Jesus' Best Day!

Jesus' Resurrection and appearance to His followers removed all doubt that He was truly the Messiah they had long-awaited! He only stayed around 40 days before ascending to His Father, always apparently appearing to believers -- not to Pilate (the governor of Judea who sentenced Jesus) --  not to Herod (the Roman ruler of Palestine) -- not to Emperor Tiberius -- but only to those who already believed in Him.

The period between the Resurrection and the Ascension was just an interlude....

From Philip Yancy's book "The Jesus I Never Knew" --

"If Easter Sunday was the most exciting day of the disciples' lives, for Jesus it was probably the Day of Ascension.

He, the Creator, who had descended so far and given up so much, was now heading home.

Like a soldier returning across the ocean from a long and bloody war... Like an astronaut, shedding his spacesuit to gulp the familiar atmosphere of earth... Home at last!

Jesus' prayer at the Last Supper reveals what He was feeling: 'I have brought You glory on earth by completing the work You gave Me to do. And now, Father, glorify Me in Your presence with the glory I had with You before the world began.'

Before the world began!

Like an old man reminiscing -- no, like an ageless God reminiscing -- Jesus let His mind wonder back to a time  before the Milky Way and Andromeda.

On an earthly night dark with fear and menace, Jesus was making preparation to return home, to assume again the glory He had set aside."

                              His best, most exciting day!

Overlooking Offenses

  

                              Overlooking  Offenses

"A man's wisdom gives him patience. It is his glory to overlook an offense" (Proverbs 19:11).

I read once that the art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.

To overlook someone's offenses allows us to drop our defenses (in my case usually arrogant and self-righteous) and just humbly drop the burden and move on.

And we can choose to do that!

It gives us such luxurious freedom!

Remember 1 Corinthians 13: "(Love) is not easily angered; it keeps no record of wrongs..."

And "love covers a multitude of sins..."

Keep the big picture in mind -- small, petty offenses to us have nothing to do with the big picture! They are meaningless. Overlook them!

Prayer for today: "As You have been to me, loving Father, help me be to others today."

The Thief's Last Choice

Think about the thief on the cross who mocked Christ. Then think about the one who repented. We don't know much about him. He obviously made some bad choices, wrong friends, wrong behavior, listened to the wrong crowd. But was his life a waste? Is he spending eternity suffering for all his bad choices?

Words from Max Lucado....

"No, just the opposite. He is enjoying the fruit of the one good choice he did make. In the end, all his bad choices were redeemed by a solitary good one.

You've made some bad choices in life, haven't you? You look back over your life and say, 'If only...if only I could make up for those bad choices...' 

You can.  One good choice for eternity offsets a thousand bad ones on earth.

The choice is yours.

How can two men see the same Jesus and one choose to mock Him and the other chooses to pray to Him?

I don't know, But they did. And when one prayed Jesus loved him enough to save him. And when the other mocked, Jesus loved him enough to let him. He allowed him the choice.

He does the same for you."

[Sometimes life seems unfair. We are too short, too fat, handicapped in some way, too poor to buy the popular clothes, born into a dysfunctional family...but the same scales of life were forever tipped on the side of fairness when God panted a tree in the Garden of Eden.

All complaints were silenced when Adam and his descendants were given free will, the freedom to make our eternal choice. Whatever injustice might appear in this life, it is offset by our ability to choose our destiny in the next. You wouldn't want it the other way around would you? I mean, if you could pick your hair color, your size, your family, and not get to pick your eternal destiny, wouldn't that be terrible? I like the way God did it!]

From "He Chose the Nails," by Max Lucado.

 

Need Some New Clothes?

Tired of your old wardrobe?  Consider these words from Colossians 3 -- 

"Now you must also rid yourselves of all such things are these: anger, rage, malice, slander and filthy language...do not lie to each other since you have taken off your old self with its sinful practices, and have put on your new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of the Creator...Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, and patience. Bear with one another and forgive one another.

  Forgive as He forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity."

   So, first, we have to take off the old clothes and then we have to put on the new (after all, we can't wear two outfits at once!).

  So let's change wardrobes today. Take off the old sinful habits and put on the new clothes God has given you.

Yes! Today! Right now!

(And don't forget to clean out the closet)

The Pursuit of Joy - Jonathan Edwards -- John Piper and C S Lewis

Thoughts from Jonathan Edwards:


....the end and goal of creation hangs on knowing God with our minds and enjoying God with our hearts.

The very purpose of the universe -- reflecting and displaying the glory of God -- hangs not only on true knowledge of God, but also on authentic joy in God.

"God is glorified," Edwards says, "not only by His glory's being seen, but by its being rejoiced in."

Here is the great discovery that changes everything. God is glorified by our being satisfied in Him.

The chief end of man is not merely to glorify God and enjoy Him forever, but to glorify God by enjoying Him forever.

The great divide that I thought existed between God's passion for His glory and my passion for joy turned out to be no divide at all, if my passion for joy is passion for joy in God.

God's passion for the glory of God and my passion for joy in God are one.


What follows from this, I have found, shocks most Christians; namely, that we should be blood-earnest -- deadly serious -- about being happy in God.


We should pursue our joy with such a passion and a vehemence that, if we must, we would cut off our hand or gouge out our eye to have it.

God being glorified in us hangs on our being satisfied in Him.

We quake at the fearful luke-warmness of our hearts.


We waken to the truth that it is a treacherous sin not to pursue that satisfaction in God with all our heats.

There is one final word for finding delight in the creation more than in the Creator: treason.

Edwards argued for this in a sermon that he preached on Song of Solomon 5:1....


    Persons need not and ought not to set any bounds  to their spiritual and gracious appetites...they ought to be endeavoring by all possible ways to inflame their desires and to obtain more spiritual pleasures...

    Our hungerings and thirstings after God and Jesus Christ and after holiness can't be too great for the value of these things, for they are things of infinite value...endeavor to promote spiritual appetites....there is no such thing as excess in our taking of this spiritual food. There is no such virtue as temperance in spiritual feasting.



--From  A God-Entranced Vision of All Things, The Legacy of Jonathan Edwards, by John Piper and Justin Taylor







C S Lewis on the same subject....



If we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds that our desires not too strong, but too weak.



We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offers of a holiday at the sea.


We are far too easily pleased.



      -- From The Weight of Glory, by C S Lewis