Posts from 2020-07-09
SOLVING THE GUILT PROBLEM
Some Christians are troubled by guilt; memories of past sins continue to haunt them even though these sins have been confessed and repented of most sincerely. Many times it will be the sins committed after we became Christians that bother us most. We know that when we received the Lord Jesus as personal Saviour, we were cleansed by His Blood. During our Christian lives we can be tempted to discouragement by an insistent reminder of times of failure/disobedience, even though we have brought them to the Cross and asked God to cleanse us from all sin.
On a Fall afternoon we drove along a country road, drinking in the harvest-time splendour and our souls were replenished. Everywhere we looked we saw the finger-prints of God. Autumn is the time when the Lord lights the candles in the trees. All around us ... resplendent colour, ravishing loveliness, sparkling radiance; how much beauty can a heart hold? Then, when we come to worship this Creator-God, we understand that He created this universe for us and created us to be master in earth and sea and sky. But we turned dominion over to a cruel usurper and God created another order out of the confusion of ruin. It staggers and overwhelms my comprehension that the Altogether Lovely One, Who created unblemished beauty, became sin for us so that we might become all we were created to be.
It was early morning and I was kneeling in prayer. Suddenly these words filled my thinking, "Healing God's heartbreak." Then, urged on by my faltering imagination, my mind began to travel. Heaven was ablaze with joy. Excitement poured from every corner. The angels exulted in jubilation and the seraphim cried "Holy."
David was stalked by death from early youth; a lion, a bear, Goliath, King Saul, his son Absalom and others all tried to kill him.
But David did not die, could not die, until ... (Acts 13:36) only after David had served God's will and purpose and counsel in his own generation, he died and was buried with his forefathers.
This morning I was struck again by how little I truly know about prayer.
A missionary in Africa told of a Christian who had been training to be a lawyer. Apparently because of a sorcerer, he became completely paralyzed.
Okay, Peter; this time I hear you loud and clear.
Have you ever said to yourself? --- I know its right to pray but do my prayers really accomplish anything? With all the huge happenings in the world, how could my feeble prayers make a difference? Who am I that God should answer my prayers, whether for my personal world or around the globe?
We need to look at the eternal things beyond, because the actual things in life are sordid and decaying and twisted and wrong.
If our hopes are being disappointed just now, it means that they are being purified. Oswald Chambers said, "There is nothing noble the human mind has ever hoped for or dreamed of that will not be fulfilled."
No answers? More waiting?
Where do we go when the heart is made sick by hope deferred again and yet again? To the only reliable Source, the Word of God; the only place of steadfast security and unchanging Providence.
I was buzzing around my kitchen, when these words of Jesus popped into my mind, "He that has seen Me has seen the Father."
Hard on their heels came more of His words, "As the Father sent Me, so send I you."
CAN YOU IMAGINE?
Do you ever, as I sometimes do, try to picture where we can go when we pray, that very different level; what it is like there? Do you try to probe deeper into all the vibrant wonder and our mystic joining with unseen reality?
