Rest for a Weary Soul

We love to make much of our choosing God and doing something for Him when it is all backwards.  We did not choose Him.  He chose us.  And our work for God is like a candle set up against the sun when compared to the work of His for us.  We get disappointed when ministries do not go well.  Sometimes we grumble about how tough we have it and how hard is our lot in life.  Take a moment to stare up at Christ crucified.  Listen to Him groan as tries to lift up to gather in one more breath.  Taste the blood that drips down from His forehead and onto His cheeks and falls down to the dusty hill below Him.  Smell the sweat as the soldiers pass by you after they finish flogging Him.  Feel the vibrations of the hammer beating down upon the spikes going through His wrists and into the beams of the Cross.  Watch as His body trembles with another blow across His back.  Weep with Christ as the Disciples flee and Judas hangs himself.  Shake in agony over the crowds calling for His crucifixion and the nine lepers running off without looking back to thank Him for their healing.  Stare in bewilderment at the Disciples who fall asleep in Gethsemane and cannot pray with Him for just an hour.  It is all too much to consider, the agony of Christ as He worked His way up to Jerusalem without a single soul walking  at His side that He could count on to lighten His load; to reduce His burden.  The whole mass of humanity was upon Jesus' shoulders and He kept going to the end without a grumble or a complaint.  We live in a fallen world filled with disappointment and suffering and ministry is almost unbearable at times.  Yet we are not alone.  We have a Savior who lifts up from us the full weight of our troubles and carries them upon His own back as we regain our strength and have our hope restored.  Sit down for a moment and let the Holy Spirit sweep you up in His arms like a shepherd gathering a fallen lamb to his breast and be still with all your sorrows and pain.  Our Lord loves you and He will carry you in your time of trouble and heartache.   Give Him time to hold you for He knows how you have suffered and how hard it is for you to breathe.

The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still."    Exodus 14:14 NIV

The Defining of Pressing Forward

Have you thought much lately about the extreme agony of God as He stood at the brink of the Cross...taking within His body the terrible sinnings you have been working out moment by moment?  Nothing troubled the Lord in His daily dealings with us.  He was not maddened by the rejection nor was He discouraged by the flip-floppings of the crowd.  He pressed forward with the joy of doing everything within the Father until He came to the Garden and He stopped dead in His tracks and His anguish dripped out of Him.  He was not afraid.  He wasn't disheartened or depressed.  He swelled with sorrow as the sins of us came upon Him, as the agony of our precious independence scored a direct hit within.  Ponder the pain of Christ when you take that left turn off the road, when you screech to a halt as the Holy Spirit calls you forward.  Take the moment here to breathe in the air Jesus exhaled as He bore your sins within His body.  You are not the only sinner for which He died but you are the only one living at your spot and that sort of love cannot be taken lightly.

Body and Soul

I was asked recently by one of my children what I thought he would be like if he had a different biological father or mother.  Of course this seems like a sensible enough question except for one misconception.  We don't exist as a person outside the body we have been given. The soul came into the man after the body was formed and not before.  Adam became a living soul or nephesh after the Lord breathed into the body the breath of life.  Before that, there was no "soul" of Adam.   There is no scriptural evidence for baby souls or incubating souls waiting somewhere for God to distribute into bodies.  Rather what we have is that the physical body initiates the birth of the soul.  Thus when the body is formed, the soul comes into place, is breathed into it by God.  The body is picked out and then the soul is created.  When the egg is fertilized by the sperm, it is a mystical moment of conception, not just with the forming of the body but the initiation of the soul as God puts life into place.  We don't exist before the body comes to be but when we are brought to life, we are from the outset God's life.  He breathes into the body its being, its soul.  David talked about the work God did knitting him together within his mother's womb and creating him stitch by stitch as it were.  But moving down just a bit in Psalm 139 to verse 16, we come to the most interesting part of this .  When God saw us in His mind before we were even formed, our days were already established; they were written in His book.  It is as if out moments are a part of our DNA; the days we have written even within our body.  But take this one step further.  Ecclesiastes 3:11 indicates that our bodies also contain eternity in them; the heart is the receptacle of forever.  The body is no mere addendum to the soul...and the soul is not as U2 implies stranded in "some skin and bones".  The body and soul are intertwined as one, each a part of the whole God established when He decided to create good.  The body is either the whipping post or idol of humanist thinking.  It must be neither.  It is created by the Creator to establish the person Christ died to save. You are peculiar in the best sense of the word.  Made by God, particular to God, defined by God, known by God, loved by God.