Earning or Believing?

"how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?" Hebrews 9:14

The Christian life is not easy but impossible to us by our first birth. How many years has it taken me to learn that? And I need reminded every single day!

At the Goodwill the other day, I found a little gem of a devotional called "None but the Hungry Heart." Edited by Miles J. Stanford, author of The Complete Green Letters, it is filled with snippets from some of the great teachers in Christianity. Apparently this devotional ran as a series, starting in 1968 and ran through 1987. My volume was from 1968. Perusing through it, I found an entry called "Mount Sinai, Mount Zion" for Feb. 23, where the message comes from Hebrews 12:18. ("For you have not come to the mountain that may be touched and that burned with fire, and to blackness and darkness and tempest,")

There is a world of difference we see between Mount Sinai where Moses received the law from God, vs. Mount Zion, which speaks of a "new and living way," entering into God's favor through the grace of Christ. The devotional by an author with the initials C.A.C. (not sure who that is ), reads:

"So long as one thinks that his blessing depends in any way, or in any degree, upon himself, he is under the shadow of Sinai, and naturally we all gravitate in that direction. Many truly converted persons are more occupied with themselves, and in trying to improve their own condition, than in seeking to learn the grace of God. The result is that where there is a shallow work of the soul they get lifted up with pride and conceit, and perhaps deceive themselves so far as to think there is no sin in them."

I don't know about you, but when I first was saved I tried so hard to be good. When I thought I did pretty good for the day somehow I thought that God was more pleased with me than on days where I committed a "whopper" sin. Then when I thought I had done pretty well, it was easy to look down on others critically. Somehow, Christ died to save me eternally but as far as the day to day went, well, that was still my job. After a long time, I knew that I really did not have what it took to live a life that pleased Him. All the while, though, I pasted on my Sunday Christian smile and kept up the facade. One day, though, I had enough and was ready to quit trying.

Instead of that being a bad thing, it was the best thing!I began a new way of life learning of the grace of God. God is very pleased with me because when He looks at me He sees the righteousness of Christ, not me in my trespasses and sins. He already dealt with them once and for all (seeing them in the future, for me), and when Jesus cried "It is finished," then the punishment for them was complete. Romans 4 says that if we work we are owed wages, as if we are trying to "earn" our Christianity, but when we believe in the finished work of Christ, we receive the gift of righteousness by faith.

Romans 4:4-5 "Now to him who works, the wages are not counted as grace but as debt.But to him who does not work but believes on Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness,"

If we did nothing to earn it, then why do we think we have to maintain it by good works? We can't, but that really is good news. We then don't have to expect anything good coming from ourselves, but keep on relying on Christ living inside of us to do the works that are pleasing to God.

"Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think of anything as being from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God,who also made us sufficient as ministers of the new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life." II Corinthians 3:5-6

Reading in the Gospel of Luke, I've been using William Barclay's commentary (The Daily Bible Study Series). In the portion in Luke 7:11-17,
Jesus encounters the widow at Nain, who just lost her only son. Jesus had such compassion (in raising the young man from death), that there was no stronger word for it in all the Greek language. He identified fully with the plight of the stricken woman, and did what only He could do, bring the dead back to life.

In the same way, He has compassion on us. He knows that we cannot do it. It is like He is tapping His foot, just waiting for us to acknowledge that fact, and to look to Him then for everything we need, right down to producing in us what He requires of us. Another quote from January 13 (in None but the Hungry Heart) by T.Austin Sparks sums it up beautifully:

"It is for want of a complete or adequate realization of the meaning of the Cross, that so many Christians are carnal, or try to live for God out of themselves...There is much prayer for 'revival,' and much effort for 'the deepening of the spiritual life.' The only answer to this is a new knowing of the Cross, not only as to sins and a life of victory over them, but as to Christ supplanting the natural man."

In letting Him live in us that we find who we really were all along!

“I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me." Galatians 2:20

Change is Coming... Let's Wake Up for the Warning!

Today, flash flooding overwhelmed some parts of our city. Cars were submerged suddenly on their way into town without warning. Railways flooded with muddy debris and were knocked out of commission, at least temporarily. Tornado warnings were issued for parts of our viewing area. In fact one was scheduled to go right over my parents home, which thankfully broke up before reaching them. It could have been much, much worse.

Yesterday I watched a fifteen minute You tube video of the disasters that had occurred in just this past month of June alone around the world and it was really eye opening, to say the least. It also was heart breaking, thinking of all the people who had lost either their life or their home in the wake of up-stepped natural disasters. You can find it on the first of two video links posted at this blog link:

http://theextinctionprotocol.wordpress.com/2013/07/09/2013-unprecedented-natural-disasters-june-retrospective/

I saw a microcosm of suffering in my hometown today. Now multiply by what has been happening all over the world, not just in 2013, but in the last decade or so, although each year it seems to be getting incrementally worse. I would love to just ignore it and say life will go on as usual. The Bible doesn't have good news for those who are just trying to be good people and are hoping for the best, somehow thinking that this world will get better and better. No, He does not, but God made an easier and better way, completely devoid of any human good works. Ephesians 2:8-9, Romans 4: 4-5.

In the face of natural disasters, there are tough questions that deserve an honest answer. But before you raise a fist in anger at God for what's happened, did you ever think that somehow God may have allowed these things to wake people out of slumber, maybe even you, so that they could possibly seek after Him now, before things get even worse? I love what Paul proclaimed as part of his speech to the Greeks in Acts 17: 26- 27 when he found their tomb to the Unknown God:

"And He (God) has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their pre-appointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us." {emphasis mine}

Jesus talked about terrible events in the last days being the beginning of sorrows. (Matthew 24: 8)Sorrows over what, you ask? The evil in this world will not be permitted to go on like this forever. Sin was already paid for and judged at the cross of Calvary around 30 A. D. But the problem of evil has not been dealt with in finality. Evil is what caused the plague of sin in the first place. It was found in God's enemy, Lucifer, when God replied to his proud look in Isaiah 14: 12-14 and his five "I will's."

"How you are fallen from heaven,
O Lucifer, son of the morning!
How you are cut down to the ground,
You who weakened the nations!

For you have said in your heart;
I will ascend into heaven,
I will exalt my throne above the stars of God;
I will also sit on the mound of the congregation
On the farthest sides of the north;
I will ascend above the clouds,
I will be like the Most High."

Isaiah 14: 12-14

Lucifer had not only sinned, but now had introduced evil into the world.

In the Chronological Study Bible put out by Thomas Nelson I have learned much this past year. As I read through its clear arrangement of Israel and Judah's history, I have reached the part where the prophet Jeremiah had to preach a most unpopular message: His beloved country was going down. Other prophets told people the things they liked to hear, that certainly they would not be destroyed. Jeremiah was God's man, though, and he could not prophesy lies. He was the "weeping prophet" because he knew that King Zedekiah would be carried away captive with his eyes taken out by the Babylonians. Israel's capital, Jerusalem, would go under siege for all her years of rebellion and idolatry against her God.

Jeremiah wrote of terrible times coming as the siege by Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon neared. But his writing could also foretell of the times that are coming now. For we cannot undo the prophetic clock. It started ticking when Israel became "reborn" as a nation on May 14, 1948, which also was prophesied clearly in Scripture, after 2,000 years of dispersion to the four corners of the earth. (See Isaiah 66:8)

Jeremiah declared in Jer. 30: 23-24:

"Behold, the whirlwind of the LORD
Goes forth with fury,
A continuing whirlwind;
It will fall violently on the head of the wicked.
The fierce anger of the LORD
will not return until He has done it,
And until He has performed the intents of His heart.

In the latter days you will consider it. {emphasis mine}

I propose, along with many others who know much more than I do, that we are in those latter times now. The birth pangs, which signal Christ's return for His Church and His ultimate judgment on evil are at any moment ready to come to fruition. There is no time to be on the fence. Whose side will you be on? Christ has already made a way for you by His Finished Work on the cross. If you listen to the world, Christ could come for His church and you will be left behind to suffer the wrath of God on this unbelieving planet. While you may still believe on Him at that point, you will have to undergo trouble then like never seen in this world before, which is called the time of Great Tribulation. You can skip all that though by believing in Christ now and being a part of His Church today.

God spoke to Israel also through the prophet Amos, but He also speaks to us now:

"Prepare to meet your God, O Israel!" Amos 4: 12a