The peace of being loved...

 

Love is often shown by small things. Hubby washing the dishes when I am tired, or making the bed every day, or buying supper so I get a break from cooking. God is our example. Pink tulips may mean nothing to many, but when I said, “Lord, if I’m to have a wreath of pink tulips for my door, You will need to provide them” — He did. And parking places, directions in small things, help with my chores, so much more.

The same love shows up in many prayers. Once I prayed for expensive ivory carved scrimshaw with audacious words: “Lord, I’d like one and only ask because You love me.” And He gave me two pieces, not just one. Such is the love of God. He shows it off and nothing can change it.

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:31–39)

That love shows up in what most children would say is not love at all, but because I know He loves me, then I know His rebukes, corrections, discipline chastening and discipline also are acts of love. I didn’t get much of that as a child and actually remember only one time. My mother rebuked me for being a sassy know-it-all at the dinner table. God fills in what she didn’t do. These verses are changed a bit to suit my gender:

And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as daughters? “My child, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him. For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every child whom he receives.” It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as His child. For what daughter or son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not His children. Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness. For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint but rather be healed. (Hebrews 12:5–13)

Healing means being rid of the selfishness that is never satisfied because with healing God gives great contentment and peace. Being out of joint is not fun, always wanting and striving rather than being at rest. It is like Jesus in that He gladly abandoned all that He might do the will of God, and when that was declared finished, He sits on an eternal throne and lovingly desires that I sit there with Him.

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. (Ephesians 2:4–7)

PRAY: Lord, nothing has changed in my world. That to-do list is still long. Many prayers are not yet answered, but in the shift from wanting a vague something to being content, I have that peace that goes beyond comprehension. So thankful. Fill me with Yourself that I might glorify You today.

Eternal God speaks into a world of time

Sometimes the Word of God speaks to us in parables, figures of speech, types and other literary devices to make His truth simple for us to understand. We readily understand most of them such as the verses that say God covers us with His wings. Few would assume that means God is a chicken.

However, there are places where He uses eternal language. This means terms that tell of His realm — where time is not an issue and everything is now. He knows about creation before He made it, how it exists, and what happens to it. Most of us struggle with eternal language because it speaks of what God did before it happened as if it already was true…

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. (Ephesians 2:4–7)

As for types or typology, this is seeing how a person or event, usually in the OT, foreshadows another person or event usually in the NT and the future. For example, Romans 5:14 compares Adam to Christ: “Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.”  Obviously Jesus is not like Adam in many ways. Types need careful interpretation and a good understanding of all the Bible. They can easily be given meanings not intended. For instance, the devotional for today was written by a person who ties an OT type too tightly to her Christian experience without realizing that a type is a term that illustrates but is not perfectly like what it typifies.

For instance, Joseph is an OT type of Christ yet Jesus did not get sold into slavery or interpret dreams. In thinking this way, she says that God promised His people that when they entered the Promised Land every place that they would tread had already been granted to them. He didn’t say that He would give it to them; He said that He had given it to them. This is eternal language.

The author of this reading didn’t get it that the land was theirs whether they took possession of it at that time or later. Those who didn’t get it missed out because they did not believe, not because they didn’t take it and enjoy it right away. God knew what would happen and He could say it was theirs even before they were born, never mind how long it took them to figure it out.

This is a type, but not the same as the gift of eternal life. That gift is given to those who Jesus chooses, not offered the gift of faith. Actually, the gift God offers is Jesus. When He gives us eternal life, He gives us the new life of Christ and He comes in, giving us His wisdom, righteousness, even His mind. We are given all that Christ is, including a revelation or a ‘knowing’ of what we have:

I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life. And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him…. We know that everyone who has been born of God does not keep on sinning, but he who was born of God protects him, and the evil one does not touch him. We know that we are from God, and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one. And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true; and we are in him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life. (1 John 5:13–20)

PRAY: Jesus, I know also that none of my salvation from sin is up to me. You give me experiences, even wilderness wanderings, to teach me to listen to You and obey You, to love You with my whole heart. You use all things for my good, to make me more like You. And You know me so well than You offered me Yourself at a time when there was no thought of refusal. You do not throw Your pearls to swine, only to those You choose before the foundation of the world, before we were even born!

True wealth . . .

 

For some, this pandemic has clarified what it means to be well off. Isolation and other factors reveal that money cannot buy peace of mind or physical comfort. Today’s Bible word is RICHES and what it says about the wealth of God, rather than human ideas of being rich.

The OT does speak of material wealth using rich or riches, usually about physical wealth rather than God’s riches. Even though the OT encourages human diligence, it does say that the Lord supplies all material and spiritual riches.

1 Samuel 2:7. The Lord makes poor and makes rich; he brings low and he exalts.

1 Chronicles 29:11–12. Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, for all that is in the heavens and in the earth is yours. Yours is the kingdom, O Lord, and you are exalted as head above all. Both riches and honor come from you, and you rule over all. In your hand are power and might, and in your hand it is to make great and to give strength to all.

Because God is the source of wealth, we can freely share it, trusting Him to supply our needs. Proverbs 11:24 put it this way: “One gives freely, yet grows all the richer; another withholds what he should give, and only suffers want.”

In the NT, riches is used to describe physical wealth, but also describes God’s everlasting riches. These include the riches of His grace and mercy as well as the riches of Christ. Also described are the richness of His kindness, glory, wisdom and salvation. Philippians 4:19 says, “And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.”

These riches from God have purpose in our lives. For instance:

Romans 2:4. “Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?”

Romans 9:22–23. “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, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory . . . .”

Even though “there is no distinction between Jew and Greek” and the Lord “bestows His riches on all who call on Him” the failure of the Jews to accept their Messiah “means riches for the Gentiles” until that time the Jews will be included. Colossians 1:27 and 2:2 says, “God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory . . .  that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery, which is Christ.”

Paul was deeply blessed by God’s plan. He declared in Romans 11:33: “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!”

The salvation plan is rich in many ways —Jesus left the wealth of glory so we could have it:

Ephesians 1:7. “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace.”

Ephesians 2:4–7. “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved — and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.”

Scripture contrasts riches in material ways with being rich toward God and rich in doing good. Some thought they were rich according to outward appearance, but were poor, while others who were poor are described as being rich in Christ. 2 Corinthians 8:9 says, “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.”

GAZE INTO HIS GLORY. Colossians 3:16 tells me, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God” because He saved me, not because of works done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on me richly through Jesus Christ my Savior. 2 Peter 1:10–11 says I must “be all the more diligent to confirm my calling and election, for if I practice these qualities, I will never fall. For in this way there will be richly provided for me an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” Every day I’m to demonstrate that all that I have in this life is nothing compared to the riches I have in Christ!