Our Comforter: John 14:16

If you look up the word "Comforter" on Google, you will find a description of a puffy down-filled bed cover to keep you warm as you sleep.  Now this is perhaps only in the English.  The word "parakletos" has nothing to do with ducks or cozy beds.  But this meaning is still something to be examined.  The Holy Spirit, who is our Comforter, given us by the Father because Jesus will not leave us "comfortless," is like a warm blanket on a cold winter night. He keeps us tucked in if we stay beneath His warmth. Sometimes during the night time of our lives we get out from under the Comforter.  We feel we must do something alone, and we  go out into the night air.  But what a joy when finally we get back into the bed underneath His warmth and care. Jesus said, "I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter, that He may abide with you forever."  Just because we get out of bed, does not mean that the Comforter disappears. We are just wandering from our place, so we feel the coldness of the night.  The analogy breaks down because sometimes at night we may need to get out of bed for a few minutes, but in life we should endeavor to always stay put under the protection and the safety of our Lord's presence.  Nestle into his warmth, and you will find peace through the storms of the night.  Shalom and Shana Tova.

Jews remember the Exodus, their freedom from bondage in Egypt.  We as Christians must remember our freedom from bondage also.  Egypt is a type of sin and bondage to the kingdom of Satan.   We must look to our Passover Lamb who initiates our release from slavery.  It was that night  3500 years ago that the Passover lambs were slaughtered and the blood put on the doorposts of the houses.  It was 1500 years later that the eternal Passover Lamb was sacrificed by crucifixion.  He is the fulfillment of the entire story of the Exodus.  This is the greatest aspect of the relationship between the Old and the New.

I can imagine that to Jewish young people the story of the Exodus could become very stale very fast, and yet, there are still Jews 3500 years later that are remembering that night and the subsequent events of the crossing of the Red Sea and the wandering in the desert.   The key person in all of this is Moses, rescued by the Pharoah’s daughter, trained in Egypt for 40 years, and then exiled into the wilderness to learn the ways of Jethro and the unseen God of the desert.   

This God was not a new thought.  He was not dreamed up by Moses or Jethro for that matter.  He was not dreamed up by Melchizedek, priest of the Most High God several generations earlier.  He was not dreamed up by Noah as he wondered why those rain clouds looked so ominous.  He simply was and had always been, and people knew about Him from  long ago, from ancient days.  The pagan religions of the world came out of this primordial knowledge of God as mutations of the Truth.  The Exodus is therefore not actually a coming out of something old into something new.  Exodus is a returning to the ways of the eternal God.  So leaving Mitsrayim is leaving a system that had been imagined by men because they had forgotten the Truth.  

Some archeologists will say, “Oh, look here, a similarity to the sacrificial system of the Bible.  That’s where Moses got it.”  No,  Mitsrayim, grandson of Noah, or one of his descendents brought these false concepts to the world because their hearts were cold.  They did not believe in the Almighty God first hand, and so they invented other gods to suit there purposes.   They took their knowledge of resurrection from past generations, and made it into fantastic accounts of Pharaohs walking through the depths of the earth and the rising of the sun each day.  We do this today.  We do not want to keep God in our minds, and so we imagine  everything from Harry Potter to UFO's  to amuse ourselves and keep our spirits busy rather than seeking the true God.  Without Christ, man reverts to paganism in a very short time.   

And God remembered Rachel... Genesis 30:22

I sometimes feel that God does not remember me, that He would just as soon forget me, because so often I have forgotten Him.  It took 16 years before I was aware that God had remembered me.  I had things that I needed to go through.  And now when I think of those 16 years, I can sum them up with a few brief flashes of memory.  Jacob was angry with Rachel for wanting her own children so badly.  He couldn’t fix it, and so he blamed her for being too emotional. She was so desperate for children that she was willing to let Jacob go “in unto” her maid so that she could have a surrogate.  

Dan and Naphtali were her “adopted” step-children.  But it did not satisfy.  Perhaps she tried to make it satisfy.  Perhaps she even loved them, but it was not enough.  She wanted her own.  And then when her own son was born she wanted another, because she wasn’t satisfied with just one.  I understand.  I know Rachel’s heart.  The second son killed her, but still she wanted him.  Rachel never knew her grandchildren, Manasseh and Ephraim.  I’m sure she would have loved them so.  Little bald Manasseh and Ephraim with the weird little locks of hair sticking out of the sides of their heads.  Would she have approved Asenath the daughter of Potipherah priest of On?   Not her God.  But Joseph chose her after all.  Rachel had gone from stealing idols and pretending she was on her period to crying out to Jehovah for a child.  She had some stuff to go through, and then when it was all done, she died.  

But Rachel is remembered. For what? For her cry and her grief for her children, In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not. Matthew 2:18 

But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. Genesis 6:8  But.... This word pervades scripture.  Some terrible situation prevails, but...God does something else.  We must always seek the "but" that God wants for us.  So many people stop before the "but." They give up on faith.  They commit suicide, or they despair and live a life of  depression and sadness.  How do we initiate this "but?" By seeking the Lord and His goodness.  He is always wanting to give us a "but."  

Before every "but" is a stop, a period or a comma.  It's a pause before God makes a "but."  A period seems to be an end, but given to God can be the beginning of an entirely different thought.  A comma leaves us hanging, waiting for the "but."  Still God is working.  

Think of what was going on in Noah's life.  The world was being destroyed on the scale of the movie "2012," but because Noah believed, he found grace and became one of the greatest "buts" in history.  The thief on the cross was a "but."  Mary Magdalene and Peter were "buts." Most of the saints of scripture were "buts."   The Lord can make anyone a "but" if they just seek His face in their time of complaint.

Obedience and Life vs. Despair and Death

Obedience vs. despair.  Life vs. death.  This is ultimately the lesson of our lives.  When it's just too hard to go on, you must die to yourself and your own answers, your own paths, your own dreams and seek Him even in the darkness.  I think this is part of what fasting is all about.  You are setting aside a real felt desire to seek Him.  Every time you feel that desire, you must seek Him to overcome the temptation.

When does God bow down?

Psalm 86:1 states, "Bow down thine ear, O Lord, hear me: for I am poor and needy." The God of the universe is seen here bowing down. The infinite creator and Lord is seen humbling Himself to someone. But to whom does he bow down? The great and important? The beautiful and famous?The wealthy and educated? No, God bows down to no one except the poor and needy. Those that cry out to him. Those that humble themselves to Him. When a sinful and desperate person falls on his face before Him, the Lord of Hosts bows down to listen to his faintest whisper of longing.

The arrogant and proud and disbelieving are met with a King on a throne of judgment. This is the God that they fear. The contrite and poor in spirit only have the privilege of seeing God bow down to them in love, and forgiveness, and mercy.

One thing is needful: you must bow down to Him for Him to bow down to you.

God With Us

In the New Testament the first time we see the word "God" it is not in an ethereal spiritual atmosphere. The first time we're told of God, a woman is going through labor in a stable amidst cows and sheep and dung and smells. God is with us in the midst of our greatest pain, and when all around is darkness and inconvenience. Where many would want to keep the God of the universe out among the stars, He chooses to immerse Himself in the dirt and difficulty of the common world. God reveals Himself as Emmanuel; He reveals Himself as being with us. Even though God transcends all problems, He is intimately involved in every aspect of our lives no matter how distasteful.
Of all the people that God could have preserved from going through trials, why wouldn't he Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, the Holy Family? And of all the ways God could have come into the world, why would he come as the weakest of creatures, a human infant, completely vulnerable and without power? It is His desire to experience the fullness of our humanity, not our sin, but our suffering, our limitations, and our longing for the infinite. The immensity of God the Father is with us in Jesus Christ and His Holy Spirit. The question remains: Are you with Him?