REFLECTIONS

Engulfed within the flames of love

Consuming all I am

What stands beyond the fire’s heat

Reflections of I Am

Let me understand Your beauty

The splendor of Your beauty

Let the revelation of You

Set me apart

Let me understand Your beauty

I long to see Your beauty

Let the revelation of You

Reveal my heart

Let me understand Your beauty

I need to behold Your beauty

Let the revelation of You

Tear me apart

Let me understand Your beauty

Consuming, passionate, beauty

Let the revelation of You

Ignite my heart

Let me understand Your beauty

Radiant, glorious, beauty

Let the revelation of You

Overflow my heart

If truth be known and truth be told

This is all that I am

Love scorched earth revealing Your worth

Reflections of I Am

ETERNITY

How long is forever

Is it possible to know

Can it be exactly measured

This time plus time untold

Is it like our wondrous universe

Continuing to expand

Defying human logic

Defying the mind’s command

As light released into the night

Ceaselessly wanders space

My eternal life will surely be

A ceaseless timeless place

How can I grasp this treasure

This wondrous gift of grace

How can my heart understand

What my mind cannot translate

If all the water of the seas

Is eternity to be

Then one small drop is as my life

And relatively, now I see

And so our dear ones gone before

Shall meet us when we arrive

Together to share God’s glory

In the sea of eternal life

LET THE WORD OF CHRIST DWELL IN YOU RICHLY... COL. 3:16

Let the entire truth of the new covenant writings find its home in your heart in abundance and have unrestricted liberty in guiding your life. “Studying the Bible is like gathering apples.  First you shake the tree, then you shake each limb, and then you shake each branch and twig.  Then you look under every leaf” (Martin Luther).  The Bible is shallow enough to wade in and deep enough to drown an elephant.  It is truly a paradox that a well worn passage, often read, memorized and quoted can suddenly, under the “apokalupsis”-- the unveiling of the Holy Spirit, reveal a hidden treasure that delights and nourishes our spirit.  Drink deeply of the living water of life, God’s Word, for shallow droughts intoxicate the brain but drinking deeply sobers one again.                

RELIGION

What dire offense from religious causes spring

What mighty contests arise from trivial things

What tearing doubt transpires from misunderstanding

What faith is lost in the heat of our own meandering

(Partly Pope)

I REACH FOR YOU

If you keep your passion hot

God will keep His presence close

God loves lovers

***

I reach for You

When things are good

Or when things turn bad

Whenever I am happy

Whenever I am sad

When I think I’m going under

 My heart knows this is true

I reach for You my Savior

I simply reach for You

PASS THE SALT PLEASE

Let me tell you why you are here.  You’re here to be salt-seasoning that brings out the GOD-FLAVORS of this earth.  If you lose your SALTINESS, how will people taste GODLINESS?  You will have lost your usefulness and will end up in the garbage, wasted. Here’s another way to put it: you’re here to be light, glowing brightly with the light of God’s love in your life, and bringing out the GOD-COLORS in the world.  If you hide your light, like money buried in the ground, how will people see God’s beauty manifested in His creation?  We are going public with this, as public as a city on a hill, so SHINE, SHINE BRIGHTLY!  Keep open house; be generous with your life by sharing the love of Jesus with others, you will prompt people to open up to God, our generous and loving Father in heaven. Jesus commanded us to go into the world – NO COCOONING -- love people, including our enemies -- NO COMBATIVENESS -- and to transform the world by making disciple’s -- NO CONFORMING. The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. We are the answer to Jesus’ prayer for workers in today’s harvest.  Our faithfulness in obeying the great commission, our compassion, our witness through a credible life and knowledge of the word of God, our determined purpose to bear fruit (plant spiritual seeds and water) and our total reliance on God to give the increase, will make us quite SALTY to the taste, just the way God loves us. (Ref: Matt. 5:13-16; 9:37; 25:18, The Message)

REGENERATION

My disposition of sin is my claim to my right to myself.  I am my own god.  I am not holy nor likely to be. I am doomed to failure because “self” rules.  But Jesus is the Regenerator, the one who can put into me His own heredity of holiness.  Regeneration means that Jesus can put into any person the holy disposition that is in Himself, and all the biblical standards He gives are based on “that” disposition: His teachings are for the life He puts into us.  The moral transaction on my part is to recognize my need and yield my will to His will, allowing the Holy Spirit to form Christ in me. Without holiness, without Christ formed in us, no one shall see God.  This is the crucified life.

ONELINERS TO LIVE BY

 * The cross is the signature of God, endorsing His new and final covenant with mankind.  * God tugs us toward His kingdom with cords of adversity while captivating us with His chains of love. * Truth is an arrow and the gate is narrow that it passes through.  (Bob Dylan) * When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die. (Bonhoeffer) * God cannot be to us the life of God without being the death of self. The fretful, greedy, fussy, self-centered, lustful, hateful “flesh-life” must die for the abundant life to live. * No one grows in the Lord nor in their capacity to serve the Lord unless they are pressed beyond measure. * All difficulties are within God’s purposes. * It is never the trial that makes us stronger. It is what we choose to do with it that strengthens us, so choose wisely. * We must drink deep of the word of God, for shallow draughts intoxicate the brain and drinking deep sobers one again. * Sometimes truth causes love to hurt. * We are so easily satisfied with lovers less wild. * Temptation’s response: In Christ I died, in His name I refuse. * Prayer is understanding what God wants to do, then asking Him to do it. * We need to hold all things of this life loosely, except Jesus, hold tight to Him. * God is our Sabbath – the day of rest is but a picture of Him.  * God builds by design – we are to be obedient to the blueprint. * My job is the relentless pursuit of who God has designed me to be. Anything else I do is superfluous.

You hold my breath in Your hands

And own all my ways

So I will glorify You

My soul gives You praise

HE LOVES ME

What kind of God

 Just takes us as we are

Paying the ultimate price

While ignoring what we are

And our innate inability

 To ever be anything better

***

Just as I am without one plea

But that Your blood was shed for me

In Your great love I come to see

How much You simply wanted me

***

In the great nursery rhyme of eternity

The end is fixed

For all the flower’s petals say

He loves me!

GOD IS LOVE

He loves the intent of my heart

When I turn my gaze to Him

He watches every halting move

That brings me close to Him

He teaches me in patience

The things that I must know

He’s making me a perfect part

Of the Bride He must behold

*     *     *

God is scandalously forgiving

And so must we be

His mercy burns as it destroys shame

He is whole heartedly passionate about us

We consume His thoughts

His love is so compelling it heals us

It strips away all our pretense and restores us

So we can love ourselves, love others and love Him

Therein, in love, we find true happiness

As Christ’s imputed nature emerges

We become what we behold

And we love what we become

We become Him

We are a delicious delight to our Father

A delicious delight!

*     *     *

WE ARE SECURE IN OUR KNOWLEDGE OF WHO HE IS

HE IS RIGIDLY INFLEXIBLE

UNMOVEABLE

CONSTANTLY CONSTANT

LOVE

GOD IS LOVE! 

PILGRIMS

Much of the church today simply doesn’t get Matthew 25:31 – 46 or the many other passages where God outlines His divine agenda for the Spirit led life: Love, Obedience,  Passion  and Sacrifice, are the things that put a twinkle in our loving Daddy’s eyes and bear fruit for His Kingdom.  Now it is clear from John 15 and other passages that without Kingdom fruit one is most likely not on the narrow gated, difficult, sparsely traveled road to eternal life, but on a much broader venue, a teaming interstate filled with happy smiling materially laden people enjoying their best life now.  Ops! I thought our “Blessed Hope” is eternity with our loving Savior... our best life later. The writer of Hebrews had it right referring to the saints as pilgrims: Pilgrims keep their treasures at “home” along with their hearts, and remember as the old hymn so aptly puts it, “This world is not my home, I’m just passing through.” 

SMALL THINGS

Let me live each day

As if the last

With nothing left undone

With no songs to be sung

No kindness in word or deed

Not given in my haste

No expression of love

To those I love

Lost in life’s quick pace

It is after all

These small things

The fragrance of a life well done

God’s color in a stark cold world

The music of a life well sung

I DO

The greatest commandment is to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength.  The Pharisees seen this as affective theology, mushy talk, not rational, but all the time Jesus was extending an invitation to a spiritual marriage. This supernatural union is the great mystery revealed in Ephesians 5:22-33 – bone of His bone and flesh of His flesh. Our Beloved gave Himself for us. He nourishes and cherishes us, and He wants to cloth us with the glorious splendor of His faultless, blameless and unblemished, holiness. He wants to cloth us with Himself. Our oneness with Him allows God to see us in Christ’s righteousness, the only way a holy God can be approached by a human thingy.  It is most tragic to know everything about God, to be able to pontificate endlessly about Him, but still not know Him -- to know all about the rules of spiritual marriage but never walk down the aisle, never say “I do”, and never submit to His lordship with a love-slave’s heart.  

PEOPLE

Some are humble, some are bold

Some are young, some are old

Some are healthy, some half-dead

Never ever look ahead

Some have plenty, others none

Some are bright, some are dumb

Some just laugh, and others cry

Live and never reason why

Some are heartless, some are kind

Some just loaf, others grind

Some are bored, and some have fun

Ignoring “zero” minus one

Has Christian love grown so cold

Like hidden lamps and salt that’s old

Is Christian faith such a lie

That we who know would let them die

WE ARE

There are no experts, whiz-kids or real know it alls in the fellowship of Christ, in God’s extended family. We are all just adopted nubies, beginners, Followers By Necessity because we have accepted the burning call of His heart, “Follow Me”, and have embarked upon the divine mystery of pursuing our pursuer into the unknown – into Him. We don’t know where we are going or why our life is as it is. We only know Him whom we have believed in, believed into, that He is able to keep us from stumbling and present us faultless – blameless and unblemished – before the God of All. “The Way”, our eternal pathway before God, is pockmarked with adversity, divine opportunities to grow in grace maturing in Spirit – testimonies which when marinated in the Lamb’s blood produce life as we overcome. We are the brotherhood of the meek, we are the army of the humble, we are the church of the expendable, as we follow our Savior outside the camp where our commitment is demonstrated by our sacrifice:

WE ARE DEAD MEN WALKING

WE ARE THE JOY OF GOD IN CHRIST

WE ARE THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF GOD

WE ARE IN THE BELOVED – IN CHRIST

NOTHING ELSE MATTERS

If colors measured grace applied

I would a rainbow be

Splendidly clothed in reds, yellows, blues and greens

Reflecting my Father's great love for me

*  *  *  So  *  *  *

It matters not what this day brings

Rivers of joy, death's painful sting

In You I find my peace, my rest

I'll love You with or without breath