In the spirit of Christmas I wanted to post this very unsung part of the Charles Wesley classic "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing"

"Adam's likeness, Lord, efface;
Stamp thy image in its place;
Second Adam from above;
Reinstate us in they love.
Let us thee, though lost, regain,
Thee, the life, the inner man;
O, to all thyself impart,
Formed in each believing heart."

"It is only because we follow Jesus that we can be genuinely truthful, for then he reveals to us our sin upon the cross. The cross is God's truth about us, and therefore it is the only power which can make us truthful. When we know the cross we are no longer afraid of the truth."

Proverbs 12:27-28 "A lazy man does not roast his prey, but the precious possession of a man is diligence. In the way of righteousness is life, and in its pathway there is no death."

Everyday, make a decision for God...and be pure, be loving, be just, be merciful, be holy....

I was asked my thoughts on this passage, and I thought I would post my response for all to read and comment; if you are inclined to.

2 Corinthians 10:1-6

"Now I, Paul, on my own beg you with the humility and gentleness of Christ - yes, I who am humble with you in person yet bold when away! I ask that when I am with you that I will not need to be bold with the confidence which I believe is necessary to take courage against some that act as though we're still living as part of this carnal world. For even though we live in this carnal and material world, we don't wage wars and conflicts according to material conditions. The 'weapons' of our campaigns are not material, but are still divinely powerful for the destruction of these fortified ideologies [ochuroma]. We are pulling apart baseless speculations and every thought-process that demands to be in front of the knowledge of God, and we are trying to take captive any kind of thought and making it obedient to Christ. We are also willing to punish any disobedience to this - just as soon as your obedience to Christ has become complete."

My response:

My thoughts on this..... I am not the thinker I should be, but I will give you my opinion. Paul was running into quite a bit of resistance when he was bringing this message of the kingdom of God to the Jewish and Pagan world. These ideas ran contrary to the current assumptions and deeply entrenched traditions and ideologies, which got him into a lot of trouble; but on to the meat of it. The ideas and direction of the kingdom of God are in absolute opposition to the system of the world that the "prince of the power of the air" has established. I think what is very interesting is that Jesus told the Pharisees "you search the scriptures and in them you think you have life, but you will not come to Me that you might have life." For me, I see that the Pharisees searched the scriptures and from them drew inferences and traditions that suited their agenda's and established a power base; hence the reason that Jesus said they rule from the seat of Moses and tie heavy binds to the shoulders of men. Jesus then tells the disciples that it is not that way among us, that we are to be known we are to be those who "power under" and do not "lord over" those around us. To live that way to is to live as "carnal" and to live as the "power under" is to live in but not of this carnal world.

As for the "pulling apart" that is what the teaching and seed planting of the kingdom of God is doing, it is pulling apart those baseless speculations (ideologies), and transporting our minds to a different plane of reality, true reality where Jesus is the Lord of all. Now if Jesus is Lord of all, and His kingdom is not of this world (as stated to Pilate) then our weapons are not made of steel and iron, but our weapons are our fruits. Now as to the punishing of disobedience. I see the punishment not as a negative thing, but as grace. What a great shame it would be for us if we were surrounded by fellow lovers of Jesus who never held us accountable for our actions. "Those whom he loves he scourges," as recovering sinners we are prone to wander, and we need a shepherd with a staff who will bring us back into the fold. Paul said of the brother in Corinth who was committing sexual sin "turn him over to Satan that his flesh might be destroyed, so that his soul maybe saved in the last days." May we never get that far, but if we do, may we be bold enough to take a stand against disobedience so that we may as Jude says "snatch each other out of the fire."

Hello Friends and neighbors, I hope all is well. I have started a new adventure in my life and I am going to keep an online journal about it, so here it goes.


Sometimes I wonder what is the best thing to have faith, hope or love? Now I know that all three are very important and without love all other things are worth nothing, but in my life I often find myself holding onto nothing but hope to get me through. Hope that God will strengthen my faith, and hope that God will pour His love into my heart through the Holy Spirit. So today I started my quest in loving on some precious elderly people. I volunteered at Life Care Center of Plano with a heart to just be with those that are most forgotten in our society. Those that are literally in this place just waiting to die. I just want to do what Jesus says to do, and to be salt and light. So I went, moved by the Spirit to go, and it was amazing. They are so sweet and loving, and genuinely touched that someone would care. I found myself feeling flooded with grace and love that I know God was the author of.

I walked around when I first got there, and went from room to room just introducing myself and asking if anyone needed prayer. I was especially touched by 2 of the women, one was Helen and the other Gladys. I walked in quietly to introduce myself to Helen, and there she was laying helpless in her bed with oxygen tubes in her nose. Her prayer requests were that she would have a better attitude while there, and that even though she didn't like the food to much, little children were starving and would love to eat what she had. It was an honor to hold her little feeble hand, and pray for her. I felt so unworthy to hold the hand of this woman, and to speak a blessing over her. When I opened my eyes she was crying, and I saw grace. "While I was yet helpless, Christ died for me."

Then I met Gladys, and again introduced myself and asked if she needed prayer. She said yes please, so I got down and held her hand and spoke a prayer of blessing over her. When we were done she said, it gives me comfort to know where I am going when this is done. I saw hope. Hope on the face of a woman that you could tell wasn't long from the grave. Hope that God was with her, and that God was holding her as His beloved.

I could tell many more stories of just my first day, but I just wanted to share some. I have so many ideas of what I would like to do in this little community of love, but please pray for me that I will listen to God, and that I will do what He bids me to do.

I will update often.

I wanted to share a paragraphs with all of ya'll that I read in Phillip Yancey's flip book version of "What's So Amazing About Grace?"

"Not long ago I received in the mail a postcard from a friend that had on it only six words "I am the one Jesus loves." I smiled when I saw the return address, for my friend excels at these pious slogans. When I called him, though, he told me the slogan came from the author and speaker Brennan Manning. At a seminar, Manning referred to Jesus closest friend on earth, the disciple named John, identified in the Gospels as "the one Jesus loved." Manning said "If John were to be asked "What is your primary identity in life? He wouldn't reply "I am a disciple, an apostle, an evangelist, an author of one of the four Gospels," but rather he would say, "I am the one Jesus loves."

Last night at our Tuesday night accountability meeting this thought was brought up, and a question arose from that discussion.

"What would my life be like if I embraced this as my identity?"

In the early 20^th Century there was a massive push by western white Christians to “bring Jesus” to the pagans of Africa. The major push was into Central Africa, and especially the country of Rwanda. The message that was brought to this area and presented as the gospel was “you are a sinner and to get to heaven when you die, you need Jesus. So invite Jesus into your heart, and when you die you will go to heaven.” Rwanda was the country that really took this message in, and received it. By 1994 a poll showed that 80% of Rwandans were in a Christian church, professing Jesus as their savior. In 1994 there was a tribal war in Rwanda between the Hutu majority and the Tutsi minority. It is estimated that between 600,000 to 1 million Rwandans were killed by their own countrymen. There are stories of churches killing churches. These deaths were brutal beyond belief, people hacking other people, burnings, shootings, rapes, all committed by professing Christians against their Christian brothers.

This really brings home the unbelievable importance of preaching the gospel that Jesus preached.

If the gospel we present is about getting somewhere when we die, this world greatly suffers.

The sea is to deep
The heaven's to high
I cannot swim
I cannot fly;
I must stay here
I must stay here
Here where I know
How I can know
Here where I know
What I can know

"Yet in the gloom a light glimmers and glows."

The sea has parted. Pharaoh's hosts
Despair, and doubt, and fear, and pride
No longer frighten me.
I must cross over to the other side.
The heaven bows down. With wounded hands
Our exiled God, our Lord of shame
Before us living, breathing, stands;
The Word is near, and calls our name.
New knowing for the doubting mind.
New seeing out of blindness grows;
New trusting may the sceptic find
New hope through that which faith now knows.

"My Lord and my God"

The human body is the focal point of human existence. Jesus had one, we have one. Without the body in the proper place, the pieces of the puzzle of new life in Christ do not realistically fit together, and the idea of really following Him and becoming like Him becomes a practical impossibility.

It’s in the life of Christ we are invited to seek rest, receive power, and join in on the redemptive plan for human existence. It's in the crucified Christ we find reconciliation and forgiveness, and it's in the resurrection we find the evidence of the indestructible life.

And that is the Good News of the Lord Jesus, that in the Kingdom of God all of this is found, and that is what is available to every human being no matter the current condition.

"Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen." Eph 3:20,21

may you be covered in the dust of your Rabbi,

terry

So again I will be adding a quote from the amazing book I am reading, Spirit of the Disciplines.



"The conflict between flesh and spirit is the experience of all who begin the spiritual life by the influx of God's life giving word. Somethimes the conflict is long, sometimes short. This is where the spiritual disciplines come in. The disciplines for the spiritual life, rightly understood, are the time tested activities consciously undertaken by us as new men and women to allow our spirit ever-increasing sway over our embodied selves. They help by assisiting the ways of God's kingdom to take the place of the habits of sin embedded in our bodies."



Wow, amazing quote! Just to add a little to that quote, as if I can do anything to help Dallas Willard. To rightly understand what he is saying, we have to understand sin as a condition, not singular acts of "bad behavior." Sin as a literally embedded in the midst of our bodies, as a virus that affects all aspects of our life, the good and the bad. We've read Romans 7, indwelling sin "in my members" (body parts), the will to do good but the inablity to do it, and even the good that we do is selfish, so in the end evil. With that in mind, sin as condition, the only way sin can be rooted out is by grace, which comes from God, who we expose ourselves to practicing the disciplines. "Sowing to the spirit," or the activity that Jesus calls "seeking the kingdom" that's the activity of the disciplines, as the farmer sows the seeds in the field "and goes to sleep and gets up and they grow, but he doesn't know how," so does the soul (life) become restored as we sow the seed of discipline in our lives, and God by His Spirit, causes the seed to grow, and the entire life, seen and unseen, to become renovated.


May you be covered in the dust of your Rabbi,

terry

I've been reading a book called Spirit of the Disciplines, which by the way is one of the greatest books ever, and the chapter Spiritual Life: The Body's Fulfillment prompted me to write this little paragraph:

"The totality of human existence is only present when man is connected to God. When God is energizing, directing, and inspiring human actions, only then is a human fully alive. Humans are "dead in trespasses and sins" when their actions and thoughts are all of unaided efforts, or in another word flesh. As animals we eat, sleep, and pro-create, but as humans (free and alive in Christ) we are creative, we love, and we are spiritual. Spiritual in the full meaning of being in an interactive relationship with God and His present kingdom. In this full life, life abundant, we are connected to God (and empowered by) to work in the physical (striving in good works), so that our entire lives (seen and unseen) are interacting with God, as the image and the likeness of our Creator."

May you be covered in the dust of your Rabbi,

terry

My soul was in pain
My heart was broken
I was lost
I cried out, find me my Shepherd, I am looking for you
Through the fog of my life, I saw the Cross
My Shepherd is there, bidding me to come
It is there on that blood stained Cross
My life is found and lost

Shalom, peace, isn't that what we all want? Isn't that what so many of us seek for, isn't that something that we all just wish that we could possess, peace. My question is what is peace exactly? The search for peace has prompted men to climb the highest peaks of the earth, and dive to the deepest depths of the ocean. The longing for peace has caused the destruction of families through divorce; the seeking for peace has cause men to kill men by the millions. Is peace simply the absence of conflict, or is peace really the pervasive sense of well being in the midst of the battle? To be honest, that's exactly what the word peace means, "a pervasive sense of well-being." See, it is my experience that we as people believe that peace is the absence of external conflict, but what about the conflict inside? I mean, we might be free of conflict in the environment around us, but what about the anger, resentment, frustration, the murder that is burning in our hearts? The Apostle John says in his first letter "Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer; and you know that no murderer has eternal life living in him." Now, John in this passage is talking about the inner life of a person; the inner life of conflict and the lack of true peace, or Shalom. The inner life is the focus of all Scripture, the inner life of Shalom. Jesus came to earth heralding the arrival of the ability to have an inner life that reflects the inner life of God in the heavens. Jesus came opening a way to a place where we can access resources we do not possesses, to begin to learn how to live an inner life flowing in peace.
Peace is not simply the absence of conflict; peace is the presence of God in the inner parts of your very being. Peace that surpasses all ability to understand how is it I can feel secure, even when it's all falling down around me, and I am hunkered down and the bullets are flying. We have become so blinded on what peace is, and where it comes from. Peace doesn't come with a cease fire; peace comes from a river flowing directly from the mercy seat of the Lord, into our inner lives, our Spirit. Jesus says "Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you;" The Lord has gifted us with His peace, and desires to teach us how to exist in a troubled world, above the conflict, and enter into a place independent of cease fires, but dependent on His sweet grace. The same Shalom that worked in the Lords heart on that rough road to the place of His death, the same Shalom that burst forth from Stephen as stones were thrown at him until he was dead enabled him to pray for those killing him, and the same peace that comforted Paul as he walked the roads telling people the Good News of the kingdom, in the midst of persecution. This is the Shalom; the pervasive sense of well being that has been offered us by grace, offered us by unrelenting Love.


O’ God of peace, calm our hearts, and teach us how to enter into your rest. Your peace is a gift to us, by grace, help us Lord enter into it. Help us learn that Shalom is a lifestyle and not just a moment in time. This peace, this Shalom that surpasses all understanding is the peace that can calm the storm inside, and lead us into an inner life of love and grace. Thank you sweet Lord Jesus, our Great Shepherd, and the Lover of our souls.

There is a storm raging in my life right now, and the ship is going down. Jesus is in the stern resting, and inviting me to come rest with Him. The first chapter of James says, "Consider it all joy when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance." I interpret that as "knowing that the testing of your TRUST produces perseverance." I have failed deeply in one area of my life, and I feel I have let down my family, my friends, but most of all my God. I was feeling very deeply troubled in my soul, but I remembered Romans 5 "There is no condemnation for those that are in Christ Jesus." I have failed, Jesus knows I have failed, but this failure of mine does not cause Jesus to damn me. He is down in this mess with me, He is sympathetic, He loves me despite my lacking. But, He calls me to live up to what I have already attained, but that isn't through my own power, but through training with Jesus, to learn how to be like him by being with him. "Eventhough I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, Jesus you are with me, and you comfort me."

The storm is raging, the ship is going down, Jesus is reclining in the stern, and inviting me to come, hush and be still.

My new favorite website www.theooze.com. Check it out, I hope ya'll enjoy it as much as I do.

Trust Jesus... That one phrase rings out in my heart and my mind, Trust Jesus. What does it really mean to trust Jesus? Is it trusting Him only when things are going well and life is rosey, or can we trust Jesus when all hell is breaking loose in us and around us? Somedays I feel secure in my Lords arms, I feel loved and I feel accepted, but sometimes I can feel the flames of hell, stoked hot awaiting my arrival. Then comes two words, "Trust Jesus." I will admit sometimes my trust in grace fails, and I feel that I am a sinner slipping farther into darkness, but two words ring out, "Trust Jesus." I cling to one statement that I heard from one of my favorite writers, "He loves us just as we are, and not as we should be, because, we will never be as we should be." I am at a crossroads in my life, and I realize one thing must happen. I must either place my confidence in myself and try it on my own, or I trust Jesus. Folks this isn't some trust that crops up in certain situations, but this is a trust that trusts Him in and for everything. I have indulged the flesh for many years, many, many years in fact, so it is dying hard. It is such a hope and comfort to read in Hebrews, that we have a Lord that understands, one that is sympathetic to our plight. So I call out to my Lord, come and heal my broken heart, open it up, and bring the real thing, like only You can do. I finally realize, that the only way that I can fully trust Jesus, is if He takes this stone heart, and makes it soft. This is a miracle that only He can do. So I am going to Trust Jesus. I am tired, exhausted really, and He is calling out to me, come here son, and rest.

Oh Lord, only you know the real me, only your eyes can see, what's under the veil that I have put up. Open up my heart, and bring the real thing. Open up your church Oh God and bring the real thing, Open up your children Oh God, and bring the real thing, take away the pain, and pour out your Spirit.

I want to spend some time talking about righteousness, or how I will say it “Goodness.”

Not just any old type of Goodness, and not the type of Goodness that is in bondage to external actions, as the Pharisees.

I want to talk about, true goodness, the God type goodness.
The type of goodness evidenced in love. But not just any old type of love, but agape love, True Love(selfless love.)

Jesus came to earth and lived a life that exhibited this type of goodness.

This type of righteousness or “Goodness” is the word DIKAIOSUNE which means “the inner life of the soul when it is how it should be.” In easier terms, of “being a really good person.”

The life of Jesus was a demonstration of the God type goodness.

The Pharisees pinned being a good person by outward actions in adherence to the law.

The Pharisee takes his aim keeping the law, rather than becoming the kind of person whose deeds naturally conform to the law.

In the Discourse on the Hill (sermon on the mount) Jesus is telling us, and teaching us, what it’s like to live from kingdom of God, and have His goodness or “righteousness.”

Now how is it that we have His righteousness? It is because of we have His life, and His righteousness comes from His life.

John 10:10
”I came that they may have life, and have it running out there ears!” (in the original is used the word Abundantely)

Whose life, His life, and where is the life of Jesus? It is caught up in the kingdom of God

That’s the new birth, the birth from above. It is the Life of Jesus deposited into a trusting disciple of Jesus. It is His life, by which we are saved.

Romans 5:10 (NASB)
”10 For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.”

It is the by our Lords blood we are cleansed, reconciled (say I like the use of this other word HARMONIZED-means to form a pleasing relationship) back to God, but it is by His life we achieve salvation.

His Righteousness comes from His life, and His life is the way by which you can make contact with the Kingdom of God, and its transformation power.

2 Peter 1:4 says that we have become partakers of His Divine Nature.

Now we have to come to realize what is the divine nature. Now we know that Divine Nature is evidence of something, and that something is LOVE. True, God type Love, Agape Love.

And you can see that when Paul gives his exposition of Love Is in 1 Corinthians 13, he is describing the same thing as when he writes about the Fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5.

Now you see, some people will read these two descriptions of Love and say, now I have to go out and do these things, or I need to try harder to be this person.

But you can clearly see, by what Paul is saying, that it is Love that does these things, and not us, what we are to do is “pursue Love” 1 Corinthians 14:1

Jesus says the same thing to us when He says to us “Seek first the kingdom of God…”

Seek first His kingdom, and what is His kingdom, the Kingdom of God is Love, the very essence of the Kingdom of God is love, and that can be seen by Jesus personally inviting the unlovable and embracing the unlovely.

The only way that way that this life of love can be cultivated in us is if we train.

Instead of trying to live the Christian life (and failing) we ought to be training.

When Jesus was hanging on the cross and He prayed “Father, forgive them because they don’t understand what they are doing.” That wasn’t hard for Him. That prayer flowed out of who He was internally.

When we hunker down and train with Jesus, learning from Him how to be like Him, when we hit the playing field (the world) we won’t have to think about returning good for evil, it’ll just happen. We won’t have to think about how we can be patient, it’ll just happen.

The Lord does not call us to do what He did, but to be as He was, permeated with Love.
Then the doing of what He did and said becomes the natural expression of who we are, in Him.

“Seek first the Kingdom of God, and His kind of Goodness, and all these things will be given to you.”

This is a excerpt from a book that I am reading right now. I think it is one of the most powerful commentaries I have ever read, and I wanted to share it. Grace is something most believers don't really understand, I will admit I didn't, and I am still in the process of learning about it. Grace has either paralyzed us, or has become the resource from which we draw our lives. It is the power that sustains us, and enables us to get up each day, and rejoice in our sufferings. It is what spur's our growth, and bids us come, Follow Him, the one from whom that grace extends. Grace and Peace to you, through my Lord Jesus Christ, enjoy.

Costly Grace by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church. We are fighting today for costly grace.

Cheap grace means grace sold on the market like cheapjack's wares. The sacraments, the forgiveness of sin, and the consolations of religion are thrown away at cut prices. Grace is represented as the Church's inexhaustible treasury, from which she showers blessings with generous hands, without asking questions or fixing limits. Grace without price; grace without cost! The essence of grace, we suppose, is that the account has been paid in advance; and, because it has been paid, everything can be had for nothing. Since the cost was infinite, the possibilities of using and spending it are infinite. What would grace be if it were not cheap?

Cheap grace means grace as a doctrine, a principle, a system. It means forgiveness of sins proclaimed as a general truth, the love of God taught as the Christian "conception" of God. An intellectual assent to that idea is held to be of itself sufficient to secure remission of sins. The Church which holds the correct doctrine of grace has, it is supposed, ipso facto a part in that grace. In such a Church the world finds a cheap covering for its sins; no contrition is required, still less any real desire to be delivered from sin. Cheap grace therefore amounts to a denial of the living Word of God, in fact, a denial of the Incarnation of the Word of God.

Cheap grace means the justification of sin without the justification of the sinner. Grace alone does everything, they say, and so everything can remain as it was before. "All for sin could not atone." The world goes on in the same old way, and we are still sinners "even in the best life" as Luther said. Well, then let the Christian live like the rest of the world, let him model himself on the world's standards in every sphere of life, and not presumptuously aspire to live a different life under grace from his old life under sin. That is what we mean by cheap grace, the grace which amounts to the justification of sin without the justification of the repentant sinner who departs from sin and from whom sin departs. Cheap grace is not the kind of forgiveness of sin which frees us from the toils of sin. Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves.

Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the Cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.

Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will gladly go and sell all that he has. It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will sell all his goods. It is the kingly rule of Christ, for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye which causes him to stumble, it is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows Him.

Costly grace is the Gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock.

Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it costs God the life of His Son: "ye were bought at a price," and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon His Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but deliver Him up for us. Costly grace is the Incarnation of God.

Costly grace is the santuary of God; it has to be protected from the world, and not thrown to the dogs. It is therefore the living word, the Word of God, which He speaks as it pleases Him. Costly grace confronts us as a gracious call to follow Jesus, it comes as a word of forgiveness to the broken spirit and the contrite heart. Grace is costly because it compels a man to submit to the yoke of Christ and follow Him; it is grace because Jesus says: "My yoke is easy and My burden light."