Jesus did not say, “All men will know you are my disciples…if you just pass laws, suppress immorality, and restore decency to family and government,” but rather “…if you love one another.”
–Philip Yancey
God, may I love others more today than I ever have before.
[sorry, this quote was supposed to go out the morning of Jan. 6th, but I just saw that I scheduled it for 2105 instead of 2015! I didn’t want you to have to wait 90 years to get it! So it got posted at 7pm instead.]
We’ve been praying for God to bring our hearts peace. We’ve been begging Him to open the floodgates of heaven and give us a teaser of the rest to come. We’ve been yearning for the “light” burden He promised, wondering whether we’ve misinterpreted Matthew 11:29-30 because our yokes certainly don’t feel easy or light. Could we be the root of our own stress? Might our ambitions be to blame — at least some of the time? What if our pride — including our fear of being unknown — was keeping us from the rest that Jesus promised?
–Anonymous, from the book Embracing Obscurity
Is your pride getting in the way of you finding the peace and rest that God wants you to have? I know that too often my pride can trip me up in telling me what I deserve, what I should have. When that happens I fall into comparison mode and all of my peace can quickly drain away. May God be all that I desire (because He is certainly all that I need), and may I find full peace and rest through my relationship with Him.
“The Ever-Increasing Intensity of Jesus”
by brian rushing
Many people seem to have the idea that the God of the New Testament is loving while the God of the Old Testament is angry and full of wrath. The thought process seems to be that when Jesus comes on the scene, He decreases the intensity of that fiery, wrathful Old Testament God. But that is most definitely not the case. In fact, regarding those 10 Old Testament laws that God had given to Moses called the Ten Commandments, we see that Jesus did not remove them nor did He even reduce them. No, surprisingly He made them even harder to live up to!
It was one thing to not kill someone (the O.T. Law), but now Jesus had said that anger in your heart can be the exact same sin as murdering someone. It was one thing to not have an adulterous affair (the O.T. Law), but now Jesus had said that lusting for someone else was the same sin. The intensity of the Law was increased dramatically by Jesus.
And when it comes to Old Testament God and New Testament Jesus, Jesus’ idea of judgment is actually intensified as well.
Dr. Packer puts it this way:
People who do not actually read the Bible confidently assure us that when we move from the Old Testament to the New, the theme of divine judgment fades into the background. But if we examine the New Testament…we find at once that the Old Testament emphasis on God’s action as judge, far from being reduced, is actually intensified.
The entire New Testament is overshadowed by the certainty of a coming day of universal judgment…and proclaims Jesus, the divine Savior, as the divinely-appointed judge…. If we know ourselves at all, we know we are not fit to face him. What then are we to do? The New Testament answer is: Call on the coming Judge to be your present Savior. As Judge, he is the law, but as Savior he is the gospel.
Run from him now, and you will meet him as Judge then—and without hope. Seek him now, and you will find him, and you will then discover that you are looking forward to that future meeting with joy, knowing that there is now “no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Rom 8:1).
Jesus was not a reduction of God in any way – not in providing an understanding of the Law, not in being the world’s Judge, and not in love. Instead, Jesus is a clear look at who God always has been and always will be. He clarified for us how intense the standard of God is, how intense the wrath of God’s righteous judgment is, and how intense is the love and grace that God has provided to make us into holy people fit to be with Him.
I pray that Jesus continues to be ever-increasing in intensity in your own life!
(Quotes in today’s post are from Knowing God by J. I. Packer)
Isn’t there something we can give to God that won’t belittle Him to the status of beneficiary? Yes. Our anxieties…. God will gladly receive anything from us that shows our dependence and His all-sufficiency.
–John Piper
We recently finished Christmas. Sometimes during that season it is hard to remember that God is not Santa, though we often reduce him to some type of cosmic Claus. He is not just a beneficiary that gives us things when we want or need them. He is much more than that. He wants a real relationship with you. And He wants you to depend on Him and find all of your needs fulfilled in your relationship with Him more than you finding fulfillment only in what He can physically “give” to you in wealth or in health.
The importance of being humble:
If there is good in you, see more good in others, so that you may remain humble. It does no harm to esteem yourself less than anyone else, but it is very harmful to think yourself better than even one. The humble live in continuous peace, while in the hearts of the proud are envy and frequent anger.
–Thomas à Kempis
It is so hard for us to place ourselves below others, to esteem them as more important than ourselves. And yet, that is exactly what Jesus did for us. Though immeasurably more worthy than us, He placed Himself lower than us so that He could serve us. Self-sacrifice. Humility. Love.
As a follower of His, it is now time for me to do the same for others.