A Spiritual Cardiogram

February 17, 2012

“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it? I, the Lord, search the heart, I test the mind…”                 (Jeremiah 17: 9-10)

In this passage of Scripture God gives us all a spiritual cardiogram. According to the prophet Jeremiah, our heart is not only desperately wicked, but above all things our heart is deceitful.  We can pay a professional therapist thousands of dollars to help us understand our deceitful heart.  But according to Jeremiah, the reality is our heart is so deceitful only God is qualified to understand it.

I once had the immature belief that if you showed me someone I could understand you would be showing me someone I could love. In my experience of more than sixty years as a pastor I have met people I understood pretty well but found it very difficult to love.  I now have a more mature belief.

In the fourth chapter of the Gospel of John we read that Jesus told the apostles to lift up their eyes before they looked upon the fields (people) of this world.  He was teaching them that if we look at people through the lenses of the way God sees them we will never meet anyone we cannot love because God loves them all.  He loves them so much He became a man and died for them.

Beginning with those who live under the same roof with you, and moving out from there, are you willing to lift up your eyes and get God’s perspective on the people who intersect your life before you look at them?  That can revolutionize your relationships!

This is true because you will never see or meet anyone God does not love whom Christ cannot love through you.

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Posted by Dick Woodward

An Inspired Art Gallery

November 10, 2011

“So the Word became human and made his home among us.” (John 1:14 NLT)

 The Gospel of John is like an inspired Art gallery.  Every chapter of the Gospel is like a room in that gallery with beautiful portraits of Jesus Christ hanging on the walls.  In the first room, the portrait is that of Jesus as the Word that became human to make His home among us.

If you want to communicate a great idea wrap it in a person.  God does that all the way through the Bible.  He communicates the concept of faith by wrapping it in the person of Abraham.  He tells us what grace is by wrapping that beautiful concept in the person of Jacob.

What does it mean when we are told that Jesus is the Word?  A word is the vehicle of a thought.  When I want to communicate thoughts that are in my mind to your mind I use words as vehicles of my thoughts.  God had ‘Thought’ that He wanted to express to this world.  Jesus was like a beautiful comprehensive Word that expressed the Thought of God to this world – and to you and me.

Our loving Heavenly Father decided that an inspired written Word was not enough.  He wanted us to see His expressed thought in human flesh and blood.  He therefore became human and made His home with us so we could see and experience His expressed thought toward us.

The Word not only made His home among us – He wants to make His home in us.  If He has done that for you, what great ideas does He want to communicate to others by wrapping them in your life?

 

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Posted by Dick Woodward