Skip to main content

 This Advent season gives us cause to reflect on why Jesus’ 1st Advent was necessary for humanity to ever be restored to life as God intended.

Love doesn’t demand robot-like responses that have no connection to an actual will. God’s eternal Love given does call for a response of love in return; love that is a surrender to God’s absolute provision for mind, will emotion, body and spirit. That is what Jesus brings us into by the Holy Spirit.

The hard truth is, that in Adam & Eve, we all took our place and chose to wander away from God’s presence, believing the lie that God was not enough…we needed something more. The lie was that more knowledge was needed…but, God had not given humanity the knowledge of good and evil because we didn’t need it to be fully human; whole and complete. Such knowledge has made us less than fully human.

One result was, ever since the “fall”, humanity has been rudderless. The prevailing winds of the time have filled humanity’s sails, often to great disaster. The prevailing currents of cultures have carried humanity through periods of history, resulting in a variety of shipwrecks.

Another result is that, like some hiker, we decided to get off the clear path with a broken compass and to go our own way. Like that hiker, we have known disorientation, exposure, isolation and loss. We don’t know how to get back home.

Still another effect of the “fall” is systemic…endemic disconnection from others; even from ourselves. We search for meaning and purpose because we cut ourselves off from the Source of human meaning and purpose. Without a “True-North” we struggle with not being known and loved as we were meant to be known and loved. We find that no human being can pour into us a foundation to fill that void. Our hearts become hard, our minds hostile and our deeds take the shape of the evil we thought would give us insight an illumination.

We long for home…to have a place, to be a people, to have a purpose…a place to belong. Jesus has come to reveal to humanity that HE is our true Home. He’s coming again, soon, to take those who have believed Him into that Home. Please open your hearts and minds to believe and receive that love.




Comments

Popular posts from this blog

WHAT DO YOU BLESS? It would be an act of utter folly and disaster were I to choose to "bless" what God will not bless. God's wrath is set against anything and anyone that would try and hinder you becoming all He created you to be and to grow in by being united to Him through the sacrifice and resurrection of Jesus Christ. There is nothing arbitrary about the Word of God. He is very specific on what will make for life and what will not. Human life only becomes human life when the Holy Spirit becomes Life withing a believer. Being united to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the follower of Jesus becomes a new creation and begins to live Life as God intended. God begins the good work, and He is the One who will bring it to competition. Somethings will NEVER make for life. What God calls sin, missing the mark of what will make for life, is always sin regardless of what culture anywhere and anytime say to the contrary. Sin cannot save, heal, redeem, restore or remake...
 INFINITELY MORE Ephesians 3:20-21 " Now all glory to God, Who is able, through His mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think.   Glory to Him in the church and in Christ Jesus through all generations forever and ever! Amen." In the Gospel of John, many of His followers turned away because of the covenant commitment He required of those who would follow Him. That covenant declared that what was to happen to Jesus would also happen to them. We, too, must lay our lives down and choose the will and way of God's Kingdom over all else. Those in the crowd knew that in Jerusalem, the Jewish religious leaders were plotting and planning Jesus' destruction. To follow Jesus to that degree required denying self and the thrall of the world and its ways, even to the point of laying one's life down by refusing to deny the Lord and His salvation. Jesus turned to the 12 and asked, " Are you also going to leave?" ( John 6:67-...
BEWARE DECEPTION   Deuteronomy 18:9 “When you enter the land the Lord your God is giving you, be very careful not to imitate the detestable customs of the nations living there. Deuteronomy 12:29-30 “When the Lord your God goes ahead of you and destroys the nations and you drive them out and live in their land, do not fall into the trap of following their customs and worshiping their gods. Do not inquire about their gods, saying, ‘How do these nations worship their gods? I want to follow their example.’ Pragmatics was the downfall of Israel when they took possession of the Promised Land. To the unredeemed eye, it seemed that the fertility gods and agricultural gods of the pagan nations actually were helping the indigenous peoples. Just because something works does not make it right or good.  God promised to prosper His people if they would trust Him to the point of obeying His Word. God's Word is not empty. When He directs and commands, it is always for...