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I believe in the Kingdom Come
Then all the colors will bleed into one
But yes I’m still running
You broke the bonds
You loosened the chains
You carried the cross
And my shame
And my shame
You know I believed it
But I still haven’t found
What I’m looking for
But I still haven’t found
What I’m looking for

It is what CS Lewis calls that “inconsolable secret” or longing that we all feel in life; that feeling that won’t go away- that there must be something more out there for us. In Mere Christianity he distills it down to this one thought provoking statement- “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”

That in itself is enough to make you stop and think about that universal feeling of, for lack of a better word, “moreness”. We all have that inconsolable longing for “more” that we think will eventually be satisfied by doing more things or getting more stuff. Since I doubt that anyone reading this will ever reach the status of Tom Brady in terms of worldly accomplishment, fame, wealth and even power, we are likely to fall into the trap of thinking that if I just had a life like his or _______ (fill in the blank), I would be satisfied. But the testimony of Brady and countless others that “have it all” is that nothing in this world satisfies that desire for “more”.

As Americans, we are masters at doing and getting more. Our entire culture is built on this materialistic principle. But what if, as Lewis, says, we are indeed made for more, but the best we can do in this life is get little glimpses and feelings of it? In his amazing essay “The Weight of Glory”, Lewis explores this with a clarity and depth that is his trademark and genius. If you’ve never read it, put it on your short list and order it from Amazon or pick it up at Borders. You may have to read it several times to really get all that is there, but it is worth the time.

In speaking of this desire for our own far-off country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you—the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name.

When Lewis wrote this, he was writing primarily of the longing that Christians still feel even though they know and are known by God in some measure. But there is a distinction to be made between what a believer feels and what an unbeliever feels. The unbeliever longs for a sense of meaning, purpose and significance that only a relationship with Jesus Christ can give. There is that desire to make the temporal nature of life eternally significant. The Christian feels this as well, but on a different level also longs for the consummation and perfection of his relationship with Christ.

It doesn’t matter whether you are Tom Brady or the Apostle Paul, God made you for Himself and all the experiences of life point to that fact- the desire for more that is never satisfied in this life- The Inconsolable Longing.

But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith- that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Philippians 3:7-14

From RC Sproul  at www.ligonier.org

God said to Isaiah: “Go and tell this people: ‘Be ever hearing, but never understanding; be ever seeing, but never perceiving.’ Make the heart of this people calloused; make their ears dull and close their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed” (Isa. 6:9–10, NIV).

This type of judgment is articulated by Paul in Romans 1: “Since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done” (v. 28, NIV).

The worst punishment that can befall us is to be given over or abandoned to our sin by God. This anticipates God’s verdict at the final judgment: “Let him who does wrong continue to do wrong; let him who is vile continue to be vile” (Rev. 22:11, NIV).

Every time God’s Word is proclaimed it changes all of those within its hearing. No one ever remains unaffected by God’s Word. To those who hear it positively, there is growth in grace. To those who reject it or are indifferent to it, calluses are added to their souls and calcium to their hearts. The eye becomes dimmer and dimmer, the ear heavier and heavier, and the mystery of the kingdom more and more obscure. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.

Jesus did not come to a neutral world with the result that some people moved from neutrality to be anti-Jesus, and others moved from neutrality to be pro-Jesus. Nobody was neutral. And nobody is neutral. We have all sinned. We are all guilty. We are all perishing. Therefore, we are all under God’s righteous wrath. And we are already condemned.

Whether we stay that way depends on how we respond to Jesus. He came not to make neutral people into pro-Jesus people, but to make guilty people non-guilty, condemned people not condemned, and to make dead people eternally alive. God does not owe anybody acquittal or life. That Jesus came to offer it, and that some accept it, is all undeserved grace.

http://www.desiringgod.org/resource-library/sermons/this-is-the-judgment-light-has-come-into-the-world

]]> http://souldout.org/blog/what-jesus-came-to-do/feed/ 0 http://souldout.org/blog/a-tribute-to-my-friend-jerry/ http://souldout.org/blog/a-tribute-to-my-friend-jerry/#comments Sun, 07 Nov 2010 05:19:42 +0000 Curt http://souldout.org/blog/?p=326

2 old racers sitting on the porch

My good friend Jerry Jacob died earlier this week after a long fight with cancer. I will miss him. Actually, I already do. It is hard to believe he is gone.  He was honest, trustworthy, caring and always willing to help whenever I called him or needed something. These are traits that defined him and that I wish I had more of. God brings people into our lives for many different reasons but certainly one of them is so that through that relationship, they can “rub off on you”.

I have 30 years of great memories of my friendship with him and his wife Debbie. He was the guy who got me hooked on motorcycles- something that would become my vocation. We did everything from riding dirt bikes in the swamps of Florida to racing at Daytona and restoring vintage bikes. In fact it is hard to find a picture of him without a bike of some sort in it. I have lots of wonderful memories from years of going to Daytona Bike Week with him and Debbie- and later their son David too. He was a good friend, father and husband. So here are a few pictures from over the years…

Riding the mud flats in WPB, FL

Racing at Daytona 1985

Daytona- in the pits

Jerry and family camping at Daytona

Jerry on the FJ... explaining something! circa 1999

last winter after we painted the 350 stuff

The little book is available for download free from Google since the copyright has long since expired.

On a similar note, today’s Slice of Infinity at RZIM is also “hopeful”…

What is man in nature? A nothing compared to the infinite, a whole compared to the nothing, a middle point between all and nothing, infinitely remote from an understanding of the extremes . . . equally incapable of seeing the nothingness from which he emerges and the infinity in which he is engulfed. . .

Let us then realize our limitations. We are something and we are not everything. Such being as we have conceals from us the knowledge of first principles, which arise from nothingness, and the smallness of our being hides infinity from our sight.

Our intelligence occupies the same rank in the order of intellect as our body in the whole range of nature.

Limited in every respect, we find this intermediate state between two extremes reflected in all our faculties. Our senses can perceive nothing extreme; too much noise deafens us, too much light dazzles; when we are too far or too close we cannot see properly; an argument is obscured by being too long or too short; too much truth bewilders us.

—Blaise Pascal, Pensées, 61-63 (reposted from desiringgod.org blog)

Personal experience must always be first in real life. The most important thing is that we experience reality by the shortest and most direct method. A child may eat nutritious food without knowing anything about chemistry or diatetics. A country boy may know the delights of pure love while never having heard of Sigmund Freud or Havelock Ellis. Knowledge by acquaintance is always better than mere knowledge by description, and the first does not presuppose the second nor require it.

In religion more than in any other field of human experience a sharp distinction must always be made between knowing about and knowing. The distinction is the same as between knowing about food and actually eating it. A man can die of starvation knowing all about bread, and a man can remain spiritually dead while knowing all the historic facts of Christianity. “This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.” We have but to introduce one extra word into this verse to see how vast is the difference between knowing about and knowing. “This is life eternal, that they might know about thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.” That one word makes all the difference between life and death, for it goes to the very root of the verse and changes its theology radically and vitally.

Laden with guilt and full of fears,
I fly to Thee, my Lord,
And not a glimpse of hope appears,
But in Thy written Word
The volumes of my Father’s grace
Does all my griefs assuage
Here I behold my Savior’s face
In every page.

Rhema Marvanne – ‘Amazing Grace’ REVISED 6/11 from Black Olive Media.com on Vimeo.

Catalyst West 2010: Dallas Willard Part 1 from Catalyst on Vimeo.