CL

A close brother of mine texted me today with 1 John 5 as a strengthening and encouraging passage for today and as I read it, it rang something that sometimes we so easily forget.

I’ve been married for 2 1/2 years now and I love my wife with all my heart and I find myself doing things that I normally would not do because of my love for her. I want to lead, serve, sacrifice, and honor her and make her happy and I don’t see these things to be burdensome, but I find joy in doing them because I love her.  

1 John 5:3 - “For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not burdensome.” 

I pray and hope that our love for Him would be like this, that abiding and living according to His Word is not burdensome, but joyful because of the overflowing love we have for Him because He first loved us!

Matthew 15:11, 17-20 - 11 - “It is not what enters into the mouth that defiles the man, but what proceeds out of the mouth, this defiles the man.”

17-20 - “Do you not understand that everything that goes into the mouth passes into the stomach, and is eliminated?  But the things that proceed out of the mouth come from the heart, and those defile the man.  For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, slanders.  These are the things while defile the man….”

Jeremiah 17:9 - “the heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it?”

This morning as I meditated on these passages, I was reminded of something J.D. Greer mentioned in his book “Gospel” which I highly recommend about his own heart that though outwardly the actions of sin may not be so apparent, inwardly, there is so much sin taking place with harboring evil thoughts, anger, bitterness, jealousy, etc, which happens in all our hearts and lately, as at the day progresses, I’ve realized more and more how wicked and evil my heart is, how easily thoughts of anger, hatred, bitterness, pride, etc easily come about and my question in all of this is how much do we truly repent and ask God to cleanse us from the inside out when we realize these things?  I’ve been finding myself during my prayer times, reflecting on my heart and as that has been taking place, I realize more and more how much I need His forgiveness, grace, and mercy, though outwardly things may seem ok, inwardly there is a war going on and as I read through these verses today, my encouragement to anyone reading this is please accept the fact that my and your heart is truly deceitfully wicked, do not think that you’re good for one second because that is the deceitfulness kicking in, but come to realize the true state and condition of your heart that you and I would continue to be led to repentance, continuing to being molded to the image of Christ that as our hearts continue to become purified, what comes out from out hearts through our mouths would not be slandering, discouraging, unwholesome (Eph. 4:29), but uplifting, encouraging, and strengthening to those around us.

I’ve been reading through Matthew in my personal studies and I’m going through Chapter 14 now and as I was reading this morning, I came across that wonderful passage of Jesus and Peter in the boat and the water:

Matt. 14: 28-31

Peter said to Him, “Lord, if it is You, command me to come to You on the water.” And He said, “Come!” And Peter got out of the boat, and walked on the water and came toward Jesus. But seeing the wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, “Lord, save me!” Immediately Jesus stretched out His hand and took hold of him, and said to him, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?”

We all know this story, but it was such a great reminder to me because here is Jesus inviting Peter to come out in what we would consider impossible and dangerous conditions, I mean, I don’t even know if I would’ve gotten out of the boat imagining that we were in the middle of the Pacific Ocean or Amazon River or even just a deep lake, just the fact that yes, I’m most likely going to fall, man, what a hard decision to make.  But here is Jesus inviting us into something completely impossible, but being fixed upon Him and standing firm having faith that He would not let us fall into the depths of our own oceans, man, I realize that little faith I still have that so easily I let the distracting winds of life and the depths of challenges and obstacles faze my focus.  But what an amazing King we have in Christ that still He helps us to stay focused and helps us to stand in the midst of all of it, as Peter was, we are truly in His grip.

For homework I’m reading this book called, The Hard Sayings of Paul and as I was doing some HW, it had this commentary on Romans 1 about “the wrath of God is revealed from the heavens” (1:18) that was really interesting, just thought I’d share:

     ”As the passage which follows 1:18 shows, the present manifestation of God’s wrath is indirect rather than direct; it is an expression of God’s permissive will, not God’s active will.  God is not depicted here as doing something in response to human sin.  In some sense, God’s wrath is built into the very structure of created reality.  In rejecting God’s structure and establishing our own, in violating God’s intention for the creation and substituting our own intentions, we cause our own disintegration.

     The human condition, which Paul describes in 1:18-32, is not something caused by God.  The phrase, “revealed from heaven” (where “heaven” is a typical Jewish substitute word for “God”), does not depict some kind of divine intervention, but rather the inevitability of human debasement which results when God’s will, built into the created order, is violated.  Since the created order has its origin in God, Paul can say that the wrath of God is now (constantly) being revealed “from heaven.”  It is revealed in the fact that the rejection of God’s truth (1:18-20), that is, the truth about God’s nature and will, leads to futile thinking (1:21-22), idolatry (1:23), perversion of God-intended sexuality (1:24-27) and relational-moral brokenness (1:28-32).

     The expression “God gave them over” (or “handed them over”), which appears three times in our passage (1:24, 26, 28), supports the idea that the sinful perversion of human existence, though resulting from human decisions, is to be understood ultimately as God’s punishment which we, in freedom, bring upon ourselves.

     In light of these reflections on our text, the common notion that God punishes or blesses in direct proportion to our sinful or good deeds, cannot be maintained.  God’s relationship with us is not on a reciprocal basis.  God’s radical, unconditional love has been demonstrated in that, while we were sinners, Christ died for us.  God loves us with an everlasting love. But the rejection of that love separates us from its life-giving power.  The result is disintegration and death.  Against such a perverted creation, God’s wrath is revealed.”