Return, to the things you once did, your first love, where the relationship was new.  Do you remember son when a relationship was fresh, when your fear and reverence pulsing in your ears it was so palpable?  When the song sprung from your lips and the words of your mouth were kind, simple and strong in the Lord’s encouraging force.  When the days each looked fresh, a new plot of land to sow with the seeds of his kindness and truth.  A day when you couldn’t wait to get to the Word.  Certainly you recall those childlike moments when you were so thankful for salvation that you couldn’t wait to wake and recall the dream of his message to you that previous night?  Does love have to dwindle or be rekindled or may it grow and mature like craftsmanship, someone we get better with in age, something we learn to cherish and improve upon.  I sure hope that is my case, for the Lord counsels us return to the point where we Loved the Lord above all else that we might yearn for the next Word.  In that moment, I have never been happier.

This world is designed as an ambition vacuum to put us to sleep unless we are intent upon wakefulness.  It lurks with shiny objects, concerns and “realities” that consume our attention, power and passions to the point where focus becomes blurry.  Without vigilance we are left divided, distracted and ill committed to the things that demand, deserve and require our full attention and nothing less.  What is the tenor of my relationship with God?  Is it as it once was, fresh, new, worthy of all my effort or have I relegated him to a position among the cast, the host of characters and things vying for my attention that has dulled to an ember?  Am I luke warm, which is the dangerous position, hot as demanded or perhaps even worse cold in my pursuance’s?  Can it be returned if lost, be found again, stoked, lit, blown upon until ignition?  Whatever must be done to once again be on fire for God, isn’t that the only course of action, the desperate man’s course, the man who has thrown himself at the foot of throne beseeching God for intervention?

I don’t know where journey’s take each of us.  I don’t know your heart, that is something concealed but for you and God.  This one though is pivotal, of utmost importance, unavoidable, the question we all must ask of ourselves.  What position does God take in my life?  Is it first as he deserves, requires and clearly bids us?  Only you and He know.

I pray for all of this in this last or first hour of our day that we investigate the status of that most important relationship with God.  May it be the first and the last thing you contemplate each day, in Jesus’ Name.

They were with Jesus for three years and still asked to be shown the Father.  How long do we need to be in presence of Almighty God, before we begin to comprehend the revelation before us?  Do we need to be struck in the head by a rock to know that when hurled from a distance it will cause damage, concussion, contusion or death?  How then is being saved, being forgiven, washed clean, transformed and indwelt by the Holy Spirit of God’s Promise not enough evidence for the believers faith account?  Must we be as Paul said the denier’s of the power therein, having a semblance of Christian but lacking those things that make it filled with Grace, Mercy, Power and Transforming Testimony?  One Question; will you follow the herd, being too afraid to step out into the power of your belief that you end up missing the Master’s Return for the Church?

What else do you believe that parable of the maiden’s portends?  Having not the oil specific to our individual lamp, an oil that may not be given by friend, family or neighbor, an oil that essential in the lamp of our internal discernment that will allow us to meet the Master at His return even in moments of utter or outer darkness?  We must begin to grow in our faith.  That requires we understand the oil to be the filling of the Holy Spirit that marks us as believers, adopted into the Kingdom of the Most High God.  You believe that saying some prayer on a Sunday morning because you were so ashamed at the guilt from what you did the night before was adequate for salvation.  Read the Bible, ACTS 8, read it, why else did the Apostles remain in Jerusalem after their Rabbi had been just cursed to be hung upon a tree.  That was a death sentence.  They were told by God to stay that they might be sealed by the Holy Spirit in a believer’s baptism by the Fire of His Spirit.  That is Pentecost.  The filling of the Holy Spirit, indwelt, sealed, the down payment, the earnest of our salvation.

Now the churches, especially those preaching once saved always saved are going to counsel you that I have lost all reasoning.  Why then if we may never lose our salvation did Christ himself say in a warning to the churches in Revelation that he would not blot their names out of the book of Life.  If God said that it is possible to have your name blotted from the Book then it is possible, don’t let me tell you different then God’s Word proclaims.  Read Ephesians 1, it is the entire story of the Gospel in one chapter.  It tells us clearly that the Holy Spirit is the power, the seal, the down payment of our Salvation, without it we have nothing but ill founded understanding.  You will know someone by the fruits.  What are the fruits?  The fruits are the characteristics of the Holy Spirit, evidence that He indwells each of us, without which again we are in desperate straights.  I am not counseling you to be fearful of not being saved, I am counseling you to do as Paul directed and be certain of your salvation.  How can you be certain without evidence to the existence of the Holy Spirit within you, the oil in your lamp, the earnest of your Salvation in Christ Jesus.  I don’t know but I certainly had to ask the same questions and go to God for the answers.  Won’t You?  In Jesus’ Name I pray that you are more certain of His divinity and your relationship than were many of the Apostles who needed to see him resurrected in order to believe.

Taking time, breaking time, faking time, forsaking time, saving time, making time, conserving time, which of us can exclude time from among our top few priorities in life?  It shapes us, defines us and for most it simply controls every thing we do, every emotion we feel, even our pain is controlled by the length or sparsity thereof.  How can we ignore time, is that possible, perhaps passing time, sequestered to some hidden cove or mountain retreat, defeats the power of its constriction.  But even those moments of relaxation are not beyond its strangling governance.  We can’t go back into it to repair mistakes or missteps, we cannot forward and escape from the impacts of present.  What then did God develop this limitation, this construct, control that governs all things even the face of evil.  For without time freedom would be an unnecessary pursuit.

I am a finite being, not because I have chosen that label or implied self-defined limitation.  It is simply the truth.  At some point the light, the spirit or for those new age followers that energetic force that powers this lifetime, will cease to influence this body.  That is ironic that Life and Time are used in the same descriptor for our existence here as humans, for isn’t time one of the main factors in our life’s equation?  When that life leaves this corporal form, since we know that energy is neither created nor destroyed, where does it go?  I will not ignore the other question that has been begged by the previous statement, but merely mention, if it wasn’t created then what was it before it was in me?  For now we will ponder locas imagenes de las piensas mio.  That time is dictated by those moments having been lent each of us to perform those tasks either for self of some voluntary purpose.  When it runs out it is redirected to another repository or form. Oh, you agree.  I see the arguments reside not in the equation but in the form to which each of our energy either returns of is directed.

Understood, so is time that governing factor that determined where our energy would reside beyond our present iteration?  No, then who invented that governing force which controls each of our lives?  Is it then a random allotment, given as chaos theory with a pattern inside a supposed menagerie of action?  If everything is random or chaotic why does time proceed in orderly fashion, why are there orbiting planets, why do cells adhere and how is matter in fact contained within a medium?  Logic may not simply be a passe object to pull out in order to impress women at parties.  Like time it is a governing force that requires its consistent implementation.  I will assert that time is given us a by a Creator who designed the rules for life when he designed Life itself.  And people have a choice as to what to follow or believe, but that choice does not have the potency to redesign the equation but rather to allow us to “lie” to ourselves about the inevitable to somehow provide self cathartic romance upon which we may reside and escape the inevitable coming judgment of a Holy and Righteous God.  Like time it is inescapable, outside of our control, even those daunting hands of evil are marking its moments until their power is removed.  So will time define your life or the scarcity thereof?  Or will you take control of the moments given you to make your mark upon it for the Lord our God?

In Jesus’ Name I pray you use time in its wisest form to the fullness of God’s Purposes for your existence in this segment of our journey to once again live in fellowship with Him.