Open up, ancient gates!
Open up, ancient doors,
and let the King of glory enter.
10 Who is the King of glory?
The Lord of Heaven’s Armies—
he is the King of glory Psalm 24:9,10
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Lillie-Put 
I think they get their soldiers to blast them off, unfortunately, not with trumpets. 🙂
True story. The metaphor here is a little frightening by extension if we refuse to surrender to God, isn’t it? I know Him as a God of mercy. Yet sometimes I wonder if in His mercy He doesn’t allow some of the trouble into my life because I will not surrender.
I responded to this earlier. Hope you got it. If not, let me know. I’ll repeat.
Got it.
I agree. I think all ‘trouble’ is an opportunity for growth; the really enlightened know this as soon as it hits and look instantly for ways to ‘flip the coin’. That’s not me, of course. I have been lucky – without deserving it in any way – to have experienced true miracle out of deep trouble. May your troubles, when they come, be little ones, nevertheless! 🙂
I have had big and little troubles and God in all of them has worked everything for my benefit.
Psychologists tell us it’s all a matter of viewpoint. True, except when it isn’t. Where did we get viewpoint from, refresh my memory? 🙂
🙂 This has been a thread that has led us down a wonderful rabbit trail…God sometimes besieges us like a general from an invading army because we will not surrender to Him…Our lack of surrender at first makes His siege look like trouble meanwhile He is only trying to strengthen and build us up. Our refusal to surrender to His ways is the real problem…When we finally give in and surrender God comes in and turns our trouble into a blessing…that surrender often comes in the form of a change of viewpoint…Or something like that!
I’m very uncomfortable with your concept of ‘surrender’, Joseph. What you write makes God look like an obeisance-demanding, domineering parent who will wreak cruelty on his children until sheer pain breaks their spirits. You can’t mean this, of course. 🙂
Oh no I never see God as domineering. But the longer I serve God the more I come to it that He is more concerned about my character than He is about my comfort. Further He knows me far better than I do myself and knows what is good for me.
Even knowing all this I have to admit there have been moments in my life where I have outright rebelled against Him and shut up the gates of my life against Him thinking I knew better than He did what I needed. God was good enough in those situations to not leave me behind my locked up gates. He disciplined me using life circumstances and I will not lie, it was painful, and God brought the pain (or at the very least allowed me to be exposed to the pain) so that I would ultimately benefit.
Thank you for all that, Joseph, and Joseph you are one of those folks I am privileged to engage with on the Internet that I truly wish I could meet face to face and talk with and feel a sense of loss in knowing that it will likely not happen. I’ll keep reading your blog. And saving my pennies for a trip across America.
Oh thank you so much! That moves me so deeply. Let me say this if in America we do not meet, come and find me when we enter the Kingdom of Jesus. We will have lots of time there and unlimited resources!
Will do, but then we won’t have anything to argue about. 🙂
True story! 🙂 But then won’t that even be more glorious.
I don’t know. See, the thing is, stuff I’ve read about ‘Heaven’ makes life There seem pretty much without challenge. Therefore, I decided that logically that can’t be right. I’ve pondered my idea of Heaven and, being an exploring type of person, decided that Heaven must be one of constant challenge, endless new horizons to explore, new lands, worlds, universes to discover – and describe through my art and writing – even singing. What wouldn’t be there in Heaven would be war, discord, hate, jealousy, envy, illness, pain and death – the whole kit and caboodle of the deadly sins and their consequences. So, ‘argument’ would be more like ‘conjecture’. And Heaven would include snow not endless sunshine and ‘comfortable’ temperatures. I hope we get to conjecture together! 🙂
I do agree conjecture or “argument” without discord will be a lovely thing. Like you I have done a lot of pondering about Heaven. I like Lewis’s expression of Heaven in “The Last Battle”.
Heaven… or New Heaven and New Earth/ Eternity as the Book of “The Revelation”, The prophecies of Ezekiel and Isaiah lay it out make that time or place seem to be not so much without challenge as without limit. I don’t see it as a place of rest or permanent vacation but as a place of boundless accomplishment, success and overcoming glory. That all said I have to fall back to the words of the Apostle Paul, “Eye hath not seen nor ear heard the glorious things that God has prepared for those that love Him.”