“The people who survived the sword found grace in the wilderness — Israel, when I went to give him rest” (Jeremiah31:2). 

The challenges of today will be survived leading to the discovery of grace in a place unfamiliar to us. God has not abandoned His own children. Even when we are chastened, His everlasting love is directed towards us. These things are not allowed to destroy us, but for introspection. It is our responsibility to examine the caliber of our love and devotion towards Him in contrast to the time spent focusing on other things. He draws us to Himself with cords of love. We cannot depend upon what appeared to be the solutions of the past. Only God has the care and the answer that we so desperately need. Cast all of your cares upon Him and lean on Him for assistance. He will take away the reproach of the past. God is about to do wonders in our future. Remember the day of the sword when the enemy of faith appeared to destroy all hope for the future. God rescued us from the hands of the enemy. Now as we go through the wilderness, a lonely and barren place, the same God of our salvation who delivered us then, is with us now! “The planters shall plant again.” “You will eat from your own vineyards on the mountains of Samaria as ordinary food.” Restoration lies ahead for all who put their trust in God. 

“…. they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved” (2 Thessalonians 2:10b). 

The motive behind one’s action is either truth or pleasure. Throughout our lifetimes we have made decisions on the basis of either of these factors. Usually it is pleasure and if truth can be found in pursuit of it, there is an added bonus. It gives one the sense of being right. The path of least resistance in pursuit of wholeness is a pursuit of pleasure and often requires the compromise of truth. The quest for truth must be deliberate unless a compromised version of it surfaces as a substitute for the real thing. The reason truth alone appears to be so unattractive is because it prohibits the full expression of free will. To follow ones heart is to allow the dictates of the world, the flesh, and the devil to dominate the life of the person. The heart unchanged will by nature violate the laws of God because of the nature of sin dwelling within the heart. “They did not receive the love of the truth,” they had not allowed their hearts to be changed by the Word of Truth. They found pleasure in other things which prohibited them from receiving the Spirit of Truth. The Holy Spirit will make the Truth of God sensible thus bringing one to a place of receiving in the heart what the mind is yet to fully understand. It is saying yes to God before He thoroughly explains what one has agreed to. This is faith in God’s Word to take us where God desires for us to go rather than where we wish for Him to take us. The grace to be saved is the grace to accept God’s Word and to be passionate about it. Then our confidence in Him will position us to understand what is reserved, not for the wise and prudent but for His babes. 

“For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily; and you are complete in Him, who is the head of all principality and power” (Colossians 2:9-10). 

Friedrich Nietzsche, the German philosopher who announced the death of God placed his emphasis on the strength of the human personality. “Relinquishing the belief in God opens the way for human creative abilities to fully develop.” “The Christian,” he wrote, “would no longer stand in the way, so human beings might stop turning their eyes towards a supernatural realm and begin to acknowledge the value of this world.” His idea was that “will power is the essence of reality.” 

Today, the death of the God which is expressed through a shift in values is proclaimed even while using religious language. Asserting oneself and accentuating the positive while eliminating the negative supposedly have freed individuals from the bondage of their past. There is a super-human being on the scene that can control the activities of their god and create their own destinies. “If it is to be, it is up to me” has become the motto for daily living. God is about developing the human personality in ways far beyond the wildest dreams of Nietzsche. He thought it was possible to find one’s life while Jesus is about one losing his life that he might find it in Him. The aggression of egotistical behavior contributes to the destruction of the human species rather than the development of society. People are too busy trying to get for themselves what they want rather than having a true concern for God’s agenda and glorifying Him by giving Him what He requires. Listen more carefully to the message of this age or this world system, even in religious circles and you will hear this opposing gospel message seeping into the very center of what is being proclaimed. Only God can complete man and we are complete only in Him. He reigns over the things contributing to the conditions of man’s fragmentation. No one can rescue himself. All are in need of help. All are in need of God who is yet alive and well! 

 “The Lord has made bare His holy arm in the eyes of all the nations; and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God” (Is 52:10).

The Lord has crowned His kings and princes throughout the earth. His strength has gone out to both defy the power of the enemy and to undo the enemy’s work. There are those who bear the mark of royalty and are destined for the throne to rule and rein with Him. The Kingdom of God dwells among men! The question the world is asking is where is the mark or seal borne by those that belong to Christ? There appears to be no distinction between them and others; in fact, those who rebel appear to have the advantage over the faithful. The mark that they bear is within their hearts. Their passion for their King and the desire to see Him rule in righteousness separates them from others. They have an undying hope directed towards the future. Their faith is not wrapped up into small packages limiting them to temporary pleasures. They want the whole thing and will not settle for anything less. As Dr. James Stewart puts it speaking of the coming first of the Lord Jesus Christ, not simply of the emergence in Galilee of One whose power matched His pity and whose pity matched His power. He came on the scene to destroy all the works of the devil and to do and establish the works of God His Father. Those who fully have His mark carry His passion. The time will come when the Lord Himself will manifest His strength among the nations and all eyes shall see it. Things are growing more rebellious today and the hope of many has been shattered by the crises facing the entire world. But the stage is being set for the Light of the world to shine with the backdrop of the darkest of darkness. Salvation will be distinct and sure. It will not be shrouded by the pipe dreams of the ambitious who only wish for themselves the best. True salvation will come manifested in waves of power and glory. He will provide the solutions to resolves our deepest problems. 

“So he answered and said, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind,’ and ‘your neighbor as yourself’ ” (Luke 10:27). 

God gives us the strength to love. The heart is guided in a direction and the soul agrees to give full expression to that particular emotion. To love is not a miracle. It is a part of man’s nature to love. Without guidance the heart gravitates by default away from God. Loving then is not deliberate, but the result of some forceful habit that captures the mind and heart in order to condemn the soul. The passions must be harnessed by an object that is capable of containing all that is offered and reciprocate by providing what is desperately needed in return. When love gives but does not provide the person with what is needed, he eventually becomes bankrupt and bitter having been taken advantage of. Then love is inverted and transforms into hatred that is primarily directed towards the true Lover of his soul. They feel shortchanged having not received from Him what they needed, but refused to give Him what He commanded. When God is loved with the whole heart, the heart is made whole. Then the heart guides the soul with every emotion towards what is good. One will engage in activities using his strength to glorify Him alone. Thought and action is unified when the Word and Spirit are experienced. They empower us to do what we will and will to please the One who provides both will and ability to do for His good pleasure. Then He will show us our neighbor in a different light. We see him through God’s eyes. He directs our affection towards them in ways far beyond the levels of selfishness and competition. We see ourselves in him, thus loving him as we love ourselves. 

“For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?” (Matthew 16:26). 

Values are a means of equating the worth of things in contrast to their usefulness or utility. Whether a thing is valuable or dispensable is determined by the individual. The question directed to Jesus was what value one would place on his own soul. It has to do with ultimate importance, or to consider the ultimate cost one would have to pay for it. Values fluctuate among the immature. True maturity is marked by the development of a value system that is unalterable. They become the center of our lives, standard of behavior, and the stimuli for thinking straight. Jesus asks them to make a value assessment of their lives. He asked them, “What profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world?” If the whole world were gained, would the gaining of it produce peace within the soul? Would the pleasures of the world squeeze you into a fixture that cannot escape the grip holding you tightly to it? The pursuit of acceptance and the trappings of success have the potential of robbing one of any desire for spiritual truth. The world defines the person rather than God giving him meaning for living. Has he really won or lost when his sole desire is to achieve greatness and all traces of humility have faded? The loss of one’s soul is a great loss from which few ever recover. Jesus does not speak of receiving at all when one’s soul is at stake. He speaks of the loss of spiritual sensitivity as severe loss. Even though the person paying may not be aware of the price attached to it, he is still paying more than he would be willing to pay if he only knew the consequences—where his decision is leading. The entire soul is lost in exchange for whatever he thought to receive on his end of the bargain

To lose heart is to become fainthearted when fear holds its grip upon the soul. It is when discouragement occurs as result of failed hopes and dreams. Things were expected in a certain amount of time; a rescue from a dilemma, but the situation remained the same. Time is beyond our control, but not beyond our management. Each moment should be used as an opportunity to further develop the stature of the soul. Each day, a lesson is learned and applied to our eternal destinies so that even our failures amount to success in God. We are being trained for eternity. God is taking us through a course in life that will increase the measure of our faith in Him alone. The outward man is perishing along with its passions for the external and temporal things. As we grow older we grow wiser in our values. We are now seeking those things which are above where Christ is. All other things are being held loosely in light of their temporary value. The confidence we have in Christ is that life as we have known it to be is not the only chapter in our stories. The greatest chapters await us and are yet written regardless of how old we may be. Even death cannot stop what God has in store for us but only serves as a passageway into the eternal. The outward man is perishing, but the inward man is being renewed day by day. Now the gospel message is known to be good news to us. We are able to see the goodness of the Lord that surpasses the temporary elements of this world and to see beyond our own feebleness. The time will come when we will be re-clothed or re-suited with a body conducive to the spiritual development of our souls thus possessing the ability to give full expression to what God have placed within our hearts to be and to do. We do not desire to be naked, but to be clothed in immortality and now we have hope that the God who promises it will deliver. 

“Who has measured the waters in the hollow of His hand, measured heaven with a span and calculated the dust of the earth in a measure? Weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance?” (Isaiah 40:10). 

The question God asks causes us to think of His majesty and glory. It magnifies the Lord and minimizes all other things that once appeared to be so overwhelming and intimidating. It is not a matter of what but a question of who, as we consider what we daily observe as coincidental. Things and people being held together, maintaining their set boundaries, is the result of an ordered plan. The thought and the power displayed in nature, if more carefully examined would have us stand in awe at the wonders of God! He created all things and is above all things. He calls to mind from the greatest to the smallest. The telescopic expanse and mystery of the universe created by His Hand and the microscopic detail and mystery of invisibly tiny worlds both are in need of the invention of instruments powerful enough to examine what is yet to be seen. God has full knowledge of both extremes. “He has measured the waters in the hollow of His hand.” He knows the limits of His creation that is measureless to man. Light years are used to measure the distance of stars and galaxies. Things that appear limitless have their limits. “He has calculated the dust of the earth in a measure”, i.e.; He knows the number of particles of dust existing on planet Earth! He knows how much each mountain weighs and the combined weight of all the mountains in the universe in both pounds and ounces. And not only mountains but hills are accounted for. If He pays that much attention to details, there is little wonder that God knows whatever challenges we may be facing. Nothing happens without God having full knowledge of it, the God who loves us! 

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He shall direct your paths” (Proverbs 3:5-6). 

The words “trust”, “lean”, “acknowledge”, and “direct” illustrate to us the Lord’s mode of operation. Trust is not a mere accent to the existence of God. Even though we must believe on the Lord to be saved, but to accept His Lordship, we must lean on Him. That is, to place the weight of our lives upon Him. To believe on the Lord is to have confidence in what He is able to do. But to lean on the Lord is to believe that He will be engaged in our personal experiences and do what He is able to do for us. Our understanding is limited. His ways are not our ways, nor are His thoughts our thoughts. It is when we learn from Him His ways and paths that they become our own ways and our paths. We must be convinced that He knows what is best for us. He does not lead us in a direction away from His ultimate intentions. He looks ahead and directs us towards those things that would develop character within our lives. To acknowledge Him is to constantly consider His interaction with us in the everyday affairs of life. There is no activity in which we are to be engaged where the Lord is not to be acknowledged. Where He is acknowledged, He is given permission to direct.