“I Will Be With You” (Even in Long beach) When I write the things I do about the Lord and all that is given to me about our shared redemption and Christ’s wonderful truth everywhere all the time, I know that what I write is essentially for me; to keep me going and hopefully mature me as heaven gets nearer for me, for us all, if you place your faith in Jesus. If there is something in what I share for anyone else, then that is truly a gift from God. I am just man. I know that many people share their faith in writing and my case is no different. I seem to have been compelled to write what the Spirit has revealed to me in the way I write it and at the times I write it; I don’t have it all stored up and just unlock it when I feel like it. But, writing has been important to me and I know it ‘recycles’ the Gospel of salvation and the discipleship which follows, at least for me it does and it has been primarily through me writing. Just ask any of the poor souls who were with me in my first re-born years as I was changed from a science and math kind of guy with very poor and, frankly, willingly neglected English skills into a too-much enthusiasm, stream-of-consciousness (as Pastor Lance Ralston described it) new-born Christian in whom every day was filled with remarkably boring (but exciting to me) experiences that were seen through new eyes; eyes of new faith. There were WAY too many e-mails with way too much spiritual emotion, too many words, and not enough careful thought or organization. That didn’t stop me though; Lord have mercy on those who endured my multitude of gushing e-mails back then. I am definitely a babbler. Having said all this, I have come to know that the most important and valuable quality of Jesus was/is His humility, and that He thought, knew, obeyed, and lived the personification of what He said, The Son can do nothing of Himself. John 5:19 I can of My own self do nothing John 5:30 I receive not glory from men, John 5:41 I have not come to do My own will. John 6:38 My teaching is not Mine. John 7:16 I have not come of Myself, but He sent Me. John 8:42 I seek not My own glory. John 8:50 The words that I say, I speak not from Myself. John 14:10 This kind of self-perception and way of living is one that I hope to obtain, by whatever means and however long it takes when the Lord grants my request, “Whatever the cost, You humble me Lord; I cannot.” However difficult the humbling process will be, this humility can only do me good and in turn I know it is the very best of the very best state to be in for intercessory prayer to be heard. It also, I believe, is the very best state to write from and share from. There I’ve done it again; too many words, too long! This is going to be a LONG one due to the immense depth in the five words spoken to us by the Creator God of our constant salvation. It is nothing new for me to say that the Word of God is deep and cannot be fully and completely exposed by men in this lifetime, and maybe not be fully and completely exposed throughout all eternity. We have heard so many of our favorite teaching pastors say, like Alistair Begg, “Let’s unpack this verse” or perhaps, “I wish we had the time to go all the way into this verse today but…” Charles Haddon Spurgeon wrote along similar lines about the revelation the two men on the road to Emmaus received directly from the risen Christ Himself, “The two disciples on the road to Emmaus had a most profitable journey. Their companion and teacher was the best of tutors; the interpreter one of a thousand, in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. The Lord Jesus condescended to become a preacher of the gospel, and He was not ashamed to exercise His calling before an audience of two persons, neither does He now refuse to become the teacher of even one. The readiest way to be spiritually rich in heavenly knowledge is to dig in this mine of diamonds, to gather pearls from this heavenly sea. When Jesus Himself sought to enrich others, He mined in the quarry of Holy Scripture. Jesus spoke of Jesus; here the diamond cut the diamond; the Master of the House unlocked His own doors, conducted the guests to His table, and placed His own dainties upon it. He who hid the treasure in the field Himself guided the searchers to it.” Morning and Evening, Jan 18 / AM These references can be only discerned by those who have been re-born and have the Holy Spirit to bring them deeper and deeper into each blessed truth. The words “I will be with you”, spoken by God and recorded in the Bible to men in various places times, forms and circumstances are words which I have, relatively, ‘skipped over’ so many times until recently. Those words or a combination of words with the same overwhelming meaning were spoken to, or through, Noah, Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, Gideon, David, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and so many others that to mention them all it might become tedious, if it has not done so already. The impact of those words have supernatural volume in Exodus 3:12 where the Lord not only says “I will be with you”, He places emphasis on it for poor Moses, “I will CERTAINLY be with you.” Backing up a bit, I remember a Thursday night Bible study at the home of the Arredondos right after I was saved and hearing a man remark on how Moses was talking back to the Lord in an almost flippant tone; at least a contrary one with lots of questions and reasons why Moses should not/could not be the one to deliver Israel from Egypt. This was the burning bush exchange and after the first question about whether God had picked the right person, that is Moses, the Lord then responded with that immense statement, “I will CERTAINLY be with you.” However, Moses seemed to do as a lot of us do at times and either consciously or unconsciously say to ourselves and to the Lord, “Yeah, yeah, You will be with me, but what about this and that and me?” Perhaps you have had the same experience I have as I thought back on hearing or reading those words, “I will be with you”, and hearing and thinking of them as just coming from people; people that He has put into our lives; people that are good gifts to us, but the words and gifts of the people who bring those words to us can never come close to the magnificence of the Giver of those original words and the magnitude of what those words from Him really mean. It is my hope that I grow to never dismiss, even momentarily and even in the slightest way, the tremendous reality of all that is in God’s statement that He will be with me. Amongst ourselves we may have said and heard these words spoken at various times, and the impact of them varies from seriously heavy to almost dismissively casual. To hear the Creator of everything say this to humans, who seem so small and insignificant in comparison to Him, even the renown Moses, is to hear what is so full of so many kinds of thought, emotion, very deep supernatural-meets-flesh truth, and incomprehensible power as to be as high above us as the heavens are above us. It is only five words, but the Speaker puts all He is into their meaning and into our reality. I can’t explain that or even think that I could come close, but it is what I and a multitude of believers ask, pray, and plead for repeatedly; “Lord, be not far from me!” “Lord, cast me not away from Your presence!” “If You do not come to me and stay with me, then surely it is over, surely I will die!” “Do not utterly forsake me! You are all I want in all eternity!” Please excuse the autobiographical ingredient in this, but until recently my life had taken a turn in which the Lord was with me in power during a time which for me was as alien as thinking I would actually go to, say, Mars; intensely painful as well. I had the blessing of being restored by Jesus at the Ventura County Rescue Mission six Years ago, and then subsequently brought into the family there where I made my home, and a joyful home it was too! The Lord has been with me all along and during another turn in my life for the last seven months as I have moved to what may as well be Mars; Long Beach. I don’t mean any offense, but I have been in love with and attached to my surroundings in nature all my life. My father made sure of that when he moved us to Ojai in 1960, and then we did the same when my family moved back there in 1983. However, at the entrance of Christ into my life, relationships with Him and the people He brings into and out of my life have clearly become the most important attachments I am to have now. Moving with my beloved Daughter and precious Granddaughter to start a life in Long Beach involves finding and establishing new relationships, and having been a person who spent considerable time alone in the sticks and in or on the ocean, I have found Long Beach has no woods to explore and the beach is, well, different than those of Ventura county. So, I found myself feeling lonely. This is a contrary state of being for a child of God and the Lord has been more than generous with Himself in making real to me the fact that “I will be with you.” He has brought many friends and new Brothers and Sisters-in-Christ to me, and more than that, it has been humbling; humbling to the point where I have pleaded and He has become more to me more than ever before, “the best of tutors; the interpreter one of a thousand, in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge – “I will be with you. I AM with you!” “He who’s not busy being born is busy dying.” Bob Dylan, “It’s Alright Ma, I’m Only Bleeding” It’s a long road, soon to be an eternal state for us all. I am glad He is humbling me; it is better to be lowdown and low in my own estimate so that I don’t get my head loped off by the world before I enter in to be absolutely and wholly with Him. The supernatural essence of the Holy Scriptures is that the words are from beyond our time-space concrete reality, and they are from Someone who is also from beyond our time-space concrete reality. He has had them written in an exact particular way to accomplish what He sent them for. So much of the things in the Bible are writings which appear to have happened in the here-and-now which are recorded for us to learn from, and in learning from them we are to be changed by these words through the power of the Holy Spirit. The persistent ingredient of the scripture is that they contain a communication from our Creator that is to ‘point to’ or ‘foreshadow’ Him who is from beyond our world and direct us to the world He is going to bring into existence, beyond our world. His work in the Bible is to bring Himself into our reality in a way that is perfected and complete, as He did when He became incarnated into human form and has shown, is showing, and will show that what the Scriptures say provide infallible proof that He, indeed, has been with us, is with us, and will be with us. The imminent re-appearance of our Lord, all the way ‘with us’, in a way that will be the amazing culmination of His promises and wise love toward us and with us, will be the best yet; so much better than when He was with Adam and Eve and, unlike us, He didn’t have to TELL them that; He certainly was, period. To hear the Lord say to us ‘I will be with you’ is to have Him bring all of Himself, all of Eden, Heaven, time and eternity, all of creation from sub-atomic physics to the vast expanse of the ends of the universe, all of every ounce of compassion and grace He puts into the redemption of humans, and best of all, His promises into these words that will, without fail, come to be an overwhelming reality on all fronts when we are finally brought to our God who wipes away every tear, removes all pain, sorrow, death, the presence of sin, and the curse, and we are definitely, perfectly, ‘with Him’ in the way He intends for those words to say to us, in the way He intends for those words to say to our soul now. “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you. The Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you.” John 14:26 “This age is peculiarly the dispensation of the Holy Spirit, in which Jesus cheers us not by His personal, physical presence, as He will do soon enough, but by the indwelling and constant abiding of the Holy Spirit, who is forever the Comforter of the church. It is the Spirits role to console the hearts of Gods people. He convicts of sin; He illumines and instructs; but the main part of His work still lies in gladdening the hearts of the renewed, confirming the weak, and lifting up all those who are bowed down. He does this by revealing Jesus to them. The Holy Spirit consoles, but Christ is the consolation. If we may use the figure, the Holy Spirit is the Physician, but Jesus is the medicine. He heals the wound, but it is by applying the holy ointment of Christs name and grace. He does not take of His own things, but of the things of Christ. So if we give to the Holy Spirit the Greek name of Paraclete, as we sometimes do, then our heart confers on our blessed Lord Jesus the title of Paraclesis. If one is the Comforter, the other is the Comfort. Now, with such rich provision for his need, why should the Christian be sad and despondent? The Holy Spirit has graciously committed to be your Comforter: Do you imagine, weak and trembling believer, that He will neglect this sacred trust? Do you suppose that He has undertaken what He cannot or will not perform? If it is His special work to strengthen you and to comfort you, do you suppose He has forgotten His business or that He will fail in fulfilling His loving task of sustaining you? Dont think so poorly of the tender and blessed Spirit whose name is the Comforter. He delights to give the oil of joy for mourning and the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. Trust in Him, and He will surely comfort you until the house of mourning is closed forever, and the marriage feast has begun.” Spurgeon, Morning and Evening 10/12 PM ` They went forth for His name’s sake” —3 John 7 Our Lord told us how our love for Him is to exhibit itself when He asked, “Do you love Me?” (John 21:17). And then He said, “Feed My sheep.” In effect, He said, “Identify yourself with My interests in other people,” not, “Identify Me with your interests in other people.” 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 shows us the characteristics of this love— it is actually the love of God expressing itself. The true test of my love for Jesus is a very practical one, and all the rest is sentimental talk. Faithfulness to Jesus Christ is the supernatural work of redemption that has been performed in me by the Holy Spirit— “the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit . . .” (Romans 5:5). And it is that love in me that effectively works through me and comes in contact with everyone I meet. I remain faithful to His name, even though the commonsense view of my life may seemingly deny that, and may appear to be declaring that He has no more power than the morning mist. The key to the missionary’s devotion is that he is attached to nothing and to no one except our Lord Himself. It does not mean simply being detached from the external things surrounding us. Our Lord was amazingly in touch with the ordinary things of life, but He had an inner detachment except toward God. The duty of a faithful missionary is to concentrate on keeping his soul completely and continually open to the nature of the Lord Jesus Christ. The men and women our Lord sends out on His endeavors are ordinary human people, but people who are controlled by their devotion to Him, which has been brought about through the work of the Holy Spirit.” Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, 10/18 Long ago when I was going through a tumultuous time in my life (at least it was tumultuous to me) I was diagnosed as being clinically depressed, whatever that means. I did agree that this was not just a case of the blues which would pass as they usually did, so I reconnected with a good counselor and took time off to address this unusual heaviness of mind, heart and spirit. At one of my sessions I described my depression as a pervasive feeling that “something was wrong all the time, although I can’t put my finger on it and it is relatively constant, and yes, indescribable.” Now that time has passed, I understand as a Christian that the feeling of something wrong all the time is sin in me and in the world. I have often referred to it as a “low hum” of a distressing, if not downright evil sensation, in and around us at all times. I even knew this as I was being counseled for depression, but it came into the focus of my faith clearly once the Lord had healed me of my debilitating condition, at least it became a condition where I could return to work and carry on as a saved sinner in the land of the living. That feeling still seems to persist to this day and I think most Christians struggle with it. So...what do we do about it? We ask God (at least I hope we do) and pray saying. “Lord, why do I keep feeling like this? I know that it is sin. I know that the enemy is constantly trying to get me, and I know that I let him get to me because I have a sin nature inside of me.” The Lord answers and He helps us. However, that still remains as the nature of what is going on for us saved sinners. We try to think about what is going on in the hope of finding an intellectual answer, “It’s the devil; it’s me; it’s this thing; it’s the next thing”, when the answer is spiritual. The foundation of our life of faith, the one point to start from and restart from is simply that we are created to love God and for Him to love us. That’s it. More than anything else, more than ourselves and the way we may feel at any given point, that is what our existence is all about. That’s all that life really is. We, or at least I, go to the intellectual, logical earthly mode of perception about our circumstances and the way we feel about them too often and too easily. “We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. So I find this law at work: although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!” Rom. 7:14-25 Here the trouble in body, mind, heart and spirit that we experience is described in its common, frustrating, and logical (if you can call it that) appearance by a man of great faith; the apostle Paul. He concludes this section with a statement of pure faith which is the answer to the dilemma. It is not “figuring it out”, it is a supernatural, grateful step from here into eternity, so to speak. We can, “Lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.” Heb. 12:1-2 Paul’s last statement in Rom. 7:14-25 comes from a relationship with our God which is steeped in His love and Paul’s reciprocal love; not words or deeds, or the lack of them. Many words and many thoughts when seeking God’s help can serve to diminish our reception. and our giving. of the love we are made to share, above all else, with God. In this state of Him being with us and us looking to Him, we are closest to eternity. “Look to Me, and be saved, all you ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other.” Isaiah 45:22 “I will CERTAINLY be with you” Exodus 3:12 Out of that relationship comes our life and out of that life springs everything that happens, everything that is, and everything that comes and goes in our life. But the foundation of it is that we are to love God; that’s what we have come into existence for. Everything else feels like something’s wrong. So this being the case, I have looked at my life, like everyone else does, and look at what seems to be wrong; “it’s because I don’t have a job, or it’s because my job is bad, or my romantic life is good, or its bad; I don’t have enough money, or friends, or my health is poor, my car is bad, my car could be better”…all these things are outside of us or inside of us and we think, “My life is not right because of these things.” That may be part of it, but, frankly, the Lord looks at this as asks, “What really is your life? Your life is that you were made to love Me. Come back to Me. Look to Me, and be saved. Remember, if I were decide to take you right now from this life, what would be important to you, what would you cling to, what would be important to you? Would it be all these things which are wrapped up in toil and regret; would it be your health, your car, your marriage, your lack of these; is that it? Or would it be your relationship to Me and to all those people I have put into your life? Would you miss them? Would you look at all the things and “stuff”, and plans and schemes and work which has succeeded or failed, and everything else that life seems to be as human in a busy sinful world? Are you going to look at those things and truly say, ‘That’s what is really important to me. That’s what my life really is’”? No. We all know that this is all going to be distilled down to the fact that we will miss the relationships we have. The relationships are going to rise to the top immediately as being good or bad, being full of joy or regrets, or being anything as we are about to leave this planet. Did we have a dependent, loving relationship with the Lord? Did our relationship with Him spawn, color, and guide all our other relationships? We don’t always have to go to these thoughts about what we will feel like when we are going to die to address this feeling of the sin all around us and in us. It is just a deeper way of looking at our need for the words of the Lord here and now as we desperately need Him to constantly remind us, “I will be with you, I am with you.” “Dwell in this land, and I will be with you and bless you; for to you and your descendants I give all these lands, and I will perform the oath which I swore to Abraham your father.” Gen 26:3 “Then the LORD said to Jacob, ‘Return to the land of your fathers and to your family, and I will be with you.’” Gen 31:3 “Then He inaugurated Joshua the son of Nun, and said, ‘Be strong and of good courage; for you shall bring the children of Israel into the land of which I swore to them, and I will be with you.’” Deut. 31:23 “No man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life; as I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will not leave you nor forsake you.” Jos. 1:5 “And the LORD said to him, ‘Surely I will be with you, and you shall defeat the Midianites as one man.’” Judges 6:16 Do we think that it must have been like a divine “hum” of constant reassurance which the blessed men of the scriptures felt as the relentless, faithful promise of God that He will be with them; as if they did not have to recollect it like we do? We do have to live by faith and, like them, we have had and will have the full blissful effect at the perfect times in the land of the living from the fact that the Lord is with us and we can definitely make it until the next foretaste of the eternal home we will share with the God who will be with us in every respect, and this will be very soon, O you of fragile faith and vaporous physical life!! When I think of the life to come in the kingdom of heaven, I try to imagine what it will really be like. Revelation and Christ’s words about it have given us what can only be described as a melody or a flavor of life in eternity. So by way of that melody and flavor (or aroma) I end up thinking about all kinds of actually insignificant things, even “What shall we eat and what shall we wear?” When I am struck by the familiar sound of these particular wonderings, Matt 6:31-33 comes over me and I have to laugh at myself. Weird; taking this worlds concerns with me to heaven. I know it will all be swept away by the reality that truly and completely Jesus will be with me. When we wonder or anyone asks what heaven will be like, it is not without blessing to recount what the Bible has said about our new joyous, painless, tearless, sinless life; and whatever other heavenly images our divine imaginations and sanctified deductions are blessed with by the Holy Spirit to look forward to in rapt awe; it sounds like it is too good to be true! But the one statement that outshines all of these by so, so very far is, “The Lord will be with us!” “Christ Jesus has no quarrel with His spouse. She often wanders from Him and grieves His Holy Spirit, be He does not allow her faults to affect His love. He sometimes rebukes but it is always with a tender manner, with the kindest of intentions: It is “my love” even then. There is no remembrance of our follies. He does not cherish ill thought of us, but He pardons and loves equally after the offense as before it. IF JESUS WERE AS MINDFUL OF INJURIES AS WE ARE HOW COULD HE COMMUNE WITH US? Too often a believer will put himself out of humor with the Lord for some slight turn in providence, but our precious Husband knows our silly hearts to well to take any offense at our ill manners.” Spurgeon, Morning and Evening, 12/3 PM God will be with us in the most profound ways imaginable. Search the Word for these promises and meditate on their contexts. It is a good use of our time.
Posted on: Tue, 27 Jan 2015 04:10:25 +0000
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