2023-03-03
Good Morning Dear Ones,
When I was very young, I was raised in a Conservative Jewish home, but this training wasn’t reaching my heart. I went through the motions, memorizing certain prayers in Hebrew. God was in my life, but I wasn’t really feeling His presence in it. Instead, I was doing what my parents expected of me. If I had been asked, “How important is God’s presence in my life and “what does it mean to me to have access to the Father?” My answer would have evoked frustration in my well- meaning parents. However, I was raised at a time when parents didn’t take an interest in their childrens‘ opinion of such matters. At the time, I was sufficiently unhappy, that even switching me to a Reform temple wasn’t having the desired effect. By the time I went through my “confirmation” at age 15, I was in full rebellion, and there were 92 students in my class. Once I was out of the sphere of influence of my parents, I drifted trying other belief systems, looking to find the spiritual solace that only maturity and accepting Christ as my Savior could give me. Only much later, I understood that God was in charge, and human beings are not.
At this juncture, I am led to ask each of us to answer the questions: What does God’s presence mean to us and how important to each of us is access to the Father? Whether born to a Jewish or a Gentile family, we begin our lives as “separate from Christ…foreigners to the Covenant of the Promise, without hope or God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus, you who were once far away have been brought near to the blood of Christ” [EPH 2: 12-13]. Christ is our peace, Who has …destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility between Jews and Gentiles, by setting aside in His flesh the law with its commands and regulations, putting to death hostility and reconciling them to God through the cross” [EPH 2: 14-16]. “Through Christ, we have access to the Father by one Spirit” [EPH 2: 17-18].
Is this process complete at this time? Absolutely not! Anti-Semitism and desire to persecute Christians is still going on. It won’t be until the end times are completed that such a day will come. Sadly, humans don’t seem to learn the lessons from history and are still condemned to repeat the same mistakes over and over again. But, in God’s perfect time, the events predicted for the end times will indeed happen, and the Lord Jesus will bring these truths of His peace will be reality. We, who believe in and read the prophecies of Daniel and Revelation will be able to celebrate the truth of that final outcome the only Jesus can bring about. RO 7:6, “But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.” RO 10: 4, “Christ is the culmination of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes.” Praise and thanks be to Him!
PRAYER: O Lord, one of the closest ways we have access to You is through Your “Love Letter” to us, Your word. Another is through prayer. Through both, You have given us ways to assess just how important access to You really is. Some of us, like me, must wait until the middle of our lives to understand that You choose for us to become aware of Your constant presence with us; others know much earlier. 2 TIM 3: 16-17, “All Scripture is God-breathed and useful in teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” The Scriptures tell us how to pray to the Lord and give us the encouragement that He listens to our prayers and takes them thoughtfully. His love for us is great enough, that He teaches us the many ways that the Lord demonstrates His love and wise principles. We derive the gifts of “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control from the Holy Spirit. There can be no law against such things as these,” GA 5: 22-23. It is in the holy/ mighty name of Jesus Christ, that we offer this prayer. Amen.
NEXT WEEK: What are the blessings of access to the Father? That is a question that needs answering before we can assess just how important this access to the Father means. We recognized above that peace and the other gifts of the Holy Spirit arise from access to the Father. But there are more. Peace and the blessings of access to the Father are also the absence of the desire to persecute others different than ourselves; the presence of God-given direction in one’s life; a sense of skills and the task to which God calls us, freedom and confidence in Him, access to His wisdom, a way to grieve loss, trust in Him, cognition of His presence; a Source of everlasting joy, and many more. No one has promised us a rose garden given to us by God, as we go through our earthly lives. They are filled with challenges, losses, illnesses, and other bumps in the road. God gives us His perspectives on our lives through Scripture and the answers He gives us to our prayers. I’m old enough to have gone through these “bumps in the road” to have learned how helpful His perspective is and to have experienced wars and all manner of what life has to offer and to have acquired opinions and lessons from my life. And even with that, I don’t know a modicum of what He has to teach us! PS 145: 18-21, “The Lord is near to all who call upon Him, to all who call upon Him in truth. He fulfills the desires of all who call fear Him; He hear their cry and saves them. The Lord watches over all who love Him, but all the wicked He will destroy. My mouth will speak in praise of the Lord. Let every creature praise His holy name for ever and ever!”
Grace Be With You Always,
Lynn, JS 24: 15
© Lynn Johnson 2023. All Rights Reserved.
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