Better is little with the fear of Jehovah, then great treasure and trouble therewith-Proverbs 15:16
One of Tolkien’s poems is about an Elvin treasure that has a deep magic upon it; Magic so deep that eventually the elves leave. During this poem a dwarf finds the treasure and delves deeper and deeper into the mountain until he is old, deaf and blind. A young dragon comes and kills the old dwarf taking his treasure. Latter the dragon is old, deaf and blind, when a young knight comes in and slays the dragon taking his treasure. Next the same happens to the knight and when the crusaders come he is also slain. The crusaders leave the treasure untouched and soon it is forgotten. A treasure that takes the very soul of a person, dragon, dwarf, is also like a coveted sin. Many have sins that they know deep down are wrong but they will not yield them. Those sins will eventually cause them great trouble. It is better to have a little and trust fully in God and serve him than to have great riches and power that eventually consume and destroy you.
Tag: Jesus
Remembering who HE is
I love how Jerimiah 33:1-3 first states who God is. ‘He who made the earth, who formed it and established it. ‘
Only after this does Jerimiah say the promise of God. ‘ Call to me and I will answer you, and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know.’
Jerimiah doesn’t forget WHO God is, before declaring WHAT He will do.
It is so easy to treat God like a genie in a bottle who grants a wish and appears when you rub his lamp. We forget that God is awesome! In the true definition of the word. We forget that He IS the almighty, the I Am, master, king, creator of the universe. God is so much more than a wish granter, the only reason He pays attention to us is because He loves us. He doesn’t have to help us, He wants to. Let us not take advantage of God’s love and forget who God is in the process.
Set Free
What good is it for a man to gain the whole world but to lose his very soul? –Matthew 16:26
In The Voyage of the Dawn-treader, the group of main characters land on an island in search of provisions. While all the others are searching Eustace wanders off and stumbles across a dragon’s hoard. In his blind greed Eustace starts taking bits of treasure. But a dragon’s treasure is cursed and the boy turns into a dragon. Nearing the end of the book, Aslan has Eustace climb into a pool, Eustace tries to wash the scales off himself but fails, only when Aslan helps him do the layers and layers of skin finally come off.
In our lives sins pile up and cling to us, like a forbidden treasure, we keep on gathering more sins until we are so laden down that everyday is a struggle. Only when God offers to peel off our layers of sin will we finally be who we were created to be. We can’t remove the sins ourselves we must have Jesus to remove them by the purity of His sacrifice. By dying on the cross our sins were washed clean, and through knowing Jesus personally we can be made free from the bonds of this world. Sometimes it is painful to have the scaly sins stripped away, but in the end the healing balm of Christ’s eternal presence in our lives soothes the hurt and we can see how much greater it is to be scale free. Without Jesus we are trapped, with Him we are free.
JESUS
When did we become so afraid to say the name Jesus?
Jesus is our savior, He is our King, He is our friend; but are we His friend? If we are afraid to say we love Him, to call Him as ours then are we His friend? This world is changing, in some ways good, in some ways not so good, but where will Jesus fit into all this change?
We can go right back to Jesus’s ministry as a man here on earth all the way up to His ministry through Christians in the present day and we see many common strings linking these times. The one I am going to touch on is the string of trying to get rid of Jesus.
The High Priests of the courts back in the days of Herod tried and failed to rid the world of Jesus. I say failed because He rose again and then ascended into Heaven where He now reigns until the day when He returns to collect His people. Jesus was crucified in as brutal a fashion as you could crucify a man, and yet He lives. Even if you ignore the fact that Jesus rose again, even if you believe He stayed in the tomb His ministry never died. Wheather Jesus rose again or not (I believe He did) Jesus’s ministry lived on. In countries that tried to squash it by killing His believers, through ages of people trying to rid the world of the name Jesus, He has survived, both literally and in narrative. So where does He fit in now?
In a world where hate mail is a common thing since the creation of FaceBook and Twitter; In a world where people mock, slander, insult and swear at you if you say the name Jesus, where does He fit in? Where He always has. In the whisper, in the quiet, in the yearning and crying of our hearts for someone who loves us, that is where Jesus fits in. IN the magnificent, the crouch of a lion or the roar of the ocean waves, that is also where Jesus fits in; He is in everything if we look for Him. Why are we afraid to say the name Jesus? Our ancestors never were, or at least it didn’t stop them. Throughout history people have died and suffered for the name of Jesus so why are we so afraid in a country where people can’t hurt us with more than just their words? We need to remember that Jesus is there when we speak His name, we are not standing alone, and we need to feel privileged to say the name Jesus and know that He is there. We don’t need to be afraid, people’s words hurt, when they call down and insult Jesus it hurts, but He is used to it and we need to be willing to stand with Him anyways.
Carried in the cross 