by RobertCummins | Jul 7, 2015 | 27. Letting Go
Letting Go – Hebrews 12:1-3
Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider Him who has endured such hostility by sinners against Himself, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.
What does this divine audience have to do with our battle with sin and the outcome of our race. How will we become any more or less motivated by playing to that crowd? Who were these people anyway ? You have to read all of Hebrews 11 for the answer. One thing we discover about them; they were above the crowd before they became the crowd above.
The act of faith is what distinguished them, set them above the crowd……an act of faith is what God noticed and approved as righteous…… They believed both that he existed and that he cared enough to respond to those who seek him…… Each one of them died not yet having in hand what was promised, but still believed. How did they do it? They saw it way off in the distance and accepted the fact that they were transients in this world.
What do we envision on the horizons of our imaginations? Is there something out there we are intentionally pursuing? Hopefully it is Jesus. In Jesus Christ, who has become our life, we have in hand what these saints were running toward by faith. This audience is applauding our faith which is making us sojourners as opposed to squatters. Our Hebrews 11 audience are our examples. They remind us that in our race there will be much to endure. While our race may become grueling through some stretches it will really be much shorter than it may seem in those moments. And, regardless the cost, running it will win divine applause.
Jesus too is our example. He persevered in sufferings more sever than most will ever know. In the midst of them, he overtook joy which had been set before Him. Jesus continually did the math; “Whatever I encounter is mine to conquer or endure.” In our running some of our greatest hurdles will be questions, such as; “What bearing on my race does the life of Jesus have? Will a mental inventory of Christ’s sufferings somehow fortify my stride?” I have tried this. I won’t say it is useless. I will only say that I think there is more to it than mere reflection and volition. I believe the Holy Spirit is integral to our race in ways the author of Hebrews assumes we understand.
God’s Spirit has breathed Life back into our mortal bodies raising us from the dead. His Spirit rarely come upon us as it it did in the Old Testament. The Holy Spirit has now come to dwell in us. So that same Spirit, which is God’s Life, is what equipped Jesus and the Hebrews 11 crowd. He will equip us as well for the long haul of our journey. And once again, at the risk of wearing the point thin, our journey is not really that long. The Spirit’s presence has altered our nature. It is our nature which animates the thinking and the choosing of our running. It is really no longer about God’s part and our part as if they were separate tracts. In Christ, a great mystery exists. In Christ God and man have merged. The exertion of running is now a commingled partnership with Christ as the controlling partner.
We must continually rest in Jesus’ promise that he will complete what he has begun. As our controlling partner (the head), he is the originator and completer of our faith. We will each be tempted to grow weary and loose heart but in our malaise we must discover, in our own experience, God’s Spirit within. It is in these moments when the winds of inspiration are absent, where temptations are so tangible, that Hebrews 12:1-3 is most helpful. It is here in the unwanted place of our doldrums that His best faith-perfecting work is advanced. Isn’t it just like God, that His ways and His thoughts are so unlike our own? While we think we may be perishing, we are in reality being perfected!
Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider Him who has endured such hostility by sinners against Himself, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.
Father, may you train us to run our race well, persevering by faith, putting one foot in front of the other, trusting that you are the ground beneath our feet and the very path we are traveling. However fraught our race is with discouraging circumstances lead us again to the realization that we are seated with Christ in heavenly places. Right now, in the midst of our inspirational vacuums, breathe endurance and vision into us. Succeed wildly in your mission to perfect our faith. With our eyes fixed obediently upon You, may we each cross our finish lines in full-stride. All to your glory. Amen.
by RobertCummins | Jul 6, 2015 | 27. Letting Go
Letting Go (Monday) – Colossians 3:1-17
We have been buried with Him through baptism into death, in order that as Christ was raised from the dead, so we too might walk in newness of life. Romans 6:4
Newness of life! Paul clearly anticipated a believer’s victory over sin because of what Jesus had accomplished. He taught that since we have been crucified with Christ we have been liberated from sin as our old master. Neither sin nor death have any further authority over us. In our inner most beings we have been liberated from their tyrannical reign. In light of these truths, has it been your experience that sin no longer reigns in your life? For many of us the answer will be, “No, sin still seems to reign.” Why is this? Let’s explore this question and another related one.
Since coming to believe in Christ nearly four decades ago, I have kept an ongoing question before the Lord. It has been, “What is Your part Lord? And what is mine?” I’ve never heard the Lord say, “Robert” (that is my legal name), “This is My list and here is yours.” His answers to my question have come slowly through an ongoing process of living continually in His presence in the light of His Word. If that sounded super-spiritual let me comfort you; it has also been messy! The fact is we can never escape His presence, even if we were to go to the remotest part of the sea. As to hearing God’s voice; this dynamic has been a moment by moment, day-in, day-out affair of living with Him. This experience has been far more intimate than hearing an occasional string of words which he is more likely to speak if I have prayed adequately or if I get real real quiet.
As I read Colossians 3 this morning, I could not help but see Paul’s consistency in the way he addressed these questions. His comments dovetail perfectly with Romans 6 where he put it like this …..
Keep doing the calculation. Recall as often as necessary the irreversible fact that Christ is our new master. Now that we have been included into Christ’s very own death and His resurrection, our ties to sin’s regime have been permanently severed. Once for all men. Once for all time, to all those who trust in Christ. (my paraphrase)
So…. what is our part? In Romans 6 Paul says, since you are now serving a new Master, having become slaves to righteousness,
…. present the members of your body to God as those alive from the dead as instruments of righteousness from God.
If he were standing here among us what would Paul have to say? Would he see us doing our part? I believe he might think we had misunderstood some things about grace which have led us to an unhealthy passivity. I think he might wonder where our zeal and intentionality were in the doing of our part. He might wonder where are all the testimonies of those who have been liberated. He might be so bold as to say, “In case you missed it, here is your part…
Persevere in the calculation. Realize continually that the members of your earthly bodies are actually dead to sin; Set your mind and keep thinking on the things above. Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you. And while you are doing the math and regularly calculating that it is no longer you who live but Christ lives in you and that Christ is now your life, live like this ……
Put aside: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive speech from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, since you laid aside the old self with its evil practices, and have put on the new self who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the One who created him…..
Put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience; bearing with one another, and forgiving each other, whoever has a complaint against anyone; just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you…..
Put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity. Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts. Be thankful. Admonish one another. In summary, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus.”
Back to our original question; Why then does sin still have stroke in our lives? Is it because we are just like Paul and have found that the principle of evil is is present in us, making us slaves once again to sin? When we stumble and sin (and we all do), what calculations do our minds perform? If we do depravity-math (see Friday’s MwM post; Grasping – Romans 7:14-25) can’t we excuse ourselves from any victorious life which he seemed to have been proclaiming and anticipating in Romans 6?
Let’s just fast forward to that moment when we have stumbled and have sinned. Shall we do depravity-math? Yes. I’m of the flesh + sold into bondage to sin + Sure enough, I practice the very things I hate + It’s not really me doing it + It’s sin indwelling and reigning over me + There is nothing good in me + I practice evil + Again, I remind myself, I’m not the one doing it = What a wretched man I am.”
Does this really sound like Paul to you? Can you reconcile this reasoning with Romans 6 and the balance of Paul’s victorious new testament instruction and commentary?
Oh how familiar this math is to me! For much of my Christian life, when I would sin, this was my calculation: I have proved it yet once again + Yes, its true; (with much self loathing) I am nothing but a wretch + My heart is utterly depraved + In fact, my heart is exactly as Jeremiah has said, It is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it? (Jeremiah 17:9 is my old life verse. I’m not kidding.)
Are you tracking with me? What I am trying to say is that I used to do the calculation with the wrong variables and come up, naturally, with the wrong answer. If we sin, the bad math provides a path of least resistance. Here is that fumbling calculation:
I am hamstrung (just like Paul supposedly was) by sin + I am saved by grace (aren’t I?) + so, I will get to heaven someday (hopefully) + but until then, my besetting sins are going to be a problem because I am, by nature, a sinner = That’s just who I am. (my identity)
The problem with depravity math is that it produces a colossal identity crisis which insures a roller coaster- religious experience.
Are we just sinners as many of our hymns, teachers and consciences have testified? Is depravity our root identity? Is the deepest truth about us that we are just sinners saved by grace? Or, should we plug in the apparently lost variable that we are now saints – those whom Christ has ransomed out of that old identity in hopes that we too, like Himself, will shine brightly, giving credence to the gospel’s claims of liberty. Here is a very pointed question;
Other than a hope of heaven, what is the Good News to us, if sin is still ruling in our members?
Oh the religious hamster wheel we spin when we do depravity-math! There can be nothing more exhausting than attempting to live a life pleasing to God as a sinner. With this lie about our identity operating at the foundation of our being we are left cranking out our works, our compliance, our strategies of sin management, and our religious traditions as an inadequate salve to sooth a conscience that is never really free of its guilt and shame. How could it be? I’m just a sinner after all. (maximum sarcasm intended).
I have battled sin as a sinner and I have battled it as a saint. There is no comparison in outcomes. As a sinner, I was defeated before I began. No matter how well I thought I had strapped on my armor, I was still exposed to a myriad of fiery guilt-producing missiles. It turns out, my breast plate of God’s righteousness was not in place while thinking of myself fundamentally as just a sinner. Is this terribly surprising since depravity-math had produced my identity as a servant-slave, whom God tolerated, instead of a son, whose company he cherished?
Even as a saint, I have been knocked down hard. But with my identity in tact as a son, I don’t just lie there concluding that a TKO is normal. As familiar as it might feel (for a moment), sin is unnatural to God’s children. So, when I do sin, I no longer view it as my fate or as a confirmation of my fallen identity. Instead, I do a higher math. I calculate that sin is alien to my new nature. I hope you can see how doing the math with the essential variable of ourselves as new creations can, as Christ intended, lead us to out intended victorious destiny.
Oh how different Romans 6:23 looks in light of our new identities and In light of a true kingdom gospel!
For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
From the old just-a-sinner identity, eternal life is that life we get only after our physical bodies have expired. From that limited and defeatist position, the great hope of the Christian is the Rapture, where our futile attempts at rightousness are no more because we are getting new bodies without our native connection to sin. From God’s kingdom paradigm, where Christ is reclaiming the domain of men’s hearts, Christ’s Life is now our life. We have eternal life now! It is unfortunate that we have equated death with that ocassion when our bodies finally expire because, in reality, those whom Christ have made right with God are not going to taste death. Remember sin and death no longer have any claim upon us!
Even now, we can experience and proclaim that we are living out of His Life which is now our Life. (Capital “L” intended) He is the free gift of God, who is even now our eternal life. This is the good news of the kingdom of God! This is the full gospel. It is so so much more than dying and going to heaven! We truly need to crunch the numbers afresh. Here is the equation;
How much eternal life do I actually have = Our years yet to live x 365 D/Y x 24 Hrs/D x 60 Min/Hr x 60 Sec/Min + infinity (of course).
In another place Paul stated it like this….
We’re free of it (that old constricting paradigm)! All of us! Nothing between us and God, our faces shining with the brightness of his face. And so we are transfigured much like the Messiah, our lives gradually becoming brighter and more beautiful as God enters our lives and we become like him. (2 Corinthians 3:17-18 MSG)
It turns out that our part – our responsibility and opportunity, grows where eternal life is a now-life as opposed to an after death – life. We are now kingdom citizens who are in partnership with the reigning king who will bring about His unending kingdom, one heart (i.e.; ours) at a time. I believe Paul’s writings will make much more sense to us as we look at them through this lens.
I sincerely pray this morning’s math lesson was helpful.
So teach us to number our days, that we may present to You a heart of wisdom. Psalm 90:12)
Father, help us to let go of the ideas which exalt themselves in our hearts, eroding away our new creation-identities. Deliver us from every false-religious-salve we apply to our consciences where they labor under guilt and condemnation. Persevere with us Father until we truly are resting in the security of our new identities as your beloved chidden and friends. Fill your Church with fresh stories of liberation which come from our higher math. Thank You that you have done Your part and that now we may do all in your name. Amen.
by RobertCummins | Jul 6, 2014 | 27. Letting Go
Genesis 22:1-19
Over the years the Lord has permitted me to mull over certain issues. A frequent theme has had to do with how the person of Christ is revealed to the human heart and how this revelation equips us and establishes our authority. As one who has done a fair amount of both following and leading within the body of Christ, I think often about the nature of authority; where it comes form and how it develops. Today’s passage highlighted for me what I have come to think of as the legitimate authority that is unique to the the sons and the friends of God.
God, testing Abraham, said, “Take now your son…and offer him as a burnt offering“. The scripture doesn’t record Abraham’s reaction other than his prompt obedience. There just had to be a “You-Can’t-Be-Serious!!” moment in there somewhere. “Slay Isaac?! But God, he is the miraculous fulfillment of your promise to Sarah and I. And, need I remind you, he is the means to the fulfillment of your promise to make nations from me. Isaac has brought laughter into our lives replacing the sorrow of Sarah’s barrenness.” It is recorded that Abraham is God’s friend. Has it ever bothered you how God treats His friends? How about His sons; each of whom He scourges?
Words like scourging and discipline sound so Old Testament. But it is the New Testament writer of Hebrews who goes so far as to call us illegitimate without these experiences with God. Here is a question for those who lead;
How do we possibly abide in His Word, confessing that it is inspired and not speak with clarity from personal experience regarding the Word-driven aspect of our friendship and sonship with God?
Legitimate shepherds are those whose lives and teachings incorporate these challenging aspects of following Christ. By teaching on our favorite themes (which frequently exclude correction), we fail to equip would-be followers of Christ with this essential part of the vision that should be forming in their hearts. Without this understanding of God’s ways, how will the would-be disciple react when the pathway becomes steep with some discipline from the Lord or narrow with some challenging circumstance?
My mulling has grown over time into a personal appeal to those who lead in the body of Christ; Please do not just share what you have learned from the latest books you have read and expect your listeners to become disciples. True disciples will balk at this voice. Unless it is lived-truth it is just propositional truth. Second hand truths do not fan cold embers into fires nor can they sustain the fires that already glow within hungry followers.
Speak to us instead from your legitimizing experiences with God. Model for us what life with Him and each other looks like. I believe there are many who are looking and longing for those who can speak to them and live along side them with the authority that can only come from a life-experience shaped by God’s Word and His Spirit.
In his becoming a friend to God, Abraham had to let go of the thing that was most precious to him on this earth. Contrary to ever fiber of his being, he had to relinquish his rights to God’s promise and entrust that promise back to Him to do with as He pleased. For Abraham and for the author of Hebrews, it boiled down to this;
It is with God with Whom we have to do.
The sons of God who also enjoy friendship status with Him have been weened (often through discipline or pruning) from their earthly ambitions. Having let go of their agendas, they have become equipped with that legitimate authority that comes only from broken men and women; saints whose false foundations have been demolished; who are now resting exclusively on Christ alone as their life and are now living for His larger kingdom-agenda.
Father, please raise up authentic spiritual fathers whose lives and words will honor the whole counsel of scripture and help us to understand Your loving Father-heart so that we may process life as You intend us to; so that we might grow up well-formed in our spirits accurately representing who You are, as legitimate sons and daughters, to the world around us. Amen.
by RobertCummins | Jul 6, 2014 | 27. Letting Go
1 John 2:15-17
The scriptures teach us that we are temporarily located in a body which is located temporarily in a temporary world. It is not surprising that we are conditioned by all this temporariness. Yet, that is a real problem since, being created in His (eternal) image, we are anything but temporary.
The apostle John, an intimate friend to Jesus, knew that it was in man to give his affections either to the temporary or the eternal. His Master had taught Him that men are either going to love one or the other and that; “if anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in Him”. (Matthew 6:24)
The religious deal with worldliness by way of prohibition; “Thou shalt not” is the spirit of their creeds. Consequently, their understanding of the fear of God is centered around what may happen to them if they break a rule. Those who are resting in Christ’s righteousness are in the world but they are unfettered by this spirit and its prohibitions. Rather, they are focused on the promise;
And this is the promise which He Himself made to us; eternal life. (check out 1 Cor 6:12 and 10:23)
So how are we to live out our lives as eternal spirits in a world that “is passing away? All of scripture speaks to this in one way or another but John gives us a great insight in 1 John 2:29
“Little children, abide in Him, so that when He appears, we may have confidence and not shrink away from Him in shame at His coming.”
The scripture tells us that Satan has some authority in this temporary world. He wields it through deception. By leveraging the temporal, as if that were all there is, the prince of this (temporary) age reigns over a network of ideas that are designed to distract us from the eternal. But,
….. the anointing (gift of the Spirit) which you received from Him abides in you…. His anointing teaches you about all (these) things”. (1 Jn 2:27)
And …in verse 17, John tells us;
….. if we will do the will of God we will abide forever.
We will succeed in “not loving the world” best by not turning this apostolic command into a list of laws and prohibitions. We will succeed best in loving God by abiding in His promises and abiding in intimate fellowship with Him.
“As for you, let that abide in you which you heard from the beginning. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, you will also abide in the Son and in the Father”. (1 Jn 2:24)
Father, may we hear and respond to the anointing of Your Holy Spirit within us, Who would help us renew our minds in every way where we have been conditioned and conformed to the temporal. Holy Spirit, please teach us to reinvest our affections in You. When Jesus appears once again may it be apparent that we have been abiding in you. Amen.
by RobertCummins | Jul 4, 2014 | 27. Letting Go
Hopefully you can pause and read Philippians 3:1-14, the account of a transformed heart which is God’s good and perfect intention on earth as it is in heaven.
In this passage we see the words; losses, gains, counting. Why is an apostle using the words of an accountant? In Luke 14:25-35, Jesus tells us that we must all do some critical math in calculating the cost of following Him. In today’s scriptures, the Spirit gives us a peak into Paul’s heart. We get to see how he processed Jesus’ command and how the accounting within his own heart worked itself out.
Why did the Spirit include in scripture such a transparent view of Paul? Was it to just reveal Paul’s heart as an exception; a bar set so high that it could only be cleared by one with apostolic muscle? I don’t think so. I believe Paul’s heart is intended as a reference point for all Christ’s followers. The apostle’s story (like our own) is intended to be a catalyst to others as we work out our own salvation with fear and trembling and move toward our destiny as those who are being transformed into His image.
Paul’s pre-Christ balance sheet was loaded with what he had thought were strong spiritual assets: He was a Jew from the tribe of Benjamin; He was a Pharisee who was flawless regrading Law-based righteousness; He was a persecutor of the church. But somehow Paul’s balance sheet had flip flopped! Whatever he had experienced since those days as a Pharisee had undercut the value of his former assets. They had become (in his counting) worth less than nothing. It was as though he had experienced a joyful sort of bankruptcy, suffering the loss of all things. The passage reveals that Paul could not have been more pleased with his windfall outcome – Jesus Christ.
With Christ Himself as his only remaining asset, Paul has become a reference point of transformation capable of assisting us in the calculations we each must make. What do you think had happened in Paul’s experience that transformed him from proud pharisee to the profoundly grateful chief of sinners? What events and processes took place that left Christ as the sole asset on Paul’s balance sheet? Just how had God brought about this transformation?
If we are making claims on the name of Jesus, the calculation Jesus instructs us to make must eventually include question like these; “In what ways has my own heart been transformed? Do our stories reveal the process God uses, which causes us to become less and less while He becomes more an more? When I stand before Him and the books are opened, will Jesus appear as my sole asset? As Lord, have I given Him ongoing access to the asset column of my heart?
Note; If you have believed that God held Paul’s heart, in its apostolic-ness, to higher standards than he does our own, please read verses 15-21. Also note the consequence for those who had replaced the cross with their own preferences.
Let us therefore, as many as are perfect, have this attitude; and if in anything you have a different attitude, God will reveal that also to you; however, let us keep living by that same standard to which we have attained. Brethren, join in following my example, and observe those who walk according to the pattern you have in us. For many walk, of whom I often told you, and now tell you even weeping, that they are enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is destruction, whose god is their appetite, and whose glory is in their shame, who set their minds on earthly things. For our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ; who will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory, by the exertion of the power that He has even to subject all things to Himself.
Father, on that day when you ask us to give You an accounting of our own hearts, may our books be in order – where our righteousness is that which comes from you on the basis of faith, and that like Paul, You alone are our treasure. May we encounter You in our circumstances and may we see Your strong loving heart’s efforts to transform us and to reveal Christ to us and though us. May Your eyes soon see Your Bride pressing on toward the goal of the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Amen.
by RobertCummins | Jul 3, 2014 | 27. Letting Go
Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect. For through the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think; but to think so as to have sound judgment, as God has allotted to each a measure of faith. Romans 12:1-3 NAS
Paul, as one of the natural Jewish branches, is writing to the unnatural Gentile branches who, by a mysterious and extravagant gesture of kindness and grace, God has grafted into Jesus, the deep and rich root of the olive tree. How big of a deal was this to Paul?
“Oh, the depths of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways! …For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever.
Anyone, like Paul, who has gone from being the chief detractor to the chief advocate with no hope of earthly gain other than suffering; a man whose passions compel him to stretch human language to its limits in conveying His new reality, bears my complete attention. What is the passion that is driving Paul? I believe it is to see Jesus, who apprehended Him, being glorified through the working out of “the good, acceptable and perfect will of God”. Paul is urging us to listen as he explains how this must happen. He carries the burden of a man who knows what others must discover. The consequences in either direction are too great to not proclaim with as much force as he can muster.
If men in Paul’s day heard the word “sacrifice”, their minds would likely conjure images of sacrificed animals whose blood was offered to appease a deity including YHWH. Paul throws the Romans a curve when he tells them they are now to become the “living” sacrifices. He tells them that in their living they would be fulfilling their calling as worshipers. No longer was the primary act of worship going to be limited to ceremonies and rituals. Worship’s primary expression, from this point going forward, was going to be the living of life.
“Take your everyday ordinary life, your sleeping, eating, going to work, and walking-around life, and place it before God as an offering.” (MSG)
Paul goes on to reveal a major (if not THE major) roadblock to this transformation that God desires for us. The hindrance is the false ideas that we hold about Him, ourselves and the world. This collection of beliefs represents our reality. That is why change is so difficult. “Our reality” is our foundation. It is what has become familiar and therefore sacred. We have learned to make life work-out (at least to some degree) from our “worldly-conditioned” mindsets. Touch these foundational ideas with new ones and we tremble or retreat, fearing our whole superstructure will topple. To see God’s ultimate version of reality (His good and perfect will) it our reality that we must let go of.
This is another reason that Jesus said, “Blessed is he who is not offended with Me”. Jesus words and the words of His apostles run counter to the philosophies and values that drive this world, which have infected most of us without us even knowing it. This is the nature of this world’s prince who oversees a vast network of well coordinated lies. This is the kingdom of darkness out of which God is calling the sons of Light.
By what possible means am I going to abandon the foundational “codes” I have come to operate by? It is by the renewal of the mind (a close relative to repentance) and “that measure of faith” that God has allotted to each man. In God’s unsearchable wisdom and in His unfathomable ways, He has given us “faith” that we must choose to exercise in order to embrace a kingdom and its “codes” which will first appear to us as unnatural and, most likely, threatening.
Father, may we not forget that there is still an original place in Your heart for the natural branches; that we gentiles have a season of grace to respond to You. As the beneficiaries and heirs of such extravagant grace, may our daily, walk-around lives serve to prove out Your good and acceptable will. May our new lives in You radiate so brightly as to be an attraction to the Jews and a validation of Jesus’ rightful status as Messiah. And ….may we not so quickly run from the ideas that threaten any of our vain and false speculations about reality. Amen.
