Category: January

Daily Light – Jan 31, 2018

On By Don HesterIn January, Let There Be Light ArchivesLeave a comment
Your daily goal:
Philippians 3:14  “I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”   
(Monday-Friday, from my morning quiet time, I will write a short thought for that day which I pray God will use to motivate you to ‘GO’ for that day.  Your objective is simple…to GO…to GO OUT and share the love of Christ with someone in that day….to GO and bear fruit …to be light to the world.)

Today’s Daily Light

(Continuing to ‘graze’ in 1 Peter 😊)

1 Peter 1:13-25 NIV  (double down and ‘absorb’ what the Holy Spirit ‘inspired’ herein…let it soak down into your spirit ‘so that’ it will do its work in you…and I promise that it will do so.)

3 Therefore, with minds that are alert and fully sober, set your hope on the grace to be brought to you when Jesus Christ is revealed at his coming. 14 As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. 15 But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; 16 for it is written: “Be holy, because I am holy.”[a]

17 Since you call on a Father who judges each person’s work impartially, live out your time as foreigners here in reverent fear. 18 For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors,19 but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. 20 He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake. 21 Through him you believe in God, who raised him from the dead and glorified him, and so your faith and hopeare in God.

22 Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for each other, love one another deeply, from the heart.[b]23 For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God. 24 For,

“All people are like grass,
    and all their glory is like the flowers of the field;
the grass withers and the flowers fall,
25     but the word of the Lord endures forever.”[c]

And this is the word that was preached to you.  (end)

Friends… one of the ‘ways’ I make sure that I routinely pray..as to type and form of prayer…is to pray God’s ‘word’ back-to Him.  Meaning…obviously God’s word is His perfect will…and so we should make it our practice to including praying within the context of His revealed will…praying and petitioning within His stated desire and will for us in all things.  That said… this morning I pray:

Father..I pray that we, through time spent with you in prayer and through the inspiration and spiritual nourishment that comes from time in your ‘word’..that we will be increasingly alert as to the evil desires that exist out there in this temporary world system that seek to distract us from your way and will….and that you give us strength and power to ‘holy’ in our minds and hearts because this is what you ask us to do.  Help us to more deeply value the precious gift of eternal life that is provided us through the precious blood of Jesus.   And Father I pray that we will work at loving everyone around at a deeper level…help us be better lovers of others.  And lastly this morning Father…help us to realize that we have been born anew through the work of Your Spirit into a new creation..and that such life is kept safe and protected by your power and that this new eternal life inside us is born out of the imperishable seed of the Spirit.  All of this is so precious and so amazing.   Thank you, thank you.  

Please feel free to forward Daily Light to those that you feel would benefit from receiving it.  To receive Daily Light, simply send us your email address and ask to be added to the mailing list. Send address to p314go@outlook.com.   Email addresses will not be shared and all recipients are blind copied.  
If you have not visited our blog, the web address is    lettherebelight.blog

Daily Light – Jan 30, 2018

On By Don HesterIn January, Let There Be Light ArchivesLeave a comment
Your daily goal:
Philippians 3:14  “I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”   
(Monday-Friday, from my morning quiet time, I will write a short thought for that day which I pray God will use to motivate you to ‘GO’ for that day.  Your objective is simple…to GO…to GO OUT and share the love of Christ with someone in that day….to GO and bear fruit …to be light to the world.)
Today’s Daily Light
 
Praise to God for a ‘Living’ Hope
 
1 Peter 1:3-8
 
3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, 5 who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. 6 In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. 7 These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. 8 Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, 9 for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls.
Dear Jesus… through the eyes and heart of our faith…through the reality and knowledge that you are ‘in’ us and with us through and in everything we encounter in this life….the joys and blessings… the storms and times of turmoil… the trials…and even in pain and physical suffering…we proclaim that YOU are faithful…that YOU have proven that YOU give us such glorious joy that we can’t really even express the reality and depth of what it means to us…that deep and pure knowledge that we are Yours for eternity..kept safe and shielded in heaven…’in’ YOU.   wow…Thank you, Amen.
 
 
 
Please feel free to forward Daily Light to those that you feel would benefit from receiving it.  To receive Daily Light, simply send us your email address and ask to be added to the mailing list. Send address to p314go@outlook.com.   Email addresses will not be shared and all recipients are blind copied.  
If you have not visited our blog, the web address is    lettherebelight.blog

Daily Light – Jan 29, 2018

On By Don HesterIn January, Let There Be Light ArchivesLeave a comment
Your daily goal:
Philippians 3:14  “I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”   
(Monday-Friday, from my morning quiet time, I will write a short thought for that day which I pray God will use to motivate you to ‘GO’ for that day.  Your objective is simple…to GO…to GO OUT and share the love of Christ with someone in that day….to GO and bear fruit …to be light to the world.)
Today’s Daily Light
From the Apostle Peter…Grazing in 1 Peter this morn..
 
1 Peter 1:1-2 NIV, Peter, inspired by the Holy Spirit of God, wrote to us   To God’s ‘elect‘, strangers in the world, scatted throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia, who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and sprinkling by his blood:  Grace and peace be yours in abundance.
While we are grazing on these few choice morsels of spiritual food this morning…let’s really chew on it and get all of the spiritual nutritional value out of it 😊
 
So here…Peter says to us that all 3 persons of the God-Head…the Trinity…are at work in our redemption.  God chooses us…the Holy Spirit then comes to live inside us and constantly is our champion to lead us away from sin and into the ability to be obedient to the life that we as believers should live…The Spirit is at work in our ‘sanctification’ process….and thus God’s choice to choose us and the Spirit’s work to complete us all comes through the sacrificial work of Jesus Christ on the cross…the sprinkling of His blood makes it all possible for us to become God’s choice…God’s children.  And Peter sums up the awe and wonder and eternal wow factor of ‘all that’ by saying…   Grace and peace be yours in abundance…in abundance.  We have the whole God-Head team at work from beginning to end to bring us to our eternal home in heaven with our heavenly Father while we live here in this temporary realm.   Wow. 
 
Dear Lord… Thank you, thank you for choosing us before we were ever created…and then placing us in Your Son to make us Your righteousness…and then for giving us of Your Spirit to protect us and lead and guide us to our eternal home which is in heaven.   Thank you that you think and plan in abundance and that you do not leave us here to figure all this out on our home.  You know how crippled we are and weak we are because of the effect of Sin.  Thank you that Jesus overcame the effect and power of sin..He overcame death…and we become your righteousness and you give us eternal life.  Help us to cooperate with the Spirit that is at work in us and to make it our goal and aim everyday to please you with our life.    Amen
 
 
 
 
 
Please feel free to forward Daily Light to those that you feel would benefit from receiving it.  To receive Daily Light, simply send us your email address and ask to be added to the mailing list. Send address to p314go@outlook.com.   Email addresses will not be shared and all recipients are blind copied.  
If you have not visited our blog, the web address is    lettherebelight.blog

Daily Light – Jan 26, 2018

On By Don HesterIn January, Let There Be Light ArchivesLeave a comment
Your daily goal:
Philippians 3:14  “I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”   
(Monday-Friday, from my morning quiet time, I will write a short thought for that day which I pray God will use to motivate you to ‘GO’ for that day.  Your objective is simple…to GO…to GO OUT and share the love of Christ with someone in that day….to GO and bear fruit …to be light to the world.)
Today’s Daily Light
 
Biblical Righteousness is ‘not’ just some’thing’….it is some’one’…It is both a place/position and a person.   Jesus is our position and person. 
 
Sooo…I am grazing in the book of Romans this morning…and other contextually linked writings of Paul…..feasting on the morsels of truth and light that the Holy Spirit gave to the Apostle Paul to write to you and me and to ‘all’ who read, or hear, these truths.
 
At the top of the page, chapter 1, in the open margin, somewhere in time, I had read or heard someone say the following, and it seemed to capture the essence of the overall context of the central message of Romans: 
 
“The righteousness of God is that righteousness which His own righteousness requires that He require.”  (why don’t you read that several times until its intended meaning becomes clear). 
 
Romans 1:17  NIV, Paul writes       For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.'”
 
Romans 3:21-26  NIV, Paul writes      But now a righteousness from God apart from the law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify.  This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.  There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.  God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood.  He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed before hand unpunished — he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies the man who has faith in Jesus.
 
Romans 5:1 NIV Paul writes    Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with god through our Lord Jesus Christ through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. 
 
1 Corinthians 1:30 NIV Paul writes    It is because of him(God) that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God — that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption.
 
God is rightly righteous.  We are not righteous…we are actually born in a state of unrighteousness.  God requires and desires for us to ‘be’ righteous ‘so that’ we can have fellowship with him.  We cannot make or earn the required position of righteousness that God requires….so…God reconciled the difference…He reconciled the Gap…and He made Jesus-God-the-Son to become ‘righteousness’ ‘so that’ we could become the righteousness of God through faith/believing in Jesus.   
 
2 Corinthians 5:14,17-19,21    NIV Paul writes    14, For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all and therefore all died (judicially)…17, Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!  All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation:  19, that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them.   21, God made him (Jesus) who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. 
 
Dear Father…wow…all I can say is thank you.   I know we could never be good enough, no matter how hard we try, to meet the requirement for perfection and righteousness that you not only require..but because of your own righteousness…you deserve.    Thank you that you made up the gap…that you reconciled the difference in giving your son Jesus to die the death we deserved and YOU then give us forgiveness and eternal life…and You place/position us IN YOUR SON…so that we might become YOUR righteousness…..and all of this because of your love and grace shown and given to us.  Thank you, thank you.  Amen
 
 
 
 
 
 
Please feel free to forward Daily Light to those that you feel would benefit from receiving it.  To receive Daily Light, simply send us your email address and ask to be added to the mailing list. Send address to p314go@outlook.com.   Email addresses will not be shared and all recipients are blind copied.  
If you have not visited our blog, the web address is    lettherebelight.blog

Daily Light – Jan 25, 2018

On By Don HesterIn January, Let There Be Light ArchivesLeave a comment
Your daily goal:
Philippians 3:14  “I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”   
(Monday-Friday, from my morning quiet time, I will write a short thought for that day which I pray God will use to motivate you to ‘GO’ for that day.  Your objective is simple…to GO…to GO OUT and share the love of Christ with someone in that day….to GO and bear fruit …to be light to the world.)
Today’s Daily Light
 
Taken  from an Article by 
Tony Reinke
Senior writer, desiringGod.org
 
Continued theme from Romans 12 – Do Not Be Conformed to the World.. 
 
(continuation and final of article from yesterday)
 
So we can love and treasure the day Christ will return. Or we can love the world. But we cannot go on trying to love the world and love the day of Christ’s return (2 Timothy 4:8–10). In the same way, we cannot love darkness and love the light (John 3:16–21).
 
Love for the light will die once the heart falls in love with the darkness. And this is how the world proves to be our love-killer.
 
When we talk about worldliness, primarily we are not talking about the substitutes of adultery and materialism and money. We are not simply warning against television shows too graphic and media too lewd and skirts too short. All of those things are secondary matters.
Curing the true heart of worldliness is not in the forbidding or what is forbidden; mending the true heart of worldliness must always begin with finding a core love worth fighting for — a love so precious that we will guard it with the proper holy jealousy it deserves.
The problem of worldliness only emerges with any real clarity in our lives once we have discovered our “first love,” a fundamental love, a central love for our Savior Jesus Christ (Revelation 2:4).
 
If talk of worldliness falls into hard times and does not surface much in our thoughts and conversations, it is not a sign that the dangers have disappeared. It is a sign that we have grown careless with the exclusivity of delight in Christ at the center of the Christian life. And once the jealous love is gone, the danger of worldliness grows more deadly and more invisible at the same time.  (End.)
 
Lord…  I pray that you will help me demonstrate my love for you by following you in obedience to what you say in your word as to what our love for you should look like if we truly love you.   I know my love for you is less than you deserve.  And I know that if ‘you’ do not incline my heart to love you more…I most likely will not grow into that person that makes you the highest love of their life.  I claim my dependence on your work in my heart and life.   Thus I pray that ‘you’ will work in me to give me the strength and desire to love you as you deserve to be loved.   Amen
 
Please feel free to forward Daily Light to those that you feel would benefit from receiving it.  To receive Daily Light, simply send us your email address and ask to be added to the mailing list. Send address to p314go@outlook.com.   Email addresses will not be shared and all recipients are blind copied.  
If you have not visited our blog, the web address is    lettherebelight.blog

Daily Light – Jan 24, 2018

On By Don HesterIn January, Let There Be Light ArchivesLeave a comment
Your daily goal:
Philippians 3:14  “I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”   
(Monday-Friday, from my morning quiet time, I will write a short thought for that day which I pray God will use to motivate you to ‘GO’ for that day.  Your objective is simple…to GO…to GO OUT and share the love of Christ with someone in that day….to GO and bear fruit …to be light to the world.)

Today’s Daily Light

Continuing the theme from Romans 12… ‘Don’t Be Conformed to The World’…

Taken  from an Article by

Tony Reinke

Senior writer, desiringGod.org

This evil age” is perpetually trying to kill our loves — not through blunt force, but through coercion by seduction. The world tempts us daily to leave greater loves for lesser lusts. 

“The moment we care for anything deeply, the world — that is, all the other miscellaneous interests — becomes our enemy,” wrote G. K. Chesterton. “The moment you love anything the world becomes your foe” (Works 1:59–60).

 

To love something genuinely is to immediately face all the second loves that are making an attempt at killing your first love. It is the wink of the adulteress to the married man. It is the invitation from a clique to abandon a true friendship. It is the ignoring of the familiar gifts around you, in search of the next thing to charge on your credit card. Worldliness kills because it exchanges loves. The world becomes your foe. 

Theologically speaking, this is why to love the world is to lose the love of God. It’s a horrible trade, but we do it all the time.

 

Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world — the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life — is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever. (1 John 2:15–17)

  

Misdirected love is the root cause of worldliness. Worldliness sucks the sap from our greatest love until it becomes a dried-up branch. 

(Same theme continued tomorrow) 😊

Dear Lord… help us to fill the internal pump of our spirit with YOU… because we know that what we take-in is what we think about and dwell on and what drives our actions…and we want to do your good, pleasing, and perfect will.   The world mindset wants to rob us of YOU as source and supply and replace YOU with ‘it’ as source and supply.   We need and ask YOU to be source and supply for our internal pump.  I pray that YOU help us to see each occasion where the world seeks to replace YOU with and push YOU into some distant second place in our priorities and daily focus.   We need Your help…help us to abide in Your Word ‘so that’ we can remain engaged with Your mind..Your way…Your heart.   Amen
Please feel free to forward Daily Light to those that you feel would benefit from receiving it.  To receive Daily Light, simply send us your email address and ask to be added to the mailing list. Send address to p314go@outlook.com.   Email addresses will not be shared and all recipients are blind copied.  
If you have not visited our blog, the web address is    lettherebelight.blog

Daily Light – Jan 23, 2018

On By Don HesterIn January, Let There Be Light ArchivesLeave a comment
Your daily goal:
Philippians 3:14  “I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”   
(Monday-Friday, from my morning quiet time, I will write a short thought for that day which I pray God will use to motivate you to ‘GO’ for that day.  Your objective is simple…to GO…to GO OUT and share the love of Christ with someone in that day….to GO and bear fruit …to be light to the world.)
Today’s Daily Light
 
We Are To Choose to ‘Transform’…Not To ‘Conform’
 
con·form  (dictionary definition) 
  1. comply with rules, standards, or laws. 
synonyms: 
comply with, abide by, obey, observe, follow, keep to, stick to, adhere to, uphold, heed, accept, go along with, fall in with, respect, defer to 
Romans 12:1-2, NIV, Apostle Paul writes to us…”I urge you, brothers, (and sisters), in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God — this is your spiritual act of worship. 
Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.  Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is — His good, pleasing and perfect will. 
 
1 John 5:19, NIV, The Apostle John wrote   “We know that we are children of God, and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one.
 
Paul says ‘because of’ the ‘mercy’ that God chose to show to us…….Paul says “by the laws of divine judgment we should have received death….that we deserved death….but God chose to pardon us…to show and give us ‘mercy’…and because of THAT…because of THAT marvelous, huge, and wonderful act on the part of God…..we ‘ought to’…rightly should…we must be blind not to want to…give Him the credit and honor and return on investment that He is rightly due…Paul is saying..”do you feel the love that was given you?…then return the ‘love’. 
 
And Paul goes on to say…. ‘now…here is how you do THAT.  You gotta move from ‘conform’ mindset to ‘transform’ mindset.  You gotta recognize that the ideas, views, and mindset that you grow up with in this ‘fallen’ world system…such is NOT God’s ideas, views, and mindset.  John says this temporary world system is under the control of the dark side…  So you gotta do a major paradigm shift and move from old mindset to new mindset.   You gotta ‘morph’ 😊….you gotta TRANSFORM from old to new.  And you do that through a renewal process.   
 
We renew our mind…begin to bring-in God’s ideas, views, mindset…by spending time in the Word and in time with Jesus.  When we do ‘that’…the Spirit of God…takes the light and truth from the time in the word and prayer and installs that light and truth down into the old mindset to create a new mindset….kinda of like over-writing the old software.   The reason we don’t transform so easily…is because it ain’t easy…if it were easy everyone would simply transform.  But we are at war folks…eternity is at stake.   Our old mindset is under the control of the world systems – evil one…the power of the dark side.  So…we have to learn to use the tools of the light…the tools of the Spirit (the force) time in the Word and time with the Lord…’so that’ we can transform and become all we were intended to be…
 
For more on this concept of renewing….you can go to my 2017 (now retired, but still posted) blog..  lettherebelight.blog and look through the categories and go-to ‘The Default System’ articles.  It will greatly help you understand the power of the old mindset that belongs to the fallen world system..how it affects us and how it interferes with God’s desire for us to renew and transform into the new mindset.  The dark side does not want us to move into the light and truth of being transformed and renewed because it does not want us to see the light and beauty of what it looks and feels like to experience God in His goodness, to know how pleasing He and His ways are..and how perfect His will is.   
 
Father…I pray that all of us will really bare down this year and transform more into the people you desire us to be ‘so that’ we can experience you good, pleasing, and perfect will ‘so that’ we can bear more eternal fruit.   We can’t do ‘that’ without your source and supply working in us.   We need your help.   We turn to you now…we ask YOU to help us transform.  Amen 
 
 
Please feel free to forward Daily Light to those that you feel would benefit from receiving it.  To receive Daily Light, simply send us your email address and ask to be added to the mailing list. Send address to p314go@outlook.com.   Email addresses will not be shared and all recipients are blind copied.  
If you have not visited our blog, the web address is    lettherebelight.blog

Daily Light – Jan 22, 2018

On By Don HesterIn January, Let There Be Light ArchivesLeave a comment
Your daily goal:
Philippians 3:14  “I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”   
(Monday-Friday, from my morning quiet time, I will write a short thought for that day which I pray God will use to motivate you to ‘GO’ for that day.  Your objective is simple…to GO…to GO OUT and share the love of Christ with someone in that day….to GO and bear fruit …to be light to the world.)
Today’s Daily Light
 
God Not Only ‘Created’ It All….He ‘Sustains’ It All
 
Genesis 1:1  NIV  “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 
 
Hebrews 1:1-3 NIV   “In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe.  The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word.” 
 
Colossians 1:13-17 NIV   “He (Jesus) is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.  For by him all things were created:  things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him.  He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”
 
Hebrews 12:2 NIV   “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith.”
 
So…here we are…and in our faith in understanding of God’s sovereignty and activity in our life…..we sometimes are like the little kid standing beside the ocean with his little bucket and asking if there is enough water in the ocean to fill his bucket…
 
Our Great God, who can create the universe, our planet, and you and me…who not only creates but ‘sustains’….who holds all things together by the word of His power.   He created ‘all’…including ‘us’, with a total plan in mind…and He is active and involved not only in every little piece of the material universe…He is active and involved in every miniscule piece of our lives. 
 
Father…I ask you..today…at this moment……to manifest the sweetness and assurance of Your steadfast and powerful presence in our hearts and minds…let us feel and know what we have in YOU…that you are creator and sustainer of life.   And I pray that when life blows up around us and things seem scary and dark and life reaches out and takes our breath away…that we know that you are our sustainer…you alone are our source and supply.  And no matter what befalls us…we are eternally safe in you.   You hold the keys over the good, bad, and the ugly…You alone hold the power over life…You who creates and sustains ‘all’ things….we trust you in ‘all’ situations’.   You are sovereign and your plan is perfect.   We trust YOU as author and finisher of our faith….to perfect us according to YOUR great plan.  Amen
 
 
 
 
Please feel free to forward Daily Light to those that you feel would benefit from receiving it.  To receive Daily Light, simply send us your email address and ask to be added to the mailing list. Send address to p314go@outlook.com.   Email addresses will not be shared and all recipients are blind copied.  
If you have not visited our blog, the web address is    lettherebelight.blog

Daily Light – Jan 19, 2018

On By Don HesterIn January, Let There Be Light ArchivesLeave a comment
Your daily goal:
Philippians 3:14  “I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”   
(Monday-Friday, from my morning quiet time, I will write a short thought for that day which I pray God will use to motivate you to ‘GO’ for that day.  Your objective is simple…to GO…to GO OUT and share the love of Christ with someone in that day….to GO and bear fruit …to be light to the world.)
Today’s Daily Light
 
Grazing in Green Pastures..today
 
Psalm 130: 3-7 NIV…   The writer of this Psalm…(ascribed to King David)… writes… “If you, O Lord, kept a record of sins, O Lord, who could stand?  Butwith you there is forgiveness; therefore you are feared.   I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope.  My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning.   O Israel, put your hope in the Lord, for with the Lord is unfailing love and with him is full redemption.”
 
We worked pretty hard the last 9 Daily Light days working through the theological/emotional/philosophical components related to God’s sovereignty in perspective to the existence and activity of evil.   Wore my brain cells out 😊…but good…like the last 5 minutes of a 45 minute uphill treadmill workout….we gutted through it and got it done…so now let’s graze a bit and feed our souls.
 
Soooo…here we have this God, creator and sustainer of the universe and all of life…and He answers to no one…He can manifest Himself as He wants…but in the revelation and manifestation that He chose to reveal …in creation, in nature around us and what we see in the sky above us.. he chose amazing wonder and beauty that takes our breath away…and in the actual design of how he created humans with an internal spirit compartment ‘so that’ we can actually have Him, His person, His presence, come and take residence inside our spirit ‘so that’ we can KNOW that He is real….so here we have this God that could be any way He chooses to be…do whatever He chooses to do…and He chooses beauty and good… pure light…pure holiness…to be forgiving…to have unfailing love…all because He wanted to be a Father who has many children who love Him not simply because He commands it…but in that He created them to KNOW Him …so that He could love them before they ever knew Him or could love Him in return.   Can you see that?   Wow.
 
Father…I am glad that even though you could have chosen to hold our sins against us…our selfish ways…our weaknesses….you could have looked at all our faults and where we come up short and chosen to simply hold all that against us..and eternally separate yourself from us..and there would be absolutely nothing that we could do about it…you are God and Creator and Lord of the universe and you can do what you want…BUTTTT….. you total plan…from get-go..is to draw a people to the heart of who You are…and to be tender and forgiving and unfailing in Your love to us.   And yes, as a good and just Father…you have to discipline us at times…because if there was no consequence to sin…we would not fear consequences or fear judgment and we would not rightly respect, honor, or love You to the degree that You deserve to be loved…..and thus you are rightly and justly feared because you are a fair and loving judge…..and I praise you for those times that you have disciplined me…because I look back and see that in all of such times ..of times where the consequences of my sin brought pain and agony to my soul..brought judgment….. in ALL of those occasions..Your unfailing love and mercy called me to repentance…and Your unfailing love always reached down and picked me up and Your strong hand guided me forward into better and new.   Oh…how I appreciate that You are forgiving…and ohhh…how I appreciate and am so thankful for Your unfailing love.  Amen
 
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Daily Light – Jan 18, 2018

On By Don HesterIn January, Let There Be Light ArchivesLeave a comment

Your daily goal:

Philippians 3:14  “I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”   

(Monday-Friday, from my morning quiet time, I will write a short thought for that day which I pray God will use to motivate you to ‘GO’ for that day.  Your objective is simple…to GO…to GO OUT and share the love of Christ with someone in that day….to GO and bear fruit …to be light to the world.)

Today’s Daily Light

Final part of 9 part article….

Biblical, Philosophical, and Emotional Reflections on a Perpetual Question

By:  Joe Rigney, Professor, Bethlehem College and Seminary

Confronting the Problem(s) of Evil      Part IX

Which brings us to Christmas. This is what the Incarnation is all about: the Author of the story becoming not just a character, but a human character. In this narrative, God is the storyteller and the main character. He is the Bard and the hero. He authors the fairy tale and then comes to kill the dragon and get the girl.

The Incarnation is God’s definitive answer to the emotional problem of evil. The living God is not a detached observer or absentee landlord. He doesn’t stand aloof from the suffering and pain and evil that forms the central tension of his epic. The God who is born is also the God who bleeds, the God who dies, the God who identifies with our sorrows by becoming the Man of Sorrows, acquainted with grief.

God comes down, in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, and draws to himself all of the sin and the shame, the rebellion and the hate, the sickness and the death, and swallows it whole. And he swallows it by letting it swallow him. The Dragon is crushed in the crushing of the Prince of Peace. The triumphant hour of darkness and evil occurs on the day we know as Good Friday.

This biblical paradigm frees Rachel to lament when Herod slays her little children, to weep that her little ones are no more, knowing that God is weeping with her, shedding Christmas tears of sovereign mercy. And it does so without removing the soul-anchoring consolation that the Author of this story has good and wise purposes in writing his story in the way that he does. We desperately need both aspects of the analogy. We need a Sovereign Author who crafts each chapter, paragraph, and sentence (no matter how horrible) into a fitting narrative, one in which evil exists to be crushed underfoot. And we need a Consoling Character, a very present help who identifies and suffers with the brokenhearted, entering into our pain and loss with love that will endure long after the last tear falls.

Because in the story God is telling, evil does not have the last word. Good Friday is not the end (which is why it’s so good). He burst from the spiced tomb on Resurrection Sunday, commissioned his disciples, and ascended to his throne, where now he sits until all of his enemies are subdued under his feet, including and especially Evil.

This then is the truth, goodness, and beauty of the Christian answer to the problem(s) of evil. It is the confession of Jesus Christ, the Divine Author who never himself does evil, but instead conquers all evil by enduring the greatest evil, and thereby delivers all those enslaved and oppressed by evil who put their hope in him.

O Come, O Come Immanuel.  (End of article).

 

And there we have it….a 9 course meal…..I plan to re-read this article a couple times a year ‘so that’ I can retain the key ideas in Joe’s work and reflection… ‘so that’ I can retain readiness in sufficient understanding to encourage and help those people I meet in life who need help thinking through the biblical and philosophical and emotional components that present themselves with the context and subject of ‘evil’.

I pray that God has stretched your understanding on this subject…and that at a minimum it has caused you to think and reflect on the ‘sovereignty of God as revealed to us in His word and in Creation… ‘so that’ you will grow in your delight in the ‘all’ of who HE is to us and for us.   He is the way, the truth, and the light…that is what He is ‘to’ us.   And He alone is our Savior and the only path to eternal salvation..and that is what He did ‘for’ us.  Amen

Please feel free to forward Daily Light to those that you feel would benefit from receiving it.  To receive Daily Light, simply send us your email address and ask to be added to the mailing list. Send address to p314go@outlook.com.   Email addresses will not be shared and all recipients are blind copied.

If you have not visited our blog, the web address is    lettherebelight.blog