For Love Of God: December 2008

Thursday, December 25, 2008

I Don't Know Why...But I Wish You A Merry Christmas

A pastor friend of mine recently showed me his shirt that said, "Jesus Loves You" and then pointed to the parentheses under it that said, "and I'm trying." Truly thats the gist of it all. I am so thankful that others try to love me, but I know that only God can truly do this. I am an unlovable guy and it has always been hard for me to like others or much less love them and I heard Pastor Steve Brown from Key Life once say that he is up to his eyeballs in misunderstandings as a pastor and said that we church people are often like porcupines on this storm tossed gospel ship; but then he said, "Hey, we're all we got so lets try to love each other!"....or something like that.

It is with this thought in mind that I wish you all a very Merry Christmas. It is a day remembered where God commended His love toward us even when we were His enemies and left heaven's throne and embraced a smelly old manger, to first touch us with the grace of His perfect baby son and lavished upon us grace beyond our wildest dreams. How can I not love all of my pastors and the members of my church and all of you out here in the blogishere?...and yes, even some of those blogs where you all get really mean, cause I know I have been mean in the past and have been loved by God in a way that I cannot imagine and forgiven and washed clean by His precious blood. I want to love others as He loved me, so thanks for being patient with me. Jesus loves you and I am definitely trying, because he is worth my last dying breath that it may take me to love as He loved.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!

Nothing Is Impossible With God!!!

In the book, Life and Works of Spurgeon, Charles Spurgeon gives the account of his conversion. This hope is there for anyone who would ONLY LOOK TO CHRIST:It pleased God in my childhood to convince me of sin.… My heart was broken in pieces. Six months did I pray—prayed agonizingly with all my heart, and never had an answer. I resolved that, in the town where I lived, I would visit every place of worship in order to find out the way of salvation. I felt I was willing to do anything and be anything if God would only forgive me.I set off, determined to go round to all the chapels; and I went to all the places of worship; and though I dearly venerate the men that occupy those pulpits now, and did so then, I am bound to say that I never heard them once fully preach the Gospel. I mean by that, they preached truth, great truths, many good truths that were fitting to many of their congregation—spiritually-minded people; but what I wanted to know was, How can I get my sins forgiven? And they never once told me that. I wanted to hear how a poor sinner, under a sense of sin, might find peace with God; and when I went I heard a sermon on "Be not deceived: God is not mocked," which cut me up worse, but did not say how I might escape. I went again another day, and the text was something about the glories of the righteous: nothing for poor me.…At last, one snowy day—it snowed so much I could not go to the place I had determined to go to, and I was obliged to stop on the road, and it was a blessed stop to me—I found rather an obscure street, and turned down a court, and there was a little chapel.…I wanted to know how I might be saved.…At last a very thin-looking man came into the pulpit and opened his Bible and read these words: "Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth." Just setting his eyes upon me, as if he knew me all by heart, he said, "Young man, you are in trouble." Well, I was, sure enough. Says he, "You will never get out of it unless you look to Christ."And then, lifting up his hands, he cried out…, "Look, look, look! It is only look!" I saw at once the way of salvation. Oh, how I did leap for joy at that moment! I know not what else he said; I did not take much notice of it—I was so possessed with that one thought. Like as when the brazen serpent was lifted up, they only looked and were healed. I had been waiting to do fifty things, but when I heard this word "Look!" what a charming word it seemed to me! Oh, I looked until I could almost have looked my eyes away! And in Heaven I will look on still in my joy unutterable.

After the Sermon On The Mount, Jesus came down from the Mount and a leper was the first person to meet Him knowing that the Lord was oh so willing to heal him, and then a centurion with a tormented servant knew that all God had to do was just say the word and he would be healed. It is almost the same with salvation. I say almost because God has already spoken the word:

"IT IS FINISHED!"

Believe that He has already spoken and your salvation will be finished as well. Do you hear him from your graves calling out to you and saying,

"IT IS FINISHED!"?

Hear Him now.

Only Look To Christ!!!