Day: April 11, 2010

Abundant Life

Teaching: Magnifying God’s Love For You

Karen

Every Sunday I provide videos and valuable links to the Truth or Tradition teachings. We’ve been following the Truth or Tradition teachings for many years now and they have truly blessed our family. We have found peace and happiness through our beliefs and we walk confidently for God. My hope, by passing on this information to you, is that what you find here, or on the Truth or Tradition website, will guide you to a better, more blessed and abundant life.

If you would like to read my views on religion and how we got started with the ministry, you can read this.

Let’s get started:

[The following article was taken from The Contender, a bimonthly magazine that was published by Spirit & Truth Fellowship International.]

Hey, here we are again on the edge, so we had best read the theme verses for this column.

1 Peter 5:6-8
(6) Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, [so] that he may lift you up in due time.
(7) Cast all your anxiety on him, because He cares for you.
(8) Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour.

No doubt you alertly noticed the words in all bold, which I will be expounding upon as we go. Certainly our Lord Jesus Christ epitomized obedience to the above verses, and in this month of April when we celebrate his resurrection, I am moved to dwell upon his magnificent accomplishment on my behalf. I hope that my standing in greater awe of it will inspire me to follow in his steps in my own life. If there were ever anyone who had to believe that God cared for him, it was Jesus.

From the moment Jesus realized who he was — the “Last Adam” with a chance to do it right, he came to see his mission clearly set before him in the pages of Genesis through Malachi. He also saw his kingly destiny, pending his obedience to walk the path set before him—a steep path strewn with gut-wrenching temptations as it led up to the ultimate challenge — the Cross. He saw that unless he chose to humble himself by obeying the will of his Father and laying down his life via a horrible death, God could not lift him up to newness of life, a life he could then pass on to all who would believe in him and his “one righteous act.” What motivated him to get through Gethsemane and walk out his agonizing decision to submit to torture and death? I think it was because he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that God, his father, cared for him with infinite, detailed and relentless love. Possibly the following verses contributed to his faith that God was not only able, but also passionately willing, to care for him:

Psalm 62:11 and 12a
(11) One thing God has spoken, two things have I heard: that you, O God, are strong,
(12) and that you, O Lord, are loving.

One of the worst things about the lie first told by Satan in Genesis 3 that “you will not surely die,” that is, the lie that there is really no such thing as death (defined in virtually all dictionaries as “the end of life”), is that it gravely (get it?) dilutes the glorious truth of resurrection, as contrasted to the hideous reality of death. That lie, coupled with the lie that God became a man named Jesus, also greatly diminishes the magnitude of God’s love. How so? Because, as I think you will agree, especially if you are a parent, it took far more love for God to watch His only begotten Son suffer than it would have for Him to somehow violate all the laws He had set up and turn one-third of Himself into a baby so that He Himself could go through the torture and death. [For further study read Does the teaching that Jesus is the Son of God, not God himself, demean him?]

Of late in my life, I have been asking myself the question, “How big do I really see God’s love for me?” Since Scripture seems to indicate that our love for God (and thus our obedience, and thus His ability to bless us Ephesians 3:20-style as He so desires to do) is directly proportionate to our understanding of His love for us (“We love him because he first loved us”), it may be a relevant question for you also to ask. Perhaps, for each of us, the answer hinges on how big is our God, or, more accurately, how big do we see Him? The bigger God looks to me, the more faith I will have in Him. The more faith I have in Him, the more He can do for me. The more He can do for me, the bigger He will look to me. The bigger…ad infinitum blessum.

Here’s another question I’ve been asking myself: “What would I be like if I really, really, really believed that God (as in Creator, Big Daddy, nobody messes with) loves (as in fervently desires to do every good thing for me that He can) me (as in yes, the dirtball I know myself to be)? I’m sorry to say that I don’t think I know the answer experientially. But verses like 1 John 3:1 inspire me to continue to pursue the quest of knowing it up close and personal: “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!” (NIV). What would I be like? I think I’d choose the road to Ephesians 3:20ville rather than the one to Margaritaville (I heard the song and I just wanted to say that — I’ve never even had a margarita). I think I’d be more fun to be around (even without a margarita). OK, so I’m running it into the ground, this is the end of the paragraph.

Recently, I heard it said that God is a “benevolent schemer,” meaning that He is constantly thinking and planning how He can thrill our hearts, blow our minds, knock our socks off, or however you would choose to say “show us His love.” When I heard that phrase —“benevolent schemer”— I thought of Santa Claus. Not because I still believe in the guy, or still send letters to “The North Pole” (When stamps went to 32 cents, I said, “That’s it!”), but because if you, like I, used to go to Wonder Mall and sit on Santa’s lap and rattle off your incredibly greedy list of 197 things you wanted for Christmas, you may have ended up by saying, “and some surprises,” just in case you forgot anything.

But I always did get some “surprises,” and I now realize that “Santa” was really my dad. Well, what kind of wonderful surprises do you think your father, God, wants to give you? And that brings up yet another question I’ve been asking myself (I sure hope I can answer some of these questions), given that God, my loving Father, just happens to be the Creator: “Am I excited about the no doubt many scintillating surprises God wants to give me today, and am I expectantly and faith-full-y anticipating them?” I think I’m supposed to live in perpetual wonder. And oh yeah, I remember, I’m supposed to live each day looking for the biggest surprise of all — Jesus Christ, in person, in the air!

So then, how can I see God bigger? Yes, Jesus did say that if we have seen him, we have seen the Father, so it is imperative to press into intimate fellowship with the Lord. But for now, let us think about the biblical exhortation to magnify God. Have you ever thought about what that means? Sometimes I think that my God is too small. Huh? Well, in terms of Him being able to do for me, and for others via me, all He longs to do, He is only as big as I “see,” i.e., understand Him, and I’ll trust Him only that much. I want to see God as big as I possibly can, so that I have as much F-A-I-T-H (Fabulous Adventures In Trusting Him) as possible.

Picture yourself scrutinizing the finer details of a local insect under a magnifying glass. Suddenly you find yourself back in a 1950s horror movie, before special effects were made really special through computer graphics, etc. In those days, movie “monsters” were actually grotesque-looking union insects hired to have their ugly faces filmed through magnifying lenses. To elicit fierce facial expressions, directors would threaten them by saying that if they did not comply, they’d see to it that the only parts they ever got after that would be in Raid commercials. Anyway…the point I am circuitously making is that when the bugs were magnified, they did not actually get bigger, but they did look bigger. Ditto for God, so how do we magnify Him?

You can read the rest of the article here.

If you have any questions, or would like to learn more about God’s wonderful message, please visit the Truth or Tradition website. You can also keep track of the ministry through their Facebook page, their YouTube Channel, or follow them on Twitter.

Thanks for reading.

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