He is inexorably, unchangingly, determinedly Going! Nothing will stop Him, nothing will thwart Him. We are meant to be part of it. We each have an assigned place . . . within the Idea. But we can join or not. We can go or we can stay. We can miss it all or we can be caught up in the flow toward which the Spirit is slowly but deliberately effecting God's end. The culmination of God's creation will be the gathering of all things into, unto and under . . . His Son!

We possess the Love of God, yet . . . we are more focused on amassing prophetic information, and accumulating spiritual education than in knowing the majesty of Emmanuel, the supreme Object of it all. We are in danger of being so besotted with the "principles of God" and the knowledge of the Trinity, that we miss the Supreme Object . . . Himself!

Wherever there is chaos, the Spirit of God comes to consider, to brood, to watch. Darkness is disorder and chaos is confusion boiling out of nothingness. All of it – the antithesis of God. When the Spirit becomes present, the chaos is disturbed by its waste and darkness becomes unendurable. The emptiness groans for God . . . . Out of the murky waters of drowning, a terrible need for God's flawless order becomes the cry of the dark.

Jesus. Hinted at by prophets, glimpsed in brief segments by the seers. Yet David! David saw Him. Not by shadows, not by bits and glimmers. David saw Him, actually beheld Him by a clarity and constancy of no one else in all of Old Testament time . . . as such, he was captured and enthralled. "I saw the Lord always before me, because he is at my right hand, I will not be shaken."  (Psalm 16:8; Acts 2:25)

The Lord Jesus has many names but He has four faces, symbols of His being. Four fascinating pictures of His endless wealth. Each one is a challenge to our measly idea of this unspeakably rich Son of God. Four sides, four manifestations of Jesus' character. Glimpses only, of His glittering facets. Few are those who can distinguish the four faces of Jesus. See His contrasting sides and know Him as He is . . . .

A secret King born to rule no earthly turf but all the Kingdoms of all the World and all the kings of all those kingdoms. He was King and the only Monarch ever born. King from birth by sovereign right of His Father's Throne. His reign came with His coming and a throne was His right of birth. He came to establish His throne on David's precedent and He reigns today, the Unseen King. His Kingdom is ever moving and increasing until one day it will burst onto earth in full and dazzling splendor.

The Kingdom of Heaven is God's reign and His realm. The place of His absolute rule and the home of His boundless imagination. He wishes us to enter the Kingdom and live by Kingdom joy and power. "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven."

New resolutions abound every January 1st. I think it is really more essential to do some work of resolution on the old year! I usually spend January reading over journals, considering the events of the past year and putting to rest what is over. THEN I begin to look toward the coming year, asking the Lord for His will and purpose to be revealed . . .

The kingdom of God is under siege, a state of war: perpetual and real, but a shadowed conflict with invisible armies. So the believer in Christ is born-again into a victorious kingdom, a reigning kingdom but a dominion under savage assault. Christians are at war.
We are. Enter or not. See or be blind. War is on us.

You are only individuals but your lone life has a significant effect among your comrades and in this war. Your individuality is crucial to the entire effort, and could be as pivotal as Joseph, Deborah, Gideon and others. On their personal spirituality rested the turn of events and in their sole hands lay the power of victory. God burns in my heart that you are individuals, intimately known and lovingly watched. You have a role to play beyond your military abilities, a role of character and influence. Perhaps even of the ultimate outcome.

The Bible is an unfolding story of worship. Worshiping the wrong things. Worshiping God. This Written Word is also a moving revelation of God's response to worship. Worship that gains His favor and . . . worship that is rejected. By this meticulous revealing, He unshrouds who He is, what He requires. And especially, what He has done!

The giant universe reveals God and points to His Son . . . for Whose delight it was fashioned and in Whose holy hand it is held. The heavens preside. Heaven rules the day, the night, the hour, the year . . . the crops, the tides. And we live ever under the lines drawn by the heavens above us. For us. If not to God, at least to the "lights," we submit. In the Heavens, the Father utterly rules, issuing life-in-light, down to us.

God is the beginning of all. What He does not begin, ends at its beginnings. From the fountain of His boundless imagination flow the inventings of our finest ideas. We are merely cups of varying levels of receptivity. Some narrow, some wide. What we begin, drawing out of the cauldron of human depravity and calling it God's plan, will find no support from Him . . . and no Brilliance of His Glorious Mind. He must begin whatever is begun. He initiates. We respond. He proclaims. We hear. He gives. We receive. He imagines . . . we are simply the clay of His inventive molding.
 

The Faces of Love and Hate are extremes of polar opposition, the difference between real heaven and literal hell. Those faces are certain, frighteningly or wonderfully real. The whole of life is a venting, a spewing of either love for God or hatred for Him.

A grave deception lies dormant like a sleeping sickness in the theology of the
church . . . an error with eternal consequences and unutterable loss. The error is this: that all believers, all born again Christians will be at the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. Christ's own words refute this. The Bride of Christ must meet specific requirements. His parables make such clear illustration of this, it is a marvel there can be such a serious mistaking of His teaching. Salvation is ever free. A gift. Unmerited and unearned by any effort or will. There is no work to be born again, only that of the work of Christ . . . but the Bride, that is another matter.

A long time ago I began to write Letters Never Sent. They were just for me, but some read them and said they should be read by others, that they speak for all, not just for me.  So I offer these letters, written for profound events and little encounters. Written to real individuals. Some are lost to me. A few are dead . . . but all are remembered - and I remember my own responses - because I recorded them.

Two trees still stand in the secret midst of the universe and in the timeless center of every human heart. Two towering canopies cast their shadow over every event and all relationships, calling for choice, ever calling for choice. One is death, the other Life. They demand unavoidable decisions by being diametrical opposites, incompatible and irreconcilable. We can never have both mental independence and absolute grace.

One of the most misunderstood, twisted and abused doctrines of Christianity is the subject of authority. It is a neglected study. It is an excuse for tyranny. The church that purports to be of Jesus, is one which today functions as Apostate Israel: "each one doing what is right in his own eyes." True authority, as God ordained it, is scarcely to be found. The Divine Order of authority is clear in scripture. We don't like it so we build a self-reasoned case against it. But it stands...as an eternal doctrine and a practical guide to God's will.
 

There is no transforming the flesh.  No revelation can convince it. No determination, master it. No noble work can silence it. It is hopeless. The only remedy for the flesh is death.  Yours by…Christ's.
 

We murder reputations, we kill relationships,
 we annihilate confidence, we crush individuality,
 we quench life and terminate the move of God.
 We curse with thoughts and 
kill with words. We plot to destroy. The ancients killed the prophets because they 
were the closest link to the God who kept interrupting
 their schemes to rule.
To put away the prophet is to kill the Voice of God.

In one hour of a normal sunny day our nation was catapulted into war,
and the world with us. That one hour has brought us to our destiny. Each of us live and are alive for this hour. So we, the ordinary, the young, the too old, we ALL are in a war that has knocked down our front door, right up the street from us. By this sudden emergency, we face an uncertain future. The security of yesterday was blown away by the 'today' frozen in time called "September 11th." Our future as a nation lies in the hands of believers in the Only Son of God, Jesus Christ, and our personal lives hang suspended in that balance.
 

Faith is a law…established by God for us. It is the gift of power given to humanity to possess and to produce. What you believe is what comes forth. It appears. Every person operates in a set of beliefs. Whether truth or lie, we all believe some things with a solid certainty. The heart has a secret doctrine, so ingrained as to be automatic and unrecognized. Faith is a law. The things we deem certain are certain to materialize.
 

Christian, you serve a Monarch. Believer, the One you love is in Majesty, incomprehensible and dazzling. Yesterday He walked a common path and wore His crude robe of one piece. Yesterday He died as would a common criminal at the hand of human envy. Yesterday He came as one without appeal, ordinary and easy-to-miss. Today He is King. King of Kings and of all kingdoms of kings. The Only King.

We are all on a lifelong journey and the core of its meaning, the terrible demand of its centrality, is forgiving and being forgiven. To forgive is to possess holy power over the person you are forgiving, power to change their life for God, for goodness, to free your enemy from his Enemy, that he might see his error. Come with me, beloved of God, come with me to behold the miracle of the universe - forgiveness.

The donkey stands for the worst characteristic of humanity: stubbornness. "Donkey" is resistance . . . obstinate by intent. Stubbornness is when a person will not obey, will not listen, will not. When the will is set in an unmovable "no," that is "donkey." We were born stubborn. It's who we are and that stubbornness unchecked will be our downfall. The loss of all . . . destiny, purpose . . . God!

Estos artículos han sido traducidos al español para tu edificación por otros santos del Cuerpo de Cristo, hambrientos y sedientos por conocer a Cristo. Han sido extraidos de las diferentes secciones de nuestra web, como quien extrae un tesoro para asistirte en tu viaje. Esperamos llenos de fervor que te estimulen, que toquen tu espíritu y que aviven aún más las llamas de tu amor hacia nuestro Salvador Jesucristo. ¡Dios te bendiga! ¡Disfrútalo!