#chist

[kadira-siren]

[ascendancygallery]

SANTA (Oil on canvas 50cm x 70cm)

[patcegan]

Loveliness of Faith

Oh, the loveliness of faiththe Light that banishes darknessdries tears, fills us with hopeunseen though it may befaith lasts through eternity***** Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.Mark 11:24I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may…

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[e-devotion]

Easter is about 9 days away.  We have so much to be thankful for.  It is a time of celebration, yet it was a time of crying and so much pain.

Can you imagine knowing what the cross was all about?  It was for criminals and not Christ.  It was punishment for a life of wrong doing and hurting others.  So, how could they justifying putting Jesus on the cross.

The first mention of the cross from Jesus might have seemed a little strange.

Matthew 16:24  NLT  

Then Jesus said to his disciples, “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross, and follow me.

How do you take up your cross?  The people around Jesus might have been a little puzzled as to what Jesus meant by taking up their cross.  He never wasted His words.  But what was this about?

John 19:17-18  NLT  

Carrying the cross by himself, he went to the place called Place of the Skull (in Hebrew, Golgotha). 18 There they nailed him to the cross. Two others were crucified with him, one on either side, with Jesus between them.

Then they saw Him.  They saw Jesus carry His own cross.  It was a horrible road, and it was a difficult thing to watch.

Move to the end of where He carried the cross and Jesus was nailed to it.  Can you imagine looking at the cross before when He was carrying it, and then looking at the cross when He was hanging on it?  That had to be confusing.

But there was a ready.  May we see the cross for how God uses it in our lives.  It is a place of guilt, shame and punishment.  But Jesus deserved none of that.

He deserved none of that until my sin was placed on Him.  That is until your sin was placed on Him.  May we see the cross as those that were present when it happened did.

Galatians 3:13  NLT  

But Christ has rescued us from the curse pronounced by the law. When he was hung on the cross, he took upon himself the curse for our wrongdoing. For it is written in the Scriptures, “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.”

1 Peter 2:24  NLT  

He personally carried our sins in his body on the cross so that we can be dead to sin and live for what is right. By his wounds you are healed.

That is what Jesus did for us.  In the coming week may we really examine what Jesus did for us.  May we see the place of death as a place that brings us and others life.  May we not make it small and insignificant but mighty and a mark of who Jesus really is.

Easter is ahead.  Let’s get ready!

[mightyflamethrower]

Karl William Diefenbach

[shemayya]

The Meaning of "Ekhad אֶחָד" in Hebrew. Understanding Trinity Is Not Hard Actually

"Therefore, a man will leave his dad and his mum, and he will cleave with his wife and they will be one flesh (Levasar ekhad לְבָשָׂר אֶחָד)"

Hebrew: עַל-כֵּן, יַעֲזָב-אִישׁ, אֶת-אָבִיו, וְאֶת-אִמּוֹ; וְדָבַק בְּאִשְׁתּוֹ, וְהָיוּ לְבָשָׂר אֶחָד. (Genesis 2:24, Literal Translation)

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[wanderingforgod]

Everything Nailed Down

     This past week an old friend wrote to me: “Faith is intact without certainty of what to do next.”  How true that often seems.  A tangled, disarranged time as ours shakes the confidence in many of not just our life truths but our religious truths also.  Many people see our present day as a confused, purposeless mess, where everything that is being done stems from a position of shortsightedness.    

      It’s all kind of like the 400 year old tale of Sinbad the Sailor.  He anchored his boat on what he believed to be an island, but then it proved to be a great sea beast that took off swimming across the tumultuous ocean pulling Sinbad and his boat right along.  Just so, a lot of people believe our trusted stabilities failing and a disturbed society dragging us right along with it.  

     “Everything nailed down is comin’ lose” says the Angel Gabriel to the Lord in the old play Green Pastures.  Societal customs, economic conditions, institutions, ethical standards, ideas long held -- all that was once thought solid and durable now seems as fragile and fleeting as winter’s frost on a window pane.  Even the Psalmist doesn’t make us feel better when he cries out to God regarding the foundations of the earth: “They will perish...they will all wear out like a garment.  Like clothing you will change them, and they will be passed on.”  Robert Browning may have written: “God’s in his heaven, All’s right with the world,” but it took an American soldier to write: “God’s in his heaven, All’s riot with the world.” 

     “We live on a transient planet, in an exploding universe” as someone once described this world of ours.  And that proves true, we know it every day.  Yet the truth is that even as chaotic and unsettling as these times appear, they can illuminate our faith and give to us an even greater meaning.  This runaway world in which we live is still inhabited by the Eternal.  Life’s seeming erratic, volatile, and fickle behavior is still penetrated by an unchanging purpose.  Behind, before, and within it all, “from everlasting to everlasting” there stands God, as the Psalmist reminds us.  

     We have another vocabulary to hang on to, and this lexicon is filled with such words as: unchangeable; permanent; and eternal.  There is something else which resides among us, and that is everlasting.  Not all is in flux -- there does exist that which is not perishing.  

      The highest and best in us is not found in bemoaning the world around us, but in taking this shaken time and discovering that which is unshakable.  When everything that can totter and fall is staggering, that is the time for our eyes to focus on what is firm, and see the eternal permeating this present world.  Here and now is when, more than any other, we look to a sure foundation upon which to stand secure.  When we have done this, we will find a spiritual victory which our present generation so desperately needs.  No longer shall we be victims of chaos and happenstance.  No longer are change and variation enemies to be feared.  

     Deformation and alteration are inevitable in a world such as ours where the eternal purpose and biding laws of a personality like Christ are constantly being worked out.  But when viewed with the eyes of faith, the very chaos and instability which once confused us, now challenges us to take the Christians victory out into an upset world.  We have the faith to do this because “we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are unseen; for the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.”