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stellaluna012
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Country: United States
State: California
Birthday: 1/4/1983
Gender: Female
Interests: reading, writing, singing, dancing, laughing, drawing, thinking, and making everyone's life that much more difficult for MY happiness!
Expertise: being silly and sarcastic, whining with no pause for air, and being a classy know it all. =]
Message: message me
Website: visit my website
Member Since:
9/27/2002
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| "The price you have to pay in order to know God is great; it is costly and difficult. We learn of God's worthiness, His beauty, His power at the cost of our pride, our selfishness, our very selves. You can only see how good God is, after seeing how sinful you are.
You cannot comprehend God's love for you until you realize that it was your own hands that condemned Jesus, struck his bare flesh with a whip until it tore, nailed his strong hands and feet to a cross. God's grace is only understandable in the context of your need for it. To anyone who does not see their need of His grace... the very gift of the cross is stupid absurdity.
There is no way to come see God's glory and His perfection until you see how much you need Him. God does not reveal Himself to those who refuse to see their brokenness, their shame, their dirtiness.
Coming into the presence of God is coming into a cleansing fire: in the moments where you feel like perishing in the flame, you see the ugliness being called forth from your own soul. Your only consolation is that the heat is so strong, it is burning your sins out of you.
But it is burning away things you wanted to keep with you: your sense of self-righteousness, your belief that being a "good person" was good enough, your confidence in your flesh, your desire to do your own will instead of His. Every secret belief is called forth and put in front of you. By His grace, by his burning desire for holiness, it goes up in flames.
You see, God's concern is not for our happiness; it is for our salvation, our perfection, our becoming like Him. Happiness is but a small part of God's overall package of love for you. I'm sure God is glad when you're happy, but He's happier when you're holy.
Nobody who is unwilling to pay the cost of seeing God can ever know Him. The rich young ruler, unwilling to pay the price, will never see the glory of God. And yet, Jesus loved him. The Lord wanted to be with him, but He had to tell him the truth of the matter. Regardless of your refusal to pay the price, you are still loved. But you cannot draw near to the Lord until you accept His truth.
God always loves us enough to tell us the truth. The truth is He does not need us. He does not require our worship in order to feel loved or powerful or desired. He is wiser than we are; He already knows His own worth and ours.
The sad truth is we are worthless without Him. We are helpless, blind, stupid and selfish. He is here to tell us that we need Him. He is here to tell us that He has 'struck all the work of your hands with blight, mildew and hail, yet you did not turn to me,' declares the LORD.' (Haggai 2:17). This is the person you are, this is the person I am. We do not turn to God of our own volition.
That is every human at heart. No matter how pleasant or kind or gentle or sweet we may act, within each of us is the capacity to do evil, to sin, to disobey God and worship ourselves.
Yet, by grace, we have been saved. We have been redeemed. He loves us, and is glad to serve us, to help us, to redeem us, to hear our cries and hold us. He delights in His people when they try. When His people rejoice in Him and accept His good gifts, God is GLAD. His good gifts may seem strange to those who do not believe, because they rarely come looking like a blessing. But they are, oh they are.
O, this magnificent God!!
Salvation is a gift that is free from the Lord, but there is a cost in accepting His Lordship in our lives. We are called to two things in knowing His salvation. We must admit that we are degenerate and lost, condemned without Him. We must also take our sacred duty to rejoice in the truth that we have been pardoned by Him.
Both must learn to exist in a believer's heart; the shame and denouncing of sin and the rejoicing of being set free. Any man or woman who devotes themselves to serving the Lord out of love and gratitude that springs from accepting these truths is a saint of the ages indeed.
Keep this in your heart always, be moved by His love for you and let it cause a desire in you for Him. Because 'blessed are they who keep his statutes and seek him with all their heart.' (Psalm 119:2)"
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