TEA CUPS

In my china cabinet I have several lovely china teacups.  One of these I bought in Halifax, Nova Scotia some 25+ years ago.  Another one I bought in England at about that same time.  The rest of them  came from my Aunt, who brought them from Scotland as a young woman.   I think they would be at least 100 years old.

They mostly just sit in my cabinet gathering dust, but a few years ago I used them every week for awhile.  It was after I had retired, and during the day I was home alone most of the time.  As I had my devotions one day, I was impressed with the well known verse from Revelation 3:20 that states Jesus said He would come in and ‘sup’ with me; so I decided to provide a place for this.  I would set out a couple of my special teacups, fill them with coffee or tea and imagine my Lord sitting with me, to ‘sup’ with me.  It was very easy to just tell Him my heart as we had our ‘tea party’.

This brings to mind ‘cups’ that our Savior mentioned in the Scripture.  The first one, which stands out to me, was in the Garden of Gethsemane on the night before He was crucified.  He prayed “O Father if it be possible, let this ‘cup’ pass away from me.”  I have read different thoughts on this; some say He was afraid of the physical part.  I do not believe it was physical at all.  I believe it was my sin and your sin that He knew He would bear.  He was not to just carry it as a load, He would drink this ‘cup’ of sin, and it would become a part of Him.  He knew it was at this point of time when sin and God would clash, and God would have to turn away from His Son.   Oh, what a bitter cup!

Jesus accepted that first ‘cup’, and now He can offer us a ‘cup’, the cup of communion as He says “this is my blood which was shed for you, drink ye all of it.”  Are you ready to drink of that cup?  Am I ready to accept what He did on Calvary and give Him my life, and my all?  Are you?

When we have given Him our life, we will then be able to do as He asks in Matthew 10:42: “whoever gives to one of these little ones even a cup of cold water because he is my disciple, surely I declare to you he shall not lose his reward.”

I may have some lovely bone china teacups, probably valuable only to me, but He provides the blessings to fill my spiritual cup, to last for all eternity.

“Fill my cup, Lord,

I lift it up, Lord!

Come and quench this thirsting of my soul;

Bread of heaven,

Feed me till I want no more—

Fill my cup, fill it up and make me whole!

(By Richard Blanchard)

GOD'S INDESCRIBABLE GIFT!

II Corinthians 9:15 “Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable (indescribable) gift.”

Christmas Day, a day we give and receive gifts, and a good day to talk about God’s unspeakable, amazing, beyond our comprehension, gift.  This gift was Jesus, all wrapped up in love.

God’s ultimate gift to us was His Son, Jesus.  Of Himself, Jesus said “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked Him and He would have given you living water.” (John 4:10)

Because of God’s wonderful gift, we can have other gifts such as the ‘gift of a relationship’.  John 1:12 states that all who receive Him, those who believe in His name, He gives the right to be called the sons and daughters of God.

He also gives the ‘gift of His Grace’.  Ephesians 2:8 says, “For by Grace you have been saved…” We have received the ‘gift of Eternal Life’, as according to Romans 6:23 “but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

One reason I think of God’s gift as ‘indescribable’ and perhaps part of Paul’s thinking in II Corinthians 9:15, is that it is greater than we can grasp with our finite minds.  Jesus was God, 2nd person in the Trinity, totally God.  Yet in order to become the propitiation for man’s sin, He had to take on a human body.  In doing so He had to become a human being.  Now we have something beyond our imagination, something incredible, indescribable.  He was still God, just as though He had never been man; yet He was man as though He had never been God.

And He did this as a gift to each of us.  “For God so loved the world that He gave (this indescribable gift) His only begotten son, that whosoever believes on Him will have eternal life.” (John 3:16)

So at this Christmas Season, as we open all our wonderful, no doubt expensive gifts, remember the most unspeakable, indescribable,  gift of all, ours for the taking.  This Gift is Jesus!!

IMMANUEL

In Matthew 1:23 it states “they shall call His name Immanuel, which, being interpreted, is God with us.”  Why, you may ask, was Jesus not called Immanuel as His given name?  The notes in my Scofield Bible say that ‘according to Hebrew usage, the name does not represent a title, but a characterization.’  It shows that He really was “God with us”.  It also shows that the diety of Christ, our anointed one, was emphasized at the very beginning of the New Testament.

The word “Immanuel” consists of two Hebrew words:  ‘El’, meaning God, (the reason the word is sometimes spelled ‘Emmanuel’) and ‘Immanu’, meaning “With us”.  It is pronounced ‘ih-MAN-yoo-el’, and is used only three times in Scripture; the first appears in Isaiah 7:14, with prophetic words spoken by Isaiah about 700 years before Christ.  It is used again in Isaiah 8:8, and then in our verse of Matthew 1:23, which is quoting from Isaiah.    Matthew is applying it to the child to be born of Mary, the virgin betrothed to Joseph.  In Jesus, God would become a man that He could save the world and bring man back to God.  Through Jesus, Immanuel, God with us, would redeem and restore this relationship between man and God.

David tells us how God is with us as our ‘Immanuel’ in Psalm 139:7-10:

“If I go up to the heavens, you are there,

If I make my bed in the depths, you are there.

If I rise on the wings of the dawn,

If I settle on the far side of the sea,

Even there Your hand will guide me,

Your right hand will hold me fast.”

How can we lose?  What do we fear?  Immanuel, God is with me.

A 4th century prayer known as St. Patrick’s Breastplate, says:
“Christ be beside me, Christ be before me,
Christ be behind me, King of my heart;
Christ be within me, Christ be below me
Christ be above me, never to part.”

‘Immanuel’, God with us.
                      He is our God 
                                         He is truly with us!

GRACE

“The Maker of the stars would rather die for you than live without you.”  This comment made by Max Lucado, jumped out at me as I was reading his devotional Grace for the Moment.  Read this again, think about it, absorb it, make it personal:  “The Maker of the stars would rather die for me than live without me!”

 Wow!  This boggles my mind, brings tears to my eyes, a lump to my throat.  How can anyone refuse this love?  How could I have ignored this for so long?  So I have trials, so I feel alone at times, so I can’t do all the things I used to do.  I do live in this world of sin, and hurt, and death.  But Jesus loves me!  He has made a way for me to spend eternity with Him as a princess, a joint heir with Christ my Savior.  Man is born unto trials as the sparks fly upward, but Jesus is walking with me, through the fire, through the flood, and all the way to Glory.  He who made the stars loves me and provided the way for me to live with Him!  This is Grace!

Our Awesome God

"Behold heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain You.  How much less this temple which I have built."  I Kings 8:29

When we think of God, we have a tendency to place Him in a box of our making.  We think limited thoughts about Him when in fact He is unlimited.  Our minds simply cannot contain Him, as He is infinite, He is endless, He is limitless.

We say God is a mystery because we cannot understand His infinity.  We must accept the things we do not understand by Faith.  God has given us His Word to help us learn about God, and by searching God's Word we can find true facts about God called 'Attributes'.  An attribute is a characteristic that is true about God and how He reveals Himself to us.  Love, for instance, is not a quality that may grow or diminish, but it is the way He IS, as with all of His attributes.  He IS all faithful; He IS all merciful;  He IS completely immutable;  He IS all and always Holy.

A.W. Tozer tells us that "The God we must learn to know is the Majesty of the heavens, God the Almighty Father, Maker of heaven and earth, the only wise God our Saviour.  He it is that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, who stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain and spreadeth them out like a tent to dwell in..."  The Psalmist of Psalm 145:5 says:  "I will meditate on the glorious splendor of Your majesty and Your wondrous works."

Prayer:  O Lord!  Enlighten our minds that we may know You as You are, so that we may perfectly love You and worthily Praise You.  In the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.

Our vows, our prayers, we now present

Before Thy throne of grace;

God of our fathers!  O be the God

Of their succeeding race.

--by Philip Doddridge

God, Do You Hear Me?

 Have you ever asked God if He can hear you?  If He can see you?  I think David felt this way on occasion.  In Psalm 55:1 he pleads with God, “listen to my prayer, O God, and hide not Yourself from my supplications.”  And in Psalm 61, verse one, it sounds as though he is pleading “Hear my cry, O God; listen to my prayer.”

There was a time when I thought of God’s knowing me about the way a speaker knows the person in the back row of a large auditorium full of people.  Yes, I was in the crowd, I was in the door, but I was only one of the masses.  Of course this also gave me reason to feel that if I did something not becoming a child of God, no one knew.  Wow!  These thoughts were really putting God into a box!  I was bringing Him down to our very human level.

When Jesus Christ came to earth some 2000 years ago, and ultimately gave His life on Calvary’s Cross to pay the wages of sin, He tore away the veil separating God and man. We are now one with God if we have accepted Christ as our Savior.  He states in John 17:21 “That they all may be one, (just) as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, and they also may be one in Us…” and in verse 23 “I in them and You in Me, in order that they may become one…”

Ephesians 3:17 makes it very clear that Christ dwells within me.  From the Amplified version we read “May Christ through your faith (actually) dwell (settle down, abide, make His permanent home) in your hearts!”

Read what it says in Colossians 2:9 &10 (again from the amplified): “For in Him the whole fullness of Deity (the Godhead) continues to dwell in bodily form (giving complete expression of the divine nature).  And you are in Him, made full and having come to fullness of life (in Christ you too are filled with the Godhead—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,--and reach full spiritual stature.)”

So I ask again, “God, do You hear me?  Do You see me?”  And the answer is “of course my child, behold, I am with you always, as we are one.”

“He knows my name,

He knows my every thought,

He sees each tear that falls

And hears me when I call!”

(Words by Tommy Walker)

Prayer:  Thank You Father, for hearing me, seeing me, and knowing all about me.  You are so Good!              Amen

Sweet Holy Spirit

Romans 5:5  “…the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who is given to us.”

How can I describe the Sweet Holy Spirit within me?  He is like another Jesus without a physical body.    He is the Spirit of Jesus, the Spirit of the Father, so in essence I have the fullness of God within me. He gives me power and light, peace and comfort; He gives me joy in the midst of sorrow; when I am weak, He makes me strong.  Just as a breeze carries the sweet fragrance of perfume of flowers, so the Spirit flows through me as love, joy, peace, goodness, and righteousness wafting its way to others.  Frederick Faber was one who had a blazing love for the Holy Spirit, and he wrote:

O Spirit, beautiful and dread!

My heart is fit to break

With love of all Thy tenderness

For us poor sinners’ sake.

O Sweet Spirit, fall on me today.  Mold me, melt me, use me that Your fragrance will flow through me.  Blaze within me and set my soul on fire.  Thank you in the name of Jesus, my precious Saviour.  Amen