Having this long weekend to celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day with our families this mid-January Monday, we could think of no better time than now to shine God's liberating Light of Truth on an area that satan has gone all-but unchallenged on. Due to a lack of knowledge of God's Word by most people, the devil has been successful at deceiving countless millions of men and women away from the joy of discovering and walking in the purpose for which God created each of us. God's Word teaches us that, "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to Me: seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, I will also forget thy children." (Hosea 4:6)
"As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which
are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and
unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own
destruction." (2 Peter 3:16)
A
dear friend once said something in a message that taught everyone listening a valuable principle. He said, "If you don't
know the purpose of a thing, all you can do is abuse (ABnormally-USE) it." That same law applies especially where human beings
are concerned. If we do not know the
purpose for people and why God has created so many different skin colors, ethnic
groups, etc., all we can do is abuse one another. Until we have pursued, with all diligence,
God's written Word, to the point that we can hear His spoken Word -The Person
of The Holy Spirit showing us personally- on why God does all that He does the
way He does, my advice is do not say a word. The purpose for a thing can only be found in
the mind of the maker of that thing. Where
we individual human beings (being the "thing" referred to) are concerned,
the purpose for each one of us, as individuals, can only be found in the mind
of God, our Creator and our Maker. So,
"But seek ye first the kingdom of
God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. "
(Matthew 6:33)
Remember this, something I have learned,
"People tend to criticize the
harshest the things and the people they understand the least." Why does this happen? In short, it is a symptom of being afraid of what
is unknown. However, this kind of fear
is far worse that your run-of-the-mill fear of the dark. The fear that I speak of here are wicked
spirits that are deployed for the purpose of working to lure us into the trap
of casting false judgment against others - a sin that carries with it a deadly
price. Why do they work so intently at
this? Our enemies (satan and his minions)
know, far better than most Christians do, that a family must first be unified before
they can function effectively. So, you
see, if the enemies can tempt us into condemning ourselves by casting false
judgment, they know they can knock out two birds with one stone (so to speak). By their deceiving us into using our own
tongues to condemn ourselves, one "bird" they can knock out is our approval
of and favor for one another. By our
allowing ourselves to be used by the enemy, the second "bird" they
can knock out at the same time is the unity within God's Family.
Jesus warns us of the price of falling into
that trap. He said, "Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn
not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven: Give,
and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken
together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same
measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again." (Luke 6:37-38)
Stop for just a moment and listen to what Jesus is gifting us with here.
Jesus, knowing how satan will use our own lack
of understanding of the way God does things concerning the beauty that is His
diverse Creation, is revealing to us how beloved everyone is to God and to the
fulfillment of His Dream. Simply put,
when we condemn others, we are insulting God, His beloved Children, and the
dream He carries in His Heart. Here
again, we find that our lack of understanding God and the reason and the way He
does what He does provides satan and his minions with what they need to lure us
into condemning ourselves with our own tongues.
If
we are going to accurately represent God, we must know Him and His Dream, and
work WITH Him to see His Dream fulfilled. In order to do this, we MUST know that God is
the Consummate Family Man! God was
Father way before there were dads on earth. Everything God does is because of, and for,
His children - *all* of His children! Period.
Let's talk about the Bible for a minute.
Among so many other brilliant things God
gave us, the Holy Scriptures are given to us for the purpose of leading us into
the unfathomably loving and waiting arms of God. My wife, Brenda, likes when I put it this way,
"From the beginning of the second chapter of Genesis, all the way through
to the very last period at the end of Revelation, in short, the Bible is God
devising means to get us back around His 'supper table' (you understand that
term best if you're from the south)."
You see, everything God has created began
with the very first number that He formulated and mathematically arranged, then
set into place as the base code of the very first molecule, or the
"foundation molecule" for all of creation. For each molecule to follow, God made changes
to one or more digits of the strand(s) of mathematical code, formulating a
series of numbers within each strand, for the ultimate purpose of designing
everything He ever wants to, never creating any two objects alike. So, why would God go to such unfathomable
lengths to ensure that every single thing He creates is so different? Because the brilliance in all of His entire Creation
is in the fact that He was, and is, able to create everything, not just
different but, entirely different because of the way each and every one of His
molecules is coded mathematically. This
is what God meant when He said, "Let
us make man in Our Image, after Our Likeness: and let them have dominion over
the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and
over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth."
(Genesis 1:26)
What did God mean when He said "Let us make man in our likeness and in our
image"? In part, He was saying
that He wanted to create each of us as individuals as well as members of various
ethnic groups, with endless potential. For
example, Paul writes, "I can do all things through Christ who
strengthens me." (Philippians
4:13) To help explain the multiple facets
of God, of Whose Image we are created, I would like to share a small part of a
brother's account where he prayed one night, before he died, and asked Jesus if
he could meet Him in person. (Please
note, I cannot confirm or deny the authenticity of this account.) Something that this brother said happened
toward the end of his encounter, I believe, will provide a good visual for the
point that I am making concerning the endless potential of God. Not long after the brother had made his
request, he said that he was taken up into Heaven in the night. He said that he was greeted at the gate by
Father Abraham. He said that Father
Abraham, from the start, called him by his first name and led him through
various parts of Heaven showing him things that he explained as being so
beautiful that he could not explain their beauty in words. After Father Abraham had taken the fellow to
meet Jesus, Who he said was mighty beyond all comprehension, he said that
Father Abraham wanted to take him to see one more thing. He went on to describe a place Father Abraham
then took him to where he saw and heard enormous sounds of lightning and
thunder, more massive sounds than he could ever explain. He said that he asked Father Abraham where
they were at that time. Father Abraham
replied, "This is God's Throne."
The fellow said that he was frozen in
awe! He then said that, as he was taking
it all in, he saw countless angels circling over God's throne nonstop. The fellow said he then turned to Father
Abraham and asked, "Father Abraham,
what would cause all of those angels to continually fly around God's Throne
without ever stopping to rest?"
Father Abraham replied, "Each
time the angels fly a circle around God's throne, they see a facet of God that
they had not seen before, and it compels them around again to see yet another
facet of God that they had never seen."
Our difference is proof positive that we
are created in God's Image. The
interesting thing here is, if we were to take two people of the same race and
disassemble their physical bodies down to their base foundation molecule, we
would find that the differences between the two same-race individuals is just
as great as the difference between two individuals of two different races
and/or skin colors. Though, outwardly,
we may *appear* to be the same, we most certainly are not the same. Why? Because
we are created in God's Image, which is multi-faceted.
One evening, as I was enjoying time in
fellowship with the Person of The Holy Spirit, He showed me, from a distance, the
most beautiful painting or portrait that I had ever seen of Jesus Christ. As I looked at the painting, I noticed that the
distance was shrinking between the place where I sat and the painting. The closer to me the portrait became, the
clearer I could see the portrait, and I began to see that it was not painted with
natural human hands. All of a sudden,
the Person of The Holy Spirit imparted to me that this most glorious portrait
was not a portrait at all. It was a
tapestry made of countless threads or fibers, all of them woven together to
become more beautiful than anything we have ever seen on earth! Each of the countless threads represented an
ethnic group and skin color. That
tapestry was like nothing I had ever seen; it was literally breathtaking!
As
my eyes were taking in that "not-of-this-world" beauty, knowledge was
imparted to me by The Person of The Holy Spirit. Every single thread in the completely glorious
tapestry represented the gloriously beautiful differences God created in each
and every one of us, His Children. It
was then that I realized what it was that I was looking at. What I was seeing was nothing short of
stunning... it was God's Family Portrait!
SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT:
"If each and every one of us does not play such a crucial role in
the fulfillment of God's Dream, then why is satan spending so much of his time
and effort trying to keep us divided?"
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