If You Have Heard, Do You Know?
Posted: Thursday, April 09, 2009
by Jean Purcell
OpineBooks.com
How wonderful the good news about God through Jesus Christ! Exclamations like "Wonderful," "Awesome!," and "Fantastic!" are a few that Christians use when trying to convey a sense of the Amazing Grace of God, the Creator of all things in heaven and on the earth.
Even in this fallen world of fallen nature, we see residual beauties up close or in photos. They provide intimations of God's original creation, before sin entered into the heart of Man, if we truly can see and hear them.
Fear is good if it drives us toward God. The massiveness of the ocean when in turbulence and high winds is one of many reminders of the overwhelming power of those waters and winds, currents and tides!
And those powerful water events are only slight evidences in comparison with the power of God. How can anyone be so hard hearted and so deaf and blind spiritually as not to see or grasp this?!
The song "Amazing Grace" says "I once was blind, but now I see." The writer, John Newton, wrote about spiritual blindness and spiritual sight.
Only Almighty God can give such sight! We want to put exclamation marks around everything that has to do with God!
Why, on an everyday level, are some among us fans of legal or police shows? The heart and mind seek justice. The most rebellious sinner, the most lost soul knows that injustice requires justice.
Yet, when we say that God is a just God, the God of justice and righteousness, some either laugh in scorn, or nod in awe.
The loving, kind, and redeeming God is a just God. He is righteous. In Him is nothing but good, the good that is pure, whole, and righteous.
Some of us sing praises to a God who loves so much that He gives all of Himself to redeem fallen Man and fallen Creation!
Some of us showed our deafness and blindness in years past, when we recoiled from God! Why would anyone recoil from love?! Yet, this happens everywhere, every day.
Many of us have run from God. We have recoiled from Him. We have refused Him, We have rejected Him. We have ridiculed His ways. We have rebuffed His attentions. On and on go the atrocities that we, mortal people, do toward God!
Many now run from God. Yet, He continues to reach out to us. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, this great and mighty God forgives every one who turns to Him, rejecting and recoiling from the miseries and illusions of sin, of blindness to Truth.
God truly is love. His day of judging the world has not come. Neither did Jesus come to judge the world, but to give His life for it. It is love we have run from, recoiled from, refused, rejected, ridiculed, and rebuffed. What fools we have been!
When I was far from God, I never cursed Him with words. I would not dare, for I had heard of Him as a child and I decided I wanted to follow Him, in Christ. That was before I gave up on God when times got rougher, during college days.
I ran from Him, for I thought He was religion. But He is not. He is Spirit, one God. Christ is the express image of God.
We lose sight and grasp of these wondrous truths when we lapse into spiritual blindness! If we become deaf spiritually, we can hear the good news we once embraced and not let it touch us. It is not real to us. We have neglected God. We did not know the importance of prayer. We did not understand that He is not judging us, but reaching out to us, calling us, "Come home!"
The world has heard about Jesus, yet many only know Him by name, and they make of His name a word of cursing. They are rebels against God. Some boast in this. They are blind and deaf to the dishonor they do to themselves and God's grand purposes for them. Pity them. Pray for them.
There is a way by which we can hear or read and we can truly hear and see! We simply dare to say, "God, help me. I want to know you. Show me!" Unless we do this as a game, a trick, a trial runwe shall know. He will answer us!
God is the One who gives sight, who opens the ears of the spiritually deaf! No power of man can open eyes and ears in that way. God reads the hearts of each person. He knows when one sincerely cries out to know if He is real, who asks to know if Jesus is real, alive today!
Only God can restore the years the locusts have eaten, the wasted years of doubt or refusal, of agnosticism or atheism. He has promised that in His Word.
We want everyone now running or rebelling to reach the end of themselves so that they can have a fresh beginning, a wonderful, awesome, and fantastic beginningwith God. His written Word reveals all of this.
"And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten"(Joel 2:25).
"Fear not [there is nothing to fear], for I am with you; do not look around you in terror and be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen and harden you to difficulties, yes, I will help you; yes, I will hold you up and retain you with My [victorious] right hand of rightness and justice" (Isaiah 41:10-Amplified Bible).
Jesus said, "For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel's, the same shall save it" (Mark 8:35-King James Version of the Bible).
Even now, whether you know or believe it, you are sought by the Beloved, the One who gave His life that you may live forever. God is true and righteous. He is God and there is no other. How sweet the sound! There is no wretchedness He cannot heal, no lost one He cannot find, welcome, and restore.
God is love.
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Top-level comments on this article: (2 total)Very well written Jane, you speak many truths here in your article.Dear David, I appreciate your kind words. I hope that some might turn to God with their questions, directly, and speak their needs to Him who knows and answers. Thanks to the loving God. God bless you.
This is a wonderful mini-sermon, worthy of being preached over the pulpit.God has shown Himself in everything He made and that is why scripture says that people are "without excuse". I think that those who have seen God's works and accepted them as coming from Him, yet refuse to ask Him into their lives, refuse Him for one big reason. For to accept God to rule your life, is to know that you now have obligations, obligations to live a life that He will be pleased with, and many just want to hang on to what they have always known.Dear David, I wish to quote from your comment: "For to accept God to rule your life, is to know that you now have obligations, obligations to live a life that He will be pleased with, and many just want to hang on to what they have always known."
That says it, for in giving us the connection between the church's relationship with Christ and marriage, surely God shows us that our union in Christ is wonderful, yet also life-changing, requiring deep commitment and sacrifice of our own ways.
Thank you for taking time to comment.
Blessings, Jane
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