The Hungry Disciple

" O taste and see that the Lord is sweet. Blessed is the one who hopes in Him" In the shadow of The Tree of Life was always the other tree.  That cursed tree, whose fruit brought shame, loss and death.  That despicable tree that caused us to be put out of Paradise to protect us from eating of The Beloved Tree of Life one more time and living eternally in our wretched aloneness. Of course Jesus had to be crucified on a tree!  The Redeemer of all things now says, " Look and Live!  Taste and See!"   Behold! He has made all things new!

Matthew 24:3   As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately. “Tell us,” they said, “….what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?”   The Parable of the Bags of Gold; Matthew 25:19-28 “Again, it [The Kingdom of Heaven] will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted his wealth to them.   To one he gave five bags of gold, to another two bags, and to another one bag, each according to his ability. Then he went on his journey.   The man who had received five bags of gold went at once and put his money to work and gained five bags more.   So also, the one with two bags of gold gained two more.   But the man who had received one bag went off, dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money. After a long time the master of those servants returned and settled accounts with them. The man who had received five bags of gold brought the other five. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘you entrusted me with five

I believe God reserves a special admiration for the spiritually honest. He knows the real you and loves the real you-so should you. So don't give up being real about the state of your desires and life experiences before Him no matter how "different" you feel from other Christians who don't admit to the same struggles. Jesus promised those who squarely face their inability to live the Christian life with His very own Strength! Most of us do not need a definition of spiritual failure. We know it very well. If I were to rephrase Galatians 5:19-21,  it would sound something like this:  “The results of living according to human nature are apparent by observing life.  You see them everywhere and many of them plague your own life and the lives of those you love.  Things like sexual immorality, impure thoughts, eagerness for lustful pleasure, making other things more important than God, dabbling in  all kinds of demonic power of the occult, hostility, quarreling, jealou

The Lord will never ask one more thing of us unless we first ask a question of Him. Remember the story of The Rich Young Ruler; the young man who approached Jesus to ask what he had to do to gain eternal life?  Jesus gives him the Bar Mitzvah question,  and  the young man proudly quotes the scripture & says he has done all those things since he was a boy. Comforted by having the right answer, he is waiting for his gold star. This young man was a Ruler. He had power over something; perhaps people, or an office of authority. He had done well with his life, had dutifully obeyed all the commands of his religion, and yet as he listened to Jesus speaking,something wasn't right.   Perhaps as he heard Jesus' words he wasn't quite as sure as usual that he was good. Perhaps he wondered, did this man, Jesus, perhaps know one more thing he needed to do to be sure he would spend eternity with God? He was right. Jesus did know one more thing. Jesus loved him and kne

Dare we ask that question?  Let's put it another way. Dare we say we are a little more than anxious to know how to please Him? We have a never ending list of answers available to us. Only an insatiable person would continue to crave knowing more about what God wants even though they  are stuffed full already.  But that's me and this is where my hunger has led me. God was Abraham’s friend. He changed Abraham, talked to Abraham, directed Abraham and blessed Abraham. His relationship with Abraham was the first intimate interaction God initiated after Eden ’s lock down. He made a great Promise to Abraham-that through him all the people on the face of the earth would be blessed. What did Abraham do to warrant such generosity?  Genesis 26:25 tells us God honored His promises to Abraham’s son, “Because that Abraham obeyed my voice, and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws.” All of the woe of religion is based in the misunderstanding of what God wants