Heaven is just a prayer away. We can’t talk to those who have before us, but we can talk to God. Sometimes when we lose someone we like to ask God to pass on a message to them and that can feel a little wrong, but if I’m being honest, I truly don’t think God minds. He gets that we are breaking. He gets that we want to hold and touch our loved one again. So when we ask Him to give our family or friends in Heaven a hug from us, I think He’s okay with it, He knows that we aren’t trying to be offensive or trying to speak with those in Heaven other than God Himself, He knows that our hearts are simply trying to hold on to the one who has torn them apart by going. God wants us to talk to Him. He wants us to be honest. Sometimes I find myself saying things like, “Are you sitting on the beach with Nana.” Or “I miss Max, give him a big hug from me please.” Not because the ones we love need us sending them hugs and love, but because we need the hug and the time on the beach. God understands our pain. Now. That does not mean we should try and contact our loved ones. We must not try and communicate with those who are dead. But if asking God to pass on your love to the ones you have lost helps you heal, then I think He would rather you were talking to Him about it then doing anything else. Does He transfer your messages and hugs to those who have gone first? Probably not. Simply because time does not exist in Heaven. We feel it has been so many years since we last saw those who have gone first. But to them it’s been no time at all. They don’t miss us, they are in paradise and when we get there it will be like a blink, like no time has passed at all.
But that won’t stop me from saying, “I wish I could hold him, one more time. Give him a hug from me Jesus, and hug me too because I need it so badly tonight.”
He loves us. Jesus holds us close and comforts us. Let Him heal you. Speak to Him about your pain. Tell Him the memories you cherish. Let Him be your joy.
Author: carriedinthecross
I am a young woman who grew up in British Columbia. In BC was all I ever wanted; I had my poodle (Max) and all my friends, Saturdays at the Vancouver Aquarium and Sunday afternoons at one of my favorite beaches it was paradise. But God had a different plan for my life and my dad's job landed us in Alberta and now where I remain, in small town Souris Manitoba. The transitions from paradise to prairie were difficult and I will admit that now 10 years later I still refer to home as Abbotsford BC. Through this crazy pathway trek across Canada I have had one true constant, God; and though none of it was easy, everything that has happened in my life has formed in me a true lasting friendship with the one I call Immanuel. Because no matter how far from home we are God is with us, and thanks to God I have found an almost completely over looked beauty in Manitoba. If you open your eyes you will see that God has planted wondrous things everywhere you go.
Today He dies, Sunday He comes back
Sever skin from bone
-Snap- the screams echo through the halls. It’s dark and dry. Thirst. Need. Fear. Pain. -Snap- another shriek. Your turn next.
Trembling. Is this an illusion? A nightmare? No. The tearing at your skin from the rats shows that’s not true. Is anyone out there? Someone to save you. -Clink- Doors open. “Leave!” Gruff voice. Daylight. Tears. Relief.
Screams.
Not yours. Out comes a man. His face is twisted and he drags his body as he walks. You run over just in time to catch Him.
“Sir. Are you alright?” Blood soaks your palms. A weak smile. Sweat. More tears.
A whisper. “For you, I did this.” Death.
3 days. Arms lift you up and spin you around. ALIVE! RISEN! FREE!
I hear the best torture professionals could sever skin from bone with a single lash. Have you ever had a cut bone deep? I have; it’s agonizing, I still have the scar.
Imagine 49 of those covering your body.
They spare some details in the movies because I am sure that Jesus wasn’t free standing, He most likely was tied to something to hold him still when they beat Him. Also. He probably threw up blood till He couldn’t anymore. The screams and cries of anguish, (anguish we should have bore) would have been sickening to the audience. It would not have been anywhere near as gentle as we see it in our minds.
Image one hundred billion names or more tattooed on the end of the whip. Look closely. There is your name. No! Don’t look away! Watch as it drives itself into your savior’s back. That is why we serve Him.
I know most people will walk away from this and shake their heads and try to remove these images. But don’t. Lest we ever forget that Jesus SUFFERED and died. Those lashes were yours, and mine.
Majesty of God-part 4
.John 20:15-16 NIV
[15] He asked her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?” Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.” [16] Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means “Teacher”).
He said to her, “Mary.” Jesus called her by name. Why is this so important? Because Mary had lost her name. She had had her name taken by the evil that was in her. Jesus drove seven evil spirits out of Mary and restored to her her sanity, her dignity and her name. Even in fables if your true name is taken you are lost to the one who stole it. In this true account a woman had lost her name and her life to demons, the Prince of Peace and savior came to her and saved her and restored her name. The fact is, Jesus isn’t just the savior of the world, He’s the savior of you. You specifically. He knows your name. He knows your hurt and where you have come from. He knows there will be times you stumble and run back to the evil that held you captive, and He will always be there ready to forgive you again when you run to Him.
Imagine being in the garden, looking for Jesus and hearing His voice call your name. Relief, joy, happy tears, laughter and sobbing, it would all come to the surface as you ran to Him calling, “Teacher!”
He knows your name and loves you.
Majesty of God- part 3
.Ephesians 2:6-9 NIV
[6] And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, [7] in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. [8] For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— [9] not by works, so that no one can boast.
So, after the last section I am sure there were many who went, ‘you’re preaching that I have to live a pure and flawless life. You’re saying I must not sin ever, you are saying that my mistakes are condemning me.’
No.
I’m preaching that we need Jesus! We are saved by His grace alone. Yet, we still need to do our best everyday to live as Jesus did.
If you have given your life to Jesus, then you will want to live differently because you love Him.
No person can get to Heaven through her or his own goodness. We are sinful by nature. We are not naturally good. Some are more prone to goodness then others but we aren’t going to get into psychology today. God made it so that only His grace could save. Anyone who boasts about how amazing or spiritual they are has missed the point. If we were saved by being super spiritual and awesome then only those who had given up everything and gone to live on a mountain to reach a closer knowledge of God would be the ones getting into Heaven. Thank God He makes it so that His grace is all sufficient!
We are saved by grace, but once we know and love Jesus we will want to change to serve Him better, because your works as a reflection of Christ play a part too.
Majesty of God – part 2
Revelation 5:13-14 NIV
[13] Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, saying: “To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power, for ever and ever!” [14] The four living creatures said, “Amen,” and the elders fell down and worshiped.
Revelation really brings together the Majesty of both Jesus and God being one. In Revelation the elders give praise and worship to God and Jesus in the exact same way. Now, we must remember that John is trying to make all he is seeing understandable to those who have not seen them because things were so amazing and frightening that they were beyond human description.
The Majesty of Jesus is very important. We treat Him like our best friend, and He is, but we also then tend to forget that He is Holy. He is equal with God. He is king. Only the Lamb could open the scroll. His glory so great that John feared he would die simply by looking upon Him. So many do the, when I get to Heaven all my sins will be read and Jesus will walk up, put an arm around my shoulders and say ‘it’s all good’ and take me to Heaven, thing. But Jesus isn’t opening the doors to a rave, He’s opening the doors to the most holy place. Yes, if you have accepted Him your sins are forgiven, but that doesn’t mean that you can keep on sining. It also doesn’t mean that Jesus is going to stand there, fist bump you and wave you through. There will be a trial. We will stand before the seat of judgment. God will call out all we are accused of and the devil will stand there like the prosecuting attorney laying out all our failures and sins and mistakes. If we do not have Jesus, then that’s it, we’re sentenced to life in the eternal fire.
Yet. If Jesus is our defense then He will walk up to the throne and show God His hands, feet and side, and say, “this one I’ve paid for.”
We are payed for by His grace.
Jesus Himself never used the word grace, He is the grace. Without Him there is no hope. With Him there is always reason to hope. But people get so caught in the crevice of grace setting us free that they act like deserve the grace, they act like Jesus is our concierge bringing us what we are owed. We get to he place where we treat Him like a servant.
He is Holy. He is worshiped by creatures we cam only imagine, and the way to be with Him is narrow. You have to throw this life away. To die to yourself every day. And that is hard, and it’s not fun. And there are days it will feel unfair. But in the face of Heaven. In the face of being released from our punishment, then isn’t it all worth it. We are saved because of His grace, grace we don’t deserve and can’t buy or earn. Grace that changes us to want to be more like Him and to leave our old selves behind for the new life Christ offers. Grace that makes it so when we fail we haven’t lost God. Grace that makes it so when the devil is calling for our blood because of our sins and failures Jesus claims us out of his hands because we are now His. It was my sin that held Him to the cross, it was His love that made Him choose to stay until it was accomplished. You don’t have to accept Him, but someday we will all see God, who do you want as your advocate? Because if you only lived for yourself, then the only one to defend you is you. Nothing you have done will ever be good enough to pay for your faults. Only the blood of Jesus washed across you, cleansing your failures, not covering them up, but washing them away, will be enough to pay your Ransom.
Majesty of God part 1
1. Majesty of God
.Hebrews 1:3-4 ESV
[3] He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, [4] having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.
He is the exact imprint of His nature. Its nice to almost imagine the though they are three separate beings, if God and the Holy Spirit had physical forms, they and Jesus would all have same finger print. Though that is totally unbiblical and simply imagery. However, God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are three separate parts of one being. Think of them like a plant. A plant has leaves, roots, and stock, all have a different function, yet all are part of the same plant. I know the Trinity is confusing and part of the reason people want to down play parts of it and up play other parts, but you cannot have Jesus without God, or God without The Holy Spirit, or vise versa on all accounts. I say this, because we miss the fact that Jesus sat down at God’s right hand. That HE upholds the universe. That HE is greater than the angels, because Jesus is God and God is Jesus. I know it sounds like too much to understand. But a god you can fully understand is not God. If you can understand all about Him then He isn’t greater than your understanding. And if He isn’t greater than your understanding then why do you need Him?
That’s why people who say they won’t believe in Jesus because of the things about Him they don’t understand drive me nuts.
Simply put. If you went to university and knew everything your professor said without him needing to teach you and help you, then why would you be there at all? Please don’t say because you need the piece of paper that says you graduated.
If you know all your teacher knows then his isn’t fit to he your teacher. If you understand all about God and all He is and all He knows, then you can’t rely on Him. God is infinite However, we will never out learn Him. We can never fully understand Him, because He is greater than us. That’s the whole point.
People have always craved knowledge. Look at the garden. Eve went for the tree of knowledge, and learned nothing but shame and suffering, because you can’t know all God knows and understand all He understands, so the bit you can grasp will become tainted if The Holy Spirit does not guide you. See, three parts, equal power, all needed.
If Jesus was not equal with God them His death could not have saved us. If He was just man then we are still guilty of all our sins. But He is God and because of that, of we accept Him as our savior, then we are saved.
The body – part 6
Luke 24:3 NIV
[3] but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus.
This. This right here. They entered the tomb but did not find the body of Jesus. Why? Because He had risen. Jesus rose as He said He would.
Have you ever lost something? You know you put it right there. Yet when you go back it’s gone.
The deciples knew they had left Jesus’s body in that tomb. They knew that it took a good four, strong men to roll the stone away. Yet, there the stone was, and there Jesus was not.
It must have taken a long time for the deciples to wrap their heads around that one. He was there. Now He wasn’t. The ladies had told them that there was an angel (mistaken for a gardener) who told them that Jesus had risen as He said He would and to go tell the others, but to accept that. To look and go. Huh, he really isn’t here. You know where you left Him, He was in a safe place right? No way He could go missing. But now He’s gone.
I know I’m making this a little funny. But I can just see the perplexed looks on the faces of Peter and John. I can see them stare at the tomb, then each other, then back at the tomb.
The crucifixion was so horrible that they were still raw. Nothing could cleanse that pain. And then Jesus’s body dissappears. They saw Him dead. They mourned Him. They were still mourning. Now. How do they recall Christ’s words and joy in His return? First. They must have been so very confused.
Then Jesus comes and shows Himself. We have the upper room, we have the road to Damascus, we have several places Jesus appeared to show, “Yes I am alive.”
Then just as the deciples got their feet under them, Jesus ascends to Heaven. Never again in this world would they touch Him or laugh with Him. But God.
Jesus sent His Holy Spirit do the deciples and now we, can know Him better and serve Him through His own Spirit.
The body is gone guys. I know people still search for it, wanting to find it, wanting to prove that it’s still there. But as the angel said, “He is not here, He has risen. Just. As. He. Said. He. Would.”
As we end this series I want us to remember the journey. Because we followed part of Jesus’s journey. We are always walking slowly on a path following the cross. Because, of we aim for the cross, if we aim for Jesus. We get all we have ever dreamed of, simply by having Him.
The body- part 5
2 Corinthians 4:10 NIV
[10] We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body.
We don’t think of carrying death around in our bodies. If we do have death in us then we usually show signs. Drawn and pasty skin. Black circles under our eyes. Thin hair, a limp. It takes the form of many physical reactions. Disease always does. I think of my close friend who had liver disease. He was always sickly, skinny and couldn’t put on any weight. It was a result of his disease. I think of others I know who have diseases and you can sometimes see it in her eyes and the way she moves that she’s having a bad day with it.
Disease doesn’t always mean death, I’m just using it as an example.
Carrying the death of Christ in our bodies is very different. It’s a death that brings life.
But like the death of the human body, of the death of Christ is in us then we should show signs. We try a little harder than others, we care for others even if we want to hate them. We speak the Bible, we pray, we forgive, we show patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and self control. We live as reflections of love, when we don’t feel it. Joy, when we think it’s escaped us. And peace, when the world is entropy. If we live in the death of Christ there will be signs. Our whole purpose is that others may see Jesus in us and aim to be like Him themselves.
The body- part 4
1 Corinthians 27
[27] Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.
A body is a crazy machine.
If man makes an automaton it has several intricate parts to make it functional, and even then it can generally do one thing, maybe two.
The human body is far more complicated then anything any of us could make. Now think of each of us as we are. Break down I’m your mind the human system, not just the foot bone connects to the ankle bone song, think about the cells, the enzymes, the tubes, the oragns, the electric currents. All of it needs to function together, with some parts, if something isn’t doing its job or can’t, other parts step up and take the load.
That’s the body of Christ. We each have a specific job. We are individually important for the whole system to work. And in some cases, when one of us falls down, others step up to help us carry the load. No part of us is useless. All of us is valued. We can serve God and go forward in faith. Each of us in our own way. Our pathway might look very different from those around us, but that is our function. God made us who we are and able to do what we can do for a reason. We are the body of Christ.
The body – part 3
1 Corinthians 15:37-38 NIV
[37] When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else. [38] But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body.
We are amidst farmers here in my town of Souris. It’s funny because I lived in the city all my life before moving here, so when the farmers spoke about pretty much anything, I was lost. Now I understand much of what is said and can hold a general conversation on the plants, fields, livestock and crops.
I love watching harvest happen. We (my dog and I) sit in the living room and watch the lights of the machines on the fields around us. Often they are there until early in the morning, because planting needs to happen at a specific time depending on what you are sowing. I have never, Ever, Seen a farmer drive off his field and leave behind a full stock of grown crops. No, he leaves and his field looks like it did before, just turned up. It takes time and patience before we see the first signs of life in the seeds that were planted. Little, generally green, lines of thin organic material peeks out through the soil. It really is a miracle every time a crop is harvested and there is actually something there to harvest. These baby shoots are so small that an ant literally causes them to bend. God destined baby shoot to grow, so grow it does. It’s always a game at my place to try and figure out what plant will come to be from that shoot. Usually it’s wheat. Sometimes it’s canola, once it was flax, once it was sunflowers and last year to everyone’s surprise, it was beans. Beans hurt when you walk through them by the way. The have a fuzzy shell, but prickly stock. Why? God made them that way.
We plant seeds everyday. We also water seeds everyday. Sometimes we pull out weeds. It’s all in how we are to people. Do we shower them with Jesus and water a good seed while plucking a weed out? Or do we treat them the way the world does, planting more weeds and holding back the sun?
We are all planted seeds growing through the soil. We don’t know what God has destined us to be until He permits us to grow leaves, then we have a guess. Someday we will flower and then we will know, and so will the world, what sort of plant we are. Did we grow as flowers in God’s garden? Or did we grow as nettles in the ground of the world?
What sort of plant are we? Are we artists? Teachers? Musicians? Ditch diggers? Farmers?
Most importantly. How do we use what we are to bless God’s kingdom?
How are you growing? What are you growing into?
