PATJOE

If you don't know you are poor spiritually, you may be relying solely on yourself. A Christian turns himself over to God and solely relies on Him. It is then, that he realizes that without God, he is not capable of anything on his own. We need to mourn our own incapacity of being righteous, to the point where we glorify and thank God for his unconditional love and offer of salvation that He gives us freely. The Christian's common experience is discovering, believing and mourning that we can do nothing to earn our way into Heaven. We just receive God's freely given mercy and unconditional love.

One part of the beatitude's is the naming of the understood afflictions that befall those who truly seek God, and the second is the reward or blessing that will be received while enduring the situation and not letting go of God. I believe Jesus made each beatitude a paradox to get the attention of all who suffer, and then to give them the hope and promise immediately, of all that His love will give them. Blessings that will turn their downward spirits upward, instantly, with happiness and assurance. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace (the promises of the beatitudes) -- long suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance (the attributes of all who love Christ and seek to be closer to Him -- in other words - those who the beatitudes speak to).

David is suffering in his exhile (possibly when Absalom turned against him), wanting so desperately to be back in his role of worshipping and rejoicing in the temple - not knowing if he ever will again - needing to be in God's presence again more than anything else in his life. He is literally spiritually starving for his Lord. He combats this spiritual depression by praying tearfully day and night to God -- first telling Him how desolate he feels without Him, and then how earnestly he is seeking Him and then he manages to speak to his own soul and remind himself that he should not be downcast and disturbed, and to put his entire hope in God, and know that he will definitely come back to praising God for his deliverance. At times of feeling depressed and abandoned, I remember that God never abandons me and I am not alone and that is when I am reminded that I can totally trust God with the entire matter. Once I have given it to Him totally, I can just relax and wait for Him to put it all back together. He always does! Thank You Lord ! (I am not that good at relaxing yet, but I do wait for Him and He never lets me or others down).

David wants to be close to the Lord at all times, when he says he desires to dwell in the house of the Lord -- where he can rejoice and feel safe and secure. When he writes about seeking His face, David wants to seek God's presence and be face to face with Him. He wants a personal relationship with God. David provides hope when he says to wait patiently on the Lord, no matter how long it takes, and know there are rich rewards for those who persevere and do the will of God. He never wants to do anything his way. He is only secure in waiting for God to guide him to live his life God's way. God is No. 1 in David's life.

David is so awed by the power of God, the wonders of His creation, that he relates to all of this knowledge in a personal way - realizing God's power and love was totally involved in his life, even as far back as being an embryo -- and that God wove to-gether in his mother's womb, every cell that exists in his body, and he is adoring and grateful. In his concluding prayer, he seems very aware that his own human nature, being sinful, would definitely mar the perfection of God's creation in him, and he asks God to search him for any defects/sins (that he knows are there), and then asks God to cleanse his heart and put David back on the path of knowledge that he is already the owner of eternal life through the loving grace of God - as we all are that believe.

Verses 1-6 tell of how God speaks to us silently through His creation. Wherever we look in our created world, up, down, or sideways, we see silent statements of the truth of God's glory and His love for us in giving us this creation. In 7-13, this same awareness of God's abundant glory, love and the blessings He bestows, are spoken clearly to us through the scriptures, God's word. David is so in awe of the wonderment, glory and power of God, he seems unable to think or speak of anything else, thankfully. God is definitely David's first priority in his life. David sounds full of joy and full of love for his Lord. David is asking God to totally control the words he speaks as he glorifies His Lord and asks God to stand watch at the doorway of his heart to safeguard David's love for Him -- that nothing will ever be allowed to enter his heart to weaken his love for his Lord. Yes, I have felt this way many times - when I finally let go of the reins and let God take over. His answer is always so much more than I asked for. He is wondrous!

Psalm 8, to me, teaches us of the boundless lmits of God's love for us. In comparison, to the magnitude of the heavens and entire solar system created by God, we, his human creations, are infiitesimal and yet God placed us as rulers over all living things here on earth. He also wants a close relationship with each one of us. He made Christ a little lower than the heavenly beings and God crowned Him with glory and honor. We are to increase in number and take care of the earth that God gave us. This also means to take care of our own spiritual well-being by trusting God so implicitly that He comes before all else in our lives. We cannot be meaningfully involved in our lives by ourselves. We need God's guidance to work through our trials. Alone, we fail. We should strive to do this in total submission to God.

God is being asked..(as our creator, who through His peace and the blood of His eternal covenant, brought our Lord Jesus, our Shepherd, back from the dead).. that He will give us, who love Him, everything we need to do His will, so that He can complete His will in us and be pleased -- all being done through Jesus Christ to whom be glory for ever. God is asked to bring peace to us and show us how to seek that peace with Him - through the blood of Jesus (His eternal covenant to us), through His wonderous resurrection, and who earned His place at God's right hand as our great high priest - - all - - on behalf of every one of us. God is pleased by seeing His will manifested in our lives. We should aim to please Him so that we can be resident in the City of God that is yet to come, and abide with Him eternally.

Because Jesus Himself was sacrificed as our sin offering, as Christians we are expected to praise Him; share what we have with others; strive to please God, and to live our lives here on earth with our priority focus being on God and what He did for us on the cross and to do so with praise and thanksgiving. God is pleased when we praise Him and do His work by helping others. He longs for every one of us to know Him that well and trust Him.

If the original readers are the people who witnessed Jesus' miracles and his crucifixion while on earth, they would know that what Jesus has done personally for them, will be available to all mankind until the end of time. For me, I can believe that all I read and study about Jesus' miracles and his loving sacrifice, is just as available to me to-day. For those understanding who Jesus is - they know He never changes -- He is the same to-day as He has always been since the day God placed Him with us on earth -- the Son of God. All of this, being truth, should make it so easy for all to know the power of God that is available to every one of us today. We need to try and reach all of those that don't.

We can recognize greed in ourselves when we want to gather "things" into our lives to keep pace with others, instead of trusting God when He says He will never forsake us. The signs are that we depend on things to be happy instead of depending on God to provide. The antidote is to learn to be happy and thankful for what we have. The person who lives simply, and loves God more than money and uses what he has to serve God, rather than expecting money to serve him, would be a greed-free life. We should base our security for the future on God's promises to us - that He will never leave us nor will He forsake us. He will guide us and provide for us everything that we need. "His grace is sufficient for us".

Hospitality to strangers is required by us, if we ourselves want to be treated warmly with hospitality. While on earth Jesus taught "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you". The end product of obeying this is brotherly love. As Christians we also love each other,whether we have been persecuted and even imprisoned for our faith in God; or even if we were active criminally, imprisoned and found God in prison and turned our lives over to Him. I feel strong in brotherly love related to all of the above. I am still working on (with God's help) showing brotherly love to some very difficult people.

The fear of God that is aligned with awe -- being so very impressed and thankful for the wonders, power and love of God is healthy. Those who feel terrorized by God are not in a healthy spiritual state because they do not know the love of God, or understand the sacrifice of Jesus and the meaning of His resurrection. It is all so far from being terrorizing -- it is receiving a tremendous love that we cannot fully comprehend, from God, but receive and accept it (along with His mercy and forgiveness) with reverence and awe. In 1 John 4:18, when we know the love of God, there is no fear in love. To receive His perfect love, is to cast out fear. If we fear with terror, we are not made perfect in love, or in other words if we lack the true understanding of Jesus and the Cross, we cannot be made perfect. This was all done for us by the One who first loved us, and taught us how to love Him and fear (respect with awe) Him.

I believe he is saying we need to make every effort to be holy - by seeking peace with everyone, remaining sexualy pure and trying to remain godly in an ungodly world. However, whie we are still on earth we remain born into sin, and can only become holy, and in the image of Christ, once we are in Heaven. We can, while on earth, pursue the three things mentioned above in our "ethereal quest for holiness". We can only achieve "being on the path to holiness" while still here on earth. Habitual sin by people who know who God is and continually reject Him (apostacy) will deprive that person of Heaven. Once a true Christian becomes aware of his habitual sin and seeks to atone for his sins and believes he is covered by God's mercy and Jesus' sacrifice on the cross, he will automatically abandon his sinful ways. So yes, habitual sin without choosing to claim the redeeming grace of our Saviour's sacrifice on the cross, will deprive us of heaven.

God doesn't punish us for our sins. They have already been covered by Jesus' death and resurrection. Punishment in the over-all concept of proper child-rearing is done out of love rather than anger. Parents love their children and God loves us all even more - beyond our human understanding and the discipline from both God and human parents is done to teach responsibility and how to successfully co-exist in this world of materialism and one-upmanship. God's purpose also, for disciplining us is so we can learn to live and conduct ourselves as sons and daughters of the Living God. He wants all of us abiding with Him for ever. If we look at our hardships and trials of life as discipline and punishment, God does punish those He loves. As our earthly fathers punish sons and daughters, God also calls those he disciplines His sons and daughters. It's all based on His love for us.

Knowing our struggles are God's way of training us, helps us to accept the hardship. It is no longer a burden, but now a challenge to learn the lesson God is teaching us. Knowing God is in control, is another lesson in trusting Him. Without God, our struggles can make us angry and bitter. With God, He shows us the way to victory and peace. We learn we cannot struggle successfully through anything on our own. It all takes place in our lives to help prepare us to be the true sons and daughters of the Living God in our Eternal Life with Him, and while here on earth. He is training us to lean on Him so we can, one day, walk together into God's kingdom eternally.

Satan is right in the middle of our spiritual struggles. If we are not poised against him, he will increase our momentary weakness and stress and turn our 'one step forward' into 'two steps backward'. For this reason we must focus on how much more powerful God is over Satan; how much God loves us opposed to Satan's hatred of us for loving God; and believe God's promises to us, especially when He says - in our deepest trials, that is when He is closest to us. I have been overcome by Satan but thankfully it was only momentary. God was His closest to me and He overcame the dread of Satan, and the minute I dwelled on Him, He gave me peace and patience to wait on Him.

Satan is right in the middle of our spiritual struggles. If we are not poised against him he will increase our weakness and stress and turn our 'one step forward' into 'two steps backward'. For this reason we must focus on how powerful God is over Satan; how much God loves us, opposed to Satan's hatred of us for loving God; and believe God's promises to us -- especially when He says - in our deepest trials, that is when He is closest to us. I have been overcome by Satan but thankfully, it was only momentary. God was closer and He overcame the dread of Satan and the moment I dwelled on Him, He gave me peace and patience to wait on Him.

All of the prophets as well as Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David and Samuel are the great cloud of witnesses. To live the ife of faith, we are to throw off the weight of sin that slows us down as we run the race and run it with perseverence. Jesus is the author and pioneer of our faith as He has run this race before us in obedience to His father, on the cross, and He fixed His focus on the end result and the joy of completion to be at His father's side. This is our example to do the same. By this example He perfected our faith for us.

Their powerful motivating factor behind all of their actions was faith. It was based on the promises they had received from God that they truly trusted. The Israelites believed they would have dry land to pass through the Red Sea because their deliverance was promised to them by God. The Red Sea became their temple. The Egyptian Army were in unbelief and it became their tomb. The only time I believe, that true faith and shrewd opportunism are close to being the same, is when true faith exists first and is the reason for opportunism. (We grasp the opportunity to become faithful children of God). Rahab had real faith and after coming to know the spies that she protected, she truly wanted to know Israel's God, and came to trust Him and survived the destruction of Jericho because of her faith.

Moses' faith was so strong that he willingly gave up the treasures of Egypt as part of Pharaoh's family, to stay aligned with his own people -- people of God, and would rather suffer persecution with them for God's sake, than choose the easy luxury and safety of Pharoah's palace. Moses' faith had him looking ahead to the image of his final reward in heaven. For us to-day, we are all in the path of temptation periodically, and I believe we choose not to yield to it, as our love for God provides us as well, with the future image of our Eternal Life with our Lord and Saviour.

The characteristics of a believer who lives on earth as an alien and stranger, are that he is always in a state of waiting while sojournng here - waiting for his final residence in Heaven. He lives as one who is in this world with us, but he belongs to God and is of His heavenlyt kingdom. While here, he is waiting to go to his permanent home in heaven with his Lord.

Abraham obeyed God, not knowing his earthly destination. While we sojourn here on earth, we too know our future permanent home lies in God's promise to us with eternal life. Abraham believed he would be a father, strictly because His heavenly father promised he would -- even against all earthly odds. We too need to be in the world, but "of" heaven. The final city will be the Jerusalem that God alone created, in the final country of the Kingdom of Heaven.

1) Abraham knew for certain that God was totally faithful to His promises. 2) Our goal as Christians to want to live in such way as to please God, relates to His real existence and power. We cannot love and serve someone who we don't believe is real and there for us. 3) Without truly believing that God exists -- is all powerful -- and faithfully promises us eternal life wth Him, -- such a person is not Christian and depends solely on himself for control in his life. My definition of faith in God is: as the blind person loves and trusts his leader dog to guide and protect him, so the faithful Christian loves and totally trusts our Lord to guide us into His righteousness, while He protects us from our sins and from eternal condemnation. We believe this so emphatically that we both need and are able to, turn the reigns of our lives over to Him. We want what He alone offers and know certainly we cannot attain it on our own without Him.

We have an inner assurance and evidence of truth for the things we cannot see -- a gift from God that we know the absolute spiritual raelities of His kingdom -- "7 By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family". He truly believed the warning of God and protected his family, and "condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness that comes by faith". The more we learn about God an the Bible, the stronger our faith grows -- In all honesty we base our faith on fear as Noah did. (We should so fear and love God...) We believe we will be condemned if we turn away from God. However the more we learn the more we base our faith on our love for God as well.