(Detour) WHY CHURCH - 3

I am quite sick and am currently medicated, so I hope these thoughts make sense. We are now to our third article on Why Church? We have discussed that gathering with other believers is Commanded, and that it is Hard to remain faithful without regularly being with and living alongside other Christians.

Thirdly, regularly being with the church is important because it helps you Realize your Identity.

A group of animals got together to make a school. There was a rabbit, a duck, a squirrel and a bird. They were going to create a curriculum that brought up the perfect animals, so they would all take all of the classes. The rabbit insisted that running be in the school’s curriculum. The duck insisted on swimming. The squirrel insisted on tree climbing. The bird insisted that flying be included. So they began their school.

The Duck was doing amazing at swimming, but he was at the bottom of the class at running. So the duck stayed late every day to practice running until eventually he had severely damaged his webbed feet until he was a sub-par swimmer. The Rabbit was straight killing it when it came to running, he had no problem at all with that class; however, when it came to tree climbing, he wasn’t so proficient. He would try and try to climb the tree, but he would keep falling back and hitting himself on the head, until he had had so many concussions that he couldn't even run well anymore. The squirrel was doing GREAT at tree climbing, but he kept jumping out of the tree, hoping to fly, only to fall to his injury to the ground; eventually, he could barely climb anymore. The bird had an easy A+ in flying, but whenever he tried to climb the trees, he kept damaging his wings until he couldn't fly anymore.

There is a misconception in the world that the church and Christianity demand that you be one specific kind of person, that in order to be part of the church you must give up your identity and who you are. There is the idea that the church takes rabbits and tries to make them climb trees, or takes squirrels and tries to make them fly, but this was never the intention of Christ.

 (I do think that many churches today are making this mistake, trying to force all of God’s children into one mold; however, that has never been the biblical model of the church.)

On the contrary, the church is here to help you Realize your identity, not lose it.

For the body does not consist of one member but of many. ¹⁵ If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. ¹⁶ And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. ¹⁷ If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell?¹⁸ But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. ¹⁹ If all were a single member, where would the body be? ²⁰ As it is, there are many parts,^[e] yet one body.

²¹ The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.”

1 Corinthians 12:14-22

The Bible teaches throughout its pages that we are made differently and encouraged by God and each other to be who God has made us to be. What can be more freeing than that! Here is the deal: God has made some of us hands, some of us mouths, some feet, and those body parts are precisely what God intends for us to be.

GOD WANTS YOU TO BE WHAT HE HAS MADE YOU TO BE! HE WANTS YOU TO DO WHAT HE HAS GIFTED YOU TO DO! HALLELUJAH! 

If a hand is lying on the ground, what good is that hand? It is useless, constantly wondering what it is good for, what it was made for, why it exists. Its life makes no sense. But if that hand is picked up and placed onto a body, things start to make sense. The hand starts to realize what it was made for, how gifted it really is, the reason for its very existence.

We are the church, we are the body, come and find your place in it. We do not want to take away your identity and your freedom, we want to help you discover who you really are, and who you were made to be.

Grace and Peace

(Detour) WHY CHURCH - 2

We have taken a week long detour from our discussion on Prayer to discuss why "church" is important for Christians. We discussed the C yesterday as "Commanded." Please read that article before this one if you have not done so already.

H.

Hard (if not impossible) to Remain Faithful Without It

I was watching discovery channel and saw this wildebeest that had just birthed a new son just minutes earlier. She and her new son were standing apart from the rest of the pack. The mother was urgently nudging the new calf, trying to get it to stand and move on with her. She nudged and moo’d, but the calf could not stand. The camera then moves to the left as we see why the mother is acting so nervously. A hyena is stalking the wildebeest and moving ever closer. The mother takes a few strong steps towards the hyena and scares it away; however, the camera then shows many more hyenas moving toward the pair. The mother fights as hard as she can, but eventually a few of the hyenas distract the mother as the rest grab the new calf and drag him away. All the while, a few hundred yards away stood thousands of wildebeest that could have easily handled the small pack of hyenas.

Why did the hyenas go after these two? It is obvious right? They were away from the pack, and therefore easy pickings. They wouldn’t dare attempt to attack a wildebeest in the midst of the group of thousands led by the strongest bulls, especially when these two were out on their own, asking for it.

Satan, like the hyenas, is on the prowl, and he also has lots of help. The Bible even describes him as a roaring lion, going about, seeking whom he may devour. 

Newsflash: Satan is much much stronger than you, much smarter than you, much more experienced than you are. He has existed since the beginning of the earth and has been devouring men and women since the Garden of Eden. He is good at what he does. You cannot defeat Him alone, you are guaranteed defeat. You cannot survive spiritually without other Christians there supporting you, guiding you, protecting you. When you become a Christian, you are adopted into the family of God, adopted into a pack of millions of wildebeests that will do whatever it takes to keep you with them. This is one of the main reasons God created the church.

Our habit in today’s world is to live our lives basically alone, to ourselves, to keep our distance. That’s not God’s way though. When you separate yourself from the pack, you are easy pickings for the devil and his demons; you are asking for it.

When we separate ourselves from the pack, we miss out.

We miss out on the Guidance, Protection and Support promised by the pack as a whole and specifically by the strong bulls that are there for our protection and guidance.

1 Peter 5:1-7

So I exhort the elders among you, as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as a partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed:  shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you; not for shameful gain, but eagerly; not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock. And when the chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory.  Likewise, you who are younger, be subject to the elders. Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”

Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you. Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.

Hebrews 13:17

Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you.

God set up the church, the pack, for your benefit, why would we not take advantage of it?

Grace and Peace

(Detour) WHY CHURCH - 1

I am going to take about a week long detour from the series of articles on prayer to write about our assembling together as a church.

It is no longer a possibility or a prediction, we are in the midst of many people leaving the local bodies that assemble on Sundays and citing a lack of necessity when asked for a reason. Why should I go to church? The church has gotten it wrong in so many areas. The church doesn’t look like Christ. If I love Jesus, isn’t that enough? Why do I have to go sing and listen to a sermon every week to be a Christian? I don’t like getting up on Sundays to go sit with a bunch of old people. I can’t find a church around here that I like. Why church?

Now, most of you know that the biblical definition of church means the group of people that are Christians. One did not go to church, one was the church. Therefore there is a very fundamental problem with the statement “I don’t need the church to be a Christian.” This is obviously absolutely false. Saying you don’t need the church to be a Christian is like saying you don’t need brothers and sisters to be a sibling. It is the very existence of those brothers and sisters that makes you a sibling at all. Christ Jesus did not live and die for the salvation of you alone, but for the church, his bride, his body.

There is nothing wrong with what the word church has come to mean, I say every week that I am going to church, as long as you know that the church is really the entire body of Christ around the world.

You take part in the assembly of believers around the world the moment you believe, and you take your place in the body of believers around the world as you take your place in your assembly near you. You take part in the worldwide body by taking part in the local body around you. So understand that as we discuss the church, we are discussing BOTH the assembly where you are where you do or do not attend regularly, and the body of believers around the world.

In order to answer this question we will be using the name of the boss, the master, the leader, the CFO, the CEO, the founder, and the King of this particular Kingdom: C.H.R.I.S.T.

C.

It is Commanded.

Sherlock Holmes and Watson were out camping one night, relieving some stress from all of their latest endeavors. They had a little too much to drink and fell asleep. In the middle of the night, Sherlock awoke and turned to Watson,

SHERLOCK:

“Watson, look up, what do you see?”

Watson looked up into the indescribable night sky that can only be seen in such glory when far away from man made light.

WATSON:

“I see more stars than I could ever count and a boastful full moon.”

SHERLOCK:

“And what does that tell you Watson.”

WATSON:

“Well, astronomically it tells me that there are millions of stars out there, astrologically it tells me that Saturn is in Leo, ontologically it tells me that there are things of which their coming to be is unknown and mysterious, theologically it tells me that God or the Divine is much larger than we are and we in comparison look quite insignificant, meteorologically it tells me that we will have a beautiful day tomorrow, why Sherlock, what does it tell you?”

SHERLOCK:

“Watson you fool, someone has stolen our tent.”

Sometimes the best answer is the simple one. Christ knew that we needed to be meeting together, and so did the writer of Hebrews.

“Do not neglect meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing.” Hebrews 10:25 (Every preacher’s favorite verse right?)

Apparently they were having similar struggles even then. Some saw meeting regularly with other believers as unimportant, not worth their time, not necessary to the faith. The writer of Hebrews exclaims that it is indeed important to take time out of our busy schedules to meet together.

Now, obviously this does not say, “Do not neglect going to church on Sundays,” but that is an easily and correctly made application. There is rarely, if ever, a time for you to meet with so many other Christians together, for the primary purpose of edification of one another and glorification of our shared Father and Lord, like there is at the gatherings of the organizational church.

We are, as faithful Christians, supposed to meet together. And just like all of the other commands that are given to us throughout scripture, Christ gives this one also to us for our good. He knows how desperately we need constant and consistent Christian community and how desperately we need to have our eyes forced back upon the Cross and the Gospel and how desperately we need to receive and give encouragement to other believers.

We call these other Christians our brothers and sisters, let us prioritize meeting with our family from this day forward.

There are, in my estimation, even better and more convincing reasons to be involved in the “corporate church” coming in the next articles this week.

(In a Q & A after one of Keller's Sermons)

Questioner:

“Can I be a Christian and not go to church?”

Tim Keller:

“Not a faithful one.”

Grace and Peace

6- "Alanus (my son), I'm Not Asking, I'm Telling"

Prayer has always been important to God and has always been a large part of faithful life under Him.

In Genesis we see every one of the patriarchs praying powerfully and intimately. In Exodus, prayer was how Moses secured the liberation of Israel from Egypt. In Deuteronomy we hear Moses cry out,

For what great nation is there that has a god so near to it as the Lord our God is to us, whenever we call upon him? (4:7)

In Job 42, we hear God telling the friends of Job to trust that God will hear Job’s prayer on their behalf. We see how powerfully prayer impacts the course of the Old Testament and see it surging on into the new, of course climaxing with Christ and His own emphasis on prayer and His commitment and desire to pray regularly.

“Jesus Christ taught his disciples to pray, healed people with prayers, denounced the corruption of the temple worship which he called a house of prayer, and insisted that some demons could be cast out only through prayer. He prayed often and regularly with fervent cries and tears, and sometimes all night. The Holy Spirit came upon him and anointed him as he was praying, and he was transfigured with the divine glory as he prayed. When he faced his greatest crisis, he did so with prayer. We hear him praying for his disciples and the church on the night before he died and then petitioning God in agony in the Garden of Gethsemane. Finally, he died praying.” - Keller

What did the disciples do after Christ’s death? Acts 1:14 says

All these with one accord were devoting themselves to prayer, together with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and his brothers.

Acts 2:42 says

They devoted themselves to the apostles doctrine and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.

They DEVOTED themselves to praying. They set it as their duty to pray.

Martin Luther describes prayer as "a habit that occurs through regular discipline."

“Guard yourselves against those false, deluding ideas which tell you, “Wait a little while. I will pray in an hour; first I must attend to this or that.”

Luther continues and is not scared of coming off as blunt or rigid.

“We are as strictly and solemnly commanded to pray as in the others… not to kill, not to steal, etc. We must pray whether we feel like it or not.”

Wow, ouch! This is quite convicting to me. We are not asked to pray or even advised to, we are commanded to.

“All Christians are expected to have a regular, faithful, devoted, fervent prayer life. Prayer is one of the main signs that the Spirit has come into the heart through faith in Christ . . . Prayer is awe, intimacy, struggle – yet the way to reality. There is nothing more important, or harder, or richer, or more life-altering. There is absolutely nothing so great as prayer.” - Keller

Theologian John Owen is speaking of ministers here, so this hits my heart directly, but this applies truly to all Christians:

“A minister may fill his pews, his communion roll, the mouths of the public, but what that minister is on his knees in secret before God Almighty, that he is and no more.” John Owen.

You Christian may be successful in your work, may have a good life and family at home, may attend church regularly, may teach a Sunday school class, may bring up the name of Jesus to your friends, but what you are on your knees in secret before God Almighty, that is what you are and no more.

Grace and Peace

5- Duty to Delight

I can think of nothing great that is easy, and prayer is one of the greatest things, so it must be one of the toughest. It is ok. Admit that prayer is very hard, you are not alone.

“When your prayer life finally begins to flourish, the effects can be remarkable. You may be filled with self-pity, and be justifying resentment and anger. Then you sit down to pray and the reorientation that comes before God’s face reveals the pettiness of your feelings in an instant. All your self-justifying excuses fall to the ground in pieces. Or you may be filled with anxiety, and during prayer you come to wonder what you were so worried about. You laugh at yourself and thank God for who he is and what he’s done. It can be that dramatix. It is the bracing clarity of a new perspective. Eventually, this can be the normal experience, but that is never how the prayer life starts. In the beginning the feeling of poverty and absence usually dominates, but the best guides for this phase urge us not to turn back but rather to endure and pray in a disciplined way, until, as Packer and Nystrom say, we get through duty to delight.”

Whether it is here with Keller, or with Packer, Nystrom, Luther, Calvin, or Augustine, all agree that prayer is not easy for almost anyone in the beginning. It is a chore. They all also agree that if one can commit his or herself to getting through Duty, they will always, eventually, arrive at Delight. At Delight, prayer becomes just that; it gets to the point that you long for your time of prayer, when you need prayer to feel right for the day more than you even need your morning coffee. You will enjoy it. You will find it delightful and easy. You will find it consistently day and life altering. BUT . . . IT NEVER BEGINS LIKE THAT.

You must decide if getting to Delight and obeying God is worth your forging on through the mire that often is Duty. No one can make you pray. You must sit down with a chisel and stone and commit yourself to praying, knowing that it will be tough.

The Duty stage can last indefinitely, but it will not last forever. And it is really not just steps from Duty to Delight as we all will return back to stages of dryness even after reaching Delight; but Delight always returns.

When I first talked about this to my youth and college students, one raised his hand and asked, “I mean, is it ok for me to set an alarm on my phone to remind me?” ABSOLUTELY! We have dropped ourselves into this well of misconception that if your prayers are on a schedule or if they are orderly or if you’re doing anything short of speaking with God in a fiery bush then it is not really the way it is supposed to work. This is a great mistake.

We all know the story of Daniel, that he was thrown into a den of lions precisely because he insisted on praying the 3 set times a day as he had always done. MAY WE BE SO CONSISTENT AND FAITHFUL!

Commit to praying. Set an alarm on your phone. Sit down and rest in God, talk to God. Confess your sins. Let your mind go to the areas of your life that you don’t want God to bring up. Read scripture, respond in prayer.

You will worry that you aren’t doing it right or good enough; you aren’t, no one is. Do it anyway.

Deuteronomy 4:7

What other nation is so great as to have their gods near them the way the LORD our God is near us whenever we pray to him?

4- The Primary Purpose of Prayer

Colossians 1:9-12

 “From the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.”

Paul opens up almost all of his letters by telling the recipients that he has been praying for them, and this is what his prayers look like.

Isn’t it interesting that Paul doesn’t pray for a change in their circumstances? The churches he is writing to are living in a time of immense suffering, oppression, disease, and were facing and would face some of the worst persecution that Christians have faced to this day; yet, we don’t see Paul praying for their profiting, their health, or even their safety. What do we see him praying for?  He prays repeatedly that they may “know” God more.

Now this doesn’t at all mean that we should not pray for profit, health, safety, and all the other things that we think about; Jesus himself tells us to pray “Deliver us from evil” and Paul prays in 1 Timothy 2 for peace, good government and the needs of the world.  It does means that, in Paul’s eyes, those things are not the primary purpose of prayer.

What does it mean to “know” God? This word and idea is prevalent throughout scripture.

We learn with this word used in Matthew 11:27 that it is more than just having knowledge about something or someone

All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.

If “know” just meant having information about, then many people DID know the Son, but it means much more than that.

In Genesis 4:17, this word is used to mean the most intimate kind of relationship between Cain and his wife.

Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch.

In Hosea 13:5, we see it being used to refer to how God cared for the Israelites in the wilderness.

It was I who knew you in the wilderness, in the land of drought

In Amos 3:2, we see it used to show how God had chosen the Israelites as his special people.

You only have I known of all the families of the earth

In John 10:14-15 & 27, we hear Christ being very clear and emphatic with this word and his people.

 I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep.

My sheep hear my voice, I know them and they follow me.

Paul makes it clear how he values this in Phillipians 3:8

Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ

We see this word used in the negative light in 2 Thessalonians 1:8 and Matthew 7:23

(He will come back) in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus.

And then I will declare to them, “Depart from me, I never knew you.”

Keller says to “know God” is “to have the eyes of the heart enlightened.”

Ephesians 1:16-18

 I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him,  having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints

“Biblically, the heart is the control center of the entire self….. To have the eyes of the heart enlightened with a particular truth means to have it penetrate and grip us so deeply that it changes the whole person. In other words, we may know that God is holy, but when our hearts’ eyes are enlightened to that truth, then we not only understand it cognitively, but emotionally we find God’s holiness wondrous and beautiful, and we naturally avoid attitudes and behavior that would displease or dishonor Him.” -- Keller

Paul prays in Ephesians 3:18 that we may have the “power to grasp” God and all He has done for us. Paul does not see prayer as merely a way to get things from God but as a way to get more of God himself. Prayer is a striving to (Isaiah 64:7) “take hold of God.”

We are to pray not primarily so that things in our lives will change, but so that we may know God more, which in turn will change everything in our lives.

Grace and Peace

3- You Can Run and Hide, But I Am Begging You Not To

We look at Adam and Eve, attempting to hide from God, and we laugh. "How could they possibly think that God does not see them, exactly where they are?" 

Yet we do the same thing every day.

Christianity says that human beings are not inherently good, but inherently selfish and sinful. To illustrate this, think about this:

What if each morning as you woke up, a sign was placed over your head that throughout the day would show every thought that ran through your mind. Every judgmental thought upon meeting someone new, every stereotypical generalization, every lustful image and scenario, every time that you are being even slightly deceitful, every time that you are desiring to portray one image and one emotion when your thoughts contradict the words you are saying.

Do you find that desirable?  Would that do good things for your reputation and relationships?

The truth is that we very often, if not constantly, want to portray one thing with our words and expressions while our thoughts would portray something quite different. I don’t want others to see that I am weak, I don’t want others to see my immense selfishness, my pride, I don’t want them to know how many flaws make up the very foundation of who I am; so, often, I fake it. I hide who I really am behind the words and expressions that I am using to put forth the identity that I desire for the world to see me as.

Our words are who we want others to see us as, our thoughts are who we actually are.

The closer we get to people, the more willing we are to let more of our true selves show, and the more of our true selves that we discover.

When we meet new people, the conversations are very shallow, a little awkward, and not impactful to our lives at all. The closer someone is, the more impactful conversations with them have the ability to be.

I have had many conversations with my best friends, and even more with my wife, that have had a large impact on who I really am, and often leave me saying things like, “I didn’t even know that about myself.” I expose myself and often discover things about me in talking with them that I didn’t know.

Before Ariel and I got married, I expected marriage to be primarily me discovering things about her, seeing more of her flaws, and loving her anyway; however, what describes my experience thus far more accurately would be to say that I have been primarily discovering more things about myself, seeing more of my own flaws, and living in awe of the fact that she still loves me anyway.

I reveal more of myself to her, and I end up loving her so much more and realizing how special she is.

However, I still hide thoughts even from her.

Possibly my favorite quote from Keller’s book on Prayer is this:

“God is the only person from whom you can hide nothing. Before Him, you will unavoidably come to see yourself in a new unique light. Prayer, therefore, leads to a self-knowledge that is impossible to achieve any other way.”

WOW have I found that to be true!

My conversations with my wife are deep and revealing; however, with God, there is nothing deeper or more revealing. Conversations with God make the depth of your conversations with those close to you look like a dew drop compared to the Atlantic. No matter how much I love Ariel, I am still always conscious of how she will hear the things that I say and how she will feel about them, conscious of how I word things,  so I am constantly sending my thoughts through a filter to make sure that the words that come out portray what I want her to see and hear. With God, there is none of that. It is heart to heart. Created being to Creator. It is the only true direct line that you will ever experience. We cannot filter our thoughts to make sure God only hears the words that we want Him to hear, He hears it all, He knows it all. I kneel before God completely exposed, unable to hide anything; I kneel before God as the real Rene Zeringue. I cannot hide any of my foundational flaws, my evil thoughts, or my selfish ways. HERE, WITH GOD, YOU DISCOVER YOU, WHO YOU ARE, WHO GOD IS; HERE YOU WILL GAIN MORE SELF-KNOWLEDGE THAN ANYWHERE ELSE! And you will wonder how this Almighty All Knowing God still loves you anyway!

 “The heart experience of the gospel’s power can happen only through prayer.” – Keller

Those that have healthy prayer lives know this to be true: Through prayer, you will see the Gospel and God’s love for you in a way that you have never seen before, regardless of how long you have been a Christian.

Prayer will lift you up and prayer will break you, ALL because of God’s desire for your abundant life and your relationship with Him, which must go hand in hand.

“Prayer is the only entryway into genuine self-knowledge. It is also the main way we experience deep change – the reordering of our loves…. It is the way we know God, the way we finally treat God as God. Prayer is simply the key to everything we need to do and be in life. We must learn to pray. We have to.” - Keller

Grace and Peace

2- Access

As you have probably studied, the Old Testament temple was divided into various sections which could only be entered by certain people. The innermost section of the Temple was where the presence of God himself was said to be, called the Holy of Holies or the Most Holy Place. This Holy of Holies could be entered once a year by one man, the High Priest.

I can only imagine how much I would have longed to see behind the curtain that separated the Holy of Holies from everything else. The PRESENCE OF GOD? The God that spoke light into existence and breath into my lungs, the God of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob, the God that parted the Red Sea and the Jordan as He showed his power over Pharoah and freed my ancestors from slavery, the God that made Mt. Sinai shake and who’s voice I could not handle, THAT GOD IS THERE! How amazing would it be to peak behind that veil!

In what almost seems to be a passing statement, Matthew says this,

“And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit.

And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And the earth shook, and the rocks were split.”

We will never be able to grasp the full magnitude of this statement! The veil that separated the presence of THAT GOD from us because of our sin was torn from top to bottom. No longer did we have to wonder what it was to peak behind the veil, upon becoming a Christian we are all thrust behind this veil to know God in a way only dreamed of even by such men as Abraham and Moses.

We now, because of Christ, have unlimited access to THE GOD!

My dad is a pretty big deal. He was the State Champion in Gymnastics in Louisiana all of his high school years, He was an All-American gymnast at Memphis and Jacksonville State, and was even close to making the Olympics. He is now one of the greatest and most desired tumbling coaches in the country; people around the country pay large amounts of money just for small amounts of time with him. Dad owns a gym in Gadsden, AL called ACE of Gadsden. On the door that leads into the gym itself, there is a sign that says “NO ONE IS ALLOWED ON THE FLOOR EXCEPT FOR COACHES AND ATHLETES!”

But guess what . . . . . I can walk through that door whenever I want. It doesn’t matter what he is doing, whether he is coaching a class or working in his office, at any moment I can go to him and spend as much time as I want to talking to him, and he is always overjoyed to see me. People around the country spend so much to just spend a little time with him, and I get to spend as much time with him as I want, whenever I want, for free.

You know why? Because I am His son, and because of that, I have unlimited access to Him.

People around the world, throughout all of history, have spent their money, their time, their very LIVES seeking just a glimpse of the divine and great being that we call God, and we get to go in and talk to him whenever we want, for as long as we want, and He is ALWAYS overjoyed to see us taking time to come to Him.

You know why? Because Christ, The Son, has made us his brothers and sisters, and has opened the door to the gym for us, to our infinitely loving father. He has given us unlimited access.

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. 2 Cor 3:17-18

Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. Heb 4:14-16

This was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him. Eph 3:11-12

Christ has won you access to approach God whenever you wish, and assures you that God, because of Christ, is always overjoyed to see you.

Grace and Peace