saving grace

“My little children, these things I write to you, that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world.” ~ 1 John 2:1-2.

When a soul dies before its time against the Maker’s will, whereforth does it go? Does the assurance of salvation still remain and will our good Lord have mercy on those who lost this battle of life? We have so many demons to battle with, coming from every angle, breaking us down and tearing apart our hearts…and in the end, we are only human.

I have wondered long and hard what happens to the ones we have loved and lost to suicide. Is there anywhere in God’s Word that proclaims eternal damnation upon these poor, helpless, and broken ones? They are His after all, given Him to keep, in this life and forevermore.

All of us sin, terribly and day by day. Jesus Christ, our Advocate, will speak for us on Judgment Day. He paid for our sins once and for all, it is finished. And it is enough. Surely, His sacrifice will cover over the murder of our own souls. Surely, God’s love and mercy will wash over those who chose to leave this life early, and He will bring them home.

I pray and believe with all that I am that God will hold those of us who hurt the most, who somehow believed there was no other option. May their souls not be wandering and lost forever, dear Heavenly Father. Carry Your children and lost lambs in Your arms until the very end of eternity. May we not be separated from the ones we loved and lost, the ones we could not save. Only You can save them now, so let them not be lost forever.

O Heavenly Father, remember the ones You love, the ones You gave faith to, the ones You breathed life in. We are all flawed and broken and daily need your grace and mercy. For the lost, I pray for Your guidance. For the poor, I pray for Your hope. For the fallen, I pray for Your healing. Your Love is steadfast and new every morning, and You are ever faithful and true. I know not where their souls are as we wait between heaven and earth, but I pray You be with them always. Let them never feel lonesome, lost, and abandoned. May You make Your presence known to them, and may You give them rest. O Lord, I pray You let these poor souls sleep in the healing arms of Jesus Christ. He has redeemed the whole world and set us free from the clutches of evil. Though the best of us may fall out of life along the way, I pray You will save them still and give them another chance to be with You. You are righteous O God and You know all things and all hearts. Please bless and keep the souls of our loved ones safe in Your love for all eternity. Thank You Lord. In Jesus’ Name I pray, Amen.

A Simple Question that Changes Everything...

Psalms 34:3 O magnify the Lord with me and let us exalt his name together.

Hebrews 12:1-2 And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. 

The more years I spend limping and struggling through my walk with the Lord Jesus Christ, the more and more I realize His call on my life. I am deeply humbled by his promise to never forsake us (Matthew 28:20). Oftentimes I am driven to tears realizing that such a worthless sinner like me would receive so much love and mercy. O the beauty of our Lord. May we revel and marvel in how good he is to us...

As I am a person who is often distracted by my own thoughts and driven down winding roads and inconsequential roundabouts, it takes a lot of effort for me to fix my eyes on the Lord Jesus Christ, but this is what he has asked us to do. 

A simple powerful question that usually obliterates every "pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God" (2 Corinthians 10:5) ....at least in my mind is this: 

What am I putting before Jesus Christ? What am I allowing to impair my vision of him?

We should ask ourselves this not just as a daily question, but as a moment by moment wake-up call and reality check. 

The material, corporeal world is blinding, this is why we have been instructed to look only to Jesus Christ. As a child have you ever held a magnifying glass up to an insect? Do you remember how big it gets? The psalmist tells us to magnify the Lord in our hearts. 

Do you wonder how big of a space the Lord actually occupies inside of you? Although I may spend time with the Lord daily, I would not in the slightest be surprised if it was perhaps only a microscopic portion of my heart. How easy it is for me to direct my attentions elsewhere! 

Dear God, thank you for your mercy and grace for all of us who believe. Thank you for cleansing us through faith. Despite the sin that is ever so pervasive in our hearts, thank you for your kindness and your purposed plan of redemption. Dear Lord, you are too good to us and we don't deserve it....there is no part of who we are that deserves you. 

like stars in heaven

“Behold, I give you the authority to trample on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you. Nevertheless do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rather rejoice because your names are written in heaven.” ~ Luke 10:19-20

My conscious battle in spiritual warfare began two years ago. To know about the power I have in Christ, the power He has shared and bestowed me with so that Jesus will always come through whenever I call upon His Name, is life-changing and healing. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I can command away the unclean and ungodly. He saves and protects me from such spiritual intrusions and disturbances.

It can be the most frightening of things but it can also be the most enlightening. To know the power of God lies within me, wherever I may go through valleys of death and the darkest of places, they cannot touch me within His will and protection. I have everything indeed when I have God. To know too that God’s heavenly angels are engaged in battle in the spiritual realms makes everything we believe in so startlingly real. Our faith is not a joke. As a believer and warrior, I must be aware of what this battle is that I have come into, what God has armed me with as His servant.

This is not a simple do-good-feel-good religion; we are dealing with the dark forces of all ages, we are in a battle that began before Man and will go on till the very end. We have our faith and salvation set in Christ, and we have our duty to help fight for and save those who do not yet know Him. To remain in the dark of what goes on in the spiritual realms is to remain ignorant, because we can only go so long without knowing the depths of what we believe in and what Christ has done for us in this battle across ages.

And yet, Jesus tells us not to focus solely on the authority He has bestowed upon us. Yes, it is in every sense absolutely essential as we walk this broken and plagued earth, but it isn’t everything. What is worth more is the blood of Jesus that has covered over our sin, thus opening the gates of heaven to let us in for eternity. Without Him, we will remain estranged in the outer courts forever. We can cast out demons in the power of His Name but if our names aren’t written in the Book of Life, what would we be rejoicing for?

The crux of our faith, the reason Jesus Christ came to die for our sins, was to bridge the deep chasm between heaven and hell, so that we would have a fighting chance to be with Him forever. I thank the Lord for those of us whose names are written in heaven, for our sojourn on earth will not be in vain. And when You are ready to take us across life and death, we know where we will be going. We know we will not be lost forever. Like stars in heaven, we will always shine by Your everlasting light.

the chances we take

I said, "How do you account for the formation of the world?"

"Oh! Force and matter work together, and by chance the world was created."

I said, "It is a singular thing that your tongue isn't on the top of your head if force and matter just threw it together in that manner."

If I should take out my watch and say that force and matter worked together and out came the watch, you would say I was a lunatic of the first order. Wouldn't you? And yet they say that this old world was made by chance! 

~ The Overcoming Life by D. L. Moody ~

I took a biology class on evolution back in my first year of undergraduate school and it really opened my eyes to how closed people can be. Needless to say, being in a secular university, the majority of students and professors are atheists/agnostics. What I don't appreciate is professors allowing their personal beliefs to bleed into their lectures. How absolutely professional. My lecturer had a big bone to pick with Christianity and creationism and made fun of it in class. And in the online forum, it appeared like I was the only one standing up for the faith. With every post or comment I made in favour of God, I was ripped apart brutally, as if I had just made a strong, personal insult against them (and their family), people I did not even know.

What is it about faith and religion that gets people all up in arms? And why are they particularly defensive when God or Jesus or the creation of the world is mentioned? If something held no truth, shouldn't it hold no threat? 

It's quite a beautiful irony when people proudly proclaim their subscription to the evolution theory, without having even read The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin. If they had, they would realize (with a horrid start) that Darwin mentions a CREATOR in his masterpiece. O wait a minute, I thought evolution had NOTHING to do with a creator and was the antidote for those who needed something other than a god to believe in? Make what you will of the following quote:

"There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone circling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved." ~ The Origin of Species, Charles Darwin

I wonder how many would still choose to believe in the origins of evolution if they had read this. The bottom line thus appears to be: Know what you believe and inform yourselves. I've thought deeply about the issue, written about it in school, and tried to continually read about creation and science, and thus, my conclusion is firm. A simple example I'd like to pose is that of a wooden chair. It appears as a rather simple object, but for a chair to become a chair, requires an incredible process. From the felling of a majestic tree in the heart of a forest to the manufacturing and assembling process in a factory, all of this requires machinery, labour, tools, etc. All for a simple, humble chair which serves us well and daily. No one would ever declare that it came out of nowhere, plain as it looks. So what more can we say about the xylem and phloem in a plant, how a bird takes flight in the endless blue heavens, the shining stars in our infinite universe, and the human body that works amazingly and tirelessly to keep body and soul together until we leave this brilliant earth?

We all have choices and with that, chances. Tell me then, what chances are you taking with all that you believe in?

What does the "Church" mean to us??

There are many profound and penetrating descriptions of what it means to be the Lord's "Church." This week my Willingdon Discovery Bible Study Group engaged in an activity where we drew what the church meant to us. The activity was deeply enriching and revealed a lot about our perceptions of the church and our place in it. What resonated throughout all the pictures was the ideas of unity and dependency, with Jesus Christ as Lord over us all.

Artist: Mauri -- Here the church is represented as a chain with unified and connected links. We all support each other, are built upon each other and contribute to an overall structure connected with Jesus Christ as head (do you see that the hook at the end looks like a J? *wink*)

A literal portrayal of the church is first mentioned in Acts 2. Here we witness the utter devotion, unity, commonality, selflessness, dedication, gratitude, and sincerity of heart that stirred in the souls of the early believers. They were deeply entrenched in the faith and had abandoned themselves to God's word and each other. We truly see through this portrayal that the early believers laid down their lives for their brothers and sisters in the faith, for this is the greatest form of love we can show (John 15:13).

Acts 2: 42-47

42They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. 43 Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. 44 All the believers were together and had everything in common. 45 They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. 46 Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, 47 praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.  

The Church is described in the Bible through various images. For one, the Church is understood as a structure or building "built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone." (Ephesians 2:19-22). We learn through dictionary.com that a "cornerstone" is a stone that is the starting point in the construction of a monumental building. It is a stone that joins two walls and is the base of a corner of a building. As the Church we must then fix our eyes on the Lord Jesus Christ as the author and perfecter of our faith (Hebrews 12:2). We must look to him for guidance because without him we would crumble.

Artist: Lily  -- The church here is portrayed as a pyramid or structure, built on the foundation of the apostles, prophets and exemplary women and men in the faith (Hebrews 11). The Bible says that only together with us are these faithful followers of God made perfect (Hebrews 11:40) emphasizing the importance of unity and togetherness in the faith. As Ephesians 4:4 states, there is only ONE body and ONE spirit. We are called to ONE faith together.

Artist: Kristina -- In this portrayal, the church is looked at as a school bus on a journey towards a destination. As the journey progresses, more people hop on. The fuel for this bus, what keeps the bus going, is the inspired Word of God. Jesus Christ is in the driver's seat leading us towards that destination.

The Church is also characterized in the Bible, as the Bride of Christ. We are called to submit to Christ (Ephesians 5:22). In Ephesians 5, language is used to represent a self-sacrificing, loving relationship between a husband and wife. This relationship illustrates our position as bride and Christ as the husband, who sacrificially gave himself up for us and unites with us as one body. We must remember that we can only bear fruit if we remain in Christ Jesus (John 15:4).

Artist: Wayne -- Here the church is distinguished as a living body, each having its own separate function and duty. 1 Corinthians 12:12 communicates that the church body has many parts but importantly they all comprise one body. The Bible says that there should therefore be no division in the body and that all its parts should have equal care and concern for each other - "If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honoured, every part rejoices with it" (1 Corinthians 12:25-26)

(Above) Artist: Ken. (Left) Artist: Imogen

In these two pictures the church is depicted as a vast group of people from all different backgrounds (race, ability levels, nationalities, age, sex, etc). In the same way that Jesus Christ united Jew and Gentile, the faith unites people from all corners of the world. We are unified under one God, with Christ as our foremost and center. As we look upwards to Christ for guidance and sanctification, we are able to show love to our brothers and sisters in the faith. In this sense, we are considered Christ's flock with him as shepherd. John 10:14-16 --

"I am the good shepherd, and I know My own and My own know Me, 15 even as the Father knows Me and I know the Father ; and I lay down My life for the sheep. 16 "I have other sheep,which are not of this fold ; I must bring them also, and they will hear My voice ; and they will become one flock with one shepherd."

There are many ways to describe our position as the Church of Christ but it's important that we take our role seriously. May the Lord help us to achieve that vision of unity, oneness, and complete devotion to Christ which is profound to our role.

First Love

"God will look to every soul like its first love because He is its first love. Your place in heaven will seem to be made for you and you alone, because you were made for it." ~ C. S. Lewis in The Problem of Pain.

Who is your first love? When I first read these words, I was overwhelmed. Why of course! Our soul can find no rest or peace in a world without God. Because He was the One imprinted on us from the beginning, He is the One who breathed us into being. There is no one else.

To have a God prepare our souls for life on earth, and then life with Him in eternity... is mind-blowing and beyond human conception. It reminds me of the beautiful verse in 1 Corinthians 2:9:

Eye has not seen, nor ear heard,
Nor have entered into the heart of man
The things which God has prepared for those who love Him.

I remember back in March when I was incredibly nervous and anxious about a potentially life-changing event. I settled down to do my afternoon bible reading and this was the verse presented before me. I could have cried as I was so touched, relieved, and I knew that whatever came to pass, would be beautiful. Even though it didn't go as I had planned or wished, I know it's all for good. And I know that while God is fashioning a wondrous place for my soul in heaven, He too is creating something beautiful for me while I walk His earth.

God is our first love, whether we recognize it or not. And we are His.

"They have made God's law their own, so they will never slip from his path."
Psalms 37:31 

Do we make God's law our own? Does it become the way we think, live, and breathe? Or just something we turn to in moments of trial and need?