After a very profitable time with the saints in the tiny village
of Bruce, Wisconsin (pop. 752), I headed up the North Woods yesterday to Superior to visit with my soon-to-be 95-year-old Aunt Marie (her birthday is
June 11, only a day after mine).
I am currently at a Starbucks in Duluth at the branch campus
of University of Minnesota. This is my first opportunity to get online
since I left Chicago Friday. Starbucks and other such free wifi spots seem nowhere
to be found, even off the highway exits.
Life is very unique up here and I’m really loving all the ship
activity on the lake that can be found any part of town you're traveling. Everything here seems to be geared around mariner life. Seagulls abound too!
It is chilly and there was hail yesterday! Only a high of 64 predicted!
A lot of Scandinavian faces everywhere you look so that is also a BIG treat. People are super-friendly and
are quick to tell you of their own Norwegian-American heritage when you share
with them yours. My kind of folk, for
sure.
Superior is ground zero for my father’s side of the family and his
parents came over from the fjord region of Norway just before having their
three children, of which my dad was the youngest.
*****
I’ve got a new article I’m working on and hope to post
tomorrow. In the meantime, here’s this:
J.C. O’Hair once wrote in a song, “If
we’re on the way to glory, Joy should fill our soul;
*****
“There’s an acceptance that never goes
away when God Himself accepts you; when He meets that need, that yearn, that
drive, that thirst deep down in your heart and He accepts you,” says Richard
Jordan (shorewoodbiblechurch.org). "If no one else ever did, so what?!
Who’s going to last the longest? Them or Him?! Whose opinion is going to be the
one that really counts in the long run?
“I know how it is—you look at yourself
and you say, ‘Who could accept me?!’ You know where God the Father finds you
today if you’re saved? He doesn’t find you in a performance system where you’re
living up to standards and pleasing Him because of it.
“He finds you in the one place in all
the universe that He’s absolutely, sublimely pleased and that’s His Son. Whew!
You can relax. All that tension, all that stuff the world, the flesh and the
devil throws at you.
"You can say, ‘You know what, I’m
enveloped in some ever-lasting arms of love, not because of what I do, but
because I’m in Christ.’
“Satan knows that no temptation’s
going to succeed in your life when you remember who you are; that you’re God’s
beloved.
*****
“You remember what the name ‘David’
means? Beloved. It took a David to defeat a Goliath. It took David to destroy
the giant. Listen, it takes someone who KNOWS that
he’s God’s beloved to win the fights
in life!
“When you understand that you’re God’s
beloved, what that does is it makes you a victor no matter what the Adversary .
. . no matter what the world, the system, the culture, the satanic drive and
flow behind that culture; no matter how your old sin nature attacks, the answer
and the victory is in being God’s beloved.
"One of the things the Holy
Spirit prays through Paul who prays for you and me is Ephesians 3:18-19: 'That
you may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length,
and depth, and height;
[19] And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.’
[19] And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.’
“Notice that word ‘comprehend.’ God
desires that you be able to get your mind around something and understand it.
“Colossians 1:27 says, ‘To whom God
would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the
Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.’
“That’s what God wants you to know.
What do you think the Adversary would want to hide from you?
"The devil doesn’t care if you
pack a Bible and study it--just don’t comprehend out of that Bible what is the
breadth, and the length, and the depth, and the height, and to KNOW the love of
Christ, which passeth all knowledge.
“Why does He want me to know? ‘That
you may be filled with all the fullness of God.’ You see, the goal is to get to
know something that will result in God Himself controlling your life. Even the
mundane things of life, every area of your life.
“Then you move into the places where
there are real challenges and struggles. The injustices of life, the harshness
of life, the things that happen just because you were a bonehead, and yet He
says that in all of it, 'We’re more than conquerors through Him that LOVED us.'
*****
“I John 4:10 says, ‘Herein is love,
not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.’
“You know what love is? Love’s not
going out there, saying, ‘Can’t we all just get along?’ Love is what God did at
Calvary when He paid for everything that’s wrong with you.
*****
“Under the law, God gave Israel a
bunch of regulations about how to set things right when they were wrong and in
Leviticus 27: 9-11 are rules about when something is lost and has to be
replaced, how do you determine the replacement value of the thing.
“Verse 12 says, ‘And the priest shall
value it, whether it be good or bad: as thou valuest it, who art the priest, so
shall it be.’
“They bring the thing. They say,
‘Here’s where I’ve been damaged,’ and the priest sets the replacement value.
The value that the priest placed on it, well, that’s what God says the value
is.
"Who is our high priest? You
remember Hebrews 10:10? The verse says, ‘By the which will we are sanctified
through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.’
“You know what your high priest says?
‘Here’s the value, here’s the way I value it. I have by one offering . . .’
“You see, if God was waiting for you
to be perfect, Jesus Christ would have stayed home. He came so that He could
provide perfection for you. Now, if the priest values it that way, God says,
‘That’s the way it is!’ If God values it that way, what say ye?
“When you’re working along in life,
trying to figure out how God thinks about things, that’s where you start
thinking.”
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