By Jon Walker
Also available as a podcast at: http://thelife.com/blogs/experience/kindle/2008/08/01/may-god-smile-on-you-2/
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“May the Lord smile on you.” Numbers 6:25 (NLT)
The smile of God is the goal of life.
Since pleasing God is the first purpose of your life, your most important task is to discover how to do that. The Bible says, “Figure out what will please Christ, and then do it” (Ephesians 5:10, MSG).
Fortunately, the Bible gives us a clear example of a life that gives pleasure to God. The man’s name was Noah.
In Noah’s day, the entire world had become morally bankrupt. Everyone lived for their own pleasure, not God’s. God couldn’t find anyone on earth interested in pleasing him, so he was grieved and regretted making man. God became so disgusted with the human race that he considered wiping it out.
But there was one man who made God smile. The Bible says, “Noah was a pleasure to the Lord” (Genesis 6:8, LB).
God said, “This guy brings me pleasure. He makes me smile. I’ll start over with his family.” Because Noah brought pleasure to God, you and I are alive today.
Over the next few days, we will learn from Noah’s life the five acts of worship that make God smile.
God smiles when we love him supremely. Noah loved God more than anything else in the world, even when no one else did! The Bible tells us Noah “consistently followed God’s will and enjoyed a close relationship with him” (Genesis 6:9, NLT).
This is what God wants most from you: a relationship! It’s the most astounding truth in the universe: our Creator wants to fellowship with us. God made you to love you, and he longs for you to love him back. He says, “I don’t want your sacrifices – I want your love; I don’t want your offerings – I want you to know me” (Hosea 6:6, LB).
Can you sense God’s passion for you in this verse? God deeply loves you and desires your love in return. He longs for you to know him and spend time with him. This is why learning to love God and to be loved by him should be the greatest objective of your life.
Nothing else comes close in importance. Jesus called it the greatest commandment. He said, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment” (Matthew 22:37-38).
Question: What does God want most from you?
About this Author: http://thelife.com/experience/devotionalformen/authors/jon-walker/
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August 1st, 2008 at 9:42 pm
Dear Friends,
God smiles when we love God supremely! God wants our relationship and to have fellowship with us. God first loved us and now wants us to also love God in return for God’s Love. God is omniscient- knowing everything, omnipotent - having very great power without limit and omnipresent - present everywhere. Therefore, with God nothing is impossible. Yet God is most mercifully compassionate, lovingly just and unconditionally forgiving. This is our God. This is a God that deals with us.
God created the first man and woman to God’s Likeness and Image. With Christ Jesus in mind, we are therefore created in the physical image and the spiritual image-our soul, like Our Triune God. When with God, in Eden, the period of delight, Adam and Eve loved and obeyed God and like the angles before the ‘ fall’ were of the same single-mindedness. Knowing only God and accepting very thing as the ‘Goodness’ of God. Since God is Just God is prepared to share everything with humankind without concealing anything. Therefore, God revealed reluctantly the existing ‘evil’ as the forbidden ‘fruit’ and accepting ‘evil’ would mean the death of ‘good’. Since ‘evil’ and ‘good’ cannot co-exist at ant one moment. It is like darkness and light. When one exists the other disappears. The choice was given to the first man and woman. Adam and Eve took ‘evil’ and were prepared to loose ‘good’ that is, were prepared to reject God and God’s love and instead were prepared to listen to Satan and to be under the influence of Satan. God Being Omniscient, knew this would happen, therefore, existed as a Triune God. Being unconditionally forgiving and mercifully compassionate had God’s Holy Plan of Redemption for the Salvation of the humankind. Being a Just God, God cannot take a challenge with one of God’s own creative fallen angle, Satan, by God’s own-self. Therefore, God prepared God’s Holy Word to take flesh in the Virgin Mary and to be born the Son of Man. Jesus, as 100% human became the second spiritual Adam and Mary the spiritual Eve. The second Spiritual Adam and the second Spiritual Eve broke the back bone of Satan and enabled God the Father to restore the Image of the Triune God in the Soul of all humankind, with Divine Grace and Eternal Life. Therefore, now every humankind has a Soul created to the Image and Likeness of God, with Divine Grace and has Eternal Life. Unless we are reborn in this Spirit we will still remain as flesh (John 3:6-7). One of the most important criteria is for rebirth for humankind is to surrender the forbidden ‘fruit’ that is to undertake daily, the first thing in the mornings, to surrender one’s own free will, to reject ‘good’ and accept ‘evil’ to God and instead to accept ‘good’ and remain in the loving obedience to God’s Holy Will. In other words to reject duality and return to single-mindedness. Instead of doing our own will, to do the Holy Will of God in every thing and every one God enables us to encounter each day in our vocation, occupation/profession, community and in society with that love of God and the love for one another, with total humility and absolute truthfulness. For this, one needs to transform one’s physical -self into one’s spiritual-self, that is to enable one’s soul that is in the Image and Likeness of God, to enter into the Kingdom of God within us and to be in the presence of God in Spiritual Oneness. There, to be deeply strengthen in the love of God and for the love of one another, with total humility and absolute truth, in the deepening with God’s Divine Grace and God’s Spiritual Wisdom and there after to continue this Eternally.
Sit physically still and up-right and in the silence of the mind and know God lives in us! Amen!
Francis Andrew