Wisdom. We won’t get far without it.

          Wisdom is a deep understanding and realization resulting in the ability to choose to produce the optimum results, it is the comprehension of what is true and right coupled with right judgment; wisdom is the foundation of our morals, ethics, principles, reason and knowledge and is the fountain of what determines our actions in life.

We need wisdom in war, wisdom in administrative affairs, wisdom in personnel management, wisdom in spiritual matters, wisdom in moral, ethical, and our principles. If you think you’ve got enough wisdom, then obviously you don’t have enough. Wisdom is like water, it is a vital ingredient in everything on earth. The value of wisdom, according to Proverbs 3:1-6 is above all else. Its value cannot be correlated or matched to anything that any breathing person could own. Wisdom is one of the most needed gifts in the lives of believers as well as non-believers, but yet it is the most difficult gift to find within our nation, and many times, especially even in the Body of Christ. And i use the word “especially” because we, the people, are connected directly to the source of wisdom by the blood of Jesus Christ, but it seems we possess so little of the wisdom of God which is available to us for the asking. Oh yes, “for the asking” is correct. The Lord wants us to join Him in the pursuit of excellence, and we have to be interested enough in a relationship with Him in order to possess it.

Why don’t we respond to God’s offer to give us wisdom? It’s not that it’s in short supply, but maybe it’s more because we don’t search for it, and maybe there’s a lot of folks who don’t have the wisdom to even know they need it. Mankind has always searched for a “quick fix” or a short cut to their problems, settling for a band-aid, of sorts, to resolve their dilemma, but, often, we’re not pursuing God for wisdom which would solve our problems at it’s core.

i believe our answers are frequently right in front of us, but without wisdom, which God alone holds close to His heart, we walk right over our answers, looking everywhere else, finding no help, never realizing, for lack of wisdom, the solution is in front of us. That reminds me of a man searching for gold, and all day long he searches, walking up and down, eyes on the ground and he finds nothing, not realizing that he’s been walking over it all along, not realizing it’s within the grasp of his fingers but he has no clue as to what he’s seeing. Only God can open our eyes to see, and without His gift of seeing and recognizing, we all too easily think, “There’s nothing here” and we go off empty handed.

In our modern society, it appears that wisdom has been replaced by scientific knowledge, and the practice of relying on observation and experiment alone. At what point will mankind realize the value of wisdom rather than living by observation and experiment? When we crash and burn? But by then our lack of wisdom will be a regret as an “after the fact” realization. 1 Corinthians 2:5 “That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.”

Is Godly wisdom a thing to value or devalue, does it depreciate? Is wisdom a set of rules to live by, or a vague ideology? Is it a bias which plays favorites? No, wisdom is first before character and authority. Wisdom is available from God to any, who look for it. James 1:5 “If any lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him.” God is the sole source of wisdom in the universe, so the value of wisdom is the value of God Himself and He is of infinite value, as are all His attributes. “Infinite” meaning His attributes have no left, right, no top or bottom, not front or back, they are infinite.

Having wisdom is one of the benefits of knowing God, and without wisdom, how are any of us different than the rocks?  Real wisdom is a living person, not a commodity to get at the store, and who is the personification of wisdom? 1 Cor 1:24 says, “… Christ the power and the wisdom of God.” Colossians 2:2-3 “… and of Christ; In whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.”

So here is something beautiful to ponder: With every encounter with Jesus Christ, there is a revealing of His life that enables us to be as He is. You cannot see Him without being changed by Him!  Whether it is His divine nature, His truth or His wisdom and counsel or His goodness, power and authority. What is revealed to us is imparted to us. It’s like water, you can’t jump in the river without getting wet, nor can you be in His presence without being changed. It is the giving away of His person that has the power to transform our lives, and one of His leading attributes is wisdom.

Call to God for wisdom, ask Him for wisdom. What have any of us got to lose when the King of the universe offers us, for free, the very thing we need for living today, wisdom. Have you got any? Get more, we need all we can get.

There is a strange stillness and subtle rippling of the Ockluhwahhah River this evening with it’s subtle greens and grays in the twilight of the day, as if time worries no one and the freedom of the water is at your doorstep. This is Outposts, a rural cafe at the end of Old Field Road. Join us this evening for cool jazz and contemplative conversation … words to consider carefully. Dream a little dream this evening with music and words of encouragement as we each go our way, finding our footing towards home with Jesus.

For a side bar this evening, meaning a little topic before we get to the main topic is about when we distance ourselves away from God, our downfall & depredation becomes more probable. After many personal “crash & burns” on my part, i’ve concluded that every time and at all times, it is in our best interest to stay near to and in the company of God.

If God is able, then we must be willing, and in light of that we are blessed among all creatures great and small that God is indeed able, therefore our opportunity to change the course of our lives is great. He is able to deliver us, but we must be willing to be delivered. Many pay money for deliverance, but say it never seems to stick. Sozo is necessary, but the therapy that happens afterwards is just as important to help keep us staying delivered. When you realize God is all you have, you realize, God is all you needed in the first place!

Our main topic is “He Is”. Jesus isn’t just a “was”. He isn’t only “here and now” and soon to fade away like a fair-weather friend, nor is He exclusively just the “future” where He is merely a hope and wishful thinking. He is there in the past as in the “now”, He is here as in the “now”, and “will be” in the future, as in the “now”. i don’t know how, all i can say is “He is God”. He eclipses the speed of light, able to be in the past, the present, and the future all at the same time. He is able to move backwards and forwards in time at will, for He is beyond time and space, He is God.

i’ve realized that the description of who the Lord is changes some from chapter to chapter in the Bible, and i went on a hunt to find all i could which would point me to a greater understanding of all He is. And why would i go on a greater hunt for such a thing, because in all my religiousness and zeal, i’ve realized the real truth is, i don’t know as much about God as i thought i did, and, in my opinion, neither do a lot of other folks either. Sure they’ll tell you they know plenty, but when you get down to really rooting around in what they think they know, it’s often chalk full of errors, twisted thinking, one way streets, and dead end roads. So here follows the results of my quest to know more about the Lord. Some of the following is taken from the words of Jeoffrey Benward & Jeff Silvey who created a poetic vision of Who God is from chapter to chapter in the Bible. In Genesis He’s the breath of life, In Exodus the Passover Lamb, In Leviticus He’s our High Priest, Numbers The fire by night, Deuteronomy He’s Moses’ voice, In Joshua, He is salvation’s choice, Judges, the law giver, In Ruth, the kinsmen-redeemer, First and second Samuel, our trusted prophet, In Kings and Chronicles, He’s sovereign, Ezra, He is the true and faithful scribe, Nehemiah, He’s the rebuilder of broken walls and lives, In Esther, He’s Mordecai’s courage, In Job, the timeless redeemer, In Psalms, He is our morning song, In Proverbs, wisdom’s cry, Ecclesiastes, the time and season, In the Song of Solomon, He is the lover’s dream. Yesterday, He is. Today – He is. Tomorrow – He is.

In Isaiah, He’s Prince of Peace, Jeremiah, the weeping prophet, In Lamentations, the cry for Israel, Ezekiel, He’s the call from sin, In Daniel, the stranger in the fire, Hosea, He is forever faithful, In Joel, He’s the Spirits power, In Amos, the arms that carry us, Obadiah, He’s the Lord our Savior
In Jonah, He’s the great missionary, He is the promise of peace in Micah, He is our strength and our shield in Nahum, In Habakkuk and Zephaniah, He’s pleading for revival, In Haggai, He is the restorer of a lost heritage, In Zechariah, our fountain, In Malachi, He is the son of righteousness rising with healing in His wings.

In Matthew He is the King, in Mark He is the servant, in Luke He is the Son of Man, and John He is the Son of God. Dr. W.H. Griffith Thomas gives the pictures of the Gospels this way: In Matthew, written to the Jews, Jesus is seen as the Promised Savior; In Mark Jesus is the Powerful Savior; In Luke He is the Perfect Savior; and in John, the book of “whom so ever”, Jesus is the Personal Savior, and to summarize who God is in the four Gospels, Jesus is the one glorious theme of them all.

In the book of Acts, He is fire from heaven, In Romans, He’s the grace of God, In Corinthians, the power of love, In Galatians, He is freedom from the curse of sin, Ephesians, our glorious treasure, Philippians, He is the servants heart.
In Colossians, He’s the Godhead Trinity, Thessalonians, our coming King, In Timothy, Titus, and Philemon He’s our mediator and our faithful Pastor, In Hebrews, the everlasting covenant, In James, the one who heals the sick.
In First and Second Peter, he is our Shepherd, In John and in Jude, He is the lover coming for His bride, In the Revelation, He is King of Kings and Lord of Lords, The prince of peace, The Son of man, The Lamb of God, He is The great I AM, the alpha and omega, Our God and our Savior, He is Jesus Christ the Lord.

His name is Jesus. He is the tree planted in living water, He is the one who yields fruit in season and out and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever He does, prospers. He is the ultimate seed sower, and the source of rain and sun who offers Himself to the seed which must choose Him to live and grow, or deny Him to it’s own detriment and die. Can there be any dream He gives which He does not frame, build, and bears much fruit? He is the completion of redemption and the balance of reconciliation.

He is the One who gives us images to familiarize us with Himself. If He didn’t extend us visions of Himself, we would not have any, therefore we would be barren and full of despair. He is God who whispers us to sleep when we are restless, then rustles His God-fingers against the earth until it rains love in our lives, making wet parched hearts to sing again, even in the moments when we would have preferred to stop living.

Jesus is the one who knows your stories before you are born, who draws you into the truth to meet yourself, to resolve yourself, and to love Him without fear. He is God who walks without moving, He dreams without sleeping and calls us, each to Himself without speaking. Psalm 32:8 says He guides us with His eyes. He is the One who has been speaking to you before you knew it was Him speaking to you, long before you knew Him as you know Him now. Remember. His intent was calling you, even when you were a child. He is there. It was Jesus all along.

Every time we bump the life of another, Christ is spoken in our moment of connection, He is the One who overcomes our inertia , our “indisposition to  change”, our resistance to a change in direction. He is the picture that is beyond the frame – He knows no limitations of righteousness and is the unfailing brightness of reality which no eye can see and more than words can say, unless He enables us to grasp.

Many times, we don’t need someone to bring us BIG change, we just need a firm foot provided us so we can set our foot against it in order that we can find purchase to change direction.

Ultimately, it is the foot of the Savior, who in His mercy, provides us a  stanchion…even when all our closest, most relied on friends have gone, Jesus gives us the pinion to hold us fast to His Heart, even when we are dangling from a reverse-inclined sheer rock cliff, Jesus is there with us, and He is busy working on our behalf, driving pinions, making pivots, throwing us ropes, pulling us close to His heart, never leaving us or forsaking us. He is there!

From the Journal of the Unknown Prophet:

“Oh, and how long has He sought you, beloved? How many nights, has He stood listening, silently waiting in the shadows unseen by you and those that surround you?

For it was He who wept as He heard your soundless scream in the midnight hour. It was He who watched as you tried in your brokenness to marshal together the fragments of your shattered heart.

And so most beloved of His children, now He comes closer, the fairest of ten thousand. And as He walks out from behind the shadows and you lift up your tear-stained face to Him, half blinded by the radiance from the most beautiful of countenances, He reaches out His hand to you.”

“…’You?’ you mouth soundlessly. And you hear His whisper: “I have sought you all your life. Through all the pain, through the loneliness, I have sought you. Each time your heart broke soundlessly with the agony of not belonging, i sought you. Through each rejection, through each hour of despair, I sought you. I was there, loving you. Reaching out to you. It was Me all along.”

And as your eyelids gently close as you are engulfed in His tender embrace and the tears fall, somewhere through the sands of time in that netherland between sleeping and waking, you recognize that familiar presence and you too know that He was there. It was He all along.”

Jesus is the One who celebrates with us, Luke 15:10 “I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”

He Is God who pleads on our behalf, like in Romans 8:26, “In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.”

He is the One who weeps with us when we weep, like in John 11:33-35, where it reads, “When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. “Where have you laid him?” he asked. “Come and see, Lord,” they replied. Jesus wept.”

Our God is the One who goes on adventures with us. In both Matt 14 and Mark 8, the disciples were in a storm and Jesus was with them. Jesus was the one who calmed the storm, He is the one who walked on the water, and He is the one who raised the dead.

i am like a blank page, and He is the letters. Imagine yourself standing on a beautiful beach and see the place where blue water touches white shores by the Tree of Life at the Crystal Sea, right there is an intersection. Metaphorically, Jesus is the letters, and at that intersection the Letters stand up like figures at the intersection, like words written all along the horizon as far as you can see to the left and right in one continuous line of words, on the horizon, that amazing place where the sea conspires with the sky. The words are the story and praise for the Son of God. Jesus.

In scripture, silver can also be taken as goodness, generosity, fairness, or having a bountiful eye full of mercy even to transgressors. Jesus is like a shining hand writing shimmering words upon my heart, writing silver thoughts, God thoughts shining. He is God who sparks ideas in me, and God who dreams His dreams upon creation like an open hand offering His hope and salvation. Jesus is the All in All, abundant, and beyond our beyond.

Jesus, our Lord, He is the song of songs who has been sung since before the foundations of the world were laid. He is the one who teaches us how to break the rule of silence imposed on us by sin for us to praise Him with lips pressed tight out of fear and a soiled conscience. Teach us to break the rule of wounded silence Lord! He is … present tense in the past, present tense in the now, and present tense in the future. He is because – He is God and there is none like Him for He truly is the One and Only. Isaiah quotes the Lord saying, “If there were other God’s, I would know them, and I don’t know of any other. I AM.”

The Lord is the One who is near us in mercy and love and at the same time He is high exalted above us, for His Name is the expression of His Being, Yeshua, Hashem, The Name who is sanctified in all creation. Let Your divine rule come.

Romans 6:14, “For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace.” By Jesus Christ came grace, and by grace i know Jesus is The One, and there is only One. Before i knew Him i was silent because my master was sin whom i had to obey. i lost my voice to death. But now, because i have known, do know, and will know Jesus, i am free, silent no longer and am only a slave to love, the Christ of God who first loved me.

In scripture silver is a metaphor for generosity, mercy and kindness, turquoise is often sanctification, healing, and jade is for praise, prosperity, and fruitfulness. The Lord will gather us who are His, and oh, what a day that will be. He will call our names, and we will respond like letters with multidimensional value, we’ll respond to the call of God like golden words with syllables of silver, turquoise and jade. 1 Thessalonians 4:17, “After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.” We will tell our stories, He will unlock our mysteries and we will shine with the Light of our resurrected Savior when we all sit down to recline and dine with our Jesus who Forever lives. Jesus, “He is God”. He eclipses the speed of light, able to be in the past, the present, and the future all at the same time. He is able to move backwards and forwards in time at will, for He is beyond time and space, He is God.

i’m Social Porter and this has been Outposts, cool jazz and contemplative conversation. i must admit, i seem to have no problem writing about Jesus, it all just seems to flow off my lips and i find my mouth always ready with words of praise and declaration.

This presentation has been brought to you by Living In His Name Ministries, Area 22 Guitars in beautiful Brevard, White Knuckle studios, Lock, Stock, and Barrel Auction House, my buddy Burley Champion down at Tin Horn Farm Supply, and Trinity Bakers, where there’s always something good in the oven.

As you go your way this week, ask the Lord to reveal Himself to you that you would know Him more, and there is so much more to know of our God than what we’ve previously thought. He is the Lord and He is like an ever expanding, multifaceted diamond, perfect in all His ways, goodness personified, righteousness and hope all in one person – Jesus, Holy, sanctified and true.

Pray for your neighbors, declare the goodness of God over yourself, look for His favor, drive carefully, and i certainly hope to catch up with you again soon. Selah, or think about it. Amen!

Love

 In a 1985 Grammy award-winning song written by Terry Britten and Lyle Graham, as performed by Tina Turner, took the airwaves by storm… “What’s love got to do, got to do, got to do with it? What’s love but a second-hand emotion.” i can remember when i first heard it on the radio. i was in Charlotte, N.C., riding somewhere in the heat of the day tapping my foot to a tune with a catchy lyric and beat. In my mind jumped the thought, “What do they mean, “what’s love got to do with it? It’s got everything to do with everything.” i remember thinking that surely someone with a bitter and disappointed heart must have written those lyrics in order for them to think love was a secondhand emotion. Maybe that was the point.

If you buy something “second hand” you’re buying used goods. But maybe another angle on what the song is talking about is, feeling something you’ve felt before, nothing went right, and it’s not so special anymore. Or it’s possibly saying, for women who are abused, what does love have to do with letting someone treat you like that? Many women stay in abusive relationships claiming that they “love him”, yet they keep being there where the other person is causing emotional and physical harm. What’s love got to do with the decision to stay in something like that? i wonder, is that really love as God intended it as a fruit of the Spirit, just something which keeps you chained, or only something you felt before and now it’s not so special? Nope, that’s not the Lord’s heart at all.

Today, i think to myself, “second hand emotion? Really?!” Is that all it is to so many, just an emotion, feelings, nothing more than feelings? What a silly idea to think love is just a bystander at a bus stop somewhere and then has to sit at the back like some insignificant thing, a secondhand emotion only worthy of minor mention when nothing else is going on.

Fruit of the Spirit. Love. Is it really a secondhand emotion, and more importantly, is it merely an emotion, a feeling? How can something which is sometimes considered “second hand” according to worldly standards, be a top priority with God and necessary for the repair of the universe?

The three fountains of God’s heart are love, joy, and peace. He oozes all three at a steady rate throughout the universe, consistent and repeatable in a continual outpouring.

We all want love, need love. Always looking for love, and when we find it we drink it in like greedy, hungry souls. We want to talk about love but often can’t find the words to feel as though we’ve expressed ourselves well. For some, “;ove” is a form of money paid for work or service that apparently justifies treating someone unfairly in order to benefit from their work. Love, in our society, is often another English word we’ve used everywhere, so often, it seems to have lost its value.

i want to know what God has to say. i think it’s more important than anything else in the universe and more valuable than all important worldly things combined.

People the world over love all kinds of things. Issac loved savory meats in Genesis 27:4, some love pleasure according to Proverbs 21:17, yet others love silver, money, gifts, and attention. Hollywood has proven, that to many, if people give you their attention it must mean they love you, and all that attention is such an addiction, many will do anything for it. Some even say they love death, but having never been dead, i doubt they know what their talking about.

There are righteous things to love also. As Example, Love the Lord with all your living, breathing, and feeling, love righteousness, justice, the truth, and peace to name a few. In Psalm 45, the writer says God loves righteousness and hates wickedness, and in Psalm 52, David accuses another man of loving evil more than good and loving lying rather than speaking righteousness.

Some say they “love”, what they call “their work” because it pays well, it’s emotionally satisfying, and pleasurable. For others, the goal is not to find work they “love”, but to make enough money to not have to work at all, then, yes then they will love what they do. Maybe.

We love a multitude of things in this world. For me, i love to chew, i just love good food and good conversation. i love the smell of fresh cut grass, cool evenings, sunrise and sunset, the deep woods, the smell of freshly turned soil, fragrant flowers, my wife, giggling children, little girls’ eyes, April showers, and the turning of the seasons. i love them all, but does my use of the word love actually mean the same thing as love in the sense of loving God? It’s just a four-letter word in English, and as i said, we throw it around like we’re fertilizing the lawn, but often, it does not mean the same thing twice.

i must ask myself then, what do i love, and what exactly is this thing God calls “love” and tells us in Galatians 5:22 it is the fruit of our life in Christ, one of the elements of how we know we are in the fellowship of the saints? Is it the same love for the rising sun as it is looking at the sunlight in my wife’s hair. Is it the same as loving Jesus for my salvation?

i believe we must be clear on what love actually is or else we will find ourselves lost in the pursuit of it, thereby losing our resolve. You know, we can pursue something so ardently for so long, we actually lose sight of what we’re doing it all for, if you know what i mean. When we chase after something without an understanding what it is we are chasing, it easily loses substance and effortlessly morphs into other pursuits. Some would call that rabbit trailing. Many times the Lord uses “love” as a verb, but my friends, it is more than a verb. To God, it is also a noun. To only leave it as an action item is a dangerous oversimplification in that if we reduce love to solely something we feel, we will miss love for what it is, at its source. i don’t know this, but i suspect by love only being made a verb, it will likely make us Pharisees, meaning we can talk and act loving without actually loving, like kindness without compassion is duplicitous, love without devotion, mercy, and grace is deceit.

1 John 3:18, “My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth.” We can appear to be fulfilling that scripture without actually fulfilling that scripture, that’s what i mean by saying, “It will likely make us Pharisees” if we only see love as a verb.

The kind of love the Lord is and speaks of is glory, the radiant weight of His presence. As Viktor Frankl stated when in the middle of an exceptionally difficult external situation, “…even the angels are lost in the perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory.”

1 Corinthians 13:13, “And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”

Love, as the fruit of the Spirit, is the core standard. It is God’s core standard, and all His operating procedures springboard from His love, and if we are in Christ then it must be our core standard also. i realize the world has a pretty different idea of love. i suppose almost everyone has their own tailored version of what they think love is. But let’s be honest, as long as the idea of love is up to us, based on our experience, it’s always going to be just another worldly definition. Friends, we need a better standard than our own self-determined idea of what drives the universe. Romans 5:5, “Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.”

That He poured love out on us makes the Lord the right standard. God owned love before anyone else which, to me, makes its very essence exclusively His to give.

1 John 4:10, “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”

i don’t believe that we would love anyone or anything if the Lord didn’t love us first. Oh sure, we may have some big-time feelings about someone or something, but the real deal, deep abiding, living love toward God would not have been possible without Jesus Christ. If He didn’t love us, then we wouldn’t be able to love Him. Because He gave it, then we get it, and if He didn’t give it, then we don’t get it. It’s pretty simple i think. Jesus is the answer, He is always the answer, and there’s never a time He’s not the answer, which is why all things come to rest at the feet of the Son. The love of God, as demonstrated by Jesus, is the crown of everything. His love is universe changing, demon defeating, earth re-polarizing, disease healing, and relationship repairing. Jesus is love and love is the answer of all answers, both noun and verb altogether.

The world says love is an intense feeling of deep affection, but oh, how far short that is. Again, the world’s definition is from a worldly point of view and leaves God out of the picture, but when we add the Lord into the picture to get a better view, the world’s idea falls drastically short.

Everything our society does seems to be based on right and wrong, and then, ultimately, someone wants to debate what is right and what is wrong. Just like every other fruit of the Spirit, we must look above our feelings, over the top of the pulpit to see God Almighty as the standard and definition.

i recently heard a man say we need to change our thinking from the basis of right and wrong to being near God or far from God. When we are near the Lord He influences all we say and do, but the farther we get from Him the more the influence of a fallen world inserts itself. Love is not a narrow legal system of right and wrong. All our conduct and decision-making needs to be God-based righteousness, not judgment-based right and wrong. As long as we do all things based on right and wrong we are still doing the Law. Does that make sense? i mean, i get it, but i’m not sure i’m saying it well enough.

Either way, with God in the picture, love, as a noun and verb, is like medicine given or taken to counteract a particular poison, and to me, that poison is iniquity, transgression, sin, and death. Too many seem to think love is contractual, a list of agreements, do’s and don’ts, but once again it is much larger than that.

Let’s look at the actual word itself because we really need to better understand what it is we’re chasing after.

The root Hebrew word for love is a verb and is used 208 times with its first mention in Genesis 22:2 of Abraham’s son “whom he loved”. It means to have affection for someone such that we breathe after the object of our affection, with that breathless devotion and kindness being like fragrant flowers whose bouquet fills the air of every breath we take. That is SO important, here it is again: Love, from God’s perspective is to have affection for someone such that we breathe after the object of our affection, with that breathless devotion and kindness being like fragrant flowers whose bouquet fills the air of every breath we take. Now, you’ve gotta admit, that is a long, long way from Merriam-Webster Dictionary. More than a few times in my life i’ve been in the weighty presence of God and smelled intense flowers, grapes, and vanilla, we all did who were there. Jesus is love – love healed the sick and lame, love raised the dead, love was kind to the desperate and the leprous, and gave His face to mankind, looking us right in the eyes for the first time ever. That says to me, with love as a fruit of the Spirit, we should be a sweet fragrance everywhere we go. It should be the way we are, not just something we do or feel. Like God, we must be both noun AND verb altogether because Love from God’s perspective is both a noun AND a verb, at the same time. The Father gave us the door of the cross to enter into His love. The first three letters of the Hebrew alphabet tell the story of love: The Father (aleph), sent His Son (beit), and by means of the Holy Spirit (gimel), makes an appeal to the poor and needy to receive the Love of God.

Isaiah 38:17, “… But You have lovingly delivered my soul from the pit of corruption, For You have cast all my sins behind Your back.” Interestingly, Isaiah uses a different word for love than in other places.

His word for love literally means that with God-love in our hearts and as expressed to others, it is not bound by law, but is free to walk in and out, filled to running over with divine grace and holiness, and right in the middle, in the belly of the word, is a prayerful rainbow. Love crowns us with the sword of the Spirit and decides it is fitting to be generous to run after the poor; it is uninterrupted and thrives in perpetual faithfulness. Love is more than feelings of affection, it is a covenant word. Love is the sound you make before you make a sound, it is giving of ourselves to others, reflecting kindness, compassion, and grace all through the house. And hidden in the Hebrew word for Love is Mercy, grace, and hope for there is always the opportunity to return.

As a verb, you can see the action is in our heart posture toward God. The action of the verb is to reflect love. As a fruit of the Spirit is about character and action, so is the heart of the Father about character and action. The noun for love is the same spelling except there is the Hebrew letter Hei added at the end, meaning loves’ intent of grace makes opportunity for those who have wandered off to come home. That’s so good i want to say it again, and maybe you could say it with me so your ears can hear what your mouth is saying. Loves’ intent of grace makes opportunity for those who have wandered off, to come home

Do you have real love in your life? If not, remember, the longer we walk with Jesus, the more apparent He becomes, and the more apparent He becomes the more we become like Him. 1 John 4:17, “Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness in the day of judgment; because as He is, so are we in this world.”

Stop arguing with your lack and turn God’s love loose to flow where it will. As long as we try and control how God applies His love, where and to whom, we will be the encumbrance against revival and renewal we so desperately look for.

Matthew 11:28, “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

It is the motivation of Love to lift the burden of those who hoist the white flag of surrender and persuade those who have not yet abdicated their fortifications to come home singing the songs of returning to God. The source of love isn’t dependent on the loveableness of the one loved but on the one doing the loving. God’s love is not performance-based, we can’t be obedient or good enough to deserve it or obtain it. 1 John 5:12, “So, whoever has the Son, has life; whoever rejects the Son, rejects life.”

We can’t “good” our way into Heaven, no more than we can “bad” our way into hell. The position of mankind and eternity is based on our acceptance or rejection of the Love of God. The Lord gives it and it’s up to us to receive it, letting Him live His standard of love right out loud.

Love sets forth a vision of the ideal life which is characterized by mercy, grace, and hope. Did you know that the three elements of hope are direction, goal, and purpose?Well, love possesses the same three attributes, and how is that? Because the word for “hope” is hidden within the word for love. Love visits and heals the sick, gives to the poor, and offers hospitality to strangers. You know, i believe the Lord is the most hospitable person in the universe. He is THE definition of love, He is both noun and verb altogether. i believe, as Christians, we should be the most hospitable people on earth because of who first loved us. Love buries the dead as a mercy, and makes peace between God, ourselves, and others; Love is the ultimate reason for conflict resolution, and man oh man, do we have lots of conflict which needs resolving.

A quote from John Piper’s book “Desiring God”, “Love is the overflow of joy in God that gladly meets the needs of others” Now there, that is something we can get our hands around. An overflow of joy in Christ that gladly meets the needs of others suggests love is so much more than just intense feelings of affection. Everything the Lord does is right— the trademark on all his work is love, and according to Romans 13:10, love IS the fulfillment of the law, not abolished but fulfilled. Here, i’m going to draw a very distinct line, 1 John 4:8, very plainly states that the person who does not love does not know God, for God is love. The Lord our God IS, once again, the very best definition of love.

John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”

The key phrase there is “God so loved the world, that”.

Just today i read something along the same lines in my thinking of love as not only a verb, but also a noun, THE noun of all nouns.

Even for those who feel they have no hope, God’s love can enter in and persuade that person to realize their lives are not ones of no consequence, there are no spare people in the Kingdom of God. The Love of God says “You matter, you are important, so much so that Jesus died for you.” If we need to be more important than that, we delude ourselves that we need MORE, that God’s love is somehow not enough, which is never true. The Lord is SO confident in His ability to love us back from the brink of destruction, that He staked the life of Jesus on His confident love. Amen, and think about it.

John 13:34, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another.”

Ok, so check it out! A little lesson in grammar is to follow. Don’t let it throw you, just roll with it.

Jesus is speaking in John 13:34, as seen in “I give”, which is 1st person singular, present, active, indicative, meaning there is only one person speaking, the time is in the now, the Lord is the one taking the action, and what He’s saying is a fact, so pay attention.

The next important phrase is “you love one another”, which is plural, present, active, subjunctive, meaning not just a few but all of you, the time frame is in the now, you yourselves are the ones taking action, and in your action of love there are possibilities and potentials born. Let’s take the next important phrase, “I have loved”, which is aorist, active, indicative. Aorist, meaning the time frame is without regard to past, present, or future, Jesus is saying He is the one who took action, and again, He’s stating a fact that He Has Loved Us with no regard to the past present or future and it’s a fact, forever. Lastly, we come to “love one another”, which is plural, present, active, subjunctive, meaning not just a few but all of you, it is now, now, now, we are the ones doing the action, and it is filled with possibilities and potential. Do you get it? What Jesus is telling us is that if we will love everyone else as He loves us, giving of ourselves with passionate reckless abandon, breathing after others as He pursued us, if we’ll do it every day in the now, now, now, now … there are windows of endless opportunity, grace rainbows, and fragrant mercy flowers of potential and possibility that will come out of it all, we will be blessed and God will be glorified.

Do you get it? Play that again and get your head around that. It is huge and life-changing.

1 John 4:16-17, “And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him. Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness in the day of judgment; because as He is, so are we in this world.”

i love that, “…as He is so are we in this world”. You know, i think many folks just think that’s too good to be true. We’re so stuck on being no better than just an old sinner, we seem to never rise above being a sinner, and we spend our time thinking and worrying about being a sinner, regardless of what God says about us. Ok, you can be a sinner if you want, but what about the rest of what God says? Sadly, i think most of us know more about what we are not, what we don’t, won’t, and can’t than about who God says we are, what He says we do and will be. i have spent so many years of my life being less than the Lord says i am, and honestly, it hasn’t gone well. Friends, as Cody says, i didn’t come this far to only come this far!

In light of that fact, i’m going to try seeing myself like He does, “as Jesus is, so am i in this world.” If the one who abides in love abides in God, then i’m going to believe i’m abiding in Christ, whether i feel like it or not, after all, Jesus is abiding in the Father, and as He is so am i in this world. Love has been perfected among us, Jesus is love and He is abiding in the Father, then as He is so am i in this world. How would your life be different if you tried not working your way to Heaven and simply took the Lord at His word? God went to a LOT of trouble to make a way for you and i, all the way to the shedding of His blood, maybe it’s high time we take Him up on His love that He’s extended to us. Do you get me? Amen.

This has been one of the nine feathers on one wing of The Dove. The Holy Spirit is seen as a dove in Luke 3:22, and on each wing, there are nine primary feathers, nine fruits of the Spirit on one wing, and nine gifts of the Spirit on the other.

This evening’s topic is love, God’s love that has been shed abroad in our hearts, He is both noun and verb altogether, the breathless passion who pursued us all the way to Calvary. His love is the fragrant fields of singing flowers, the long harmonizing notes of the wind in the tree tops. Whether you believe it or not, God’s love in your life is rising, like the early morning light … at first, it’s barely noticeable, but as it brightens, shadows give shape to the landscape until Love blinds you like a spotlight.

Thanks for joining me, drive carefully, let God’s love do what it does best, truly… love has everything to do with everything since the beginning. Amen.

          i had a dream where i went to a friends house. As i pulled into his driveway the first thing i noticed was that his house was surrounded by a tall wooden fence, high enough that you couldn’t hardly see anything of even the roof except the peak. i went to the gate, which had a buzzer and intercom, pressed the buzzer and told him i was there. In a moment, the gate unlocked. When i stepped through the gate, inside was another gate with a buzzer and intercom. There were many gates in a short space before i got to the front door. When he finally opened the front door he glanced around outside as if he was checking to see if anyone else was watching and let me inside. In the dream, from the front and back windows i could see his yard was a series of fences and gates. i thought why, oh why is there so much fencing, and fencing inside the fencing, mostly hiding nothing? When i asked him why all the extreme fencing, he said it was nobody’s business what was inside. i thought to myself, “But there’s nothing to hide but hiding itself.” As i woke up the Lord gave me a revelation. i realized his ardent fencing was built out of fear, fear that if anyone saw inside his yard they might use it against him, fear of shame, fear someone might “know” something. i thought to myself that truthfully speaking, there was nothing to know, and fear was driving all his constant guarding.

You know, i’ve discovered the hard way that we can be a friend to someone, even if they don’t let you in the gate, but it’s pretty impossible to have a relationship with them. As they sit inside their highly guarded, nearly insurmountable fence or wall, yes, we can talk to them through the boundary, pass notes back and forth, and even toss food and water to them over the top, but in the end, it is very, very limited, and totally controls any real connection, if any connection. We need to connect, meaning we must let God tear down the walls and fences of our own construction. i did NOT say boundaries were NOT good, because they are, they are God’s invention and even God has boundaries, obviously. But our constant walling out of the Lord and the very people we need in order to prosper in our efforts to secure life, and have it more abundantly, is driven by woundedness, and fears of all sorts. All the while, we sit in sustained, abject loneliness while feeling falsely secure behind our fencing, secretly wishing we could be free. We need to connect. Some are so dedicated to their fences, the term “immurement” comes to mind. Immurement literally means “walling in”, and is a form of imprisonment, in which a person is placed within an enclosed space with no exits, and if it’s allowed to persist, the prisoner will simply die from starvation or dehydration. It can be spiritual as well as physical.

Going to church is good, but is it really, truly, enough of a connection? When scripture says, Forsake not the gathering together of yourselves in Heb10:25, it doesn’t mean merely “go to church”, as we’ve been taught… it means to connect, and i mean for more than just 10mins before and after. The Lord didn’t make a law out of going to church in that scripture, we did. We’re the ones who made a law out of it all, yet we don’t make room for the real connections we need …and connecting takes time and maybe even courage. God is telling us to get ourselves to a group of like-minded people where we can freely express ourselves, be open and disclosing, and connect. Maintaining a complex fencing system denies us the connections we so desperately need, and i don’t care how tough you think you are, you can’t successfully do life unto the Lord, hidden behind your fences.

And what if we’ve been hurt by someone’s callous religiousness? Let me say that it’s bound to happen. Some people feel it’s their job to make sure others are compliant with the rules, and boy, do they love to tell people about all their rule breaking. In light of that, here comes the idea of “moral superiority” which inspires others to put up more fencing. “They’ve” been to church every time the doors are open and they really feel the need to ask, “i’ve been noticing you’ve not been here much. Why haven’t you been here?” “i’ve noticed you drink a beer occasionally, don’t you know it’s a s-i-n to drink?” “i’ve noticed you have some worldly music in your car. Where is God in your life?” “i’ve noticed you don’t bring your Bible sometimes. i thought you were a Christian.”

Regardless of those who feel obligated to make sure others are “fixed and complying” with some unspoken rules, we can look past them and address what’s going on with ourselves. We need to connect. Ever hear of stonewalling? It is a persistent refusal to communicate or to express emotions. It is common during conflicts, or when people attempt to avoid uncomfortable conversations out of fear that engaging will result in a fight, or someone will know something and use it against them. When we allow our fences to not only keep other scary people out, they also serve to keep us in. Every fence has two sides you know. Come out of your fenced in area you’ve built. God is calling you to connect. You think you’re gifted? You probably are, but, my friend, you can’t give away what you’ve got unless you are there to give it away. i’ll say it again, we can be a friend to someone, even if they don’t let you across the fence, but it is pretty impossible to have a relationship with them.

What do you think?

Honesty is like a magnet radiating a strong magnetic force; in the heart of God’s people it is a clear bell set on a hill; like a clarion call it draws truth-hungry people to engage. Honesty should be one of our chief most attributes, honest with God, honest with ourselves, and honest with our neighbor.

Is it possible a lack of honesty is why people are repelled by many politicians, much of corporate America, some church people, and even our government? When, in our spirit, we sense a distinct lack of honesty, or the nagging feeling something is not right and not the truth, we are repelled, sometimes knowledgeably, sometimes not, either way, people tend to go away when dishonesty is in the room. Like honesty, dishonesty has a magnetism all it’s own, it draws people with a deceitful character who don’t mind wearing a very loose belt of truth.

Some seem to believe that dishonesty is a shortcut to success and wealth. However, they seem to forget they can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all the people all the time. Once their crooked and duplicitous tactics are exposed, they, the dishonest ones actually become the real victims. In my mind, they simply did it to themselves. And you know, once others see you as dishonest, it’s just hard to unstick that label from yourself.

Honesty is to truth and hope, as dishonesty is to lies and despair. Dishonesty is like false hope, and false hope is far more cruel than the truth ever thought of being. It is true, sometimes honesty is very uncomfortable, but i would rather be uncomfortable because my friend was honest with me, than to live in the dream world of lies and dishonesty. Deceit only has deceitful friends who are really no friends at all, but honesty is grounded with the faithful and has sure steps with the Lord. The Hebrew for “deceit” literally means to “steal away the mind” in the sense of saying one thing with our mouth, when we really mean something else in our heart. How important is honesty to you and how loud is it’s clarion call in your walk?

i believe the Lord asked me to ponder and study the value of honesty a short while back. i soon discovered that we can’t talk about honesty without talking about dishonesty too. Similarly, we can’t talk about white unless we talk about black, nor can we speak of up without speaking of down. Tonight, our topic is “The value of honesty”,

i’m Social Porter and this is Outposts,.

In Genesis 30:33, Jacob states to Laban that his honesty will serve as a testimony of his character, to tell the truth and to do as he had promised.

2 Kings 12:13-15, “The money brought into the temple was not spent for making silver basins, wick trimmers, sprinkling bowls, trumpets or any other articles of gold or silver for the temple of the LORD; it was paid to the workmen, who used it to repair the temple. They did not require an accounting from those to whom they gave the money to pay the workers, because they acted with complete honesty.”

In other words, the workmen were steady, reliable, faithful, and practiced “moral fidelity”. i like that, “moral fidelity”. Do you think “moral fidelity” is common today in our leadership and the church, or is the lack of “moral fidelity” driving us to feelings of being disenfranchised, frustrated, and distrusting?

As in Jacob’s testimony of his character and of the workmen in 2Kings, i believe we can conclude that honesty is fertile ground for trust. To me, that would also mean, dishonesty is fertile ground for distrust.

According to Isaiah 33:15, the godly are those who have the privilege to “walk righteously and speak what is right…” or speak straight, or with straightforwardness … with honesty.

The opposite of righteousness is iniquity. A picture of the Hebrew word for iniquity could easily be understood as a “wrongness of character”, and righteousness as a “rightness of character” with “righteous” being a legal term defining our relationship with God. Iniquity and sin are two different words. Sometimes it’s true, the translators interchanged the words incorrectly, but today we have enough information that we can know for ourselves what the Lord says to us if we’re willing to study a little. Iniquity is to sin what righteousness is to holiness.

Where there is justice, where there is righteousness, where there is a hunger for truth down to the core of our person, honesty is easy to possess and live out. When there is no justice, iniquity stands guard at the door to our house, the truth is nowhere to be found, and honesty becomes a rare character trait. Isaiah 59:14-15 “So justice is driven back, and righteousness stands at a distance; truth has stumbled in the streets, honesty cannot enter. Truth is nowhere to be found, and whoever shuns evil becomes a prey. The LORD looked and was displeased that there was no justice.”

Honesty in our hearts is a sign of our character. It is our quality of sincerity, trustworthiness, and a devotion to the truth not just the facts, and there is a difference between the truth and the facts. And on a side note, we can be honest AND transparent, but unless we are vulnerable for others to speak into our lives, we are the same old brick wall we always were. i say where your H.A.T. every day, honest, accountable, and transparent and being emotionally available every time, every day.

When asked, “What is a lie?” Augustine responded: “Any statement meant to deceive another.” He also said, “No lie is ever justified for it sets up a dichotomy, a conflict, between what we say and what is in our hearts.” A mistake is not a lie – it is unintentional, a lie is an intentional deception.

Honesty: Out of all of the virtues that are available to the human character, we need to prize honesty above possessions, wealth, titles.

Honesty is defined as uprightness and fairness, truthfulness, sincerity, or frankness – straightforward.  It is also seen as a freedom from deceit or fraud.

i think it is important at this point to point out that there are two kinds of honesty: Objective Honesty which is truthfulness. This implies admitting ignorance if one does not know truthfulness, and Subjective Honesty: This implies that our communication is our opinion, not necessarily truthfulness, but it is “The truth according to me.”

Due to the fact that the majority of peoples’ communications are based in subjective ideas such as emotions and opinions, Subjective Honesty is probably the most common type of honesty. The difficulty is when we begin to call our subject honesty, or our opinion, the objective truth. Did you catch that? “Subject honesty, or our opinion, and calling it the objective truth.” When we begin to see our personal opinion of right and wrong as the overarching truth for everyone, the devil has found a foothold, it’s called judgment or to level the hand at as in aiming the finger. Let me add that the weight of an aiming finger is usually more than most people can bear.

To explain the value of honesty, let’s start with the opposite of honesty – deceit, lies, and fraud. A lie (also called prevarication), is a type of deception in the form of an untruthful statement with the intention to deceive others. Not a mistake for we’re speaking of something intentional. Lies and fraud have cognitive intentionality; it is a manipulation, meaning to “leverage the outcome in our favor at the expense of others”. The first letter of the Hebrew alphabet is “Aleph”, and one definition is “the sound you make before you make a sound”, it is intentionality.

People lie for many reasons, but one primary motive is probably fear of the consequences of telling the truth. We can all think of the cliché example of your friend asking you if they look fat when objectively, they are. Do you slip in a white lie to appease their self esteem, or do you be brutally honest and tell them the opposite of what they want to hear? Maybe you tactfully shift the attention of your friend being fat to something else about them that is more becoming.

If we tell our friend “Noo, you aren’t fat,” is that a white lie?

“Wait a minute! You mean telling a white lie is…WHAT?” No matter how we work that, the word “l-i-e” is still attached to it. That’s like saying “Oh, it was just a small sin”, although it may be small in someone’s eyes, it still has the word “s-i-n” attached to it. i think it would be prudent of us to consider carefully before we ask some questions of others. i figure if you’re brave enough to ask, i’m brave enough to tell. Of course with all tact and diplomacy, but we can’t get lost in our tact and diplomacy to the point of not being honest, and i must add, there is also no point in being cruel while claiming to be honest.

When we are not honest, we’re simply not honest, and that’s the truth, it deprives others of something which should be easy for us to produce. As i said before, honesty begets honesty, and dishonesty begets dishonesty. Luke 16:10 “Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much.”

Honesty is the opposite of deceit. A dishonest heart is deception and according to Romans 1, deceit and dishonesty are part of the list of “worst things”; it is personal and a breach of trust. If someone likes you when you lie and does not like you when you are honest, it is likely they qualify only as a “fair weather friend” who didn’t care for you all that much to begin with.

We shouldn’t think we are helping people when we are dishonest, no matter how innocent they may seem.

The word “judgment” has two meanings. One is in the sense of an ecclesiastical decision making authority, the other means to have a personal opinion of right and wrong, and opinions are markers of our imperfections, and they are partly what makes people be people. Opinions are good as long as we understand they are what they are: opinions.

“There are two types of secrets; those we keep from others, and those we keep from ourselves.”

i believe it is imperative that we also exercise honesty with compassion. Honesty without mercy and compassion seems to have the consequences of hurting people sometimes. i’ve got a little idea i try and live by: Be honest and kind and do no harm. Honesty may hurt someone’s feelings, but to me, it’s a better alternative to deceitfully leading people on.

In addition to compassion, humility is important to honesty as well. Not many things are as offensive as arrogance in the name of honesty.

          Jesus asked why often. What do you believe was His intent in asking “why” of the disciples and others? Was He confused? No. Was He needing an answer because He truly didn’t know or understand? No. i believe His intent was that He wanted us to get at the root of ourselves and be honest about what was really going on. The Lord wants us to be responsible and accountable for our thinking and behavior, and a key to doing that is honesty, which is something i believe is in short supply in America today. Ephesians 5:1, “Therefore be imitators of God as dear children”, which means that God is honest about all things and we should imitate Him. If we find we have lives full of things we can’t be honest about, i think a paraphrase of 2 Corinthians 9:6 applies, saying, if we don’t like what we reap, we need to change what we sow.

i liked how John C. Jones in “Studies in the Acts of the Apostles,” written in 1878, speaks of the virtue of honesty. “Some people are honest in the strict sense of the word; but they habitually push bargains so hard that their honesty is suspected. They tread so near the line dividing integrity from fraud, that the public tends to entertain grave doubts respecting the legitimacy of their dealings. But it is a mandatory on every man to avoid the perilous extreme bordering on theft, and to appear honest as well as be honest. Aim at living not only above dishonesty, but above suspicion, as well. “Provide things honest.” Is that all? No; Romans 12:17 says to “provide things honest in the sight of all men.” Not only be upright, but be convincing to others of your uprightness, or that’s to say live it, don’t just tell about it. Let your life be honorable, entirely exempt from meanness and trickery. God sees honesty in the sense of being “properly beautiful”.

Being honest outwardly starts with being honest inwardly. i figure if i can’t be honest with myself and the Lord, i probably can’t be very honest with anyone else.

Personal honesty involves courageously recognizing the discrepancy between what we ought to be and what we actually are, between who the Lord says we are and what we actually believe. i’m going to make a statement which i suppose more than a few would like to argue – here it is: you don’t rule what you believe, what you believe rules you. Many easily get so entangled with religion and doctrine that it seems to relieve them of the responsibility of coming to terms with themselves. If we don’t face the challenge of being honest with ourselves and the Lord, putting off the idea of facing the growing discrepancy in our hearts, we possibly consign ourselves to a life of half-awareness.

The criminal element of our society typically believes they are more than they are. More often than not and contrary to public opinion, it isn’t bad self-esteem, but arrogance and a lack of honesty that believes they are somehow above the law – that somehow the rules don’t apply to them. Unfortunately, the church has similar criminal thinking and a distinct lack of honesty. That lack of honesty within ourselves often holds us at a distance from God and the relationship with Him we each wish so badly that we had. Sad but true. Is the relationship many of us have with God really what we’ve got, or is it more something we wish we had? Can you be honest with yourself about that? Do you see the value of honesty which the Lord calls us to? If not, then what is it which constrains you?

A woman on her death bed finally admits she was unfaithful to her husband 25 years ago. In the moment it seems like a good idea to get it off her chest, it was an honest confession. But on the other hand, she was honest at the time of no risks. She waited until her risk of being honest and telling the truth didn’t cost her anything.

We give away what we’ve got, not what we think we’ve got. If i tell everyone i have measles, but the truth is i’ve really got chicken pox, it doesn’t matter how loud i tell others i’ve got measles or how insistent i am, the only thing they’ll catch from me is chicken pox, because that’s what i’ve really got.

Isaiah 57:2 states, “Those who walk honestly and upright enter into peace…” Proverbs 24:26 “An honest answer is like a kiss on the lips.” Isaiah 5:7, the Lord says, “I had hoped for honesty and for justice, but dishonesty and cries for mercy were all I found.”

i’m Social Porter and this has been Outposts, cool jazz and contemplative conversation. This evening has been brought to you by Living In His Name Ministries, His Heart Missions walking in adventurers in Jesus Name to all the world, and Trinity Bakers, where there’s always something good in the oven.

To cap the evening off, i believe, we, as human beings, are designed to respond to real values. Not things we have created, but things we discover of the Lord, like the value of His life, His love, or the value of honesty. Let us take the time and respond to the call of Christ to cherish and practice honesty, questioning and sorting out our own hearts before the Lord, making all efforts to resolve our internal conflicts.

Be strong and courageous, be honest and stand firm in His name. Amen!

Joy

Nehemiah 8:10, “Then he said to them, “Go your way, eat the fat, drink the sweet, and send portions to those for whom nothing is prepared; for this day is holy to our LORD. Do not sorrow, for the joy of the LORD is your strength.”

The “joy of the Lord”, wow, much more than being “happy”. One fellow asked recently, “Does the Lord actually experience “joy”?” HA! Are you kidding? It was HIS idea! i think a better question is “Do YOU experience joy?” i wonder…how many of us can even relate to the idea of “joy”? These days, we say, “i am happy”, or “i am glad”, but no one hardly ever says “i am joyful”, and if they do, most of us look at them thinking, “What an odd thing to say”.

Nevertheless, joy is a fruit of the Spirit, therefore it is one of the Lord’s details, one of His attributes, an aspect of His character, and one of the three fountains of God’s Heart. The last nine words of the opening scripture from Nehemiah are popular and easy to say, “for the joy of the LORD is your strength”. We’ve all heard it a lot. But, i must say i’ve thought of the “joy of the Lord is your strength” as something God gives, which is true, of course, but in the last several years i’ve realized it is more than that. It is something He not only gives but something He possesses and also experiences. He gives us joy because He is joyful, and is the source of joy. It’s not only a description of what He gives … but who He is.

This evening’s topic is the fruit of the Spirit: Joy. i hope the following will be a reflection of God’s joy and a source of true joy for each of us.

Joy is associated with gladness, which can be a wonderful habit-forming inclination of the heart … it’s just downright contagious. How many of us see the Lord as a grouchy, unspoken, judgmental, person who seems to thrill at taunting us with silence and faintness? C’mon, be honest, you know who you are that thinks that stuff, i know i sure have. i think it’s a great question. How many of us see Him as a demanding taskmaster rather than a jubilant master whose joy we can step into? The service He requires of us even now is to be accomplished joyfully rather than sullenly. i mean, we know the Lord is always going to square things up, so what’s the point in being all foot-dragging and begrudging, walking around long-faced, and bitter acting? If you don’t have to, well…then don’t?

One day when my son was young, he asked me “Dad, are you having fun?” Now, you’ve got to understand, it’s not like i’d ever pondered such a question, so when the Lord started giving me answers, it was like someone opened full a fire hydrant. At the prompting of his question, immediately into my mind flooded images of all the things i liked to do….and like lightning i found myself measuring how i felt in those times, questioning whether or not i was having “fun”, or not. After a few seconds, i had come to the realization there was a difference between “fun” and “joy”. i thought about mowing the lawn and how much i really dislike mowing the lawn, but also how much i so enjoy sitting on the porch in the evening, watching the sun go down and smelling the fresh cut grass. i thought about a myriad of things that i did not consider “fun” but how much i enjoyed their benefits. For example, i do not find digging a ditch fun, but i do enjoy the work of my hands. In that moment, i had an epiphany about myself…i don’t necessarily have “fun” per se, but i do enjoy almost everything i do. It seems to me “fun” rises and falls like a rollercoaster, in fact, i would say that “having fun” has become such a national preoccupation, it supersedes the pursuit of happiness.

Many people think that if they aren’t having as much fun today as they had yesterday, then they aren’t having fun. Today’s fun is often based on the measure of yesterday’s fun…the idea of “fun” seems orgasmic, it is here and gone again until next time. Fun is amusing and entertaining and is a very subjective term. My “fun” is not necessarily your “fun”, and my “fun” today may not be my “fun” tomorrow.

Joy isn’t like that, it is not the same as fun. From God’s perspective, it doesn’t have sharp rises and falls, like a sine wave, but it is always on the slow steady rise, and it persists.

Webster’s Dictionary defines joy as a feeling of great pleasure and happiness, as in “tears of joy”, or great delight. Once again, i find God’s idea of joy is much, much larger than that. Worldly definitions seem to reflect a world-limited view… as a result, God’s eternity isn’t part of anything this fallen world defines, the world has a knack for leaving God out of the picture. To have joy means to have jubilation, bliss, and most importantly, rejoicing. From the Lord’s view of things, joy is connected to illumination, and how do we come to possess such brightness? James 1:17, “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning.”

Joy, as a fruit of the Spirit, is the melody of an illuminated heart, a brilliant gladness in our fundamental makeup. Did you get that? i like it so much, i want to say it again. Joy, as a fruit of the Spirit, is the melody of an illuminated heart, a brilliant gladness in our fundamental makeup.

The Lord is our light, perpetual, not dimming or ever fading. Psalm 27:1, “The LORD is my light and my salvation; Whom shall I fear? The LORD is the strength of my life; Of whom shall I be afraid.” Incidentally, the word “salvation” there is part of the noun for Yeshua, except not as a liberator, but literally as the personification of our liberty, meaning our Savior is not only the One who sets us free, but He, Himself is our liberty. In other words, we can’t be free unless we acquire Christ as Savior. We can’t work our way to liberty and joy, buy our way to liberty and joy, nor manipulate our way to liberty and joy. Liberty and joy are a person, not a thing.

In Esther 8:16, the Lord connects light, gladness, joy, and honor in one sentence, which says to me that with God’s gladness and joy, also comes light and honor. Even King Solomon came to the conclusion in Ecclesiastes 2:26 that the Lord is the one who gives joy. Not only is Jesus Himself our joy, but He also brings about a state of joyfulness in us.

With joy, comes light, and the root Hebrew word for “light”, as used in Esther 8:16 is “to be illuminated” which is made up of three letters, aleph, vav, and reish. Aleph – in this case, how you lean in your heart towards God, or intent; vav- the nail and connection; and reish is about a man’s head and choice. The picture is one of head and heart being connected by our purposeful choice, which to me means choosing Jesus. Oh man! When that happens, there comes spontaneous combustion, and illumination, making us to be bright. Rejoicing is the root word of joy. Can you see the relationships the Lord has built into it all, and at the center is Himself?

Those with joy have an illuminated heart, God-light at their center.

Joy is tied to gladness in Esther 8:16, although they are similar in many ways, the two are different words. i think it’s safe to say there is a shout in joy, rejoicing, and gladness.

Psalm 5:11, “But let all those rejoice who put their trust in You; Let them ever shout for joy, because You defend them; Let those also who love Your name be joyful in You.” Rejoicing in the Lord inspires gladness which inspires joy, with continual joy making our foundations to sing. Ephesians 5:19, “…speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord…” Rejoicing is the object which causes joy in Psalm 48:2 as gladness is the substance that motivates joy in Psalm 45:7. i say that where there is rejoicing, joy, and gladness, there also comes a melody, rising from our heart. Joy is gladness with a shout in the middle!

The name of the Lord is revealed in God-caused gladness and comes with grace and kindness in its wake. A thankful heart is a glad and kind heart reflecting as a perfect mirror, God’s fruit of the Spirit – joy, as an overall disposition in association with our heart. Psalm 19:8, “The statutes of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart: the commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the eyes.” i love that phrase, “Enlightening the eyes”, eyes wide open in amazement to see the Lord in the world around us…like the Lord waking us up into awareness, giving us brightness of the eyes.

The fruits of the Spirit aren’t attributes we go and get somewhere, they aren’t book learned, won as a prize, or some sort of mental ascension. They are all works of the Lord, attributes of Himself that He shares with us. Without the Lord, our spirit is in submission to our mind. With the Lord, the soul and spirit are connected, and the soul comes into right relationship with our spirit, submitting to the authority who is living in our heart. All that to say, when our Savior is on the throne of our heart, what is in our heart makes us more than a conqueror by the blood of Jesus. Like the persistence of leaven in dough. As a result, His qualities of righteousness become qualities of ourselves to shine in the dark world around us, offering salvation to those who are chained in darkness, imprisoned in chaos.

Isaiah 49:9, “That You may say to the prisoners, ‘Go forth,’ To those who are in darkness, ‘Show yourselves.’”

Thankfulness is key to gladness and joy, after all, a morbidly thankful heart is not one of joy. It is impossible to have joy in our lives when we are morbidly thankful. Do you know what i mean when i say, “morbidly thankful”? It is a picture of a little kid who has to go wash his hands and he begrudgingly walks slowly to the bathroom, dragging his feet all the way, not realizing the blessing of having hot and cold running water or even a bathroom to wash up in. Can’t you see it? A snurl on his lips when his mother says to go wash his hands, “right now”, and he’s got a heart full of “don’t want to” with a downcast demeanor, he obeys anyway, but he just oozes with the attitude that if he didn’t absolutely HAVE to, he wouldn’t. The boy may say he’s thankful to even have a bathroom, but he’s so occupied with how much he doesn’t want to wash his hands, he misses the good things in his life. THAT is morbidly thankful. There is no joy in that heart posture. i’m not saying that when our lives have unfortunate circumstances in them we must dance and sing and pretend to be glad when all along we’ve got some dread going on. Friends, please be honest about your life and simply call things what they are. Nobody gladly enrolls in the school of affliction, but there is gladness and rejoicing in our hearts not because we’re going through a hard time, but because the Lord is with us, He won’t allow us to suffer more than we can bear, that His yoke is light, and that we will come out bigger and better than ever walking through a storm with Jesus.

The Lord and His salvation are cited more than any other reason for joy and gladness. i believe the Lord our God to be a happy person, consistently filled with joy, gladness, and a constant melody. i think many people aren’t full of joy about their salvation, largely because they have a very poor concept of what they are saved from and have a petty view of the Heart of the Lord. Oh sure, they’ll say all the right words, but the actions of their lives speak long and loud of an abiding cognitive dissonance, which means there are opposing ideologies consciously at work in them and they are at war with each other. On one hand, people say with a smile, God is good, God is love, and “Oh, how He loves us so.” On the other hand, they do things in the dark not believing God can see or hear them.

Friends, here this: Anyone who has no shame in the light, has likely been handled too much in the dark. Church, we need a better understanding of the Heart of the Lord and His details.

The Lord Himself is the source and fountain of our joy, with joy being the second of three fountains in the Heart of the Father. John 15:11, “These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full.” It is obvious that the disciples would have great joy, but what is not too obvious is that the joy and gladness they would experience were first and foremost, and it was something they would enter into. We step into the melody of God’s heart and His melody becomes our melody, His gladness becomes our gladness, His rejoicing becomes our rejoicing.

In Matthew 25, three servants were given money to invest while the master was away, and the ones who did well were invited to, “enter into the joy of their Lord”.

At some point, joy is a choice, and maybe it’s one of those choices we, wholeheartedly, make when we’ve come to the end of ourselves in living a life with no joy, no gladness and we can’t stand it anymore. Maybe it’s only then that we actually chase after Jesus to change our hearts. Joyce Meyer says we can either be pitiful or powerful but we can’t be pitifully powerful. As with joy, there is a choice in that. In the Matthew 25 account of the Lord and three servants, the third servant stated that the master was, my paraphrase, unkind, cruel, heavy-handed, and unfair, which were all gross misperceptions.

God is not a brutal taskmaster, who expects us to gain a profit where He has given us no supply or resources. He deals with us in grace and gives us the means to do that which He expects and requires. Where His appointment is, therein is His provision, and His joy and rejoicing are hidden in both the appointment and the provision. The idea of His provision is for us to advance the Kingdom of God, not advance ourselves. What’s more, we can only accomplish what He asks of us by His grace. The entire salvation system-ology is lubricated with love and grace.

i believe the Lord our God is a blissfully happy person, kind, longsuffering, always at perfect peace, and has done everything possible for us that we would enter into His joy. The reward of the servants of Matthew 25 was to enter into the Joy of the Lord, and i believe the last servant represented someone who was beggarly in heart and had no grasp, whatsoever, of God’s joy at all.

i wonder, how many of us have the same distorted view of God as the last servant in the parable did? Harsh, and unkind, hard to get along with? Nothing could be further from the truth.

Joy doesn’t come to us because we “got it right” or were SOO obedient we deserve God’s glad melody of rejoicing. Joy, like righteousness, occurs by abiding IN the vine, not working FOR the vine, trusting the vine to work and flow through us.

Joy, the melody of an illuminated heart is from being in Christ and living by faith in his power, grace, and wisdom.

Joy is always running out and returning to us, always dancing and singing with grace, close relatives with honor and blessing. As fear does not discriminate and affects everyone in the battle around us, so joy is equally contagious and has an outrageous knack of overcoming fear, if for no other reason than sheer attrition.

The persistent singing and gladness of God’s heart simply wears fear down, not because it is so powerful necessarily, but because joy is better than fear, grinding fear to dust through the sustained pressure of rejoicing.

Gladness and joy, apart from God, eventually fades back to grief which is the default setting of the world. Proverbs 14:12-13, “There is a path before each person that seems right, but it ends in death. Laughter can conceal a heavy heart, but when the laughter ends, the grief remains.” Laughter and pleasure often hide grief and sorrow. On a side note, rarely in the Bible, cover to cover, is God’s laughter used in the sense of being mirthful, or rejoicing. Almost every time, it is used in the sense of being associated with derision, “scorn”, or “scoffing”. i reckon the Hebrews just didn’t see laughter as something done when we’re happy which was called joy, mirth, gladness, and rejoicing. Think about this: If you were brutally honest, what is the foundation of things which make you laugh most of the time? Remember, i didn’t say laughing was bad, i’m only asking us to consider what is underneath it. i think most of the things we laugh about are usually at someone else’s expense, one way or another.

In Genesis 17, when Abraham laughed, it is a word which leans toward scoffing or making sport of. In Genesis 18 Sarah laughed, and the angel said, “Why did you laugh?”, she said, “Did not”, and the angel said, “Did too!” The implication of her laughter was like a “scoffing snicker”, not one of joyful rejoicing. The angels’ reply basically said, this is serious business, don’t make sport of the word of the Lord.

The root word of Joy means “to be bright and cheerful” which lifts us above the gravity barrier of worldly preoccupation. It is a man’s strength and upholds us when we wait upon the Lord. What i find most astounding is the visual i get when i read Isaiah51:11, “So the redeemed of the LORD shall return, And come to Zion with singing and a shout of gladness, with everlasting joy and the revealed glory and grace of God on their heads. They shall obtain gladness and joy; Sorrow and sighing shall flee away.” There is a shout in gladness, not just being happy but more exhilarating brightness and the dancing fire of rejoicing. Joy, as a fruit of the Spirit, is the melody of an illuminated heart, a brilliant gladness in our fundamental makeup. The total opposite of hard breathing conflict, sighing grief, struggle, and trouble. Wow! Not that is a vision to never lose sight of!

Now that we have actually received this amazing friendship with God, we are no longer content to simply say it in droll, plodding prose. We sing and shout our praises to God through Jesus (Romans 5:11), and even though we’ve never seen Him, yet we love Him, trusting in Him, rejoicing, with gladness unspeakable, with joy inexpressible, full of glory. (1 Peter 1:8) Think about it, and amen.

With wind and fire, we have joy and gladness in the Holy Spirit, who comes to us with a melody in His glad heart, making us passionate to rejoice, regardless of our circumstances, even when the sky is dark, those in the fellowship of the saints have a naturally occurring brightness and singing which always finds a way to rise in their heart. Our illumination is The Lord who is our perpetual light, who is at no time dimming, never fading. He is a blissfully joyful person, kind, longsuffering, always at perfect peace, and has done everything possible for us that we would enter into His joy.

The name of the Lord is revealed in God-caused gladness and comes with grace and kindness in its wake. A thankful heart is a glad and kind heart, reflecting the Lord like a perfect mirror. God’s fruit of the Spirit – joy, is an overall disposition, how we lean in our heart towards the Lord.

Our hope is not to be just inspirational in topic but to inspire a deeper conversation amongst ourselves concerning God’s details and the landscape of Heaven. If we are in a relationship with the Lord, we need to know His details better than we know our own.

After much consideration, the fruit of the Spirit – joy, is a fire of gladness in our heart which has Ha’Shem the Name in the middle, making us a mirror of His kindness. Our God and King eternally has rejoicing in His great heart. He is happy and loves to sing goodness over His people. Joy is a choice we can either step into or allow ourselves to be dragged back to earth with our worldly preoccupation. …it is the blessing of the Almighty, rather than the direct object of our pursuit…it is the theme and refrain of a brilliant benevolence, bearing the blessing of an honorable and singing heart, in Jesus name.

Drive carefully this week, enjoy the life God has given you, take your time, and consider carefully when you pray for your neighbor. Read your Bible, and be strong and courageous. Amen.

Goodness

          Goodness is intrinsic and essential to good works. From God’s perspective, doing good things is not His definition of “good works”. In order to have “good works”, the foundational element of our character must be “goodness”… ”good” being born of God, because the Lord our God is the sole possessor of “good” in the universe… He is the standard of goodness. From God’s perspective, without His goodness in us, our “good works” are considered “dead works.”

Pretty radical thing to say huh? i’d say it sorta blows the whole idea of “i’m a good person” out of the water. i believe the world has redefined the idea of “goodness” to mean, “that which is morally right according to me, having the qualities required to play a certain role, a benefit or advantage to someone or something.” In my opinion, the world has lowered the standard of “goodness” to something achievable and born from its own effort.

Ultimately, all things will come to rest at the feet of Jesus… His judgment of things is where the buck stops, so to speak…..if that is true, and it is, then the idea of “goodness” must be according to His standards. His goodness is incomprehensible to the finite mind, and our best ideas of God’s goodness are not enough to adequately describe this detail about the Lord.

If we are the people of God, this particular fruit of the Spirit is central and elemental to our character. If the Lord is the true standard of what is “good”, then it is impossible to be a “good person” without the Lord living in your heart. Sometimes i think people declare themselves to be a “good person” more as a way of reassuring themselves they’re not really as bad as they probably are.

Goodness is a standard for believers. It’s more than stuff you do or things you think, as with all the fruits of the Spirit, it is the way we are, it is one of our character traits infused into not only all we do, and say, but how we conduct ourselves.

i do love my wife, so very much. i know her…i know her details, her little habits, the way she thinks of things and problem solves; i know how she typically sees the world around her and maybe can reasonably predict many of her actions. i have even learned her few annoying little idiosyncrasies….all of which make up the person i know as my wife. If you love someone, it seems to me, we should know their details – their favorite color, how they will come to their conclusions, what their standards are, how they tilt their head or curl their mouth to laugh, how they flip their hair, which shoe they tie first, their preferences in clothes and food, what makes them sad, what inspires them, and what makes them cry. When you say you love someone, those are a few of the things you would know about them.

We, who are believers, say we love Jesus, and we tell people we are looking for Him to return to take us home, but i don’t think we know Him like we say we do… too many don’t seem to know His details much, and if we love Him like we say we do, how come we seem to know so little about Him? He is not hidden like we often think. If anyone is hiding it us from Him, we were hiding in the beginning and we’re still hiding today, so much so, that our hiding impairs our vision. When we are hiding, not only does it make us hard for others to see, but it also makes it hard for us to see others.

We love talking about the value of knowing scripture, the importance of prayer, and being able to quote verse and address… and we love to quote His promises and judgments…don’t get me wrong, those are very important and necessary things… but what are God’s details? Do you know His details and How do you relate to God?

One of God’s details is His goodness…. it is one of His many infinite attributes…His goodness literally saturates His whole being. …it’s sort of always in the background of everything that we know about God. The more we know about the Lord, His details, and His Word…. the more we are going to understand what is truly good and what is not. We get to know “goodness” by being involved with the personification of “goodness”… Jesus… and the better we know Him and His details, the more of a sharpened gold standard of goodness we can live by.

Seeing as how God is good, all the time…what is good anyway? What do we mean when we talk about something being good, or decide something is better than something else? How do we decide what is good?

Think about it….there are many things we decide are good, and i have to add that most people think things are good as long as they get what they want.

Do we think people become addicted to drugs because they love being addicted? It’s not because they enjoy living under a bridge or going hungry, nor is it because they love the lifestyle, the poverty, or the ensuing depression. i believe it’s because, to them, the high feels “good”, though temporary, it is “a good feeling.” And the longer the addict uses, the more elusive the “good feeling” becomes.

In the idea of making money, doing business, or working a job, some business owners have an attitude of “If it works….do it.” It doesn’t matter whether it is legal, ethical, or morally right… they figure if nobody catches them and they can make a profit, it was a good idea… it makes them feel good and they are making money. They would say, “Business is good.”

In another way, there are many things that have been proven to be good for us that don’t seem good. Eating a healthy diet and exercising is good for us, but many of us have a difficult time doing it for long. Some medicine is good for us, and sometimes necessary, but it often tastes so bad we convince ourselves it’s not a good thing. Not many people take medicine because it tastes so good.

i don’t believe we, in and of ourselves, can define goodness… Why?… because we are inclined to explain our notion of goodness, based on what seems good to us. Our idea of goodness is so very self-centered and as a result, we must turn to a standard higher than ourselves for a definition.

All that to say… that our idea of what is good is so very subjective. We praise Him and say “God is good” when our prayers are answered, and when they aren’t answered like we think they should, we often lay awake at night questioning God’s goodness. Is He still good if He does not answer right away? When He heals us of a dire illness, we decide He is good…and if He doesn’t, we cry out with the question, “If God is so good, how could He let this happen to me?” We are a fickle bunch, i think.

Knowing what goodness is, from God’s perspective, is like getting to know the wind… it’s always there, moving things, and changing things, always in the background. For us to understand goodness we must know God and His details. This may seem odd to say but think about it: Goodness is both hidden and revealed, it is seen in the idea of “the greater includes the lesser” like a mother carries a child in her womb. Goodness has a way of bringing potential things into becoming a reality. AND…

God’s Goodness drives providence. i believe the Lord’s goodness is ultimately seen in His providence… so… i asked myself after making that brainy statement… self… what is providence? Honestly, it sounded really smart, but i had no answer… eventually, over the course of 4 years, i’m finally able to say the Lord did give me ideas.

Here it is: i believe God’s providence is His unfailing and continual instruction, His unfailing leadership, and precision navigation compelled by loyalty, love, and mercy…accomplishing His good pleasure through the power of His sovereign will. Kinda long, but that’s what i’ve got. His plan… is goodness in perfection because God is perfectly good… all the time and to infinity, and infinity means no left right, up down, front, or back. He is infinitely good past infinity. Hebrews 13:8, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.” His goodness is unwavering and unsullied by shadows, secrets, or indecision, nor can it be judged by our experience, for truthfully, our lives are not a very stable thing. First, we’re up, then we’re down…. like a wheel, and we go round and round with it.

Charles Spurgeon said that God’s goodness and providence is like the axle of a wheel. While the wheel’s outer edge is exalted and then made low, round and round, the axle is always the same and is always central to the rest of the wheel. No matter how far we run, or how fast we go, we cannot outdistance the goodness of God, it is at the center of all the wheel does.

Do you get it? So many times, we look at only what happened today, or even in a particular moment… today… our vision, being so short-sighted all the time, only seeing “in the moment”… and when His goodness is not in our face evident, from that we draw a large, generalized conclusion, “God’s goodness is not here. Afterall, look at how this situation turned out.”… all because we aren’t seeing it. It’s so very self-centered and subjective to think that because “I” don’t see His goodness, it must not be here…..then we cry “Boo-Hoo, God must not love me anymore.” We really MUST grow up church.

One reason God gave man the concept of “remembrance” was so we could look back at life in general and see the entirety of things, rather than looking at each little situation, one by one. Looking at life over a time span, you will see His persistent goodness… we’ll see that God is wise, and just, and He is goodness personified. Yet, here we are fretting about our troubles.

Remembering our days in the past we will see God’s heart instead of moaning around with our mouths full of “woe is me”… we will bless God for his mercies towards us, and how God’s goodness has saturated our lives. Indeed, God is good, all the time, and all the time, God is good.

Why do you think it’s a good idea to believe God is good, and that His goodness lives in us through Christ, as a constant? There are many facets to this, but the first one that comes to mind is:

if, God forbid, He were NOT good… He would still be God… but fortunately for everybody, He IS good, and His goodness IS the standard by which we live. If we want to know goodness we must know God, and there is no way to understand what true goodness is without knowing God.

Often, we simply can’t grasp the picture of our existence in a wide enough view to see God’s goodness in our lives… for many of us, our “vision” simply isn’t wide enough. i say, let us ask the Lord to increase our “depth of field”, it is about the width of view at a certain distance, and is used to describe the optics in binoculars concerning the quality of the instrument. Lord increase our “depth of field” to see Your everlasting goodness upon the earth, Amen.

As previously stated, for many, it seems goodness is just hard to see from where we are standing. Many years ago when i was in the service, i went to a small Persian rug factory in Italy. i’d always been fascinated by the intricate patterns and incredible artistry involved, and in that little business, i’d heard they made some of the world’s most beautiful rugs, all hand dyed, hand-knotted, 100% wool… very expensive. As i walked through the area where all the work was going on, it was just so quiet… everyone was very focused. In a hushed tone, i asked the guide why all these rugs were so unattractive and just confused-looking? He looked at me for a moment, then chuckled saying, “Oh, you’re looking at the wrong side.”

Isn’t that how goodness looks to us many times? It’s so easy to become circumstantial when trouble is at the door.

When we’re looking for the goodness in God’s plan while we’re in the middle of a terrible storm, it’s just hard to see. Maybe it’s none of our business other than to simply have faith in God and trust that He is good and that His goodness is in us.

By the blood of Jesus and through faith, goodness is imparted to us….it is there, intrinsic to our character because Jesus is alive in us. Everywhere we go, everything we touch, everywhere we set our feet, the oil of anointing of God’s goodness leaves its mark. In every kind word and every good deed, His goodness is infused in it and passed on to the world around us.

Once i had a dream where i awoke in the middle of the night and walked into the kitchen. There, on the table in the middle of the room were glowing bottles of olive oil, sort of illuminated by the moonlight that was coming in the window. One bottle was a little more than half full and the other looked to be more exactly half full. For some reason, i thought to condense the two bottles into one. i poured one into the other but was left with about a third left over. In the dream, i wondered to myself what i was going to do with the extra… i shrugged my shoulder nonchalantly and decided to drink it, so i did just that. When i drank the remaining oil, instantly, i faintly glowed as the olive oil glowed and when i walked out of the kitchen, as i looked back, in my footsteps was a fine oil footprint on the floor which also faintly glowed. Where i had been in the kitchen, i could see the faint glow of oil on everything i had touched with my hands and every place i had stepped. It was the goodness of God, the oil of anointing, no…… more….it was an “unction”, the thick paste of anointing. That is how God’s goodness is in us and that is a visualization of how goodness, as a fruit of the Spirit looks from a spiritual perspective as we go forward into the world with the gospel of Jesus in our hearts.

While grappling for understanding on my part about “goodness” as a fruit of the Spirit, i’ve realized there are things of the Lord in which God Himself IS the explanation and definition. The only way to communicate some of His attributes is by metaphor and figures of speech, using phrases like, “It is like…”, “similar to….”, or comparing one thing to another.

Goodness subdues and coerces… subduing by way of God being so good to us we can’t help but love Him, and coercive in that when God’s goodness is poured out, even on the unbelieving, they are driven to their knees in honor of the King. Proverbs 25:21-22, “If your enemy is hungry, give him bread to eat; And if he is thirsty, give him water to drink; For so you will heap coals of fire on his head, And the LORD will reward you.” God’s goodness is never still, like the wind… day and night it is always moving. When the sun shines it is moving up and down the hills, across oceans and deserts… goodness is never still. The moon shines and the stars light up, and still, it moves on. Even in darkness, when our eyes see nothing, goodness is still moving like the ocean waves; it is like when we are asleep, the forests and fields are still growing, we may not notice but His goodness is always marching on.

Romans 12:3, “…Living then, as every one of you does, in pure grace, it’s important that you not misinterpret yourselves as people who are bringing this goodness to God. No, God brings it all to you. The only accurate way to understand ourselves is by what God is and by what he does for us, not by what we are and what we do for him.”

Another aspect of goodness is that man cannot control it. The goodness of God which lives in us will always find a way to leak out of our cracks. i have long thought that God only uses cracked and broken things. In Luke 7 when a woman brought an expensive alabaster flask full of very expensive anointing oil, she broke the flask and poured the oil on Jesus. The oil ran out of the cracks and broken places all over everything, and isn’t God’s goodness like that?… it just runs out of all our broken and cracked places everywhere we go…even when we aren’t thinking about it.

Of course, it helps if we just let the Spirit flow and try not to control the proceedings… even at that, His goodness has a way of coming out of us…Jesus has a way of turning things into redeeming situations because He is good, and the Holy Spirit is always working towards our good.

Romans 8:28, “And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.”

God’s goodness will never be restrained, not chained, nor managed by man….. it does what the Lord says and follows His will, like the wind or the sea, it cannot be directed by man, and is exclusively controlled by God. Man cannot alter it, and cannot change it; goodness goes before and after us like a cloud during the day and a pillar of fire at night. Psalm 23:6, “Surely goodness and mercy are with me All the days of my life; And I will dwell in the house of the LORD Forever.”

Isn’t it beautiful that we get to possess this fruit of the Spirit? Goodness….it is the fruit of your character and life, evidence that we are the righteousness of God in Christ. Think about it.

In light of the goodness of God, i can’t see why some folks practice, what i call, a “comfortless gospel”… today they believe God loves them and tomorrow He hates them… a child of the King one day, reduced to a child of the devil the next. You’re in, you’re out, you’re up, you’re down… how does that work? For me, i could never believe a gospel like that, there is no hope or peace in it. But in the goodness and providence of God there is the stability of faith, and the strength of hope, for the Lord will, in no wise, cast off His people whom He has chosen. i would not want to walk like the world, void of His goodness… to live like that would be like living in such hopelessness, that all the people, in the end, would get the same worthless prize… and i don’t know about you, but i’d like more than that. The Lord has it, and i want what He’s got… Jesus, my beautiful and glorious Jesus.

i heard a man say he believed every particle of dust that danced in the sunlight doesn’t move an atom any more or less than God wishes. It is His goodness which makes even the dust dance in the morning light, provoked by the breeze, gently moving, always moving everywhere.

God is so good, He even provides many of His blessings to those who are not His children… His goodness transcends the worlds badness and is greater than all of the negative things that we see going on around us. The truth is, there are a lot of bad things that happen in the world, and those unfortunate things cause some people to question the goodness of God or even the very existence of God. Personally, i think it’s just silly for anyone to say, “Oh no, God doesn’t let bad things happen.” His knowing is NOT His ordaining…just because He knew something was going to happen doesn’t mean He made it happen. Think about it.

i believe every droplet of water has its orbit as well as the sun in the heavens, and that the dust from the broom of a janitor has a path just like the stars have their course. i believe the aphid’s footsteps over a fruit tree bud are as destined as the rain is not random but precise where it falls. If we believe in God, we must believe in His goodness also… there is no standing point between that and unbelief. If you do you do, and if you don’t, you don’t.

His goodness is the axle and we are the wheel, with the axle being central to all that happens with the wheel, whether or not the wheel understands or appreciates the axle… that is a picture of God’s goodness.

Be strong and courageous, take your time and breath… life is good, more than you know. Amen!