Feeds:
Posts
Comments

>You always have a choice!

August 10, 2010 by Fritz

>

“You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.” – God (Genesis 2:16-17)

With these words the Bible says God set man on his way. But why allow temptation and the opportunity to really mess things up? Why not keep mankind, along with the the pristine world, safe and protected? Because of Love.

“Love … does not demand its own way” – 1st Corinthians 13:4a, 5b (New Living translation)

Evil tries to eliminate choice and allow only its own twisted way but God always promotes freedom and, with it, responsibility for one’s choices. That is the way God is.

“I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live” – Deuteronomy 30:19b

The first man made the wrong choice and we’ve been suffering since, but God sent the “Last Adam”1 who made the right choices and offers freedom to all who will choose him.2

– fritz

1 – Last Adam: 1st Corinthians 15:45
2 – Adam & Christ compared Romans 5:13-15

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | Leave a Comment »

>Making the Longest Journey

August 9, 2010 by Fritz

>

Love … Puts up with anything, – 1st Corinthians 13:4a,7a (Message)

Someone said the longest journey is the distance between the head and heart.

We have a difficult home situation with people needing to be there, needing to be cared for, seemingly unable to make personal adjustments to cooperate or even to just get along – it has been an almost constant source of stress.

My lovely spouse and I have discussed and grappled with how to respond in love toward the family, but though I can know this is God’s path, it hasn’t resonated until I read this verse again and heard God speak it into my heart.

“Love puts up with anything.” I don’t think this means that anything goes but that I, with God’s help, can have real heart felt compassion and forgiveness as we live together.

– fritz

Posted in Love | Leave a Comment »

>Prophets in Sackcloth Underwear

August 8, 2010 by Fritz

>

(Isa 20:2) At the same time spake the LORD by Isaiah the son of Amoz, saying, Go and loose the sackcloth from off thy loins, and put off thy shoe from thy foot. And he did so, walking naked and barefoot.

Most, reading this story about the Old Testament prophet Isaiah, focus on his naked three year walk as an object lesson of God’s coming wrath. This time I noticed the sackcloth underwear.

Sackcloth, known to us as burlap, was a course, scratchy, and uncomfortable material not usually intended for underclothes – except in times of extreme mourning, repentance and crying out to God. Isaiah, that fiery prophet, had been wearing sackcloth!

True men and women of God, like Isaiah, pronounce judgments not in anger or hate but in love, always crying out to God for mercy and grace. Pharisees can’t understand this, but Jesus did,

Mat 9:13 “But go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice: for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”

-fritz

Posted in Judgment, Mercy | Tagged , | Leave a Comment »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »