Monday, July 15, 2013

Another Smoke Signal - End Of Fallen History; ETERNAL LIFE FOREVER

What's your favorite novel? TV show? Movie? Music Album? Video Game?

How do you feel when you reach the end of it and its all over? I just got done with a TV series on dvd, and the last 2 hour episode left me feeling sad, and tearful (Yeah, I'm a sentimental ol' mush).

I can remember as a child, my Dad would scold me because it was getting on into the night, and I kept feeding pieces of wood to the fire in the fireplace. Seeing the flames diminish, and the light from the fire getting dim, I felt sad - like the fire was dying, and I couldn't bear to see it go. So I kept feeding it; and when the flames sprang up with new life, I felt elated.

But my Dad got his way eventually and I stopped. I remember going to bed before the fire died, just so I wouldn't see it happen.

I never had a lot of friends growing up; the few I did have, when it came time for them to move to a different part of town or even a different part of the country, on the day they were to finally leave, I'd make myself scarce.

I absolutely hated good byes. I still do. Good byes are a kind of 'death in miniature' and they are painful and leave an emptiness inside the heart. Death itself is like this.
There is something deep within our hearts that revolts against this thing that we call death. It's objectionable. Unfair. It robs us of those we love, and we resent the fact that they are taken from us.

ROMANS 6:23a
For the wages of sin is death;

Wednesday, July 10, 2013

A PASSIONATE THIRST FOR GOD

The LORD Jesus has declared in the Word that if any one should thirst, they were to go to Him and from Him they would receive the Living Waters flowing (literally "gushing, torrential") out of his heart ("belly"):

JOHN 7:37-38
37 In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink.
38 He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.

Elsewhere the LORD spoke of the blessedness of those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled:

MATTHEW 5:6
6 Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.

We understand that to thirst for righteousness is to thirst for the LORD God, Who alone may be called the Righteous One Who is the Holy Servant of the Father (ISAIAH 53:11). People the world over since time began have sought to satisfy the thirst and hunger to fulfill the vacancy that we all sense deep within our hearts - that which the KJV classifies as a "vanity" within (ROM 8:20) and the LORD Jesus told us that whoever would seek to satisfy these inner longings of the spirit with earthly things would "thirst again" (JOHN 4:13).