What Seek Ye? (and others)

What Seek Ye? (and others)

We all get what we seek in the end - let me say it differently, "The God we seek, is the God we find."

This truth becomes our hope of glory - or the cause of our destruction. John says, "We shall be like him for we shall see Him" (1 John 3:2).

The church has presented an image of God, not engraved in stone, but rather engraved in words by the reasoning of man's mind and the influences of the age in which we live. The phony word games of the present political sphere are but a pale reflection of the unconscionable manipulation of spiritual truth within the church. We've "taken away" and "added to" until the Christ revealed in the Word by the Spirit has become the Christ of our convenience and our comfort. But we only fool ourselves; we can't "take from" or "add to" God.

As a nation, and also as the nominal church throughout the world, our time has run out. For us, as individuals only, there is time to decide what it is that we really seek. The self-gratifying image conjured up by our minds will not meet the test of reality. The world hastens hell-bent to destruction. Only a true vision of the true Christ can meet our needs. We must see Him as He is or we must perish!

The abundance of the life of Christ awaits us, not as the answer to our declarations of faith, but as a filling of the empty vessel or our lives given to Him, not because of our strength but because of our need, not because of what we are but because of what He is.

I believe God will form for Himself new people - a people whose eyes have been opened to see Him, a people who esteem all things loss for the knowledge of the Son of God, a people who seek the heavenly unmixed with any of the goals of this world's hopes, or fears, or ambitions, a people who, out of weakness and total human inadequacy, are made strong through His indwelling Spirit.

God is seeking, a people who will leave the old life with its values and priorities. A people who will put God first. A people whose eyes are not on the earthly kingdom and what it can offer them. A people whose home is in the heavenlies and whose life "dwells with Christ in God."

A time is upon us when all that can be shaken will be shaken. Those of God's people who have built on shakable things will be desolate. But those whose heart is fixed on the unshakable dimensions of God will rejoice as they see with clearer vision the beauty, the glory, and the eternal fullness of those things which remain.

The Word is still true: if we seek...we shall find.

The God we seek is the God we find. He will reveal - and in that revelation we will see the purpose of life and know its life-giving flow in our whole being.

~Leonard Ravenhill~
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It Was the Golden Link of Love

"May you have power to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge" (Ephesians 3:18-19).

Oh, such was Christ's transcendent love - that man's extreme misery could not abate it. The deploredness of man's condition did but heighten the holy flame of Christ's love. It is as high as heaven, who can reach it? It is as low as hell, who can understand it?

Heaven, with all its glory, could not contain Him. Neither could all hell's torments make Him refrain! Such was His perfect matchless love to fallen and miserable man. That Christ's love should extend to the ungodly, to sinners, to enemies who were in rebellion against Him; yes, not only so - but that He should hug them in His arms, lodge them in His bosom - is the highest degree of love!

It is astonishing that Christ should come from the eternal bosom of His Father - to a region of sorrow and death; that God - should be manifested in the flesh; that the Creator - should be made a creature; that He who was clothed with glory - should be wrapped with rags of flesh; that He who filled heaven - should be cradled in a feeding trough; that the God of strength - should be weary; that the Judge of all men - should be condemned; that the God of life - should be put to death.

The sharp sufferings of our Lord Jesus Christ, from the cradle to the Cross, does above all other things, speak out the transcendent love of Christ to poor sinners.

That wrath, that great wrath, that fierce wrath,k that pure wrath, that infinite wrath, that matchless wrath of an angry God - which was so terribly impressed upon the soul of Christ - all this wrath He patiently underwent, that sinners might be saved, and that "He might bring many souls unto glory."

It was the golden link of love, which alone fastened Christ to the Cross, and made Him die freely for us!!

Christ's love is beyond all measure, for time did not begin it, and time shall never end it; place does not bound it; sin does not exceed it; tongues cannot express it; minds cannot conceive it.

Well may we spend all our days in admiring and adoring of Christ"s wonderful love - and be always ravished with the thoughts of it.

"May you experience the love of Christ, though it is so great you will never fully understand it" (Ephesians 3:19).

~Thomas Brooks~