Tuesday, May 15, 2018

Words from the heart of thanksgiving

     You have spent time with the Father giving adoration for who he is, who Jesus is, and who the Holy Spirit is.  Patience has taken you into the inner sanctum of your heart where he is waiting to meet with you.  You have spent time waiting on the Holy Spirit to point out unconfessed sin until you are empty.  The adoration and confession is never complete.  Your focus is on Him and Him alone.  There can be no other focus for you.  Jesus is everything to you and he has chosen to live in you and through you to the fallen world around you.  Because He has taken you through the adoration and through the confession, the relationship is one of awe in who Jesus is.  That's what he wants to be through you.  So during your confession you have admitted and repented from those things that have hindered you for so long.  Being free gives you the ability to move into thanksgiving.  Do not be deceived!  This is not thankfulness for what you have had any part in.  This thankfulness is for being set free to have Jesus not only reside in your heart but to also be your heart.  Like me, you and everyone else on earth have nothing to offer the Holy God we have encountered.  We are thankful for his willingness to come, live, die and then rise from the dead so that we can surrender ALL of our lives to his will and his heart.  Thanking God for his creation should be interspersed with the glory that creation reflects from him.  This time of thanksgiving is where we are so much in awe of who Jesus is, the wonder of his work here on earth to bring about our salvation.  This time of thanksgiving is for the continual presence of the Holy Spirit in his speaking into our daily lives.  Thanksgiving has all to do about God and nothing to do with you and I.
     This thankfulness is for the sole purpose of placing us in awe before a grand and glorious God.  We pass this thankfulness onto our friends, families, children and even our enemies as a testimony not of ourselves but of God and who he is.  If you haven't taught your children to adore God, confess ourselves to God and haven't provided that sense of awe before God; Jesus has not had his way in your heart and you need to start again.  Nothing but Jesus in all aspects of our lives.  Nothing but his love that took him to the cross running through us even though we don't deserve that grace.  Humbled by adoration, confession and thanksgiving you know on no uncertain terms that Jesus living in and through you is all that matters.  If you find yourself falling back into the world, begin again and be right before God.  God living in you and through you gives power by the Holy Spirit to discern what is right and what is wrong.  If you are involved in anything but the holy work of God, you aren't worshipping Jesus.  Go back to the beginning and begin again.  This process may need to be repeated hourly, daily, weekly, or as Paul suggests, always in order to put away the things of the world not just for you but for those who fellowship with you.  The process has taken you into the holy of holies.  The intimacy you find with God will be overwhelming.  If it's not, then go back to the beginning and surrender again.
     Adoration of God brings us into that space where we can come up, sit beside the Father, confess our sins and be forgiven.  It's in that space that we can be thankful for all that comes from Him.  Things from this world never satisfy.  The road is wide that leads to destruction but narrow is the road that leads to eternal life.  Have you chosen the narrow road for you and yours?  Jeremiah did in 24:15.  "As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord."  Nothing else.  Job stated, "Though he slay me, yet will I praise him."  The disciples (all but one) left everything to follow Jesus and to live Jesus day by day.  There is not exception eve if the world teaches it.  There is only one way.  Period.  No other way by which man may be saved.  Time is of the essence.  Jesus has told us to go and make disciples of all men.  Are you one?  Is your life focused on Jesus or religion?  Is it more important in your church to have order and coffee in the foyer than to let the Spirit order his service.  Time should not be an issue.  Eventually, if you seek Him daily, the adoration, confession and thankfulness will be more instant in season than out of season.  The Holy Spirit will give you what you should say when that moment comes.  Don't hold back.  Because of you people will either be saved or lost.  He has called me.  He has called you.

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