Is There an Obsession in Your Life?
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Important messages
Oh Lord of Hosts! O
righteous Father!
“The angel of the Lord said, O Lord of hosts, how long
will you have no mercy on Jerusalem and the cities of Judah, against which you
have been angry these seventy years?” (Zech.1:12) I love to find this little word oh in the Bible text. Why do the
translators find it necessary to include it here and in many places? It doesn’t
add anything to the meaning of the sentence; it doesn’t clarify any point. It
doesn’t name or indicate an action; it doesn’t define a noun or a verb. The
translators discerned an expression of passion and for that reason we have it
in this prayer from the Angel of the Lord to the Lord of Hosts. Oh! is an exclamation.
The Holy Spirit, author of
the Bible, gives us an unparalleled privilege, allowing us to observe a scene
that is too sacred for our eyes and unworthy thoughts. It is the communion that
Jesus, the Son of God, had with His heavenly Father in John, chapter 17. There
we see Him opening His heart and expressing His most intense and intimate
desires. In verse 25, He demonstrates His passion: “Oh righteous Father!” It
is holy ground and we ought to take off our shoes. The Lord Jesus Christ in the
Gospel is the same Person, who is called the Angel of the Lord in Zechariah.
We listen to His words as He
comes to the apex of His prayer: “I in
them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may
know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. Father, I desire
that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my
glory that you have given me because you love me before the foundation of the
world. O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you,
and these know that you have sent me. I made known to them your name, and I
will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may
be in them, and I in them” (Jn.17:23-26). Now, that is the Gospel! This is
Christianity! This is the will of the Father in sending His Son into the world.
This is the Son’s deep longing, expressed to the Father.
How Do You Handle Life’s Minuses? by Dave Brueckner
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Important messages
Believe me, I don't say this, because our son wrote this article... But this is one of the best that we've ever posted! I say that because, I think it will be a great encouragement for many of you. Dave is not presenting a theoretical message, but something from the pains of real life. When I first published it in our quarterly "Call to Commitment" in the Summer of 2008, people wrote us about the help they received from it.
We dare not be idealists; life does deal us minuses and we have to live with them. It will really be helpful to us, if we can see God behind it all with His wisdom and love, intimately involved, moving everything for our good. This will be a blessing for anyone...
How Do You Handle Life’s Minuses?
Dave Brueckner
We enter this planet with
nothing in our hands. As time goes on, we accumulate possessions, relationships
and knowledge. We are not to hold these with a tight grip, but loosely, as a
loan from God, because when we exit this earth, our hands will be empty again.
The death shroud has no pockets.
Sometimes we are separated
from earthly possessions before death. If we hold on unrelentingly, we will
grumble and complain, because we feel we were cheated from what was rightly
ours. After Job lost everything, he blessed God and said, “The Lord gives and the Lord takes away.” How do I handle life’s
minuses?
Update 2015: Ten Most Read Articles on CTC
 |
| Update 2015 |
I want to update you concerning visits to this Call to Commitment blog. As of
yesterday, we have had 32,145 visits since our grandson, John, got us started
in 2011. I am thankful to God, because I know and I am completely convinced
that without Christ, we can do nothing. He is the One who enlightens us
concerning His word and He is the One who draws people to read and receive
edification. There are visits from all parts of the world, including places
that I have never visited and from where I know no one.
Last year, on March 17, I made a list of the 10 articles most
read since the beginning of the blogspot. For anyone who would like to see
them, they are listed below:
The Cross Principle
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Important messages
“For He was
crucified in weakness, yet He lives by the power of God. For we also are weak
in Him, but in dealing with you we will live with Him by the power of God.” 2
Corinthians 13:4
Paul understood this principle
well. He saw the need among the believers in Corinth, especially, to grasp it.
The Corinthians were boasting in men and their abilities. He presents the
problem, as he begins his first epistle: “Each
one of you says, ‘I follow Paul,’ or ‘I follow Apollos,’ or ‘I follow
Cephas, or ‘I follow Christ’” (1:12). From there, he alluded to water baptism
and the confidence that the people were placing in the agent who baptized
(v.14-15). In chapter three, he returns to this Corinthian dilemma and
attributed it to carnality, which was based on having mere human mentality: “For while there is jealousy and strife
among you, are you not of the flesh, and behaving only in a human way? For when
one says, ‘I follow Paul,’ and another, ‘I follow Apollos,’ are you not being merely
human?”
This mentality is colliding
with the mind and nature of God, as well as the heart of the message of the
gospel. What is the heart of this message? Paul said it is the “word of the cross” (1:18) and a few
verses later, he declares, “I decided to
know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified” (2:2). The message was singular and Paul had two ways
of defining it, as far as any earthly school of thought was concerned, among
Jews and among Gentiles. He said that they would think that it was foolish and weak! (1:23-25).
It was the message of One who
surrendered His hands and feet to be nailed to a cross, where He hung helpless,
while His life’s blood flowed from His veins. “He was crucified in weakness.”The cross was the Roman mode of criminal
execution; it was a shame and an offense. The person who hung there was nothing;
he was a public disgrace. The world was not looking for a bleeding Conqueror or
a dying Champion, but Paul said that this was our message and he wanted no
other!
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