Names of God; part 30. Being a son in the house of YHVH.

Title: Names of God; part 30. Being a son in the house of YHVH.

 

 

EPH 2:4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us,

 

EPH 2:5 even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved)

 

"By grace you have been saved in past time completely, with the result that you are in a state of salvation which persists through present time." [full and complete translation]

 

EPH 2:6 and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus,

 

EPH 2:7 in order that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

 

EPH 2:8 For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that [everything pertaining to salvation] not of yourselves, it is the gift of God;

 

EPH 2:9 not as a result of works, that no one should boast.

 

EPH 2:10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

 

His workmanship - as new creatures we have been constructed by Him. It was never up to us what we should become. He made us a creature that has a particular purpose.

 

A person makes a tool or an instrument for a certain purpose. He has in view a task or skill and he designs the object to do a particular job.

 

By means of grace we perform all the works that God has prepared for us. We do not do them by human effort. We do them as new creatures in Christ fully versed in the word of God and fully empowered and influenced by God the Holy Spirit. We trust the word and the Spirit and in such faith we spontaneously perform the many works that God has predetermined.

 

We are God's spiritual handiwork. What He has made us to be comes with an operator's manual. The creature is to think and say and do what the Father has called him to do. It was one thing for Paul, another for Peter, another for you and for me.

 

Only the word of God guides us in what we are to think and do. We must consistently listen to it in order to be properly guided.

 

If our own ideas of what life should be creep in then we fail to live according to the standard set by Christ. Purify yourself as He is pure. This standard cannot be compromised. God made us with this exact purpose in mind.

 

We tend to move towards comfort. Ravi Zacharias, a fine Christian speaker, stated that he was to speak at a state prayer breakfast in Iowa in February. People said to him, "We will pray for you." He then had an engagement to speak at a Hawaiian state prayer breakfast in Honolulu, and people said to him, "Have fun!" Borrowing his conclusion, we all naturally tend towards the direction of our comforts, but God reminds us that we must never get so comfortable with comforts, that it is the comfort principle that drives all that we do. As an example, he used Daniel who was offered all of the wonderful foods of the king of Babylon, but refused them since according to the Law they were unclean. Daniel trained his appetite to hunger and thirst only for God's will.

 

We must train our appetite to hunger and thirst only for God's will and not have our own appetite for comforts and lusts be our god.

 

Php 3:19

whose god is their appetite, and whose glory is in their shame, who set their minds on earthly things.

 

MAT 5:6

"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied."

 

A worker in a hospital emergency room, a nurse or doctor, could be working on saving the life of a person with AIDS or hepatitis and accidently poke themselves with a tainted needle through which the disease will enter their blood stream and destroy their immune system, making them susceptible to all other diseases. There is such a thing in the world that is outside of this scenario in the hospital. There are people all over the world working in businesses and organizations and productions and ideas whose sole purpose is to cut your soul and infect it with a disease so that you will be hooked and reprogrammed so that you will have hungers and passions and desires that can never be fulfilled. You become incapable of fighting off a certain way which creates in you an imagination which is insatiable and you will never, ever be satisfied.

 

The great irony of this is that the desire of the world is insatiable but it is entirely earthly. It is material and bodily. It is flesh and mind only. But the righteousness of God is from heaven, and the only desire that could be in a man that could be satisfied is the one from heaven: the one that would seem impossible.

 

In this day and age of smart phones and mass and free communication, there is a great danger to people, especially young people.