Walking Thoughts

- Installing a new program will always mess up at least one old one.

- You can't win them all, but you sure can lose them all.

- The likelihood of a hard disk crash is in direct proportion to the value of the material that hasn't been backed up.

- There are only two kinds of computer users: Those whose hard disks have crashed, and those whose hard disks haven't crashed - yet.

- Anything can be made to work if you fiddle with it. If you fiddle with something long enough, you'll break it.

When you and I hurt deeply, what we really need is not an explanation from God but a revelation of God. We need to see how great God is; we need to recover our lost perspective on life. Things get out of proportion when we are suffering, and it takes a vision of something bigger than ourselves to get life's dimensions adjusted again.

Warren W. Wiersbe

Did you ever have a teacher who made it a point to make you fail the class?  Have you ever had a professor that purposefully tested you on material that wasnot covered or deliberately created a test that would have a mean equal to a failing grade?  I did.  In fact, the main purpose of many of the courses I took in college was to have people fail out, drop out, and be discouraged from continuing on to medical school - in essence, weed out those who were not worthy to the high calling of the medical field.  Those who made it through, earned it, they worked hard to maintain a high grade and do better than the rest.  Everybody started equally, with an A, a perfect score of 0/0, and either stayed close to that ratio or fell short.

Can you imagine a professor ever saying this: "Welcome to my classroom.  Because you are willing to attend and take my course, I will give you an A.  No matter what happens for the rest of the year, you have already received your A for the course.  I would like you to keep coming, however, so I may help you learn and lead you in reaching your fullest potential in the subject matter.  I will work with you to do well on the tests, succeed on the quizzes, and complete exceptional projects.  But I will give you the passing grade simply for being here and letting me instruct you."  It sounds almost absurd!! Yet, God, in His infinite wisdom, decided to do that for us in the course of Human Life 101; consequently giving us the grade we need for admittance to heaven.

In a college, everybody started the course with a perfect score of 0/0 and fell short from there, but before God we start life with a grade of 0/Eternity which gives us a failing grade of Hell.  God, in an amazing feat of mercy and grace, decided to give the only One who deserved to pass, Jesus Christ, a failing grade and its consequences in order to award us, by faith, with the passing grade. Jesus Christ, the perfect Son of God, failed for us so that we may have his perfect score.  When we turn our lives over to Him and are willing to sit before Him, He teaches us and helps us through the tests, the quizzes, the projects - not in order to make the grade to graduate to Heaven, but to thank and glorify Him!

Yet so often we view God as one of these professors who lives to make their students fail, drop out, or be discouraged from achieving great things.  When we stop and look at the cross, we see that God is in fact more like the professor who gives His disciples the passing grade (by trading His passing grade for their failing one) and then blesses them as He helps them through the tests of life, guiding them in His projects, the work of His kingdom prepared specifically for them.  His disciples are not rewarded on the basis of their performance in the class, but only that they attend and be directed by Him.  Unlike graduate school or medical school where admittance is based on performance, our admittance to heaven is based completely and solely on Christ's love for us demonstrated on the cross!  What a hope! What a Savior!

For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.
Romans 3:22-25

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
Ephesians 2:8-9

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person--though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die-- but God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by His blood, much more shall we be saved by Him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by His life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.
Romans 5:6-11

In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent His only Son into the world, so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
1 John 4:9-10

Do you ever feel lonely, as if there is nobody in the whole world that cares about you? Or have you had a great loss where afterwards you wake up the next day, and within the first few seconds of consciousness it dawns on you that things are different.  There is heartache, there is grief and mourning; there are questions for God, what if's and if only's.

If you've ever experienced that, you are catching a small glimpse of what it must have felt like for Christ's disciples this day; the day after His crucifixion.  The Bible doesn't give much treatment to what went on in the disciple's lives during the few days between Christ's crucifixion and ressurection... perhaps because much explanation isn't necessary when life itself makes us so acutely aware of the pain of such an event.  When we lose family members, friends, loved ones, we experience the pain of the permanency of death and change.

Now imagine, instead of losing a family member, you lost somebody even closer - such was the bitter breakfast for the mind's of those who intimately walked with GOD!!  I'm sure there were a lot of doubts, many what if's, and several if only's.  I'm sure there were many moments during the day when they paused, stood with blank stares, and slowly digested their loneliness.  Death was permanent, they would never see Him again...

But he said, "What is impossible with men is possible with God."
Luke 18:27

Being on the other side of the resurrection, we can lose sight of the profundity of what occurred.  We are acutely aware of loss and the side dishes of loneliness and pain in our own lives because we just don't see people being raised from the dead today.  Can you imagine the joy you would experience if the person you loved the most were returned to you, or if the relationship that seemed broken beyond repair was restored and made even stronger?!  If what was impossible was made possible - if the steel shackles of death were suddenly broken - would not the overwhelming joy and awe drive you to your knees as your unsatiable cup of loneliness was filled with an ocean of restoration?!

Christ's resurrection and ascension brought forth the Holy Spirit - God Himself would now dwell with us forever in our hearts!  Restoring, redeeming, renewing, regenerating, and reminding us of God's great love for you - so great that He would die for you to be with you.

If today you are lonely from a great loss or great change, take heart because Jesus the Christ experienced the greatest measure of loneliness when on the hill of Golgotha, abandoned by his closest friends, He was separated from God the Father, in order to spend eternity in your heart, to be with you, care for and about you, to bless you and give you abundant life.

The LORD is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.
Psalm 34:18

I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.
John 10:10

And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for He dwells with you and will be in you.
John 20:16-17

When a runner competes in a race, he must continue to run if he wants to finish.  That sounds simple enough, but the ramifications it has on our spiritual race are sometimes underestimated.  A runner is competing for the whole race. He doesn't just have to make it to the last 20 feet, he has to make it to the finish line, but not only there does he stop, he must run through it!

Any athlete on a competitive team will tell you that the fight to win isn't over until the last second has ticked off the clock.  Football players have to play hard all the way through the fourth quarter, baseball players have to make it through the ninth inning, soccer players must play through an unknown amount of injury time, as we just saw in college basketball, basketball players must play 100% all the way down through the last tick.

The opponents job is to keep you from getting to the end in victory.

In our walks with God, we have been given a numbered amount of days in which we run to glorify God in our lives.  Our race doesn't end at retirement.  Sadly for many it does, for that's what they have been living their entire lives for, a chair beside a lake where they can petrify themselves in self-absorption for the remainder of their days.  But as Christians, no, we have a much more glorious reward on the other side of the finish line of death - the Kingdom of God, an eternity with our Maker!  That is what we are running toward because Christ's blood has made it what we are running for.

Our mortal opponent Satan tries to keep us from victory by deceiving us.  All games end, all clocks tick a final second, all referees eventually blow the final whistle and one is either found a victor or a loser.  Everybody will get to the end of their lives, the finish line of death.  Everybody makes it there.  The question is where will you be found. Just like any competitive sport, life is more than just about making it to the end when it's over, it's about winning the game, to be called a victor! Those without an advocate to plead their case for their sins will receive their just punishment. Those found in Christ will be carried through by Him to God for He took our just punishment - all we have to do is get to the end to meet Him, and physical death is guaranteed.  How awesome is that?!? Our victory is guaranteed and we have a 1/1 chance of making it to the finish line... In Christ we never have to fear, accept, or entertain anything that Satan can and will use against us to discourage, destroy and defeat!!  What a glorious hope!!

With all these in perspective, if we read the book of 2 Chronicles, God gives us a glimpse into the lives of the Kings of Judah and their own life races.  We find that each king either did or did not glorify God during the heat of the race of life, and near the end, in the years of their retirement, when things became easy or when pressures subsided, they failed to honor God.  They did not play through the fourth quarter... 

I will suppose that if we examine our own lives in light of these kings, we would find many similarities in smaller time scales.  For example, the last semester of high school or college... the last few weeks of the semester before finals... the last few hours before 5 at work... and many more.  I know I do in my own life.

Let us be encouraged that our victory is not dependent on how we run the race, but in Whom we run the race - Jesus Christ and the grace of salvation purchased for us on the cross by His sacrifice.  But for this great grace, let us endeavor, together, to run each day to His glory!  Hand in hand and arm in arm, let us help each other when we are weak and struggling in sin to remember the victory of Jesus Christ over the flesh!  And so let us then give the maximum glory to Christ TODAY so that all may know and see the victory that lies for us TOMORROW at the finish line of death - HEAVEN!!! Let His grace, the work of the Holy Spirit in your life today, bring Him the glory this and every day!

Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.
Psalm 90:12

Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize.
1 Corinthians 9:24 

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.
Hebrews 12:1

His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and goodness.
2 Peter 1:3

For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.
John 3:16