Homeless Refugee – Seeing the Signs, but Deciding not to Play Crazy 8’s - Purity 596
Purity 596 12/08/2021 Purity 596 Podcast
Good morning,
Today’s photo of the bright light of sunset over an otherwise dull and
almost colorless landscape near Easton NY comes to us from my fiancé who captured
this sight near the end of November on the way home from work. My betrothed is on my mind today because she
is currently travelling from New York to South Carolina where she will reunite
with her daughter, Rachael who will be going through graduation ceremonies from
the United States Marine Corp on Friday.
While I haven’t met my future “stepdaughter”, I am immensely proud of
her accomplishment and her decision to serve our country. My brother, Michael,
is a Marine so I have a small idea of what Rachael’s decision involves and it
is my dear hope that she doesn’t decide to use her newly acquired killing skills
to dispose of the man who proposed to her mother in her absence. But seriously, I am looking forward to
meeting Rachael and can’t wait until TammyLyn and all her kids are back in the Empire
State on Saturday. Until then I will be
praying for their safety and wellbeing.
I apologize for “mailing in today’s message” but I have my wires crossed
this morning as my heart is preoccupied with TammyLyn’s safe travels and the
message I received today wasn’t clear.
Suffice to say I received a message that involved Christian numerology
that pointed to the number 8 and how it points to Christ the Redeemer. I am by no means any expert in Christian
numerology and didn’t want to craft a message that would point to the importance
of numbers rather than the appearance of Christ, so I scrapped the whole thing
before I got started.
The number 8 seemed to occur a lot in my exodus from my former life and
at different times in my faith walk I have interpreted its appearance a sign
that God was directing my path, but I didn’t want to present it as “gospel” or
make it a thing.
Sometimes our spiritual experiences can be very meaningful and profound
to us but are hard to convey to others and when we talk about “the numbers” it sounds like we are a little
unbalanced. There may be something to “the
numbers” in our walk but man is it difficult to draw conclusions from them or
to understand what they mean. It’s
difficult to discern whether or not “the numbers” are pointing to something
meaningful or if we are just crafting a meaning and creating a narrative in
which “the numbers” work.
So instead of making a message about the number 8 and inviting you down
the rabbit hole, I have decided to stay above ground. Besides if I told you about the mystery of “the
numbers”, I’d have to kill you…. or outsource the contract to some one that has
recently been “born again hard” and trained to kill.
But seriously, again, when we walk in the spirit we have to be careful
what messages we listen to and which ones we share and when we are disturbed in
our emotions/souls or preoccupied by other concerns in our circumstances it is
probably best to err on the side of caution and remain silent.
So for today’s message I decided to get a little help from my friend from
the UK, Philip Hand. Philip sent me the
following message and poem not long ago and I thought I should share it to
encourage my friends today. Philip wrote to me the following message and the
poem “Homeless Refugee” that was inspired by his pondering. Philip writes:
“There is an old saying that we don't understand someone until we have
walked a mile in their shoes. If we see people through eyes of compassion
instead of hate, it turns the world into a different place.
I asked the question: “What would we do If our world was turned on its
head, as it does for many people who live, breathe, and know joy and pain as we
do?
“Homeless Refugee
What would we do,
what would we see if we became homeless refugees?
Made to move on,
no place to rest.
Begging for bread
treated like a pest.
Blindness itself
might be forgiven
but to walk on
past as if we were driven.
Broken, lost,
scared
now that's just
not fair.
Does anybody see?
Does anybody care?
Is there any hope
for us in this dark world, out there?
The Lord himself
came down from heaven to save the lost.
To take our fears
and wipe away our tears.
He knew the cost;
he paid the price.
For us he laid
down his Holy life.
Broken, battered,
and nailed to a tree,
so great a price
was paid for me.
Healing the
heartache and sharing the pain.
Conquering death,
rising again.
Forgiveness, set
free and life without end.
If only we would
trust in King Jesus.
Our God.
Our Savior.
Our friend...”
-Philip Hand
So if you
are on the road or just feeling all alone like a homeless refugee, know that
today is the 8th of December and some people say that number points to
Christ the Redeemer and when you put your faith in Him, you are given a new life
and the protection that comes from the Lord God Almighty.
If there is
nothing else you take away from today’s musings know that God loves you. We
know this because Jesus Christ came for us. He’s no longer “away in a manger”.
He is seated at the right hand of the Father. He is alive and well and He will
come again to rule and reign forever.
And when you place your faith in Him, you have a home forever and you
will never be alone again.
So keep
walking and talking with God. He will protect you. He will guide you in the way
you should go, and He will lead you home.
Today’s Bible verse is
drawn from “The NLT Bible Promise Book for Men”.
This morning’s meditation verses are:
2 Peter 1:5-8 (NLT2)
5 In view of all this, make
every effort to respond to God’s promises. Supplement your faith with a
generous provision of moral excellence, and moral excellence with knowledge,
6 and knowledge with self-control,
and self-control with patient endurance, and patient endurance with godliness,
7 and godliness with
brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love for everyone.
8 The more you grow like
this, the more productive and useful you will be in your knowledge of our Lord
Jesus Christ.
Today’s verses are a continuation from yesterday’s verse 4,
that spoke about the promises of God and how we are to share His divine nature
and “escape the world’s corruption caused by human desires”.
Today’s verses encourage us to respond to the promises we
receive when we come to faith in Christ. The Apostle Peter is encouraging us to
“make every effort” to grow as Christians by endeavoring to pursue “moral
excellence, knowledge, self-control, patient endurance, godliness, brotherly
affection, and love for everyone.”
The progression of this list towards love for everyone
indicates that our Christian faith is much more than just following a bunch of
rules. We are to develop our minds and hearts to not only abstain from sin but
to be a living expression of God’s love, which is to be shared with all people.
Peter rightly points out that when we live out our faith in
this progressive and continuous manner we will be more “productive and useful”
in our knowledge of Jesus Christ. We will know Him more and will become more
aligned to the purpose that God has for us.
So we should never be bored in our Christian faith, God has
given us precious promises when we come to faith in Christ, but we are called
to continue to grow and mature in our minds, in our personal conduct, in our
emotions, in our love for others, in our relationship with God, and into our
purpose for His kingdom.
So make every effort to respond to the promises that you
have received from God. God has a plan for your life that includes your personal
growth but also is meant to share the love of God with others. Our lives of faith are supposed to be a rich
dynamic experience and a process of sanctification and abounding love. So make every effort to take each step in the
marvelous progression that the Lord has put before us where we will see
ourselves transformed as we fulfill the purposes that God has for us.
As always, I invite all to go to mt4christ.org
where I always share insights from prominent Christian theologians and counselors
to assist my brothers and sisters in Christ with their walk.
Today we continue sharing from A.W. Tozer’s Advent
Devotional – From Heaven, for Day 12, as
this current resource series will lead us to Christmas Eve.
As always, I share this information for educational purposes
and encourage all to purchase A.W. Tozer’s books for your own private study and
to support his work.
DAY 12
CHRIST CAME FOR ALL
For God did not send his Son into
the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
JOHN 3:17
When the Word says that God sent His
Son into the world, it is not talking to us merely about the world as
geography. It does not just indicate to us that God sent His Son into the Near
East, that He sent Him to Bethlehem in Palestine.
He came to Bethlehem, certainly. He
did come to that little land that lies between the seas. But this message does
not have any geographical or astronomical meaning. It has nothing to do with
kilometers and distances and continents and mountains and towns.
What it really means is that God
sent His Son into the human race. When it speaks of the world here, it does not
mean that God just loved our geography. It does not mean that God so loved the
snowcapped mountains or the sun-kissed meadows or the flowing streams or the
great peaks of the north.
God may love all of these. I think
He does. You cannot read the book of Job or the Psalms without knowing that God
is in love with the world He made. But that is not the meaning in this passage.
God sent His Son to the human race. He came to people. This is something we
must never forget: Jesus Christ came to seek and to save people. Not just
certain favored people. Not just certain kinds of people. Not just people in
general.
We humans do have a tendency to use
generic terms and general terms and pretty soon we become just scientific in
our outlook. Let us cast that outlook aside and confess that God loved each of
us in a special kind of way so that His Son came into and unto and upon the
people of the world—and He even became one of those people!
If you could imagine yourself to be
like Puck and able to draw a ring around the earth in forty winks, just think
of the kinds of people you would see all at once. You would see the crippled
and the blind and the leprous. You would see the fat, the lean, the tall, and
the short. You would see the dirty and the clean. You would see some walking
safely along the avenues with no fear of a policeman but you would see also
those who skulk in back alleys and crawl through broken windows. You would see
those who are healthy and you would see others twitching and twisting in the
last agonies of death. You would see the ignorant and the illiterate as well as
those gathered under the elms in some college town, nurturing deep dreams of
great poems or plays or books to astonish and delight the world.
People! You would see the millions
of people: people whose eyes slant differently from yours and people whose hair
is not like your hair.
Their customs are not the same as
yours, their habits are not the same. But they are all people. The thing is,
their differences are all external. Their similarities are all within their
natures. Their differences have to do with customs and habits. Their likeness
has to do with nature.
Brethren, let us treasure this: God
sent His Son to the people. He is the people’s Savior. Jesus Christ came to
give life and hope to people like your family and like mine.
The Savior of the world knows the
true value and worth of every living soul. He pays no attention to status or
human honor or class. Our Lord knows nothing about this status business that
everyone talks about.
When Jesus came to this world, He
never asked anyone, “What is your IQ?” He never asked people whether or not
they were well traveled. Let us thank God that He sent Him—and that He came!
Both of those things are true. They are not contradictory. God sent Him as
Savior! Christ, the Son, came to seek and to save! He came because He was sent
and He came because His great heart urged Him and compelled Him to come.
Tozer, A. W. (2016). From heaven: a
28-day advent devotional. Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers.
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