THE BEAUTY OF AGING

To love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, means we align our heart with His will, wanting nothing more than to be with Him. Aging is a part of God’s judgment: “It is appointed (by God) for men to die once.” Aging is the dying process... death its culmination... time its yardstick: From the moment of birth we are aging toward death. Aging is not our enemy but rather God’s will... a process to be embraced. Our culture tries to reverse the aging process, tries to defy God’s will. But the sooner we age and die... or fly, the sooner we are with the great lover of our soul... forever.

Every wrinkle has a beauty all its own, mile markers on our journey home, the tracks of time and a reminder that in the next life... our real life, there will be no time.  We recognize the aged saints among us because we can see the marks of long life on their face. We should honor and esteem them for the spiritual wisdom each wrinkle represents, the overcoming testimonies filling each sanctified heart. And besides, the decay of all the things of this pseudo-life is necessary, lest we get caught up in loving what the world loves, loving the very things our Lord warned and commanded us to avoid... Lest we stumble at the stumbling stone of life... Pride of Life in this world -- Lest we fail to “consider the work of God; for who can make straight what He has made crooked”?

The God who collects our tears in bottles and counts the hairs on our heads also knows and cherishes every wrinkle on our face. He has a plan for our wrinkles... it is called restoration. God commanded the children of Israel to take stones from the Jordan River as a reminder attesting to God’s miraculous intervention in bring about His promises to them. The wrinkles on the faces of saints are our stones taken from the River of Life to remind us of God’s faithfulness and our soon coming Blessed Hope of forever with our Daddy.

THE “STONES” OF GOD’S FAITHFULNESS

THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE GODHEAD

Jesus had an indwelling Lord: Jesus drew His whole life and “out-living” from His indwelling Father, as these paraphrased snippets of The Gospel of John capture so well: My Father abides in Me and I in Him. I perceive things that are from above. I hear my Father speak. I saw heaven’s realm open. My Father is with Me, I am never alone. My Father constantly bears witness to Me. My Father sent Me here, from out of the other realm. My Father is in Me and He is doing the work. I know, through intimate relationship, my Father. I am one with my Father. I see God. I live by my Father; I have life in Me because of Him. Without my Father, I can do nothing. I speak what I hear my Father speak, and do what I see my Father do. That which is of my Father radiates out to become my experience. I and my Father are so much one that when you meet Me, you meet my Father.

If we take the things Jesus spoke concerning His relationship with the Father and put them all together, then we begin to see our Lord revealing to us the fellowship going on in the Godhead - the fellowship Jesus experienced bodily and visibly from inside Himself every day, and modeled for us.  As these paraphrased snippets of scriptures were true of Jesus they should be true of all believers. The “I” and “my” and “me” also refer to the saints...“us”, for Jesus also said: “I am in My Father, and you (us) in Me, and I in you ... If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We (Jesus and the Father) will come to him and make Our home with him ... We (Jesus, the Father and us) are one: I in them (us), and You (the Father) in Me (Jesus); that they (us) may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me.” Capitalized pronouns always refer to the Godhead. We have an indwelling Lord... an indwelling Godhead... Father, Son and Holy Spirit, for the Kingdom of God during this age is within, as is God’s temple. Our life on planet earth should be an out-living of what we see and hear the Father doing from within. The only prerequisites to experiencing this fellowship of the Godhead are Love and Obedience. Father, let all who seek this walk in the Spirit examine themselves with a willingness to lay aside every hindrance to the full experience of this truth as a 24/7 way of life. In Jesus Name, Amen

WALKING IN THE SPIRIT

THOUGHTS ON CHURCH FAMILY

Don't know that I've experienced "church family" except in a small house church years ago. It gets pretty hard to be an organic body of believers... a family, when the group size gets much over 30 or so, but small churches don’t have much in the way of creature comforts or services... so... and thus begins the size dichotomy. The church leadership... pastors, etc., may experience church as a family because everyone wants to be in their inner circle and they get ample opportunity to share, care, and be supported. For ministers, church probably is like a big extended family, but for the rest of us pew warmers, church family is a myth without reality. A quick read of Acts chapter two through four sheds light on the relational dynamic of an organic body of believers. Of course “small groups” was supposed to fix this problem... and didn’t. It is sad that so many are satisfied with so little, it's like contentedly eating crumbs off the floor, never realizing there is a banquet fit for a king on the table above.

The real fix is small churches that can really be an organic body of believers... an extended family, very much like the first century churches: Small groups of believers, meeting in homes, led by home grown Holy Spirit picked Elders (note the plural), sharing life, sharing God, sharing their “stuff”, demonstrating their faith through love for their brethren, worshiping God in the unity of the Spirit. 1Cor. 14:26-33 paints a picture of this “participative” church assembly: “When you gather for worship, each one of you be prepared with something that will be useful for all: Sing a hymn, teach a lesson, tell a story, lead a prayer, provide an insight ... Take your turn, no one person taking over. Then each speaker gets a chance to say something special from God, and you all learn from each other ... When we worship the right way, God doesn’t stir us up into confusion; He brings us into harmony. This goes for all the churches—no exceptions.” Sounds good, but taking on a real extended family is costly, both literally and emotionally, sharing our stuff... loving others as we love ourselves... rejoicing with those who rejoice and mourning with those who mourn, praying effectual fervent prayers for one another... loving in deed and not in word? Love, Sacrifice, Passion and Obedience, the things that bring a twinkle to our Father’s eyes, were the primary ingredients of the first century church. What they lacked in luxurious facilities, creature comforts, and choreographed assemblies was dung... as Paul would say, when compared with the experience of living life as God intended, as a real family of brothers and sisters in Christ...

WE CAN’T LOVE THE BACK OF SOMEONE’S HEAD