The Continuity of The Bible

The theme in Psalm 136, 137 & 138 is God's enduring Mercy and it repeats through these three songs.

I am so amazed at how God designed the Bible, (For I believe the Bible is all God's doing from cover to cover in any language) and I am constantly amazed how certain books and passages line up.

Psalm 136 seems boring with its repetition but when reading it as listening to a leader speaking and then a crowd giving the echo, I imagine God smiling. It is a great song of praise and worship.

Then psalm 137 follows and leaves the wonderment of why so sad a follow-up? It recounts the horror of Israel's captivity in Babylon. The atrocious treatment at the hands of their captors.

But because the sadness of 137 follows immediately after 136, I return to the refrain "For His mercy endures forever" (or as it actually reads "For His mercy forever!) You can't help but recall the mercy of God. People are seldom merciful, but God never changes. His mercy endures forever.

The life of a person on earth is so short as to never even cause a blip on the eternal. Yes, the captivity was horrible, but God's people have the remembrance of God's everlasting mercy. The Rock of Salvation, A Mighty Fortress.

And Psalm 138, a song of David placed seemingly out of context, for David wrote it long before the Babylonian captivity. Yet reading 136, 137. & 138 altogether, the song continues and completes.

For David is the author of the chorus of 136 as he writes 138:8b: "Your mercy, O LORD, endures forever"

How awesome to have thee three Psalms lined up to be read as one song, with a common chorus.

"Your mercy, O LORD, forever"

Amen

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God Designed Christianity for His Glory!

Paul's letter to Ephesians reveals the awesomeness of the grace of God that saves us. Our God is so awesome!

The entire first chapter of this book explains the simplicity of our faith. He established all of Christianity before we even knew anything about Him. He laid down the foundation of our faith in heaven in Christ Jesus before man existed.

That's one of those things we can't really get our heads around but when we're born-again and in Christ Jesus by faith, we can see the kingdom of God. We can undeniable accept our life in Christ because God is the power in us to do so.

And then there's the great explanation of grace in 2:8-10 "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works. lest anyone should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them."

We have something supernatural that the religions based on the world ideas cannot even comprehend. Heavenly God is the Author of the Christian faith. We are saved in Jesus' sacrificial death for it pleased God to do so to save everyone in the world. And all those who accept Jesus as Savior have that predestined power of Christianity in this new life in Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

Amazing Grace!!!!

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Salvation Verses

Get Over It & Get Useful!

For who makes you differ from another? And what do you

 have that you did not receive? Now if you did indeed receive it, 

why do you boast as if you did not receive it? 

1 Corinthians 4:7

Is God honored by an over exuberant expression or emotion when He does something through or to us?

Where do we get the right to pat ourselves on the back for the supernatural experience of the filling of the Holy Spirit? If a confessed Christian makes a scene about God's powerful manifestation, do they actually understand the Spirit is Almighty, Holy God, who is due all reverence,  honor, and praise? 

"I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you" John 14:18

"But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify of Me" John 15:26 

Jesus and the Holy Spirit are one and the same, as God the Father and Jesus are one and the same. God is God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. One part of the Trinity does not manifest Himself differently than the others. Nor should we expect God to do anything contrary to what He has shown of Himself in the Bible. His power is His own and He does not share it. When we are surrendered to be used in a supernatural way by God, God will honor Himself as Almighty God, not as an emotional experience, or exuberant display.

"Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever" Hebrews 13:8

Our examples in the Bible, in their relationships with God, didn't talk about having a spiritual experience when God used them some way.

When Ezekiel was taken up by his hair in a vision, he was astonished by the vision, not because of the Spiritual encounter. (Ezekiel 8:3)

Daniel wasn't emotionally giddy when God showed him the interpretations of King Nebuchadnezzar's dreams. He gave God glory for His work, not taking glory that God spoke to Daniel himself. (Daniel 2:19)

On the rooftop, when God showed him the sheet filled with things to eat, Peter didn't jump up and down and run around exclaiming of his awesome Spiritual experience. It was the work of God he declared when he understood the true meaning of the gospel going to the Gentiles. (Acts 10)

Let God be God and be useful when God wants to use you. After all, we are commissioned to simply to obey in giving the gospel (Matthew 28: 18-20). It IS exciting to know we have the supernatural power of God to help us do His work, but that doesn't makes us anything except a born again Christian, created for every good work (Ephesians 2:8,9,10). We all have the same God and access to His power to work through us whichever way God prefers to glorify Himself. 

"But to each one of us grace 

was given according to the measure

 of Christ's gift" Ephesians 4:7.

Get over it and get useful!

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The Glory of God

"Only fools say in their hearts, "There is no God" Psalm 19:1. NLT

There is no comparison to God. 

God is One. 

God is The God. 

There is no other thing, being, or imagined object that we can place next to Him that will make Him less than He is. It is a foolish concept that mankind can 'make' a god. It was God who created us from nothing. Our puny attempts to use our 'wisdom' to imagine what a god should be like, what a god should do for us, what a god should act like toward all of us in one lump, is unimaginable to the utmost absurdity. 

God's glory is who He is. God's glory is in our knowledge of Him, as little as that is. That we should even have any knowledge of Him is awesome in itself. 

Science has studied the human organs, but science still has to step back and look on with curiosity about the special aspects of the human body. In the same way, we don't know why one-celled organism do what they do in the world. We can send tiny machines into far space but that gets us no closer to knowledge about life itself. It only brings more questions. It brings only a hungry desire to look somewhere else.

"It is the glory of God to conceal a matter. But the glory of kings to search out a matter" Proverbs 25:2.

Reverence is all we can feel for God. An awed fear that GOD is there at all. That He condescends to speak with us, to walk with us, to help us, to do anything at all. Yet He does it all and more than we can think of Him doing. God's glory is untouchable by man's effort.

"For the LORD gives wisdom; From His mouth come knowledge and understanding" Proverbs 2:6

God's Glory Is Him

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