Call to Commitment

 (Re-posted from June, 2015) 

Trying to encourage parents to teach their children the right things, I have been sharing the fact that, because I was raised in the church, I have hundreds of hymns in my head, sometimes including all the verses. They didn’t do me much good as a child, but now, it seems to me that these words come to me on a daily basis and I am blessed with their riches.

  This morning was a little different. A line and a tune from a contemporary song kept running through my head, “How deep the Father’s love for us” and I was stuck, because I didn’t know the song. I got out of bed, went to the internet and found these words:

 

 

 How Deep the Father's Love for Us

 How deep the Father’s love for us, how vast beyond all measure;

That He should give His only Son, to make a wretch His treasure.

How great the pain of searing loss, the Father turns His face away;

As wounds which mar the chosen One, bring many sons to glory.

 

Behold the Man upon the cross, my sin upon His shoulders;

Ashamed I hear my mocking voice, call out among the scoffers.

It was my sin that held Him there, until it was accomplished;

His dying breath has brought me life, I know that it is finished.

 

I will not boast in anything, no gifts, nor power, nor wisdom;

But I will boast in Jesus Christ, His death and resurrection.

Why should I gain from His reward, I cannot give an answer;

But this I know with all my heart, His wounds have paid my ransom.

                             Receiving God's teaching... some personal observations

 If you allow me some personal observations, I think you will find them helpful and perhaps enlightening in your own life. The Lord showed me a long time ago that the lessons that He taught me were not for me alone. They were to be shared with others and so over the years I have taught as I learned. Academic studies and appointed themes tend to come out dry and saltless.

 It is probably true in many people’s case, but one thing that I have noticed is that today’s teaching will be built upon yesterday’s and will contain portions of it. Some of the material comes out of a distant past. So then, there is repetition, but fresh truth will grow from it. The things that come today are not necessarily new; they were known before, but now they are emphasized and amplified, as they are woven into the soul.

 It is impossible to give an exact time schedule, as to when a certain subject begins to take root in my mind and heart. It comes without conscious knowledge and suddenly I notice that it is there. What occupies my life and ministry these days, which I will share with you today, I became aware of while I was studying the book of Zechariah late last year. It continues on, as I speak on feeling what God feels and having an obsession for God. A recent article, including a short preaching by Martyn Lloyd-Jones on the presence and personal knowledge of God, added fuel to the fire. Even in teaching on the curse upon the Mormons, I saw their lack of Holy Spirit instruction and the resulting blindness and error.

 I begin to hint on today’s subject. Lloyd-Jones said that our spiritual condition is not evidenced by our activity, but by our relationship with Christ. Of course, we do not become inactive and we are at work, but that is not our measure of spirituality, nor our aim. Our purpose is to know Him with an increasing nearness and depth. A statement by the Apostle John is making a persistent impact. The King James Version, the Spanish Reina Valera and other versions may not give a clear impression of the meaning, but here it is: 

Love to the extreme!

  “Jesus knowing that His Hour had come that He would depart out of this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end.”                John 13:1

 In the margin of the New American Standard there is this note: Or to the uttermost, or eternally. In a note in the English Standard Version, MacArthur adds, meaning ‘to perfection’. I especially like the Spanish Textual Bible: Les amó hasta el extremo or He loved them to the extreme! Here we have something for meditation. That which is translated to the end does not describe the time relationship of Jesus and His disciples from the beginning of His ministry up until the last, just before He was arrested. Rather it describes the extent of His love… the unending extent! To the end means the unending limitlessness of His love toward His disciples. He loved them to the extreme, to the uttermost, to perfection, eternally!

 That was, and must always be, the love of Christ for His own. His love is unchanging and therefore in these days, His love continues towards us to the extreme, to the uttermost, to perfection and eternally! This is the love of God expressed through Jeremiah (31:3) to Israel: “I have loved you with an everlasting love; Therefore I have drawn you with lovingkindness. Again I will build you and you will be rebuilt, o virgin of Israel!” Towards the end of Old Testament history, God tells Israel that He has loved them from the beginning with an everlasting love. When they went astray, he drew them back. When they were defeated and destroyed, He would rebuild them. He guaranteed their restoration… they would be rebuilt. It must be so, because He loved them with an everlasting love.

 Faithful love to an unfaithful people

 This morning in my daily devotions, I read Psalm 78 and here is the title: God’s guidance of His People in Spite of Their Unfaithfulness. I am trying to show how the Lord invades our daily life with His good teaching. First it was the line of the song before I got out of bed, How deep the Father’s love for us, then only a little later came the Psalm.

 A. W. Tozer fiercely criticized the shortcomings of the Church and chided us for our indifference and spiritual weakness. Now, let me read as this tough, but kind-hearted man, bares his soul to show us the unchanging lovingkindness of God: No unsuspected weakness in our characters can come to light to turn God away from us, since He knew us utterly before we knew Him and called us to Himself in the full knowledge of everything that was against us. “For the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed; but my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee.”

 Our Father in heaven knows our frame and remembers that we are dust. He knew our inborn treachery, and for His own sake engaged to save us (Is.48:8-11). His only begotten Son, when He walked among us, felt our pains in their naked intensity of anguish. His knowledge of our afflictions and adversities is more than theoretic; it is personal, warm, and compassionate. Whatever may befall us, God knows and cares as no one else can.

 Take another look at those disciples. They had good intentions, but it seems that they couldn’t get things right. They criticized what they should have lauded, they feared when they should have trusted, they failed, they doubted, and they ran in the hour of crisis and denied Him. I can’t begin to understand the people, who say that if they had it to do over again, they wouldn’t change anything. I don’t want anyone to get the impression that I have been careless or light in my attitude towards my walk with Christ, because that is not the case. But man, I have regrets and I’d change some things if I could. My mistakes are not okay with me, that’s why I lament them. I haven’t done them intentionally, but sometimes people have been hurt. I can only turn to God in prayer for mercy.

 I told the translator and publisher of Tozer’s biography in Romanian that what I liked best of his story, is the part when he was playing checkers with his son and forgot about a speaking engagement. That I can relate to! I make my confession to show that if there is anyone, who takes to heart the wonderful promise of Christ’s everlasting love to the extreme, to the uttermost, to perfection, and eternally, it’s the one who is writing these lines.

 Yet there is daily evidence of His care, His blessing and His guidance. We have seen so much grace in our family and in our ministry right from the beginning. It’s all grace and even the things that I have done right have all been nothing else than His gracious intervention in my life. I take the blame for what has gone wrong; He gets the glory for what has gone right.

It is also the Father's love

 Philip said to Jesus, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.” Jesus answered him, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father” (Jn.14:8-9). Jesus came to demonstrate the eternal, heavenly love of the Father. This perfect, extreme love of Christ for His disciples was also the love of the Father. Jesus made it very clear to them, that not only did He love them, but so also did His Father: “If you ask the Father for anything in My name, He will give it to you… For the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved Me and have believed that I came forth from the Father” (Jn.16:23, 27).  

 The Father and the Son are one in their love for the true believer. If ever Paul showed sublime, Holy Spirit inspiration it was when he wrote of the love of God in Romans 5:5-10: “The love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given us. For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will barely die for a righteous man; though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.” Read it carefully and drink it into your soul, because it doesn’t get any better than this. The cross was the greatest manifestation of the extreme, perfect, eternal love of God.

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 Coming next:

 “I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer; for I say to you, I shall never again eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.”   Luke 22:15

 And

 “Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me.”       Rev.3:20