Tag Archives: Heaven

Heaven Pt. 126

Posted on by under Pastor Wrinkles

Mel4

 

“Then I said, “O LORD, God of heaven, the great and awesome God who keeps his covenant of unfailing love with those who love him and obey his commands,” Neh. 1:5 NLT

I love the fact that we serve a God of covenants. I am studying through the Book of Malachi with our Wednesday night group and this week we had opportunity to discuss the nature of contracts VS. covenants. We learned…

“With a contract, if one agreeing party does something in violation of the contract then it is considered broken. The whole contract becomes null and void. Basically the signers of a contract agree to hold up their ends as long as the other signatories hold up theirs too.

With a covenant, both parties agree to hold up their ends regardless of whether the other party keeps their part of the agreement. A violation of a covenant by one party doesn’t matter as far as the other party’s responsibility to continue to do what they agreed to do.” Purposelydifferent.com

God has made a covenant of UNFAILING LOVE …not a contract a covenant with those who love and obey his commands.  Because God knows our race and its weakness so well He has made himself responsible to hold up all ends of this covenant. He is responsible for His love for me and out of that love for me He even creates love for Himself in me and the ability to obey His commands.  It is only because of his work at all that I can be called one of those who love him and obey his commands. In fact without God’s saving work among the people of the world there would be no group of those who love Him or obey His commands.

“No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them, and I will raise them up at the last day. John 6:44

 

 

9For in Christ lives all the fullness of God in a human body. 10So you also are complete through your union with Christ, who is the head over every ruler and authority.

11When you came to Christ, you were “circumcised,” but not by a physical procedure. Christ performed a spiritual circumcision—the cutting away of your sinful nature. 12For you were buried with Christ when you were baptized. And with him you were raised to new life because you trusted the mighty power of God, who raised Christ from the dead.

13You were dead because of your sins and because your sinful nature was not yet cut away. Then God made you alive with Christ, for he forgave all our sins.14He canceled the record of the charges against us and took it away by nailing it to the cross. Colossians 2:9-14

As my friend Angela is known to say, “We serve an amazing God!”

 

Heaven Pt. 125

Posted on by under Pastor Wrinkles

I started writing the “Heaven” posts on my previous blog in December of 2011. My goal was to look at every verse in the Bible that used the word Heaven and to bring forth a commentary on the place where God’s throne resides. In the last two years we have made much of Heaven together, dear readers. I have to admit it is not just Heaven I understand a bit better through these meditations but the God of Heaven as well. I have at least two devotional thoughts to put forth concerning today’s Heaven verse. I have prayed that God would bless those that read.

Mel4

“Then I said, “O LORD, God of heaven, the great and awesome God who keeps his covenant of unfailing love with those who love him and obey his commands,” Neh. 1:5 NLT

Sandy Patti sang a song back in the day entitled, “King Of glory”.  In it she asked the question “Who is this King Of Glory?”

Nehemiah 1:5 begins to answer the query for us. According to him the “Lord God of Heaven” is “the great and awesome God…”

That is to say ,”Yĕhovah ‘elohiym shamayim” is “gadowl ‘el” and ” yare’ ‘el”

Gadowl is translated in our text here as “great”. God is GREAT!

Yare’ is translated in our text here as “awesome”. God is AWESOME!

Yeah… those words had little effect on me either. Probably because in our society we make everything ” great”  and “awesome.”

I spill coffee on my pants and say “That’s just great!”

My daughter needs a new muffler for her car and my response is, “That’s awesome.”

 our culture has liberated these terms and turned them into useless slang words akin to “gnarly” and “neato”. So great and awesome can’t really help us to understand who this God of Heaven is anymore. We need other words to help us understand who God is and what He is like.

How about this?

You Oh God of Heaven are Gadowl- That is, Your presence is so large it encompasses every corner of the universe. You are here on Earth and You dwell upon the planets of galaxies beyond the sight of our most powerful telescopes. You presence is so potent and intense I would turn to a pile of ash if I were currently exposed to its fullness. Your voice is louder than all the rivers of Earth combined. You are older than time and more distinguished than all the kings and heroes of Earth put together.

You Oh God of Heaven are Yare’- That is, Your presence makes me shake in my boots. When you are near I am sobered to my core and all my foolish talking dries up. You astonish me with Your creativity, compassion and originality. I can never second guess You and to be honest that makes me a little or a lot uncomfortable. You are the God who takes me out of my comfort zone. I love You and am terrified by where this love might lead me.

Now that is just great and awesome!

23 Pt. 23

Posted on by under Pastor Wrinkles

23 Pt. 23

“… and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.” Psalm 23:6 KJV

It fits that pt. 23 is the last session we shall have together in Psalm 23. Today we are going to be talking about Heaven! It’s one of my favorite topics. In fact I like it so much I have written 110 blogs on the subject of Heaven between “Lillie-Put” and “Reinventing the We’ll”.
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What do we know about this place? Some people think it’s all clouds and harps and singing for eternity. David seemed to want to go there. I suppose for a guy who loved music the clouds and harps thing seemed like a pretty attractive deal; But what about those poor guys who can’t carry a tune in a bucket? You know those guys who can hardly sit through an offertory? Clouds and harps for eternity hardly sounds like a plan for the man or woman of action!….And what about the ADHD among us? Spending all eternity in one place doing one thing? Torture!

Let me rest your mind. Heaven is much more than clouds and harps and angels singing. It’s more than just “a great big house with lots and lots of room” as the song goes. I’d like to start with your thoughts.

What do you think Heaven is? What will it be like?