Jesus, our Great Shepherd, clearly wants His disciples to discern the season of His return. And He surely does not want us to be led astray from what He is teaching. We are responsible before the Lord for how we steward this crucial subject. But how are we to do so if no one knows the day or hour except the Father?
No one wants to get whooped so badly they can only escape by running through the public square bruised and bloodied in their birthday suit. But for all the popular fervor over “signs and wonders” putting the power of God on public display, only God can know the men and women with “hearts fully loyal to Him, on whose behalf He can show Himself strong.” May we be such a people.
I love the life of David. There is nothing like it. I have enjoyed decades of musings over the man after God’s own heart in books, music, and movies to ignite my holy imagination. Apart from Jesus, no one is featured more prominently in the Scriptures than David. Like so many, one of the reasons I value the life of David so much is because we discover how to be a person after God’s heart when we fall flat on our face in sin and failure.
One of the many paradoxes of following Jesus is that we gain access to eternal life, yet we are also subject to trials and tribulations as He conforms us into His image. Why does Jesus do this to His people? How do we walk this road, yet keep our hearts tender and unoffended? “Blessed is the one who is not offended by Me.”
Amos says, “Surely the Lord God does nothing unless He reveals His secrets to His servants the prophets.” God is looking to partner with people to bring to fruition the fullness of His kingdom and His purposes. That is why there is almost always a prophetic witness somewhere somehow. The torch of the testimony of the glory of God and His saving plan for His people passes through history and is never lost.
In any hour, God only has a limited number of people that will respond to Him in obedience. That fact may startle you! We would like to think that we would all do what God asks of us, but on the ground, in real time, that is not actually the case. Utter obedience to God has always been a relatively rare commodity. Thank God that will not always be the case, but in this era it is.
Written by Dalton Thomas in the months leading up to the birth of FAI in Dec. 2011, UNTO DEATH explores the implications of the resurrection, the imperatives of costly discipleship, and invites those who love and confess Jesus to invest their limited life in this age for an abundant life in the next—driven by the apostolic "blessed hope" befitting those who worship a crucified King & slain Lamb.
There is a biblical principle that we must “go down to come up,” that we must be planted in the earth to grow into the light, that night comes before day, that resurrection only comes after death. The devil can try to destroy us, but God means to bless not only us, but others, in our trials. Through our trials, pain, and deepest despair comes a path of salvation for us, for our family, and, as we shall see, for God’s nation.
No one can enter eternity and sit at the Marriage Supper of the Lamb, the feast for union with Him slain before the foundation of the world, harboring offense at another sinner in their heart. Such bitterness will damn you to eternity apart from the just Judge of the ages. So Jesus’ words to Peter were those of a sage and sober wisdom: Forgive every day, until the last day. You forgive and keep forgiving till the end of the age; the welfare of your very soul is at stake. You love till the end.
What we call the “Great Commission” tasked us with the holy dignity of bearing incarnate witness to the Incarnate God. Indeed, “let this mind be in [us] also.” As we meditate on the Incarnation this week—and we should—may we look towards the rest of the story, and may we give ourselves to hasten the Day it’ll happen.
Just over two months ago, the world reeled from the news of a young man’s death on the shores of an isolated island in the Bay of Bengal. But it isn’t the first time a young zealot’s passion for the Gospel in the nations arrested the attention of everyone around him. Hear the story of John Urquhart.
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