Skip to main content

 Advent 2 Meditation on the Word

Words from a hymn this morning, “When Jesus spoke the truth was known. When Jesus walked, the way was shown.”

As followers of Jesus Christ, those who believe Him and have received eternal life from Him and the Holy Spirit’s power to live that life, our lives are meant to point beyond ourselves to the Lord, Himself. The Apostle John writes in 1 John:2:5-6 “This is how we know we are in Him: Whoever claims to live in Him must live as Jesus did.”

Jesus Christ is not only the Truth, what is eternally right, He is the Way, the only direction bringing us into intimacy with God. And He is the Life, the only way of truly “doing” that flows directly from “being” made new creations by the Holy Spirit.

John the Baptist’s message was the same message delivered by the Word made flesh, Jesus Christ. It was, “Repent, the Kingdom of God is at hand!” A true encounter with Jesus will result in a life of repentance, a continuous and continual turning from the world, the flesh, and the devil (the normative way life is motivated when directed apart from God) and turning to follow Jesus Christ. That following is neither motivated by human initiative nor accomplished by human effort. The Life Christians have been given is either lived in and by the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit, or it is not lived at all.

The Lord Jesus is returning once again, bringing time to an end, bringing judgement upon all iniquity, wrong-doing, and upon all who have refused to love the Truth of His Good News. For those who have encountered the Lord Jesus, who lives have been forever changed by His grace, His Second Coming brings ultimate deliverance, redemption and the fullness of the Salvation that has been promised to all who will believe Him.

A life of repentance continually moves the follower of Jesus out of any degree of darkness into His greater and greater Light, from one degree of glory to another by the Holy Spirit. That life of following Jesus moves us out of the death that is sins wage into an ever-increasing experience of the Life being lived in the believer by the Holy Spirit. We are walking toward Jesus, keeping our eyes fixed on Him as we run the race set before us, walking away from the world and self-centeredness.

We can walk this way, can live a life of joy-filled repentance because, as John the Baptist prophesied, those who believe will be baptized with the Holy Spirit. We have been soaked in and indelibly saturated with the Life of Jesus Christ. The call upon the believer is to a life and mission that is infinitely beyond our mere human ability. Jesus empowers us to follow Him in a supernatural mission where we find “the serpent’s head crushed” and the demonic poisonous lie that we need something more than God provides neutralized by God’s Word of Truth.

The world is watching to see if the Word and deed match in us. The human impossibility of that ever happening with any regularity is swallowed up by the Life of the One Who has called us, redeemed us, and empowered us to follow Him. He will continue to transform our lives in time and, being His “show & tell” before others, cause them to see that there is Hope for them as well. That they can encounter the Risen and returning Lord Jesus and begin to live New Life, empowered to follow Him, too.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

  TIMING Years ago, I head an old preacher say, “The right thing at the wrong time is the wrong thing.” That statement is an offense to the culture being worshipped world-wide today. There is a lust for the immediate, as a line from an old movie stated, “Immediate gratification takes too long!” We want faster internet, immediate responses to our texts, mobile orders at the ready when we walk into Starbucks. What we want, we demand to have NOW. We are masters at justifying ourselves. “Well, we’re engaged already and we’re going to get married anyway, so what’s wrong with us living together and being sexually intimate now?” God’s timing in human relationship is not arbitrary, it is protective and covering. Sad to say, even some who call themselves followers of Jesus Christ choose to justify their living in sexual sin now, because they promise that they will one day get married. The context where sexual intimacy finds its true meaning and purpose is in the covenant of marriage. ...
Post a Comment
Read more
 THE FOLLY OF IDOLATRY Martin Luther said that the human heart is an idol factory. The truth is that we were created to know and live by the gracious rule of and in the Presence of God who created us. Our peace, our understanding of meaning and purpose can only be truly grounded in God who created us for that meaning and purpose. The rebellion of Adam and Eve, their decision to do the opposite of what God said would make for life, resulted in spiritual and ultimately physical death. They chose to believe they needed something more than what God had provided. Their doomed attempt to try and live life without reference to God as the ground of meaning and purpose did not make life fuller, but emptied it. They wanted to decide what was good and what was evil without God and the disintegration of human life was the consequence. Rather than living in the Presence of God and by the gracious rule of God all around them, they turned from wholeness to brokenness, from fulfilment to scarc...
Post a Comment
Read more
  WORKING AGAINST ALL HUMANITY 1 Thessalonians 2:15-16 “They fail to please God and WORK AGAINST ALL HUMANITY   as they try to keep us from preaching the Good News of salvation to the Gentiles. By doing this, they continue to pile up their sins.” WOW! What a startling statement! St. Paul is making it crystal clear that those who oppose and work to prevent the proclamation of the Gospel are actually “working against ALL HUMANITY.” Why would he write that? It is because the only means of the restoration, reclamation and salvation of humanity is what God has done for all people through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. That is the essence of the Gospel: Jesus Christ. To oppose and try to silence the presentation of the Gospel is to work against the reclamation of all humanity. Who would want to work against ALL humanity? Satan is the name by which he is known. He hates ALL humanity because every human being still bears the image of God, albeit that ima...
Post a Comment
Read more