Those who come in the name of the Lord find PEACE!

Luke records the crowd shouting these words as Jesus enters Jerusalem, “Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” to which we are also blessed with. The crowds were shouting what the angels announced at His birth, “Glory to God in the highest and Peace to men of Good will.”

Jesus Christ is the author of peace, the Prince of Peace. In this learning laboratory of mortality, we find that peace comes as we put Him first in our lives. We come to know that He lives, that Christ truly paid the price of our sins, our poor vision, our weaknesses, by suffering personally for each one of them, and that He has become our Advocate with the Father through Christ’s atoning sacrifice, to enable us, lift us, save us, and redeem us. He alone can bring peace to us through the gift of His Spirit.

The Savior’s words found in John 14:27 are literal and are for you and I: “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give you;  I do not give to you as the world gives, Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid”

Jesus Christ wants us to have rest and as we feel His love, we do feel guided along the “still waters.” We can feel this even in the torrent of trial and the slashing winds of stormy seas at various times in our lives. When we think God has turned His back on us, wonder how or why He could allow a certain innocent suffering or emotional pain, we can find out that He is always facing us. He never turns away. He never abandons us; He never causes harm or injury, but He sometimes allows evil that others do to run its course, that the wicked may be judged and because no one can be forced to be His follower and friend. Those who willfully inflict evil will suffer at the end of the age.

Yet the peace is only found in the Name of the Lord. Who is the Son of God? He is the Coming and Returning King. We can be blessed, tell others, and receive peace in the Name of the Lord. Those who come in the name of Jesus are convinced that there is Strength In the Name Of The Lord, that there is Power in the Name Of The Lord, and for tomorrow there is Hope In The Name Of The Lord. Yes, Jesus followers are blessed because they come in the Name Of The Lord, they desire to tell others of His Name and they live in peace for today and the hope of a great destiny.

Who is Jesus? He is the Son of Man, Friend to Sinners, Anointed One, the Coming King, and He is the King that will return. 

You are prepared to welcome him in your heart today? You know I love ya, Don

Alone or Not Alone ... equally terrifying.

Sir Arthur Charles Clarke (16 December 1917 – 19 March 2008) was a British author, inventor and futurist, famous for his short stories and novels, among them 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), and as a host and commentator in the British television series Mysterious World. Although I disagree with Mr. Clarke’s religious assumptions, he is credited with this one saying that speak clearly the feeling of our culture. He said, “Two possibilities exist: Either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.” (Visions : How Science Will Revolutionize the Twenty-First Century (1999) by Michio Kaku, p. 295)

Jesus entering Jerusalem on first day of the week of His crucifixion enters with great pomp and circumstance and he has come to declare that we are not alone in this universe. Mr. Clarke’s quote is speaking about alien life, I am addressing spiritual life.

If you believe in a huge explosion established life and that mankind is here alone…it is terrifying.

If you believe that a great and powerful creator created this world and is actively working among his creation … it is terrifying.

I am happy to declare my allegiance to the truth that a great Creator is here. He is working among his people. He is to be respected. He is not to be taken lightly. He will not be mocked. He left eternity and entered into history so that you might have a destiny…He is love.
  

Mr. Clarke died in 2008 a sinful man without any hope of knowing that we are not alone in this world, that the coming King came and will come again. He became so judgmental of religion that he was lost in the facts that clouded his faith. He had no hope and truly died a tragedy. 

He wrote in his personal "Credo," an essay published in 1991, Clarke writes, "No intelligent person can contemplate the night sky without a sense of awe. The mind-boggling vista of exploding supernovae and hurtling galaxies does seem to require a certain amount of explaining." Yet, he was so captivated by his own awareness that he could not see the hand of a loving God reaching to touch his own world.  He never discovered peace, nor did he find the only path to the very thing that would relieve that which terrified him.

The coming King has come and he will come again. Don’t be so caught up in your own life, your own terrifying existence, that you loose your place in eternity.

The Son of God stepped out of eternity into History so that You and I might have a Destiny. Are we prepared to meet the Returning King? 

I am ready and pray your are as well ...  you know I love ya, Don 

Sinner ... Jesus is your friend!

Why do we make it so hard? We ask today…who is Jesus? He is the friend to sinners. Sinner: in ordinary speech, it means someone who is deeply depraved, evil, bad. However, that's not what the Christian faith means by the word. In Christian belief, 'sinner' is not a moral description, but a relational one. Sin is the broken state of our relationship with God. There's a distance, a gap between us (with the rest of the created universe) and God, a distance far too wide for us to cross over, a distance bridged only by God's act of coming over onto our side of the gap through Jesus Christ (God-with-us) and the Spirit that Jesus sent in His place. The nicest, kindest, most spiritual, and most virtuous of us is a sinner. The vilest, darkest, crookedest, most evil of us is a sinner. Everyone in between is a sinner. God loves each and all of these sinners. And Jesus is the friend of Sinners.

Perhaps it would be best to use a word, which lacks the moralistic overtone of 'sinner'. That overtone undercuts the Christian message of grace for those on our human side of the divide. I would love to look at the good and pretend the bad away, it's so much happier -- but it is unreal. The words often put forward to replace 'sin' and 'sinner' fail to catch enough of the negative quality of that divide: it is very bad for you (in fact, fatal) and is far from what God wants for you. Because the broken relationship is so bad for us, it has profound and deep effects on all of us and all we do. It is a part of our human identity and character (that which makes each of us who/what we are), whether we want it to be or not.

The Bible has all sorts of words to describe sin. The most striking of these is Heb. mešubah (infidelity); the covenant people Israel was chasing after other lovers, as the prophets described it. In the Hebrew Scriptures, other words include ‘ahar (transgression, law-breaking), ma’al (trespass), ‘awon (straying, wandering), tum’ah (becoming unclean), beged (disloyalty, treason), and peša (revolt, rebellion). The image of sin, which the New Testament most picked up on, was the idea of an archer missing his mark (Heb. chatta’t, Gk hamartia). Anyone who does these is in some sense a 'sinner'. The origin of hamartia is the reward from competition; due to missing the mark badly or often, the archer has no (ha-) share in the allotment (mer-) or prize.

Notice that these are word-pictures, metaphors that help to describe something that has so many angles that no mere word or even phrase can quite hit the mark. You can picture someone straying from the path into the dangers of the woods, getting lost. Another image is being soaked through and through with pig-mud. Some of these are relational, others personal, or ritual, or societal. Sin is so pervasive, it colors everything we do. We all do these things, in all sorts of ways, thus we are all sinners. Jesus is a friend to sinners.

You know I love ya, Don