Radical Trust
Season 3
Heaven's Greatness
Coming Good
Leaven of the Pharisees
A Future and a Hope
Sin and Death
Choose Life!
Growth
Thinking
The Glory of God
by JR Dickey
Politicians revel in it, celebrities revel in it, preachers revel in it, everyone except one – the child. No, not teens, but little children. And it’s absolutely critical to ‘get it’, to understand why.
Even as God Almighty gave life to Jesus and raised Him from the grave, so also, He has birthed us with Him to literally an eternal expectation of coming good (that’s the living hope). That means that in Jesus, we will never stop expecting or anticipating more and more goodness. Eternity is filled with God’s goodness.
Yes, Peter nailed it with his Son of the living God answer and may have felt pretty puffed up by the response Jesus gave him.
A friend of mine once asked me what my favorite word was in the Bible. I knew immediately; I said, “Hope”. He then asked me to describe this hope, and I had to think. I told him, “It’s not the wimpy word that we hear thrown around like, “I hope so.” Or “There’s really not much hope.” Or “Hope you can make it.” The hope I think of is an atomic bomb compared to these little firecrackers.
I mentioned in an earlier article that I suspect that something akin to a genetic factor might be involved in the transgenerational nature of sin. I don’t want to ‘pound that table’ too hard because sin is first spiritual and then physical. Nevertheless, it’s interesting to note that Jesus was, as we know, sinless and he was born of a virgin. A legitimate question is, was the virgin birth necessary for His sinless condition? Does the sin we are born with transfer by way of the man?
Perhaps the most basic of our responsibilities ever since our creation has always been – choice. The Most High created a beautiful garden and placed our original ‘parents’ there and implicitly presented to them – choice. Two trees; one gave life and the other brought death.
As Christians, we desire to please the Sower of the Seed and bear much fruit, but without understanding the Word of the Kingdom, we can mistakenly focus on trying to bear ‘fruit’ by eliminating sin in our own strength/efforts. We neglect the fact that upon the cross of Calvary ALL sin was paid for in full.
Has it ever occurred to you that there is something that you’re doing all the time? Every moment of every day it is with you. Even when you sleep, you can only slightly escape it and then when you wake, there it is again. Sometimes, it’s superficial; sometimes it’s profound. It’s your thoughts, your thinking, your mind and/or heart.
And then there’s Jesus and with Him the glory of God is expressed in even more wonderous ways. He asked for and received the most indescribable glory that He had shared with the Father before the creation, before time, existed. The Bible says that that Glory raised Him from the dead.
When you are born again, Christ places His Holy Spirit IN you and He unites with your dead human spirit, giving new life – you become a new creation