Creator's Joy

I am sure most of you would like a life with a lot more harmony in it with the people around you, and even with those far away.
Who likes war after all?
Only those who are set on having more power do.
But wars start with just a few people that have a wrong attitude of heart.
If we (subjects) were government leaders than perhaps there would be a lot more wars than we would think.
We all have a tendency for power, to be in control and above others.
We all tend to take care of ourselves first.
And then when it is convenient we might look out for others as well.
But others certainly do not hold the same esteem in our lives as we esteem ourselves. Usually.
I know this may not sound bad to you since after all who takes care of us if we do not.
By no means I am saying that we should ignore taking care of ourselves if that is the only way we have time to take care of others.
Yet I believe a right balance is possible.
If we value ourselves properly, not more or less than others, I think there is still enough room to hold other people in the same esteem as we hold ourselves. And that we can look out for them the way we look out for our own welfare and benefit.

You may never have hurt anyone physically yet there can be many ways to harm a person.
Even gossip or thinking bad about someone in your own heart can affect how that person is treated, either by you or someone else.
You might feel very righeous in the way you treath others, yet in my opinion, and I believe this is what the bible teaches, you can hardly call it love if you are only kind and helpful to those that are kind to you.
You may think that is common sense but if you think about it a bit longer you will come to the conclusion that it is pure selfishness.
Love cannot be earned.
If you love only those that reciprocate your love and kindness then you are really only looking out for yourself and not loving others at all.
Love is not about you but about the other.
It is about what you can give, not what you can get.
Love is not offended when it is not returned.
It is even not offended when it is straight out rejected.
Now you might wonder why you would even want to love others if this is the case.
And why you would even want to love ALL people.
But it is hard if not impossible to draw a line.
Where would it be?
Only loving your partner and family and friends?
Perhaps your colleagues as well?
How about neighbours?
And what about the people you meet in stores and on the streets?
How about people you never met but are in need of help that you could give?
The thing is that if you only love a few you choose you probably do not love them as well as you think you do.
Your love probably has conditions.
But even if you love them well, or seem to, you might have to ask yourself if that love really is about the other, and not about what you can get from them.
If you do not love them like you love pizza…
You love it for what it does to you, but you would not make a sacrifice for its sake. After all it is a lifeless thing you only get to fill your appetite.
You might sacrifice your hard-earned money to get one, yet even that sacrifice is for yourself. Not for the pizza’s sake. But for the sake that you get that pizza.

Now if love is about giving, about expressing it instead of trying to get your own needs met, then why would you want to limit love?
Of course you can only marry one person (at least in my culture) and I am not suggesting you should have more than one partner.
But obviously that is not what I am talking about here.
I believe that true love is a posture of the heart that either you have or you do not.
It really is a choice you have to make but if you love only a few I do fear that is not love at all.
If your affections are really love than you do not want to limit them.

Now you do not have to give what you do not have.
You do not have to muster up this love all by yourself.
God is love and He is the source of our loving.
You do not have to be afraid you will be left empty if you love everyone around you.
This does not mean you have to be every one’s best friend.
You do not have to solve all the worlds problems all of a sudden.
But you do your part and are kind to all people.
All?
Yes all!
The same way you would want all to be kind to you right?
Even, or should I say especially, those that are not kind to you.
It is not about what people deserve.
You probably do not deserve it either that every one is kind to you all the time.
Just be honost.
Yet when you are grumpy yourself you need people’s kindness the most.
And God knows that.
He knows that we do not deserve his love.
But that we desperately need it.
And it is actually through his kindness in our most undeserving state that we change.
We become soft and tender.
And we will want to obey him instead of seeing submission to him as something slavish. Rather it becomes an act of love.
Did you know it gives more fulfilment to give love than to receive it?

To be continued…

Free Gift

So we need to love more to experience life in its fulness.
And because God is not going to let his kingdom, his family, be anything less than the way He designed it to be, some changes need to be made.
Rebels that do not conform to his standard of love will be cast out, unless…
Unless they change!
Now we cannot change ourselves.
So do not panic!
We can make the decision to love others but if we do not receive the love of God first we might find it hard if not impossible to love them.

I still remember the day when God changed my heart.
I was a believer all along and I did not hate people or anything.
Yet I did not always feel something for them.
Now love is not about feeling but about a choice we make on how to treath others.
But our love needs to be connected to the Source of love or it will run out eventually.
One day God showed me an image in my mind where I saw him putting my small heart in his big one.
I did not have goose bumps. I did not feel anything at all at that moment.
But from then on I felt so much love for the people around me.
Even people I did not know!
And over the years I may have been in and out of love at times, but when I connect to my Source, the love I feel for people is just exploding!
It is not my ability to love others.
It is His in me.

We all need a heart transplant!
And thankfully God provides one for every single person on this earth.
Whether criminals or “civil” people.
We all need it and we can all receive it if we want to.
Like being sick is the requirement for getting medical attention, so our lack of love is the requirment for God’s heart transplant that He wants to give us.
No amount of bad behavior can disqualify you. Rather it makes you the perfect candidate.
But do you want it?

You will have to give up your pride.
Your pride that says you do not need God.
Keep in mind that when you say that you are making yourself god.
But you cannot sustain your own life can you?
Even without food we are nothing.
Our lives are sustained from outside us.
God is our Source whether we believe in him or not.
He keeps your heart beating. Even if it is a rebellious one.
But one day you will die.
And only He determines whether you will spend eternity in heaven or in a place that is much worse than the hell you experienced on this earth.
It is your pride that is offended with all the pain in this world and blames God for it.
It is your pride that feels entitled on having everything to work for you.
That says you did not deserve the suffering you went through.
I am by no means saying that our suffering is punishment from God.
This may offend many, but in truth, what do we deserve?
What does God owe us?
Who are we that He needs to give us an account for his actions?
For the things that happen on this earth?
Will an artwork question its maker about the why of certain brush strokes?
I believe that suffering is actually the result of our initial turning away from God.
That does not mean He initiates the evil that befalls us.
But we put ourselves outside his protection if we do not submit to him.
So again, do you want him?
Do you want him to give you a new heart?
Not only one that is capable of living in God’s ways of love, but also one that is made whole, mended from all the brokenness you went through in life.
He wants to give it to every single person.
But are you willing to receive it?

To be continued…

Free Gift

Are you willing to admit that you rebelled against God?
That you committed high treason to the King of the universe by not even acknowledging his existence.
By putting yourself above him. Above his reign.
By making demands like He owes you the world.
By putting yourself above others and judging them like you are their god?
By taking God’s place. By taking his job.
Are you willing to acknowledge that you are a sinner in need of grace?
In need of a heart transplant.
Only then He can give it to you.
Like a gift cannot be received if it is not accepted, if we do not hold out our hands to take it, so we need faith to receive this gift of God.
We need to believe him.
It is not automatically put into your account.
You need to tell him you want it.
He is not going to throw a gift to you if you have no intention on using it.
You need to say YES to him.

But there is more to it.
It is not that God is hesitant to bless and forgive us.
But He is righteous.
And because of that He cannot just ignore our rebellion, even if we are willing to change and to receive his new heart.
A price has to be paid to settle our debt to him.
Our guilt because of our rebellion.
We owe him our lives for that.
We really deserve the death penalty through our high treason against the King.
After all we put ourselves in his place.
We basicly pronounced ourselves to be God by not acknowledging him.
If we use our mind properly we will come to the understanding that it would not be wise if God just wiped our slate clean without paying attention to what would be a rightful consequence for our rebellion.
We would never learn justice.
What is wrong and what is right.
So before our heart can be transformed something else needs to take place.
And thankfully it already has.
Thankfully God always provides for what we need.
Even if the cause is our own rebellion.

To be continued…

Free Gift

There is only one way God is willing to forgive us.
To wipe our slates clean and to give us a new heart.
He is only willing to do that if we are willing to accept the penalty He provided for our rebellion against him.
Read that again!
I did not say if we pay the rightful punishment for our sin.
No, rather He paid for it himself!
Like a judge that pronounces a sentence because it is the right thing to do.
Because justice needs to been done to protect the morality of society.
Then the judge does the unthinkable.
After He puts down the gavel, He steps down from his seat.
He takes of his robe.
He stretches out his hands and lets the guards take him captive.
He goes to prison and undergoes the death penalty he just pronounced on the criminal.
The criminal walks out of the courtroom freely.
No one is restraining him.
And no one is pursuing him.
He is free to go wherever he wants to.
But does he leave that judge that gave his life for his?
No, by all means.
He sticks to the judge’s family.
Serving them forever in any way he can.

That is close to what God did for us.
I say close because Jesus Christ, the Son of God who himself is God as well, the One who died in our place, did not stay dead.
Thankfully He rose from the grave and now He lives forever!
He ascended to heaven again, where He came from, and now still lives there to intercede for us to his Father.
You can read the whole story in the bible in the the New Testament in the gospel  of John and also in Matthew, Mark and Luke.

To be continued…

Free Gift

The event that we use to divide history is the birth of God incarnate!
Did you ever think about why we date our time with before Christ and after Christ?
B.C and A.D.
The turning point is the birth of Jesus Christ.
The One that would take the sin of the whole world upon himself so we could go out free.
If we would accept it.

And indeed it was a turning point.
The turning from death to life.
Spiritually we are death through our rebellion against God.
It separates us from him which is spiritual death.
But God loves us so much that He wants us to be united with him again.
And so He offered us new life.
A way to rise from the death life we are living.
A life void from his presence. The only “thing” that gives us life!
And so He fittingly came to us in the form of a baby.
A new life.
God incarnate!

His Spirit made a virgin pregnant, in the land Israel, and she delivered Jesus, the Son of God, into this world.
He lived life just like all of us.
He had to grow and learn things.
The only difference was that He never sinned.
And when He was grown and ready He taught us the ways of God and did many miracles.
He healed many people, showing us the love of God.
Then the unthinkable happened.
The religious leaders of his day became jealous of his fame.
They were blinded by their pride and did not see that He was God living among them.
Even though they had been expecting a savior, the Messiah, for a long time because God had prophesied his coming from the moment the first people rebelled.
It was written in the scrolls, which are now part of the bible.
Yet blinded through their desire for power they did not understand that they did not need to be saved from human oppressors in the first place, but from their sin.
Their own wicked heart needed to be transformed and the rightful penalty for their rebellion against God needed to be paid.
So they could be forgiven and free from the bondage that sin keeps us in.
Though Jesus did not hide to them who He was and gave them warnings until the end, they persevered in their haughtiness and handed him over to the Roman oppressors who ruled over the Jews at that time.
Making false accusations against him, saying He was a threat to their kingdom. But He had not come to overthrow a human reign.
They demanded He would be put to death.
Hung on a cross.
The most crual execution that ever existed.

But He was God incarnate.
He was fully able to escape from them.
He had no intentions to do so however.
Ahead of time He had announced to his disciples that He would be taken captive and killed.
He knew what would happen in advance.
The jewish people thought they now had him in their power.
It really shows how blinded they were.
He actually had escaped them before because it was not his time yet.
His time to be taken and to leave this world.
When it was the appointed time though He let himself be taken captive.
The religious leaders thinking He was in their hands now.
And in a sense He was.
Because He surrendered himself to them.
He did not resist.

When they came for him He boldly walked towards them asking who they were looking for.
Of course He knew very well, replying “I am”. Which is the name of God.
The whole army and all the people that had come to arrest him fell to the ground backwards when He spoke these words.
Hit by the power that went from them.
The power of the God most high becoming a humble human being and even surrendering himself into the hands of sinners.
Still not thinking straight, they just stood up back on their feet and captured him.
And Jesus went with them willingly.
Then He was taken to court, but He did not receive justice there.
They hit him, which was against the law, and made all kinds of allegations against him.
He did not reply a word.
He did not try to defend himself, even when given the chance.
“Are you the king of the Jews?” they asked.
“You said it” He answered.
They they did not realise his reign was from another world and He made no attempt to make them understand, though He told them plainly.
He knew their pride kept them from seeing the truth.
The truth of who He was.
God in the form of a human.

To be continued…

Free Gift

The truth was, that Jesus had come to take the place of sinners.
He was not just some helpless victim.
He laid down his own life willingly to die in our place.
They even released a criminal when they crucified Jesus.
A rebel and murderer who was supposed to be hung on the cross where they nailed Jesus on.
It was the perfect picture of how He came to die in our stead.
Those that rebelled against God’s reign and deserved to be put to death.
Which is all of us.
But that was never God’s heart for us.
He never wanted us to suffer and die because of our rebellion.
But justice needed to take place or we would never submit to him.
We would never see the importance of living according to his ways, his instructions He has given us through the scriptures, the bible.
We would never change if He just pardoned our sin without showing us what the rightful penalty for our rebellion would be.
And so He took our verdict upon himself.
He died the death we deserved to die.
They falsely accused him and He let them.
Because He was bearing the rightful accusations that were made to us.
It was really our indictment He underwent.
The rightful charges against us were falsely put upon him.
He was charged with treason against the roman empire.
They charged him of being a rebel, a threat to the roman reign which would be treason.
Non of those charges were true of him.
But they were true of us.
We all put ourselves in God’s place.
We all rebelled against his reign.
We all did what we wanted and deemed right instead of submitting to him and living in the ways He instructed us for our own well-being.
We made ourselves the god of our own life.
And He paid the rightful penalty for our high treason against the King.

So we did not have to suffer what was rightfully ours to suffer.
So we could be pardoned and forgiven.
So we could be united with our Father.
The One that never stopped loving us but provided a substitute when we rebelled against him.
So that we could learn his ways.
So that He could give us a new heart that wants to submit to him and live in love the way He intended life to be.
So that He could make us whole and healthy again by bearing the pain and sicknesses and grief we went through as a result of our rebellion.
Not necessarily all directly through our own rebellion, but through the rebellion of people nonetheless.
He really carried all our sorrows and pain and guilt when He was judged undeservingly.
Everything that was in the world because of sin came on Jesus.
So He could give us new life instead.
Life that was his very own.
First by laying his life down for us.
Then by giving us his Spirit, by giving us a new heart.
Making us a new person.
So we could be all we were made to be.

To be continued…

Free Gift

I mentioned that justice needs to take place, a rightful penalty for rebellion against God, our sin, to protect the morality of society and to keep us all safe.
But I believe there is more to it.
When justice takes place the value of the victim is acknowledged.
When it is witheld on the other hand the worth of a person is not esteemed very high. It basicly says that person does not really matter.
That is why it is so important for the victims of crimes to get justice.
To see the offender punished in an appropriate way.
It does not only protect society and teaches the criminal what is right and wrong.
If justice is witheld the victim will feel unseen.
Like he or she is not important.

When Jesus died on that cross He showed us the worth of God.
We would never submit and cling to a God that would let himself be walked over.
We would not respect him at all and we would not feel safe to entrust our lives to him.
We want someone that is just to rule over us.
Even if that means that our own mistakes are not wiped away like they never happened.
The paradox is that in the end God does treath us like we never sinned.
But something took place before that happened.
It even looked like God did let himself be walked over when He let himself be taken captive, tortured and crucified.
Yet He did all that to show us the rightful consequence for our rebellion.
He showed us the tremendous value He has.
It is not that He started to feel insecure when people disobeyed him.
But we needed to be reminded of the worth of God.
The importance of him being above us.
So He can actually lead our lives in good order instead of letting chaos go rampant. Chaos that is the result of people not submitting to him and trying to do things their own way.
Only a God that consist of three persons, and yet is one being, can do all that at once!

To be continued…

Free Gift

Included in the recompense that Jesus made for our sin was the harm we do to others.
Interesting is that many of the instructions God gives us to live by are about how we treath other people.
When we do others wrong it is called sin.
Sin against God.
He cares for us so much that He takes it personally if someone wrongs us.
And so when Jesus died He paid the full penalty for all the cruelty that people do to each other.
Every crime, all hate, every slander, gossip, neglection of children and really all evil you can imagine.
And by doing so his death does not only show us the worth of God but our own worth as well!
Jesus paid the full rightful penalty for every single wrong that was ever done to you or that will be done to you in the future.
Because you matter to God.
He sees you and you are important to him.
No one should do you any harm.
But the truth is that people do hurt each other and Jesus paid the full punishment for that.
This frees us to forgive others, which delivers us from the bitterness and sicknesses that are the result of an unforgiving heart.
It opens our heart to receive healing from all the wrong that is done to us.
Unforgiveness though can keep us from receiving the healing that God made available for us on the cross.

To be continued…

Free Gift

Because of Jesus sacrifice for us, his death on the cross, God is now willing to forgive us and wipe our slates clean.
Because a restitution was made.
The rightful price for our sin was paid.
One of the results of this is that we can be healed.
Both physically and emotionally.
Sickness came into the world after the first people rebelled against God.
It gave satan access to their lives which he used to bring destruction.
We need to be careful of just blaming the devil for sickness and disaster because he only has access to our lives if we give it to him. Originally.
We may need to surrender something in our lives back to God in order to get healed and to close the door to the devil.
I believe that by giving ourselves to God without reservation we give him permission to invade our lives and heal us.
We also need to be careful not to see sickness as punishment from God for a specific sin.
I do believe that a certain sin can be the root of a certain sickness.
Like the bitterness of unforgiveness can make people very sick.
Yet that does not mean that the sickness is punishment.
But it is an inroad for that disease.

People may be sick for various reasons.
I am not saying that God cannot or will not make people sick but if He does his reasons may not always be clear to us.
It could very well be to prevent something or to prevent someone from doing the wrong thing. And even that would be an act of love. Whether to that person or to others that are affected by it.
But the good news is that when Jesus died for us He did not only bear our sin but also our sicknesses.
He bore the full consequences of our rebellion against God.
When we give our lives to God and accept Jesus death on our behalf healing is available for our body and soul.
The devil has no rightful claim on our lives anymore because a recompense for our sin was fully made.
It was the blood of Jesus, that left his body when He was tortured and hung on the cross.
Remember that I explained that God gave us new life.
The bible teaches us that life is in the blood.
So when Jesus died his blood, which is his life, was poured out on the earth for us.
He took part of our death and his life was made available to us.
Because Jesus died in our place we can be healed of any sickness or disability.
This does not mean that God only heals believers.
On the contrary He often heals unbelievers to show them his great love.
And sometimes, as believers, He takes us through a journey in our own heart before we get healed.
I believe that when we truly open ourselves up for the love of God and stop resisting it and putting up all kinds of objections of why He would not love us, we are open for his healing.
Because healing is an expression of God’s love.
If we accept God’s forgiveness we open ourselves for his healing as well.
In any case, healing was made available for us on the cross and it is connected to forgiveness.
Whether receiving it or giving it to others.

To be continued…

Free Gift

If you are ready to be united with your Maker you can pray this prayer:

Dear Jesus,

I am so sorry that I rebelled against you
That I put myself in your place
That I did not acknowledge you as Lord over my life

I repent from my rebellion
I accept you as my Lord and Savior
The one who died to take my place
So that I could be forgiven

Fill me with your Holy Spirit
So that I will be able to obey you
And with your help
I turn from my life of sin
And I completely give it to you

I give you access to every part of me
So you can change me
And make me the way you intended me to be
Show me your ways
And help me to hear your voice
So I will never turn from your side
Lead me in the plan you have for my life

By your ability I surrender my whole life to you
And live for you from now on

Amen

Tetelestai

(Finished)

It is done
Paid for
Every part
To the last penny

Every sin
Every crime
Every pain
Every shame

Nothing left over
Not one single stain

You are now pure
You are forgiven
You are made whole
You are redeemed

The price for your life
Fully being paid
A sacrifice was required
It has been made

A life for a life
A tooth for a tooth
Blood for blood
It was the blood of God

To be continued…

Free Gift