MATTHEW 25 THE FINAL JUDGMENT
There has never been any real secret about God's final intent about what He has planned to do with this world or with those who dwell within it. When Christ comes the second time it will no longer be to heal the land we live in or to fix our broken bodies. Our whole concept of God has been centered on what we want and need for this life and this place, and yet we have never really considered God's mind and emotion about this place or about our bodies. What is it then that God cares so much for? It is the essence of who we are to Him that He wants to save. His concern is our conscious Spirit....those things that make up who we are as we live out a life time within this encasement of flesh.
I don't think that there are very many people who really understand that difference in thought or intent of heart between us and God. I am reminded of the verse as I write of " If my people who are called by name will humble themselves and pray, and turn from their wicked ways I will hear their prayers and heal their land". I my mind I also think the Idea that God would change the plans that He has made because we pray for Him to hold off is not really healthy either. God has meant for us to always be in a mindset of prayer as well as in an attitude of obedience. What does happen so often is that we begin to think that we can manipulate God in some way because of His great love for us. That thought bothers me...that our prayers are for what benefits us more than what benefits God.
One of the biggest areas we have to work on in our faith is that of obedience to what God's intent of heart is. Even in the times when we are trying to be obedient to praying we still want prayer to be beneficial to us as we ask for things from God...but we are rarely interested in asking that His will be done in us. There is actually quite a lot of distance between God and man when it comes to what is important in this life, and if we are ever going to understand God we are going to have to both understand and obey His plan for this world and life we live. Frankly that will only happen when we stop trying to control what is going on and we start to listen to God's word. Jesus has already been very clear about God's intent about this world...from the start it has been a prison used to hold captive His enemies. There is no better place to find out where mankind's loyalties lay than to place him on top of what He has already created as a prison for His enemies. In the final judgment God will need to do nothing more than remove those loyal to Him from the mix. There are so many different theories about what will happen when Christ comes, but we know that we will dwell with God...in His Kingdom which is not of this world. It will be a place untouchable by the hands of evil. We can follow the logic and the trail of thought all the way from the Old Testament accounts through Jesus personal teachings about the events to take place. We can choose for that to be enough knowledge for us in that we need only to understand enough to put our faith in Christ. We can teach that which Jesus taught which is enough to make a personal decision about God in our lives and then to grow in that faith, or we can push the envelope to the point that we allow this world to confuse us with a flood of information and confusion that takes us off track from developing that relationship with God and collecting useless facts that we can never quite understand. All of what Jesus taught us is usable information for developing our walk with God, and yet the constant deliberation over who is right or wrong on any given issue that does not relate to us and our walk with God begins to get more dangerous to us.
I personally choose the unity of God's Spirit to teach me all that I need to know about the future and about what I need to do to ensure my place in the Kingdom. It is something to really think about...may you richly bless God through your life in Him.
THE UNWORTHY SERVANT
I don't think that there are very many people who really understand that difference in thought or intent of heart between us and God. I am reminded of the verse as I write of " If my people who are called by name will humble themselves and pray, and turn from their wicked ways I will hear their prayers and heal their land". I my mind I also think the Idea that God would change the plans that He has made because we pray for Him to hold off is not really healthy either. God has meant for us to always be in a mindset of prayer as well as in an attitude of obedience. What does happen so often is that we begin to think that we can manipulate God in some way because of His great love for us. That thought bothers me...that our prayers are for what benefits us more than what benefits God.
One of the biggest areas we have to work on in our faith is that of obedience to what God's intent of heart is. Even in the times when we are trying to be obedient to praying we still want prayer to be beneficial to us as we ask for things from God...but we are rarely interested in asking that His will be done in us. There is actually quite a lot of distance between God and man when it comes to what is important in this life, and if we are ever going to understand God we are going to have to both understand and obey His plan for this world and life we live. Frankly that will only happen when we stop trying to control what is going on and we start to listen to God's word. Jesus has already been very clear about God's intent about this world...from the start it has been a prison used to hold captive His enemies. There is no better place to find out where mankind's loyalties lay than to place him on top of what He has already created as a prison for His enemies. In the final judgment God will need to do nothing more than remove those loyal to Him from the mix. There are so many different theories about what will happen when Christ comes, but we know that we will dwell with God...in His Kingdom which is not of this world. It will be a place untouchable by the hands of evil. We can follow the logic and the trail of thought all the way from the Old Testament accounts through Jesus personal teachings about the events to take place. We can choose for that to be enough knowledge for us in that we need only to understand enough to put our faith in Christ. We can teach that which Jesus taught which is enough to make a personal decision about God in our lives and then to grow in that faith, or we can push the envelope to the point that we allow this world to confuse us with a flood of information and confusion that takes us off track from developing that relationship with God and collecting useless facts that we can never quite understand. All of what Jesus taught us is usable information for developing our walk with God, and yet the constant deliberation over who is right or wrong on any given issue that does not relate to us and our walk with God begins to get more dangerous to us.
I personally choose the unity of God's Spirit to teach me all that I need to know about the future and about what I need to do to ensure my place in the Kingdom. It is something to really think about...may you richly bless God through your life in Him.
THE UNWORTHY SERVANT
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