09.10.2021
“If you are not doing the thing that lies nearest, because God has engineered it; when the crisis comes instead of being revealed as fit, you will be revealed as unfit. Crises always reveal character.”
– Today’s daily reading from “My Utmost For His Highest” by Oswald Chambers
Well said! Unless we fundamentally recognize the sovereignty of God in ordering the steps of our life, we will continue in missing the mark of His present workmanship towards us.
Always double even triple check then resist, with vehement determination and absolute disgust (“hate” with a deep sense of repulsiveness like something smells or tastes terrible), the “goodness” of man when it is trying to overlook and overtake the living ways of God. He is reducing and shaping us into His Goodness. Rejoice exceedingly and humble always before whatever is true and whatever is good in His sight. His mighty hand is on us. What a joy and privilege to know and yield to that!
It is often not the overtly evil or repulsive that displaces our faith in and devotion to God, but an “angel (a messenger whose message is laced with the exquisite and “kind” appeal to our unsanctified and unenlightened soul) of light”. Beware of this line of the work of the antichrist spirit – not directly against Christ, but counterfeiting or replacing Christ. Friendship with the world – the deceitful and deceived – is enmity against God. It means that we don’t love God first and are in love with someone or something else before and above Him. That is idolatry by definition.
“Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”
Matthew 16:23 NIV
Peter was a good and devoted friend on the face of it. “He just acted out.” – Someone will want to cut him some slack. “He isn’t doing anyone any great harm.” But he is! To God and to the Lord, and to himself in particular. AND in the worst way possible. His is a personal and face-to-face challenge and the Devil’s downright and on-target dismissal of the living will and the present work of God the Father thru Christ. Jesus’ intolerance toward this kind of “goodness” obviously is raw and quick. Understandably so. To Him, on this occasion, Peter is not a friend, but an “enemy”.
“Just then a man came up to Jesus and asked, “Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?”
“Why do you ask me about what is good?” Jesus replied. “There is only One who is good. If you want to enter life, keep the commandments.”
Matthew 19:16-17 NIV
The tree of knowledge of good and evil, a false wisdom and appraisal of all things, seldom is considered and weighed as a venomous thing that is “leading us to death”. A serpent’s bite in the desert if you will. Now Jesus was fond of him, but he also sees thru what the “good” young lad is made of: a religious product and a counterfeit of the true goodness that God the Father intends to produce and fill up in him.
True honor or the reverential fear of God always starts with what is honorable in our heart. Indeed it is the beginning of wisdom. If we don’t love what God loves and honor what He honors, no amount of our effort or strife in the guise of man’s love and man’s honor will savage us from our eventual downfall. We are doomed to be deceived and will eat the bitter fruit of self-love and self-destruction.
If we don’t love what God loves and honor what He honors, no amount of our effort or strife in the guise of man’s love and man’s honor will savage us from our eventual downfall.
Now the rod has parted the way, but if someone refused to walk on it, what his end will be? Will God’s mercy and goodness fellow him? And if he refused to be delivered, would someone ever be able to appreciate the goodness and the comfort of the staff in the hand of the Shepherd? Who is capable of it in what God has “failed” to accomplish? Would God then be able to wipe away of our tears have we stayed in Egypt? No. Death will passover us when we refused to passover death.
Now the good news is that God is always willing. His patience is our salvation. How true!
“…Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion.”
Hebrews 3:7, 15 NIV
Are we willing?
“Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.”
Philippians 4:8-9 NIV
“You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life. “I do not accept glory from human beings, but I know you. I know that you do not have the love of God in your hearts. I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not accept me; but if someone else comes in his own name, you will accept him. How can you believe since you accept glory from one another but do not seek the glory that comes from the only God? “But do not think I will accuse you before the Father. Your accuser is Moses, on whom your hopes are set. If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. But since you do not believe what he wrote, how are you going to believe what I say?”
John 5:39-47 NIV
“Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me.
“Now my soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name!”
Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and will glorify it again.”
……
Even after Jesus had performed so many signs in their presence, they still would not believe in him.
This was to fulfill the word of Isaiah the prophet: “Lord, who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” For this reason they could not believe, because, as Isaiah says elsewhere: “He has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts, so they can neither see with their eyes, nor understand with their hearts, nor turn—and I would heal them.”
Isaiah said this because he saw Jesus’ glory and spoke about him. Yet at the same time many even among the leaders believed in him.
But because of the Pharisees they would not openly acknowledge their faith for fear they would be put out of the synagogue; for they loved human praise more than praise from God.”
John 12:26-28, 37-43 NIV
