I wrote this in 2001

What would it be like?

 

                What would it be like if everyone felt welcome and accepted by everyone else around them?

                What would it be like if intimacy were a part of every friendship and trust was so abounding we forgot how to spell the word?

                What would it be like if you knew every minute of everyday that there were several hundred people that prayed specifically for you that day?

                What would it be like if perfect love filled each heart so much that fear's cold shadow was nowhere to be found among us?

                What would it be like if Satan was the frustrated one, trying all he is worth just to reach the children of God but held a long way off by a wall of love?

                What would it be like if avoiding sin were a reason to gather around each other not to push each other apart?

                What would it be like if mercy was the first thing to come out of our mouths and not gossip?

                What would it be like if the world looked to the church for a definition of friendship not the other way around?

                What would it be like if we were really known as Jesus disciples because of our love for one another?

                What would it be like if sincerity was the order of the day, and falsehood gone from our faces and our words?

                What would it be like if someone's motives were the last thing we had to question?

                What would it be like if Jesus were the reason we went to church?

                What would it be like if Jesus were the reason we went to work?

                What would it be like if Jesus were the reason we took each breath?

                What would it be like?

                What would it be like if we believed that this is what it could be like?

               

Let your kingdom come.

                Let your will be done.

                As in Heaven so on earth.

                Amen.

 

Josh Hawkins

BDS

 

 

unraveling rambling

Grace is the will, passion, joy of God to magnify the worth of God by enabling sinners to enjoy God without compromising His Glory and Holiness!

 

Begin with God!

He has infinite, uncompromised, unchangeable, and immutable, worth.  The worth of every other thing only exists in relationship to His worth.  If His worth were devalued or corrupted the whole of the universe would cease to exist because it was made for His worth and because of His worth and through His worth it is sustained.

 

Sin IS the devaluing of the worth of God.  It is calling God what He is not.  Because God is who and what He is the universe is what it is.  The very existence of all that exists is founded upon and rests on the foundation of the nature and the truth of God as He is.   The word says that all things are, “from Him through Him and to Him”.  It says that He “upholds all things by the Word of his power.”  If His word or His truth were ever falsified or nullified those things upheld by that Word would cease to exist.  That is why sin is so destructive and so hated by God.  It seeks to falsify and nullify God’s Word.  Of course the idea that God could ever be devalued in reality, or corrupted, or His immutable Word falsified or nullified is ridiculous.  It is not a possibility!  God is God and He cannot be changed in any way.  Anything that attempts to do so is almost laughable yet sin still exists.  Why? Because of the grace and for the glory of God it is allowed to exist for a time so that His grace may be revealed and His glory exalted! Romans 9:22 “What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, 23 in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory.”  What was it that God desired to do?  “Show his wrath and make known his power.”  It is worth it to God to send people to eternal Hell so that His wrath and power are made known.  If it is worth it to God it should be worth it to US.  His other desire expressed in this passage is, “to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy” So in both ways God is allowing sin to exist for a time so that something of His nature is revealed and He is glorified. The only way He could reveal both His mercy and His wrath are bound up in Jesus and the cross.  Sin and the “devaluing” of His glory CANNOT be allowed to stand they must be answered, but He is also merciful.  How can these two exist simultaneously?  The answer is that God Himself would have to pay the cost to repair the damage done to His own glory.  If God had forgiven sin and left the cost of that sin go unpaid.  Then the devaluing of His glory would have been accomplished and God would NOT have been God.  Since this cannot be, God must always act like Himself, there had to be another way for the price to be paid if God were to forgive sin.  The only one who had the means of paying that price was God Himself, and so He did.  Thereby revealing the fullness of His glory on the cross by both pouring out wrath and releasing mercy.  Oh the beauty of the CROSS!!