know true life as a new creation. We don’t buy nor sell “cheap grace.” (Bonhoeffer)

The Lord Jesus Christ is not an icon. He is my Friend by faith who loved me and actually gave Himself up for me, and He bids me do the same for Him. There is and must be a mystical aspect of my walk with God as He, the unseen God, governs my all by His Spirit, and I see Him do it as He speaks to me in the Way. That sounds pretty mystical to me yet I perceive it to be more real and enduring than all I see, for it touches eternity. 

“Knowledge makes arrogant; love edifies.”

“He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty.”

So God offers His shadow as my shelter. That’s beyond an icon to a Biblical theophany I pursue as worthy.  

 
Photo by George Dobbs. A friend and adventurer who is a hybrid form of Jeremiah Johnson and Ansel Adams.

Guilt & Shame Misapplied

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Our Folly of Fooling with Flimsy Robes of Guilt and Shame

Romans 8:1 Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.  

Guilt and shame in situ are non-redemptive works of the flesh or nonproductive byproducts of works the flesh. Some seek to sanctify them as enshrined works of grace, and as such they may give a sense of justified comfort to the embittered soul or solace to the perpetually hard-working pharisee.

Guilt and shame are not redemptive in their first cause as they drive one from the Light of the presence of God. Redemption is only by Light and through Light, not away from its warmth and hope and glow. Guilt must be distinguished from the nature of true conviction of sin. Conscience may scream but the Spirit alone brings sorrow as a redemptive product of the grace-process calculated to drive one to Christ, our solitary hope. Guilt and shame provide the staircase to descend into deeper darkness and despair. Though active shame may force change or departure, and even modification of behavior, it is not to be construed as Biblical sorrow leading to repentance. Such shame returns inward or other-ward to the source and not from the sin. Shame forces one into a strange relationship of satisfaction and authentication of blame and excuse.

Fortunately for we guilty shameful sinners there is a redeeming Father who tenderly delights to pardon the wayward child overtaken in a fault. Guilt and shame in the hands of this lovingly redemptive God are His tools to awaken need as He takes these products of the flesh and outfits them as vehicles to drive one toward good, redemptive purposes in glory. One may find himself overcome by despair at the strong arm of the Enemy but such is the Spirit’s pleasure to reveal Christ as the Remedy to deliver and satisfy. 

Guilt and shame flee the light and presence of faith in Christ. There will be no guilty sinners in heaven, only saved ones who know no condemnation, ideally on earth as in heaven. There will be no shame in heaven, but only joy of sins covered in robes of righteousness. 

One of the most mind-boggling considerations of our walk with God this day in this world is the freeness of no guilt and no shame and no condemnation He grants us to partake of before the journey is complete. He freely gives the “No Condemnation Contract” to guilty sinners today, and as such, we draw near Him to listen to Him. 

Avoiding an Arrow to the Liver: A How-To Schematic

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Naivety is No Excuse…Sin crouches ever, always after you. But you must master it.



“With her many persuasions she entices him;

With her flattering lips she seduces him.

Suddenly he follows her

As an ox goes to the slaughter,

Or as one in fetters to the discipline of a fool,

Until an arrow pierces through his liver;

As a bird hastens to the snare,

So he does not know that it will cost him his life.”

Proverbs 7:21-23

As a healthcare professional I always cringe as I visualize this word picture. The liver is highly vascular demanding up to 25% of the heart’s blood volume or cardiac output. Our liver is required for life and it has multiple life-preserving functions. One of these functions is the breakdown, preparation and packaging of food products for the provision of energy to the trillions of individual cells which comprise our body. Another sustaining and necessary action of the liver is the continual filtration of our blood by the breakdown of byproducts of metabolism either for further use or as refuse to be removed. 

The naive sinner enters into an encounter with the harlot who masterfully entices by full-court press of visual, auditory and sensual pictures calculated to turn a man’s head and grip his heart with the promise of pleasure as never before experienced. This seduction always continues for a season in its hunger for success until suddenly lust is conceived, born of wearisome temptation that had chipped away at rational defenses. And he follows and falls. Sin offers a sweet but deadly kiss as the arrow pierces the liver exacting required toll for its lie against truth. (Judas committed the Crime of Humanity by a not-so-innocent kiss upon the cheek.)

The arrow enters the vital organ as sin accomplishes its hideous and designed end: DEATH. Imagine now the slow and agonizing death suffered as the toxins cease to be packaged for removal but now build as secret poisons, self-induced by ceasing to follow clear rules for maintenance of purity of life. Blood supply diminishes from insidious loss as weakness dulls the senses with clouded brain that starves for lack of oxygen and required food stuffs to fuel clear thinking and necessary bodily functions. Confusion increases and lethargy advances as dangerous metabolites destroy by consequential necessity as the liver fails. And the sinner perishes by his naivety of believing a lie of the passing pleasure of sin rather than choosing to believe and wait upon the Lord who promises true treasure and lasting pleasure in His presence and Right Hand. You remember Who sits at His right hand, don’t you?

Considerations of a novice armchair theologian but professional sinner:

1. Sin always entices at your point of perceived need and desire, or it develops new desires by adventurous promises of greener pastures. 

2. Sin is deceptively accurate in the promise of immediate pleasure. This is true. Sinning is fun but at the expense of true joy and life. The perceived sanity of sin once unmasked is always insanity. 

3. Sin attacks you on every front in relentless rational promises designed to disguise the lie. The ruthlessness of temptation can never be underestimated and at the moment of its victory sin seems perfectly reasonable and legitimate. We don’t sin to do wrong; we sin because we have justified its rightness as vision is clouded by insatiable lust after what we think we have a RIGHT to enjoy.

4. Sin always and only ends in death, most often agonizingly slow with ample time to reflect upon the consequences of despising the warning signs by skillful neglect of the escape route that the Father ALWAYS builds into any life situation. 

5. The door of escape I personally have discovered with ready access is located adjacent to the entry of the path of temptation. Once you enter into the door of temptation by deliberate choice or naive action of indifferent experimentation, conscience becomes dull and a genuine desire to escape via the once clearly defined route is now cloaked from your vision. When the dominoes of temptation and lust and sin and death initiate a tip and fall, escape is IMPOSSIBLE. Repentance then becomes the goal for recovery. 

Several concluding thoughts…

1. “There is a way that seems right to a man but it ends in the way of death.” The label on any particular sin you currently ponder always has fine print that is difficult to read and a hidden skull and crossbones that signifies its lethal destructive lie. Choose wisely. Consequences can be hell. 

2. “No temptation has overtaken you but that which is common to man, but God is faithful and won’t allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, and with the temptation will provide the way of escape.” Thank God! Tinker with sin and forget this promise. Sin and it tempting power is consistently defeated in bud-form when first conceived as a thought. When it enters the mind’s eye or hearing ear, destroy it by gospel power. Tear down the thought. Cast down vain sinful speculations. Keep gospel armor on with the helmet of salvation securely covering your thoughts and desires. As a believer you have the very mind of Christ. Be renewed in your mind. Present yourself as a living sacrifice to God as conformity to the world is unmasked in all its temporal folly.

3. Any man who approaches any temptation to resist sin by natural strength or moral fortitude will fail. I guarantee it. Even if he is successful in resisting the temptation by native disposition and personal will power, he ultimately fails. You see, then the destructive blight of pride and a filthy robe of self-righteous deception is adorned as this one begins to despise others who fail to overcome as he. Christ and His glory is minimized as prideful self is exalted at the expense of grace and glory to God alone. 

4. The hope and reality of the promise of forgiving grace is imparted to all repentant sinners. God restores the fallen. God releases the captive of sin. God acts not based on merit nor personal performance but by the provision of our impossible needs in the sufficiency and possibility of Christ. We enter into life as God heals the wounds of sin’s arrows and death blows by the very blows the Father inflicted on the Son of His delight. Justice pierced Him and He died not in defeat but for designed purpose of defeating the cause and consequence of the man’s transgressions. Through one act of righteousness, (the work of the Lamb upon the Tree), we the many, receive the promise and gift of life. “But to as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe upon His name.” And that dear friend is why we “Go tell it on the mountain!” We a story to tell to the nations. 

We need to ponder this today. God’s caution to Cain, the first offspring of Adam and Eve, was not heeded as God warned Cain, “Sin is crouching at the door and its desire is for you, but you must overcome it.” God says that to every human walking the earth today with every temptation we encounter. He speaks in conscience and circumstance and Natural Law until we silence His voice and reject His light by sinning away grace and hardening the heart. Sin is after you… but Jesus alone knows its true power as He ONLY resisted it to perfection and mastered it as He put it away by His holy life and perfect redemption in death.

Flee to Christ. “Awake sleeper, arise and Christ will shine on you!”

 “We have no other confidence,

We have no other plea.

It is enough that Jesus died,

And that He died for me.”

Brevity has apparently died or was hopelessly misplaced in 2015. Matters not… we have been entrusted with Truth and Life.

The Blessing of Adversity that Rises to Meet Us in 2016

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The word adversary in some form occurs around 100 times in my NASB. In many cases it seems God is saying, “ Don’t worry, I’ve got this one… I have your back.” Other times we see God clearly raises up specific adversaries to advance His purpose. (I’m thankful He, and not I, controls the “Adversary Button.” I might tend to be vindictive now and again… And from that perspective I am thankful you don’t have an adversary machine either.)

However… adversaries are calculated to be either obstacles or enhancements to our walk before God. As we encounter them clothed in our Gospel armor it is a Biblical norm to expect that someone is be redeemed by the engagement turned skirmish. Believers are ideally perpetually redeemed in and through daily conflict by the Spirit with the Word as guidance, as nonbelievers or nominal believers NEED to be redeemed. Today.

Consider Paul’s worthy perspective: “…for a wide door for effective service has opened to me, and there are many adversaries.” Paul was not a super-saint. We sometimes forget he was a sinner saved only by marvelous grace. Sure he was a chosen vessel. So are you. So am I. What we are chosen to do is God’s call. Our response is to be lost in wonder, love and praise. We are called to be a person as David of “one thing I have asked of the Lord…” (Psalm 27) Paul viewed adversaries as evidence that God was on the move, not asleep at the Heavenly Wheel. This is a reasonable goal in perspective and application that I must shoot for in 2016. 

The #NewYear #2016 contains near infinite unknowns to all of us, yet God holds each of us as children in the palm of His hand, and grants REAL tangible joy and peace to His followers in the midst of life and struggles. He is God. That’s what He does for members of the Covenant. We bring the expectation of trust in God who is wise and good and powerful as daily providences unfold. Always remember God does not do random. He is right on schedule. Never early and never late. 

The year 2015 for a number of traditionalists and Christ-followers was very distasteful in many social, national, moral, political and corporate ways. Even so it was a spiritual feast of abundance for me personally as I still hear His voice daily as I discipline myself to seek Him in secret. What does life consist of but to “know God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent?” I know full well that #2016 will likely reveal appalling and heart wrenching challenges as our nation continues its fall into pagan pluralism and rank godlessness by departure from the revelation and light “once delivered to the saints.” The principle of sowing and reaping always touches the present, tomorrow and propels one into eternity, for either good or ill. God is just. He will by no means clear the guilty. May I quickly add that Christ is sufficient and His blood takes away our sin. It is past time for us to cease from sin and seek the Lord. God separates light from darkness. He has from The Beginning. 

So I close in saying that God has calculated in perfection what we as His people need that we might be awakened to love and good deeds as we stand firm in the Lord to graciously but emphatically resist the evil of the day and do His will. The ending of the story says we overcome and God’s Kingdom comes. Understand though the battle is not for the faint of heart and between now and the end the potential to depart and quit because of adversity will be daily pressed upon us. That is why we are called to “Take heed to yourself and to your teaching, for as you do so, you will ensure salvation not only for yourself but also for those who hear you.”

I believe in the perpetuity of the Law and Grace as I believe in the perpetuity of application of the Year of Jubilee in Christ. He makes all things new. He equips us to forgive as we have been forgiven. He shows the folly of anger and bitterness. We have become and are becoming new creatures in Christ. May He grant us to overcome and be swept up into His presence to see His face and rejoice. May it be said of us as it was of Peter and John, “They recognized them as having been with Jesus.” Do you have specific plans to hang out with the King the next 365? I promise you that this and this alone will change your life. He bids you come and drink freely and daily of the water of life as we journey into 2016.

The confetti is still falling and I am #AlreadyOutOfControl

“I was in Prison and you Preached and I could care less…”

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Reflecting back on my #CCC experience from this past Tuesday night, I was providentially pulled to a new pod where the group was larger and a few prisoners were less than attentive as they did not know me nor the Gospel I preach. Others seemed genuinely struck by the word and appreciative to know that Option B was opened to them through the preaching of the Gospel and that God’s power was abundant that they might flee the wrath to come. 

I saw again that the very means appointed to save some, harden others in their indifferent iniquity that they might fill up the full measure of the wrath appointed them. All we can seek to do is glorify the Saving Christ in the preaching of a powerful Gospel to a lost and dying world.

Successful preaching does not have to end in the salvation of the hearers. (Reference Jeremiah and Noah, et. al.) Successful preaching simply leaves man without excuse for rejection of the grace that appears in setting forth the Word become flesh as He who is full of grace and truth.

“Today if you hear His voice do not harden your heart.”

The Suffering Lamb Receives His Reward

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“Save Your people and bless Your inheritance;
Be their shepherd also, and carry them forever.”

Psalm 28:9

The provision of God in Christ meets the totality of our needs. “May the Lamb that was slain receive the reward of His suffering.” (Moravian Missionary)
He was called JESUS and His mission was not to provide for a potential salvation but to accomplish a redemption by ransom of His people. “It is finished.”
Hebrews 1:3 states that “when He had made purification for sins He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.” Redemption was accomplished and its impending application is only a matter of your encounter with grace which rushes toward you and upon you as it has been “granted you in Christ Jesus from all eternity.” How does that happen? It is a cataclysmic event ordered of God called the New Birth when God invades your life and overthrows your rebellious heart and makes you willing to repent and believe (conversion) in the Day of His Power. God knew you and predestined you and called you and justified you and glorified you… before the world was. (Romans 8) Christ bore the names of His people as He bore their particular sins on Calvary’s Tree. (He even died for their UNBELIEF.) Thank God for sovereign grace or hell would have held me for sure. In reality none would escaped the chains of sin and death, “but God, being rich in mercy…” (Ephesians 2)

Back to Psalm 28…

He saves us in particular as His inheritance for we are the reward of His suffering. “All that the Father gives shall come…” 
He shepherds us by provision and protection in intimate manner as we are twice-born to be carried in His bosom even as our names were inscribed in the books and upon His heart from all eternity.

Consider John 10:1-30 in the account of the Good Shepherd 

“But it is by His doing that we are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption…”

1 Corinthians 1:30-31

My Personal Tent of Meeting

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“And now my head will be lifted up above my enemies around me,And I will offer in His tent sacrifices with shouts of joy;

I will sing, yes, I will sing praises to the LORD.”

Psalm 27:6
Notice this exultation in the Lord is not by deliverance FROM enemies but by worship of God in the MIDST of enemies ALL around. How so? Prominently so… lifted up above… It’s all about a mindset set above, where Christ is. It’s about an act of worship wherever we are, indifferent to circumstance. All things we encounter today are calculated by a sovereign God to stimulate a faith-walk of worship, not sinful frustration, reactiveness nor retaliation. (How we doing on that? Hmmm?) Either our Heavenly Father works all things after the counsel of His will or He doesn’t. I choose to believe a God who rules in the midst of the praises of His people. I bow low in His presence. And He lifts me up in adversity. He moves me to worship the beauty of His holiness. He completes my lack by His abundant sufficiency. 
Perceived hinderances and adversaries are in reality to be viewed and experienced as gigantic springboards to propel one heavenward as we dive into the ocean of His joy-filled presence. (“To write the love of God above would drain the ocean dry…”)
It’s really a story of keeping your “tent of meeting handy”…

The thing about tents is their portability. They pack and store well, so when I arrive on location today, (work or school or home with kids, etc…), the first objective is to unpack and secure the tent, (HIS TENT), to enter in and begin to sing praises and offer sacrifices with shouts of joy to God as the enemies of the Lord congregate about. Isn’t that neat? Wherever… Whenever… In all places we hang out today we are to worship the King of glory in the midst of the conflict as we shout with joy, joy, joy… down in my heart this day! He has designed you and He orders your particular circumstances to aid you to construct an altar of worship as you go through life fulfilling your duty by the Light and Salvation of His countenance. I think of Abraham as he trudged throughout the land, not having a clue but only a promise, yet he seemed quick to construct multiple altars of worship as he sojourned. Don’t all people of faith? So it doesn’t really matter how many Philistines or Canaanites surround you or me today: Worship God! He seeks you to be a worshiper in spirit and truth. All is well when we worship God.

I encourage you to hang out with the Shepherd-King David today, especially in Psalm 27. Who knows but that light and salvation may sweep you away into another place. To a holy place. To a place of joy and praise. That is what I seek upon the eve of the eve of the #NewYear #2016.

Have We Pursued Repentance As a Thief?

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“And we indeed are suffering justly, for we are receiving what we deserve for our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong.”

The Thief of Luke 23

The thief on the cross personifies Biblical repentance for us. We must become as he, and stumble upon the same awareness as he, to enter the narrow door that leads to life. He presents himself as he is and offers to Christ only what he owns… his sin and guilt, without pretense or excuse. We tend to be trust our own advocacy to explain our narrative to God. Repentance includes a radical departure from all explanations, excuses, and all blame we have utilized in the past to resolve guilt by blame of others to protect and excuse Self. Nothing fits through that narrow door of conversion that symbolically represents the new birth. Nothing. Not even your sinful heart. God must give you a new one. This is why we say it is incorrect to say you must give your heart to Jesus; He does not need that nasty thing. In reality we all need Jesus to grant us a new heart as He takes out the old heart of stone. Our sin and our guilt are squeezed off as we press through the gate into the narrow way to be adorned in His robe of righteousness alone. 

The Thief’s Awakening Cry:

He is aware of personal guilt. 

He senses justice must be served. 

He owns his deeds as evil. 

He sees in Christ perfection. 

He senses the suffering Christ is sufficient. 

He cries to Christ for protection. 

“Jesus, remember me.”

He believes as Abraham that God raises the dead. 

One day we will meet this very man. He is in the presence of God today. He will be identified as the humble man who is quick to say it is all of grace. Won’t we all?
“Nothing in my hands I bring;

Simply to Thy cross I cling.”

(Toplady in ‘Rock of Ages’)

Lord, I could never deserve Your merit nor gain Your forgiveness by my performance, even on my best day which I must have misplaced. Unravel my pretense and confusion. Clear my vision and open the eyes of my heart to see my only hope in the very dying form of the Lamb of God upon Calvary’s Tree. Give me faith as this repentant thief. Paradise is His presence. Gripe me with this eternal reality. Never let me lose sight of the Light. Grant me fullness of joy.

“I need Thee. Oh I need Thee. Every hour I need Thee. Oh bless me now my Savior, I come to Thee.”