Light These Idle Sticks of My Life

This is an excerpt from a specialist in General Relativity named Charles W. Misner, he is an American physicist and one of the authors of Gravitation. His specialties include general relativity and cosmology. His work has also provided early foundations for studies of quantum gravity and numerical relativity. (Wikipedia) He is talking about Albert Einstein's attitude towards organized religion,

"I do see the design of the universe as essentially a religious question. That is, one should have some kind of respect and awe for the whole business. It's very magnificent and shouldn't be taken for granted. In fact, I believe that is why Einstein had so little use for organized religion, although he strikes me as a basically very religious man. He must have looked at what the preachers said about God and felt that they were blaspheming. He had seen much more majesty than they had ever imagined, and they were just not talking about the real thing. My guess is that he simply felt that religions he had run across did not have a proper respect for the Author of the universe."

This was said about 50 years ago...

This quote has griped me so much that a 'secular' scientist has a deeper revelation of God than most 'holy' preachers! I was in a prayer meeting the other morning and one of the guys there saw a picture of a glass box, and in that glass box were our perceptions of who God is and what He is about, the next thing He saw was God taking a hammer and smashing that glass box to smithereens, shattering it completely. What he felt was that God is wanting to shatter our preconceived ideas of who He is, which is mostly caused by a religious system that has not allowed or given the saints (not in any form of leadership) in the church any room to believe Go for more. For many years the church leaders were the only people in the church who had access to the word and they preached what best suited them, what kept them in their positions. Thankfully today we have free access to the word of God at the cost of many brothers and sisters lives. Sometimes I feel we take the word for granted, it is easy for us, we just walk into a Gospel Direct or something, pick one off the shelf and take it home. There are some villages in the remote parts of Laos, Cambodia, China, Korea that share 1 tattered bible between the whole village, and that is if they are blessed enough to even have a bible. They have to hide the bible in the ground during the day in fear that it will be discovered and they will be arrested and possibly killed. We have it easy, and because of that we have lost our 'respect and awe for the whole business'. We talk about what we want to hear, we seek preaches who will preach a 'comfortable' message that won't interfere with our comfortable lives or our annual snowboarding holiday. We probably know we keep God in a box but we don't mind too much because if we didn't it would mean we would really have to take this Christian seriously.

God is looking for those who will utterly lay down their lives for Him, for those who will count their loss as His gain and be overjoyed still! He is seeking those who will delight themselves in Him, for those who will desire that He would make their way straight in Him. Those people are the next Livingston's, and Carey's, Jim Elliot's, Charlotte "Lottie" Moon's. Those are the people God is going to use because they desire whole-heartedly to align their lives with the King, that they would decrease and He would increase!! We need to throw off our box-like thinking and expect great things from God, as William Carey said, "We need to expect great things from God, and attempt great things for God." We will not be much like our King if we don't spend much time with Him. Allow His grace and love to wash over you, everyday I ask God to forgive my small mindedness and shallow faith because I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is nothing impossible for Him and there is nothing, absolutely nothing that can separate me from His love!! If I could just believe what great things He would be able to do through me, these idle sticks that don't burn for him. Imagine what He would be capable of through us if we could just get out of His way and allow Him to full reign in our minds, hearts, and lives.

I found some great encouragement on this in Hebrews 9: 14 "How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!" How amazing and faithful is our King, that He offered Himself unblemished to God that He might set us free from our guilt and shame so that we may serve the Living God. We are in right standing with the Father, we can "boldly approach His thrown of grace " (Hebrews 4:16) because Jesus has made the way open to us, no more rituals, no more law that condems, only law that sets free, grace that sets us free to "serve the Living God." My prayer is that the Lord will help us in our unbelief, that He would awaken our hearts and eyes to the full measure of His glory and majesty.

One last thing :) here is one of my favourite quotes by Jim Elliot who was martyred in Ecuador,

"God, I pray Thee,

light these idle sticks of my life

and may I burn for Thee.

Consume my life, my God,

for it is Thine.

I seek not a long life,

but a full one, like you, Lord Jesus.God, I pray Thee,

light these idle sticks of my life

and may I burn for Thee.

Consume my life, my God,

for it is Thine.

I seek not a long life,

but a full one, like you, Lord Jesus."

#justathought

Where Spiders come to die!

I have been pondering grace, as in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, lately and I have begun to realise how anthropomorphically and selfishly I have regarded His grace. I realised how quickly I make His grace about me and my situation / need / weakness / sin. If we make ourselves the centre of grace, it ceases to be grace. It becomes instead a 'quick fix' to my guilt and shame, only to be put back in the medicine cupboard till I have need of it again. We are not the centre of His grace, His grace does not exist because we exist, His grace exists because He exists. Yes I am a sinner and yes I need His grace but the emphasis should not be on my weakness but on His sheer awesomeness! His grace is not dependent on me, if I were not in existence, His grace would remain the same. The chief end of His grace is not to help me in my sin and weakness, the chief end of His grace is to glorify Himself, the fact that it helps me in my unbelief is an unbelievably undeserved gift, it's a subordinate end (as Jonathan Edwards would put it) but it is not the chief end. We cannot make His grace about us. We exist for His glory. For so long I have believed that His grace satisfies my weakness and unbelief but it is absolutely crazy to think like that, that His grace exists for me. NO!!! I exist for Him and His glory, His grace satisfies His glory and not our weakness. If His grace was about us or dependent on us in anyway it would not 'increase all the more as sin increases'.

You might ask well if we don't sin then grace won't need to increase so how can it not be about us? Agreed if I didn't sin then His grace would not need to increase all the more but that doesn't mean His grace is dependent on whether I sin or not, His grace is not about cause and effect, i.e. my sin is the 'cause' and His forgiveness is the 'effect'. If that were the case I would never move from that place. I would never be able to escape the 'cause' or rather sin. It would be a constant yo-yoing in and out of sin leaving me full of shame and regret and utterly useless to God (“You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men." Matthew 5:13).

Thankfully, so thankfully, His grace is about "the merciful kindness by which God, exerting his holy influence upon souls, turns them to Christ, keeps, strengthens, increases them in Christian faith, knowledge, affection, and kindles them to the exercise of the Christian virtues" (part of the Strongs definition of grace or 'charis' in Greek). We see there that His grace is about exerting His holy influence upon our souls, turning us to Himself, keep us in His ways, strengthening us in His ways, increases us in faith, knowledge and affection. So that... we can sin no more!! It's a 180 degree turn causing you to walk in the opposite direction, it is not a band-aid. In ourselves we don't have the strength but in Him, with His grace we can.

Why did I say that His grace satisfies His glory you might ask. Well if I sin less, position myself and my life to honour Him in all things and live more in the plans and purposes He has for me, I will 'accidentally' bring Him more glory. Ultimately everything, and I mean everything, whether thought, word or deed always leads back to whether or not those things are bringing Him glory. As the famous West Minster Catechism said, "The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever."

Our chief end is to glorify God. If we are not carefully considering our ways and leaving them behind if we see that they will not bring God glory in anyway then we seriously need to re-evaluate how we approach life. As it says in 2 Corinthians 5:15 "...and He died for all, that those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again." That those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again.... WOW!! When we live for Him we bring Him glory, His grace enables us to live for Him, hence why I say the chief end of His grace satisfies His glory and not our weakness. The fact that it helps us in our unbelief is a sub-ordinate end, it's still an end but not the chief end.

The next thing you might say to me is that, "this God of yours seriously sounds like a bit of a megalomaniac..", and you wouldn't be the first! All I can say to that is in this case God isn't 'delusional' with fantasies of power, relevance and omnipotence . He IS All-powerful, Revelant and Omnipotent. He is not man, He is God, He is Holy, Divine, Unfathomable to our human understanding, and we ought to fear Him that way. Yes He calls us friends, but He is still King! If you don't know Him as I do then, granted, it will be difficult for you to see it that way but my prayer, for you, is that the Holy Spirit will, by His grace, allow your eyes and hearts to be opened to the glorious possibility that somehow, just somehow, He could be real, more real than the very breathe in your lungs, until He becomes the very Breathe (pneuma) in your lungs.

Jesus, I can't fathom what You've done for me, everytime I try I find myself on my knees!!

#justathought

The problem with the 'final hour of life' mentality.

The problem with the 'final hour of life' mentality.

“Resolved, never to do anything which I should be afraid to do if it were the last hour of my life.”

― Jonathan Edwards

I don’t think I agree with Mr. Edwards here, granted he is far more skilled and versed in all kinds of wisdom and knowledge than I am but I am beginning to realise that it is not what we do, but rather how we do it. If we all lived with the thought that I will do nothing I wouldn't do if it were the final hour of my life nothing would get done, sure we would have fun and stop to think about what and who really matter in this life but what about the boring mundane stuff that cant be separated from life like standing in a long queue at the Pick n Pay, paying your TV license, pulling the weeds out of your garden, vacuuming the lounge, or washing the car. What a sorry sight our lives would be! Would anyone in their right mind go to work if they knew they had 1 hour left to live? No! Without an economy no one would be able to do anything ‘worth’ doing in their final hour. Lets be realistic here!

Instead of approaching life with the thought that I should do nothing I wouldn’t want to do if this hour were my last , we should be saying “how would I want my heart to be in this if it were my final hour”. If we realised that our life is filled with a lot of those ‘I wouldn’t do this in my last hour’ vibes then how depressing would our life be? Not fun!! I would hate to live like that, always thinking ‘I shouldn’t be doing this at all’ when in fact I should be saying ‘I shouldn’t be doing this with such a lame attitude’. I think life will be a lot more happy, don’t you?

The attitude of your heart will determine the joy and satisfaction that you will find in that place. I would rather us resolve to do everything with all excellence and passion as if it were our last hour, even the mundane stuff. You never know who you might meet in those mundane tasks, a single mom needing a hand with carrying the groceries to her car, a homeless man needing a meal, or even an old friend who you haven’t seen for ages. The issue is not doing the mundane, it is how we do it that will determine how much we are able to get out of this life.

This all might sound rather cliché, you know like the whole ‘be the change you wanna see thing’ but think about it, is life really about sky diving all the time, diving with sharks, driving a Ferrari on the French Riviera, seeing the Pyramids, or the Grand Canyon, or the Niagra Falls and whatever else finds it’s way onto a ‘Bucket List’? (You know… that list of all the things we want to do before we ‘Kick the bucket’ so to speak) If those things were all that we did I reckon they would lose their novelty pretty quickly, the mundane stuff help us enjoy the fun stuff cause the fun stuff wouldn’t be fun if there wasn’t anything that wasn’t fun.

There is joy and meaning to be found anywhere, if we take the time to look for it.

#justathought