Tag: Christ

GOING TO HIM

By Rick Mathes

John 16:5 But now I am going to Him who sent Me; and none of you asks Me, ‘ Where are You going?’

When Jesus turned His back on the “JC & Bros. Construction Co.” he gave Him mom a big good-bye hug and set Him mind like flint on His journey to the Cross. He never wavered because He knew the old world of chaos and underestimation would self-destruct unless He accomplished the atonement of sin on the death state as the final sacrifice for sin. The wake of human depravity and suffering followed Him as His arch enemy Satan declared war and marshaled all his fallen angels against one man, Jesus of Nazareth.

He left the:

• Joy of His creation to return to the fullness of His former glory.
• Power of healing, raising the dead and miracles to His Apostles.
• Fruitfulness of His teaching for the written record of His Word, the Holy Bible.
• Friendship of His followers to be continued in the fellowship of His believers.
• Love of the believers to be further exploded in the proof of His resurrection.
• Suffering in hopefulness to a hope of healing and future glory.
• Tribulation of all religion that claim that Jesus is not the only way.
• Persecution that fades to very little compared to His sacrifice.
• Violence of the devil’s war on the Body of Christ without restraint.
• Death of souls that became transformed into eternal life.
• Eternal death of all to and eternal life in glory or in hell to all.

Oh yes, He left the ground and lifted up into a cloud that transported Him the highest heaven. Five hundred honest souls witnessed this astounding act of God to bring His victorious accomplishment Home. So He left us only to send His Holy Spirit ten days later.

The exchanges of all we are for all He is becomes the evidence of the born again experience. The old leaves and the new come. It is all a matter of returning to our first nature and that is to walk in the holiness of God. This means we must not love the world or that love of the Father will not be in us. The Holy Spirit is right by your side to remind you of this until Jesus returns.

GODLY TRUTH

By Rick Mathes

1 Timothy 4:7 (NASB77) ⁷  But have nothing to do with worldly fables fit only for old women. On the other hand, discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness;

“What is truth?” Pilate tossed out at Jesus and those with no objective values stumble over the same question. When everything is relative, nothing is truth in the absolute: chaos, insanity. There needs to be a firm basis; such as a 12 inch ruler to measure one foot. Well out Bible is the cannon, yardstick of truth. The Word of God teaches, “Thy Word is truth.” And Jesus stated without equivocation, “I AM the way, the truth and the life.”

We as Godly followers of Jesus have an upward Gospel that soars to the third heaven of truth and beyond. When you have a constant of faith, there isn’t room for speculation. The truth becomes absolute under all circumstances and settles all questions. But this awakening must come from a pure heart, one willing to stand naked in the presence of a Holy God. It’s this clear conscience that gives you a peace you have never known.

Genuine faith can pass every test including martyrdom, dying for truth. All those of faith were effectually called to keep the faith down to their dying last breath. They knew in the early church that they were saed and thi was a truth they built their faith upon. They tok a good pattern or themplet o life and fought the good fight on their knees in fervent prayer, a prayer of thanksgiving.

While you bask in truth, you will experience a peaceful life full of grace and peace that surpasses our limited understanding. There is nothing more exhilarating than honesty. It is an interior cleansing that makes your character sparkle in a brilliance your deceitful only self never even had a clue it existed. When Jesus owns you, He teaches you the truth through the Holy Spirit that loves to give us gifts or righteousness. There certainly is justice for all when we come to the judgment seat of God.

The lusts have left and the fruit of the Holy Spirit begins to ripen around you as you walk blamelessly in god’s truth. So ask yourself, “What is truth?” and recall that Jesus answered, “I AM the truth! No ne comes to the Father but through me.” We that are chosen are exclusive and that’s what separates us from the rest of the world. They are all going to Hell without Jesus!

GOD WITH US

By Rick Mathes

Matthew 1:23 (NASB77) ²³ ” Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and shall bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel,” which translated means, ” God with us.”

When Adam walked in the cool of the evening with God he was demonstrating our first nature which is to be holy and sinless in the presence of the godhead itself. Adam fell and as our natural father, we have also fallen and it is now second nature to violate God’s simple laws. The wealth of His blessings wasted away and mankind slipped into a poverty of soul that was not devoid of Jesus. As our pre-incarnate hero, He found us when we were lost and joined us in our employment, in its most humble condition. He resides in both our joys and sorrows as we see fellowship with the saints in prison. No place is too lonely and full of weeping that a song of praise will not cure because He inhabits His praises and dwells in all our song and merriment.

How blessed it is to know that even in the midst of our “bottom of bottoms”, he is there!

We all agree that He is all knowing, all powerful and all present. This means that even in the course of our most evil act, He knew we would do it before we knew we would do it. He empowered us to do the evil deed. And He was there and could have stopped us anything He wanted and didn’t. Hold on now, we were in His will!

Now understand there is His perfect will and His permissive will. When we have repented of our sins and are engaged in the business of the Lord, we are in His perfect will. But when we are obstinate and stubborn, he withdraws the protection of His Holy Spirit and lets Satan have a go at us as He did Job. This is His permissive will similar to the backside of a Persian rug: all knots and tangles.

Both conditions are in His will.

We both will be astonished at His genius in forming us to His chosen perfection when we step into the other side. All that we have been through has exactly orchestrated to display us in glory as a symphony of His creation. A caterpillar turned into a butterfly. How all creation of angels in heaven and demons in hell will be in awe of us as we have been passed through the test of time and nature to return to our rightful place, walking once again this time with dam and all the saints of the past who were tried and tested as we had been.

 

GOD SO LOVES

By Rick Mathes

John 3:16  “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life

Let us marvel together over God’s genius when He thought up and then spoke the world into existence. Not to mention inventing blue for our sky. How marvelous can it be when for His glory He made man in His image and likeness? My mind has just gone on disconnect just writing this. All of it is for us to honor Him wqith: our mind, heart and soul with all of our best effort. Whew!

Selah

For a season, Satan has been allowed to rule kingdoms of this world and prowl around like a devouring lion. What must we do?

Jesus has given us permission to come to Him with an empty hand. It’s an invitation to the rest of your life. As fellow Christians, we are on our way to an experience we won’t soon forget. The world as we know it does an amazing 180o like nothing we hae ever seen much less imagined. He beckons us to step forward, out of all the billions that populate this planet and stand before Him all alone.

When I was facing the booking sergeant and I gave him my ring, watch, belt and shoe-laces, I stood there all alone: no friends. When we step through that turns-style we will be face to face alone with Him. Our friends won’t do us any good at the white throne judgment.

Now we need to rationally consider our options. Without Jesus, what is your “plan B.?” If you don’t have a viable alternative to a resurrected Savior, don’t feel alone; neither do I nor does the world He loves so much. So what choice will you make? I strongly suggest that you should believe in Him. For 2,000 years plus, He has never let anyone down: proof enough?

Now I don’t know about you but I don’t know when I will have had my last chance nor do I know the day and time of my last heartbeat. So it seems very wise to me for you to accept Him as your Lord of your life. When you renounce the world, all of hell’s fury will be unleashed on you. So brace yourself to stand on the promises of the Lord because in the last analysis, He’s all we have in fact, He is all we ever needed.

 

GOD MAN

By Rick Mathes

Romans 1:4 who was declared the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead, according to the Spirit of holiness, Jesus Christ our Lord,

Through the Spirit of Holiness, He was declared with power to be the Son of God. I can’t even get my mind around this incredible fact. The Creator took on the humanness of the flesh as you and I have. This leaves me breathless and numb with awe.

Make no doubt about it, Jesus is God. He couldn’t say, “I am God” because it would have been considered the absolute sin of blasphemy. He said He was God in every other way He could and neither Jew nor Gentile had any doubt about who He claimed to be, and neither should you.

What would it be like to have walked with Him those 3 plus years? His precious feet rested on the dust He created us with. The Eternal One became man and dwelt with His creation. He is doing the same today through the Holy Spirit that resides in you. This unifies and binds the Body of Christ in one accord. If He returned to walk in the flesh once again, could you look Him in the eye and confess Him as your Lord? If not, even Father God cannot help you from the wrath to come.

Because He was and is God, He is unchanging. That is why the written Word is so important to us. What you see of Him there is here now. We just don’t have the heightened senses to see or hear Him and His angels hovering around us and interacting in our day to day affairs. What a comfort to know that the they are here and He cares about us now in our present circumstances.

As God He knew from then until now what we would think before we thought it. He is all knowing; even our darkest thoughts are on the Imax screen for Him to see. We may have a false front we put on for others for our benefit but that means nothing to Him because He swee our hearts as they really are. God forgive us!

I don’t understand it  but God bled and died on the cross like the man I would have been had He not taken the cross in my place,. The Holy Grail of His love was His person. He came in the flesh and left in the new flesh. He’s coming back and we will return to our first nature and walk in the Shekinah glory of God Incarnate declared to be ours by Father God.

GOD IS

By Rick Mathes

Titus 2:11 (NASB77) ¹¹  For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men,

God appeared to all men in the form of a man. This is call hypostasis. How can Jesus be fully God and flly man at the same time? I didn’t know but that doesn’t mean God doesn’t understand it. What we do know iis a lot about god and a lot about the man from Galilee. Let me take a moment to list few attributes of god and similar words that may give us both a fuller picture of Him.

God is:

• Personal          human, internal, secret, novel, characteristic
• Eternal             divine, nonmaterial, lasting, timeless, permanent, unfailing
• Spirit                life force, ghost, emphasis, seat of feeling, courage
• All-knowing     divine, well-informed, omniscient, ruling, governing
• Sovereign        masterful, national, dominant, ruling, governing
• Unchanging     eternal, permanent, stable, regular, infallible
• Good               skillful, desirable, benevolent, obedient, moral, innocent
• Righteous        right, moral, judicious, accurate, wise, principles
• Just                 legal, impartial, judicious, accurate, wise, principles
• Truthful            correct, honest, realistic, literal, naïve
• Holy                 virtuous, perfect, etical, irreproachable, impeccable

God has:

Saving Grace: It is entirely of His choosing that we are saved. I know don’t like to accept it but the truth is that you had absolutely nothing to do with your getting saved. It was all entirely of His doing.

Schooling Grace; The Logos comes alive when the Holy Spirit comes upon you and the lessons learned from the Word of God get deeper and deeper the more you study the Word. We will be studying God forever.

Sanctifying Grace; The pursuit of holiness is futile. We can’t chase it, find it or cquire it apart from the imputation of His holiness on us.

Serving Grace; The natural result of unmerited favor is to bless those who don’t deserve it. This is a clear sign of a real life change and that is to love the unlovely without their asking to be loved.

GO!

By Rick Mathes

Hebrews 4:12 (NASB77) ¹²  For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

Read the Word of God to:

• Know
• Grow
• Glow and
• Go!

It is the mirror for the Father’s heart and guidance for all those He loves and sent His Son to die for. His character and integrity is on every page with His blessing and best wishes for you to pursue holiness and the joy of your salvation.

Every word that falls on good soil will grow and prosper but it’s our calling to spread the seed. Shockingly the most fertile ground is in your church! Our post-modern watering down of Christianity has starve the souls of believers and has given unbelievers a false sense of security. Most of the condemned in hell were faithful church attendees. Too many demons have found their way into the pulpits and leadership of churches because the sheep could care less about sin, hell and death or the absolute truth.

The Word of God, like fresh water, will nourish your spiritual thirst and wsh away your sins so that you can be a sparkling clean lamp on a hill to enlighten all to the narrow way to glory. When danger approaches clean, above board, bright and in an attack mode, the Word of God becomes a Sword that slays evil by “It is written!” The Holy Spirit is the upholder and defender of the Father’s instructions and He will not tolerate the devil to move the street signs and guide us into the flames.

But back to the basics: a new baby Christian needs milk to grow on not a sword for combat. Bless the Holy Spirit for being so tender in His teaching and guidance through the volumes of the Bible. The Word is deep enough to drown an elephant but shallow enough for an infant to splash around in.

It time we grown and need to feed on the meat of the Word; If you have a Pastor that follows the Master, hang on to him! You need a Paul to learn from and a Timothy to pass it on to. That’s how faith to faith has worked these last 2,000 years. Jesus is the bread of life and it’s in Him that we grow strength and press on to His return!

 

 

GIVE ME SOME

By Rick Mathes

John 4:15 (NASB77) ¹⁵ The woman •said to Him, ” Sir, give me this water, so I will not be thirsty, nor come all the way here to draw.”

We cannot exist physically without water nor can we exist spiritually without the living water that only Jesus has to offer. Water is a word used to denote cleansing by the Word of God as in baptism or doing spiritual laundry. The woman at the well wants it but isn’t sure what it is. We are told we need to be baptized with water and fire: repentance and spirit-filled. The Holy Spirit is the fire but that’s for another devotional. Let’s focus here on the attributes of this living water.

It is thirst removing. Nothing can satisfy nor quench that burning thirst in our soul but what the Lord has to say in our Holy Bible. We hunger and thirst for this refreshment and our Lord graciously put His 66 books of heartfelt appeal to grace in our hands to read, listen, learn, apply and evaluate.

It is life preserving. We try to get our life together on our own and the more we try the more it disintegrates. Only from what proceeds from the mouth of God will keep us in Him until the Day of the Lord arrives!

It is filth purging. You can’t remain stained in sin when you are washed in the blood of Christ. His words cleanses from all unrighteousness in the power of the Holy Spirit.

It is softening. Even the biggest men with the hardest hearts will fall to their knees and cry out, “Lord, save me!”

It is fire quenching. Amen! The Word gives us fire insurance and even the gates of Hell cannot prevail against us.

It is spring creating. You will be filled to the brim and your cup will runneth over. Your veins will just pumped with the Gospel until you shout out, “Jesus is Lord!”

It is fruit producing. You will know them by their fruit. If He is truly their Lord, their walk will speak more loudly than their talk.

It is heaven ascending. Like the fragrance of a bouquet of flowers, your reading, speaking, singing and thinking the Word is very pleasant to the God whose hand wrote the holy pages of our Bible, whose Son lived the spoken word of God even unto death, and whose Holy Spirit quickens the message of our eternal Creator in your mind, heart and soul.

GIVE AND GIVE

By Rick Mathes

Philippians 4:15 (NASB77) ¹⁵  And you yourselves also know, Philippians, that at the first preaching of the gospel, after I departed from Macedonia, no church shared with me in the matter of giving and receiving but you alone;

I was blessed to preach a service in a well-known national shelter for the homeless. The chapel was paced out with toothless, smelly, rag-tag winos to be there. I preached my heart out on encouragement and then an unexpected thing happened. The staff took an offering! I was shocked because this was a multi-million dollar ministry and the men were penniless indigents.

After the service I blew my top at the officer in charge, “How greedy can you get to squeeze the last drop of blood out of these poor homeless men? He explained, “Giving is a vial part of worship and that bum’s quarter was sure worth more in sacfificial giving than was your check fo $25 last Sunday. They are learning an important lesson in worship aren’t they? Wow!

WE are not under the law anymore so anyone who says yu must tithe, give 10% of your adjusted gross income to the church is mistaken. We are to give to Him what we don’t ned and I call that the “ouch!” level then it is a sacrificial giving: no pain, no gain.

Cheerfully give that amount freely and without worry about how you will get along without it. The Lord will provide and show you the way. So when you go to church with $20 in one pocket for McDonald’s and $10 in the other for Jesus, give $30 and joyfully sacrifice the lunch. You won’t miss it!

Now there has to be a consistency, so give an a regular basis systematically every Sunday or once a month but pray on each gift and give joyfully. This will give you joy especially if you don’t worry about how you can live on less. You need to send a few dollars for investment in the Great Commission.

So simply give what the Holy Spirit lays on your heart regularly and cheerfully. This really pleases our Lord. I  know as a ministry leader that I can earnestly pray all day but if I don’t pay the bill with tangible money, they will turn out the lights! AMEN?