Eternal Hope

I remember so vividly my desire to share Jesus with my children, especially as young children. Certain concepts I wanted them to catch with clarity and a childlike excitement. God loves them and wants them to be HIS kids. God is the one who created all the flowers and bugs, and rain and sunshine, and US!! The whole world was PERFECT when God first created it, and then the people God first made started making wrong choices, and doing what THEY wanted to do – just like us.......... But God STILL loved those people just like He still loves us, so God had a plan. He had a son named Jesus, and it sounds awful, but God chose, and His son Jesus chose, to let Jesus die on a cross so God would not have to punish us for our sins. Jesus was punished instead of us, on the cross. WHY??? Remember? God loves us, and He loves us even when we do things wrong, and He still wants us to be HIS kids. And with big tears in His eyes, God knew the cross was the only way for us to become His kids. But HE LOVED US, AND HE GAVE HIS SON JESUS, so WE could be His kids. And we keep teaching, and being good examples, and praying for our kids, and then, prayerfully, what we most long for with our own children, happens. They come to understand God’s love and God’s gift, and they ask Jesus’s gift to be big enough for them, and they become God’s children as well as our own. And even with the ups and downs of being our children in a messed up world, we are delighted because we now KNOW our children are God’s kids. And then in the midst of our joy, and our dreams, something happens, and our child is now in the literal Heaven-centered presence of the God who loves him, and as we walk our journey of grief, the assurance we most want is that my child is running, playing, dancing, fully engaged in delighting in fulfilling in Heaven the potential God has for him. Our grief though can sometimes shadow the God who loves us, and we hear voices and lies we would prefer not to hear. Those voices and lies though need to take us back to God and to the truth of His Word. 2 Corinthians 5 begins with the words that most comfort my heart. For we know that when this earthly tent we live in is taken down (that is, when we die and leave this earthly body), we will have a house in heaven, an eternal body made for us by God himself and not by human hands. ..... we will put on heavenly bodies; we will not be spirits without bodies. In “who” we are on this Earth as children and as adults, the essence of “who” we are is called our spirit, and God is the creator of our spirit, but He also gives us an earthly body to live in. As believers, when our earthly death happens, our spirit immediately leaves our body, and enters the very presence of God in Heaven. And God has a home for our spirits in Heaven – eternal bodies that God Himself has made. So, our children in Heaven have eternal bodies, right now, that God has made. And in studying God’s Word, we realize that the body we had on earth is buried, but some day when Jesus comes back to Earth, that body will be resurrected and reunited with our spirit in Heaven! To be true to Scripture the body resurrected at that time is reunited with the spirit that it separated from. But again, to be true to Scripture, the body God first clothed the spirit with in Heaven, since it is an eternal body, must in some way, be united with the resurrected body. And the essence of all I have written is a powerful promise for the grieving mom. Yes, we will grieve, but our own spirits can be saturated with the truth that our child is literally in Heaven, clothed in a body God has given, fully healthy, delighting in all the perfections of Heaven, worshiping the God who loves him, and waiting too to be re-united with the earthly body she once had. O Father, thank You, thank You, thank You......................... – Bev

The Fullness of God

The Fullness of God Psalm 121:1-4 “I lift up my eyes to the mountains – where does my help come from? My help comes from the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth. He will not let your foot slip – He who watches over you will not slumber; indeed, He who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.” God’s will always occurs in spite of our plans; His will is not hidden like a buried treasure; we cannot control it or force it into happening. Sometimes His will is quiet and uneventful, but at other times it is grand and glorious, but there are times when I am in the midst of what is occurring, and I don’t like it, and I believe it is awful and terrible. I can either be anxious and upset and attempt to search for a better “will of God” than what is occurring or I can trust God and what He is allowing in my life and believe that He has a purpose and a reason for everything that is happening and that He really loves me and has my best interests at heart. I believe at times I am so far away from God that when His will occurs, I do not see it coming and I cannot fathom that this is what He really wants for me. I attempt to control the course of my destiny that He has for me and try to vigorously press the reset button as if this is not supposed to really be what He wants, but yet here I am. It is often during these difficult and raging storms that I stop and pause and I look to the mountains, I look to the ocean, I look to God’s creation in the hopes that by looking to His beauty, I will find Him and His will for me. Taking a long walk on the beach and going on a hike up a mountain trail is always very therapeutic and healing for me because when I go there, I ultimately always look up and take my eyes off the creation, and place my focus on the Creator and it is there I cry out for help. Ephesians 3:17-19 says, “And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord's holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” What is the fullness of God? God is my Helper, my Keeper, my Protector and my Preserver; He will always keep me from harm; He will always come alongside me to help me when I am weak; He will always protect me no matter where I go; He never lets my foot slip because He establishes a strong foundation in my life that is immovable and solid. He is like the mountain that cannot be shaken and I am indwelt with the Holy Spirit and Christ abides in me at the moment of salvation. Christ finds His home in me and I find in Him my comfort, my rest, my contentment and my satisfaction. When I come to a place where I trust His lordship over my life and I am rooted and grounded in His love, I will begin to understand the fullness of God and I will come to know the vastness of His love for me, the breadth, the length, the height and the depth that surpasses all knowledge. Christ’s love is far beyond the capability of human reason and experience and when the Lord fills us with His fullness, we become strong spiritually, we become compelled by divine love, we are totally dominated by the Lord that nothing is left of the human self. His power, His majesty, His wisdom, His love, His mercy, His patience, His kindness and everything that He is, will be transferred into my life as a result of my total devotion to Him. It is the ultimate emptying of myself and the completeness and fullness of Him dwelling within me. And this is the gospel of Jesus Christ, that all believers become as Godlike as possible and that our humanness will be completely diminished. The God that neither slumbers nor sleeps, He is my ever present help in times of trouble, He is my rock and my strength, He is the wind beneath my wings as I dwell beneath the shadow of His wing. – Melody