We Close the Door

It is an amazing feat to see a child of God go backward and downward away from the Father’s love and care. And yet each has the potential to back up and back down from the amazing grace and capture of our Father in heaven.

With all that is before us, the bema seat of judgment by Christ, heaven’s reward or heaven’s rebuke, with the presence of the King– it would seem, rather, that we would not turn away and spoil our soul. But it happens too often to so many. We can sit and church and backslide on God. We can sing songs of thanksgiving and songs of Christmas and yet be in a state of lukewarmness. But it shouldn’t be nor should our lives become a disgrace to God’s grace.

God the Father has given the resources we need to live above this world and with the ability to resist its undertow. Yes it takes discipline and devotion but it is doable through faith in the indwelling Christ. God has brought us back from the depths of despair and from the loss of wasting time.

If the Word of God is not changing us into the very image of Christ, then the Word of God is not functioning as it ought. And that is not because of the seed of the Word, for it is not bad, but it is because of the receiver of the Word. We can tell if we are beholding God or allowing the world to mold us into something we don’t want to become. Again, God has given us all we need that pertains to life and godliness. But we have to avail ourselves of its power. He is looking for those who are poor in spirit and who trembles at His Word.

The culture will try to dictate what you are to believe and how to behave. The culture changes but the culture should not change us. We are to go into the culture and choose to confront the culture with the gospel.

It is the job of the father and mother to teach their children the right way, which is God’s way. The father and mother choose to be the professors in the home, using the Word of God as their main text book, and with total dependence upon the Holy Spirit.

When parents live with an agenda that says, “Me and no other” will rule and reign in my child’s life, they are setting themselves up for a fall, and their children. We are to live in the fear of God and not by our own set of fears. When we live with God’s total control over any thing that takes place in our children’s lives, then we can know God’s power. The culture entices but God’s leadership through the parents can be much stronger when children are taught with truth and love.

Too many people walk through life with gloves and a raincoat on, refusing to observe and experience the beauty and the wonder of the world around them and above them. So many have forgotten the privilege of not only earthly delights, but also of our unearthly purpose.
Each day has its own distinctness and its own inexhaustibility. And yet how few really realize the miracle. Just because we take it for granted, doesn’t mean it isn’t miraculous. Perhaps nothing is really ordinary.
Do not treat your faith in God as if it were an artificial limb that you strap on each day. Though faith in God is meant to be full, yet to many it only helps you to stumble along, it never really becomes an intrinsic part of you. Whatever happened to that holy wonder, that appetite for the sacred? Have we grown blind to the sacredness of everyday things and of everyday people?
It’s been said that as we get older, we don’t regret the things that we did do, but only those things that we failed or forgot to do. Life is short, and at times it is shorter than its “supposed” to be. But there is the question that troubles me far too many times: Why do we still continue to live bland, insipid lives? Why do we waste the days that God has given us? Each day comes and we forget but once in human history that each day comes!

“…for in thy sight shall no man living be justified” (Psalm 143:2).

Our Lord suffered in His death for our disobedience. In His life His obedience to the law was perfect. Since the Law was perfect (revealing the heart and mind of God), it says that any who break it is condemned to death. Jesus Christ is and was the only One who ever obeyed all points of the law perfectly and obediently. All that is required of us to be justified, therefore, is to acknowledge our sin and helplessness. We are to repent of our life of self-assertion and self-righteousness, and to put our whole trust and confidence in the finished work of Christ to save us.

Faith in Jesus Christ is more than intellectual consent only, but personal commitment. We believe “into” Christ Jesus. It is through faith we are justified. The law kills but faith in Christ makes alive. “For it is through the law I die to the law, so that I might live to God” (Gal. 2:19). The law slays but Christ saves. So we have no good works we can do to earn justification. Because the works we do, under the law, only condemn us to death; while faith in Christ bypasses the law of condemnation for us but trusts in Christ who died according to the law for us, who did not bypass the law but died our death’s penalty.

Salvation is an act of committal, not just assenting to the fact that Jesus Christ lived and died, but running to Him for refuge and calling unto Him for His mercy. Justification is not only a legal fact when we are saved in Christ, whereby we are declared righteous by a holy God; it is also a transforming experience through a living identification with Christ.  By union with Christ we are radically transformed; we can no longer go back to our old life, for in Christ we are “a new creation” (2 Cor. 5:17). We are saved by the faith of Christ: past, present, and future.