the Requiest

These are simply some thoughts that have come to mind over the past 12 hours thru conversations I’ve had with brothers who share the same particular burden of sin that I do.

Friend: I feel like I’m waiting for the ship to come and it never does. I want the ship to come and take me away from this sin. I pray to God to take this one sin from my life. To let me be free and never think or dwell on it again. Why won’t He do that? You and I have both heard of others who are instantaneously, miraculously released from a particular sin, why can’t I be healed of this one?

Me: I can give you the pat answers. God is teaching us something. There is something that He wants us to still learn. Maybe there is something that we aren’t doing in our lives. Of course I can type up a laundry list of all the things that I know I should be doing. Maybe it’s some cumulative act of doing these things that you’re / I’m missing out on.

Friend: I feel like I’m out in the middle of the ocean and if that ship doesn’t come along soon I’m just going to drown. I’m going to die out here.

Me: What if you’re already on the ship and you just refuse to recognize that? We’re already saved – I believe we’re both saved. If that’s the case then we’re already on the ship heading to our destination.

Friend: I know what you’re saying but I don’t feel like I’m on the ship.

Me: That’s because we’re down in the engine room.

Friend: I’m in a stinky, dark hold and I want to get up on deck and breath clean air!

Me: (Thought bubble) I want to be invited to the formal dining room.  (Hmm, thinking about food again….)

Me: You know I used to smoke all the time, I mean I still like a cigar now and then, but I used to smoke a pack a day. You know the thing that made me really quit wasn’t for health concerns. At the end of the day I want to be able to go home and kiss my wife and not have to try and hide the fact that I smoked earlier.

I want to be able to do that with my Savior too. I don’t want to have to try and hide the sin from earlier in my day. I can’t hide it from Him anymore than I can hide the smoking from my wife.

Friend: Yeah, I want to be able to kiss my Bride.

Me: So, what’s more important to us, being able to kiss our Bride our living in our sin?

From what a friend said last night. We’ve got the foundation already laid, now we have to build the rest of the house. I want to start laying down the logs and that’s done one at a time. I just want to know this year that none of the logs are going to be taken back down. I also want to know that the construction project isn’t going to get put on hold. I’d like to at least get it under roof before Winter. I’d be really happy with that.

Just some thoughts to ponder.

Peace,
Rong

This all started with a thought on the way into work this morning.

1. If God is the originating author and creator of time…
2. And as such if he, like many past theologians have believed remains (*in his fully godly state) outside of time.
3. Then how does he perceive time?

Without trying to argue this point for I believe far greater minds than mine have done all the wrestling that man is able too; reference Augustine, Edwards, Ockham and the list goes on and on.

My question to myself was and remains, how does Jesus Christ my Lord, the Second God Head of the Trinity view the Cross? We (Christians) love to use phrases like, “returning to the cross”, “throwing myself before the cross”, “holding on to the cross”, etc. All of these are present tense. We understand the Cross of Christ as something that happened 2 millennium ago and yet at the same time we see it in it’s on going power to forgive not only my present sins but those yet committed. In that sense as Christians we see that one incident (the Cross) in time spanning not only our own past but the past before it occurred and then forward thru all eternity.

So if we see that incident, that act, flowing thru time past, present and future; how does God see it, He who resides outside of the flow of time?

My thought as well as what leads to my question is that God “sees” all time as now. If God sees all time as now, then God sees the Cross eternally. It has always been before him and always will be.

Maybe you’re saying to yourself, “OK, so what?” Isn’t the “so what” then the fact that God is not only seeing it but is in that sense reliving it eternally? We see Christ’s act upon the cross, past tense. God has seen Christ’s act upon the Cross and will see it thru all eternity. Christ’s atoning sacrifice was only a one time action to the man Christ. To Christ of the God Head it’s an on ongoing act.

Now I’m not trying to bring up some heresy that’s already been discounted and which I know nothing about, no what I’m trying to point out in all of this is that when I sin. When I fall short and grieve the Lord my God. I am responsible for putting him back on that cross again. Over and over and over until he comes once again in final glory.

And maybe that’s the way it is until the end of time. Until that day when time itself ceases to exist and eternity is all that remains. Perhaps at that point the Cross will also cease to exist for there will no longer be a need for it.

Until then.

*I believe that as the “man” Christ, God fully experienced linear time in the same manner that we do.

I’ve lived my entire life for tomorrow while dreaming of yesterday.