In an online devotional today the theme is trust…. “In God We Trust?” Seedbed.com/dailytext , August 25, 2002.
For me, God has come to be the only person and force in which I fully can put my trust. For a number of years I have taught that God’s Word is true and trustworthy and it tells us to put our trust in God, not in any person, not powers of this world, not riches, nor appearances, nor anything or anyone else. Only God is faithful, steadfast and true. His Word and His Spirit can be trusted….. Test it? Yes! By all means. And the testing will prove the truth. Today’s text was especially insightful and lead to lengthy contemplation….
“The commandments, like the beatitudes, contain an intrinsic inner architecture laden with the intricate wisdom of God. ……The most fundamental, foundational commandment on which all of our lives hang in the balance is this one……. “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. “You shall have no other gods besides me. (Exodus 20:2–3)”
…….The God of heaven and earth is the God of freedom.Everything else is slavery.” JDWalt..SDT
…..”intrinsic inner architecture”…
Dan Wilt, in a recent lesson on Experiencing the Holy Spirit observed that the physical realm offers us images and examples of order and principles that reveal the nature of the spiritual realm. It is why Christ used so many parables from nature and daily life and why preachers teach using object lessons. Physical, concrete, experienced knowledge allows another more ephemeral, abstract, unseen reality to be imagined, grasped, understood, known and experienced. The physical realm, marred though it is by the consequences of human disobedience, still retains an intrinsic inner architecture that God instilled at creation. As we experience life we learn much of it through common sense, one way that God reveals His glory in the physical realm. Science has discovered and explained some of that beauty, order, and functionality of His design. But the physical expression of God’s wisdom revealed in creation is not all that powers and influences our existence. The mind, voice, and hand of God wrought His will in the physical world bringing into existence all things….giving form to the formless and bringing substance out of the void. But the heart of God, His Spirit’s desire, and His infinite wisdom and love move freely, unrestrained upon the finely detailed blueprint He Himself made real in the physical.
Mark Nysewander, an author at Seedbed, said in an awakening retreat on prayer that God’s will is not like a minutely detailed blueprint which must be followed to a “T”, but more like a flowing river into which we enter and by which we are moved along. That gives us an image of the two realms at work together….. the concrete and the ephemeral, the physical and the spiritual, the seen and the unseen. Both are real.
The physical realm is detailed and concrete, defined by space, time and matter…. the spiritual realm of the kingdom of God flows, refines, and redeems with timeless and unconstrained omniscience, omnipresence and omnipotence.
God’s Word gives us instruction for knowing and experiencing both realms as they exist in parallel, the spiritual kingdom of God being originally intended to be the guiding lead, but the evil that deceives and manipulates humankind disrupted the Creator’s intent (that having been made possible through the freewill God allows us to have). And both realms as we experience them are being restored by the redeeming work of God’s Spirit and hand since Adam and Eve’s doubt and disobedience broke trust with God.
Some say “love wins” or “love overcomes all”. But that’s not true. Human love only COVERS OVER sins but does not eliminate the fullness of Sin, in the same way that the sacrificial love of Jesus for us allowed His blood to cover all of our individual respective sins, justifying us in that moment in relationship to the Father. But, additionally, it is His obedience to the Father, the best and highest and most complete expression of Christ’s love for Him, tthat made Jesus Christ sinless and righteous, the Perfect Lamb of God that knew no sin and is worthy to bring us into the same perfection of love of the Father that sanctifies us and makes us holy by His Spirit.
1Peter 4:8: “Above all, love one another deeply, because love COVERS OVER a multitude of sins.” It doesn’t remove them from our human nature. Only the Spirit of the Lord alive and working in and through us can do that.
Christ taught and lived the truth that obedience IS the evidence of love for God. Unless and until we love God completely and well, perfectly with heart, soul, mind and strength, and identify as and love ourselves as God has loved us, and love others with the same pure and perfect love of God, selfless and desiring God’s BEST for others instead of our own pleasure and fulfillment of needs and desires, we will miss the full and abundant life of the kingdom that IS and IS YET COMING to earth. Knowledge of and gratitude for the way in which He has defined and structured life to be lived according to His Word and under the authority and guidance of His Spirit brings the kingdom of God upon us and we are lifted up into a transcendent way of being in the world but no longer of it.
It was through the Beatitudes that I became immersed in the “intrinsic inner architecture” of the scriptures. As a scientist I had always observed the intrinsic inner architecture of the created physical realm. Through the order and principles of Scripture I began to grasp the intrinsic inner architecture of the spiritual realm and how both come together in the Word of God, and how His Incarnation in Jesus Christ demonstrates their unity with one another and the Scripture. Christ IS the Word made flesh, both realms merged and lived out for us to do likewise….. though our effort is measurably less perfect. Christ’s obedience demonstrated Jesus Christ’s love for The Father and us. So while God’s love wins over all destruction, it is Christ’s obedience, His perfection in living out God’s love, that is the means by which perfected love is revealed. And as “perfect love casts out fear”, one who acts justly, loves mercy, and walks humbly with the Lord is, in all ways, being obedient, such a person will never have any reason to fear God’s judgment or the world’s evil.