Keep the Important thing the Important thing

Photo by Rick Mortimer

Keeping the important thing the important thing.

There is a graveyard behind my house.  It is a huge graveyard of about one hundred acres and has existed since this city was incorporated about one hundred and fifty years ago.

 Yesterday when I was walking by it I saw graves where the people had died almost one hundred years ago.  Some of those people where old at the time they died and some where not. 

   I tried to imaging what their lives must have been like.  These must have been pioneering people who came to this city when it was young or maybe even still pretty much a wilderness even.  And then I got thinking about what their world was like for them and of all the technology and changes that have come and gone since their deaths.

   You know, they were normal people.  They had issues and pet peeves, and things that gave them pleasure.  They had families and bills to pay and jobs to go to and food to gather.  They had things they cherished and things they hated about their lives.  The had issues.  They had relationships.  They had sadness and happiness come and go in their lives just like I do.  They loved living as much as I do.  They lived and saw other die.  They had their own social circles and valued their friends just like I do.

  But none of those things matter now.  It’s all gone for them.  Their earthly trip is over.  Not one thing matters to those people now except where they are spending their eternity. 

  Think about it.  

The only thing that really matters in our lives is our relationship to God. 

When someone walks past your headstone one-hundred years from now, what are they going to think about the things that you value and place importance on  today?  What are they?  Are you putting a priority in your life on your job?  Politics?  How much money your pension is going to bring?  If your child goes to this school or that school? What your boss thinks about the last report you filed?  Where you are going to vacation this coming summer?   Which hockey team is going to win the Stanley Cup?

    Are these things going to matter down the road to you?  To others?

The only thing that matters in our lives is our relationship to God.  When that is in place, the rest will be added to you.

  What did you do to Praise God today?  Did you ask Him to spend the day with you?  Did you thank Him for bringing you the prosperity that you have and for giving you the good health you enjoy?  Did you thank Him for loving you today and paying the horrid price of the death of His precious Son so that you could know Him today?  Did you thank Him for delivering you from the fear of death and for inviting you over to His house for the next bazillion years of eternity?

What value do you put on God?   Because that is the only thing about you that is going to remain one hundred years from now.  The only thing.

  What value you give God in your life today, is the only thing that is going to remain in the future, because this is what is going to determine where you spend it.

  Keep the important thing the important thing.  That’s what really matters.

Photo by Rick Mortimer

Learning about Grace.

When I was about 14 or 15 years old, one day on my way home from school, my pals and I went into a local shopping market and I stole some cigarettes.

  I got caught.

Being rebellious and pretty cocky, when the store manager informed me that he could either phone the police, the principal of the school or my Dad, I told him to phone my Dad.

  Dad showed up and made peace with the store manager.  He and I went home.  Once there he and I went directly to his room where I got a good strapping on my hind end with his belt.

  I made sure I did not let any tears show, and as casually as I could, sauntered out the room to go to the kitchen for a drink of water.

    In the front room that I had to pass through, sat my mother in a chair sobbing her heart out.  “How could you do this thing?   Did we not raise you to be better than that?”

  My heart broke.  Tears streamed down my face as I stood condemned before her by her tears of agony.

   I never stole anything again.

   My father did no wrong giving me a strapping with the belt.  Scripture (Proverbs 13:24) tells us that ‘He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes.”  And my Dad loved me, there is no doubt of that!

    Punishment of this kind is force.  It is effective and necessary.  But it’s goal is to produce fear.  If we are acting ‘right’ because of the fear that we may be caught and having then to face some kind of painful punishment being handed down to us, then our motives are totally wrong.

   My mother on the other hand, responded out of her Love for me.  Her disappointment was very real; not for herself but in me, and it was this that brought such conviction upon me and made me realize the true error of my act.

This is the difference we see between New Testament Grace and Old Testament Law.

The Law was never brought to show us how to live Holy and righteous.  The Law was brought to show us that we could never live Holy according to what God’s standard of Holiness is.  We may be able to live a life in a more Holy manner than other men, but we can never measure up to the standard that God has set for us.  The Law was brought to man, for this purpose only – to show us how far we are from God’s standards, and to fear the judgement that comes through sin.   This was the curse of the Law through the Old Testament.

  Jesus redeemed us from the Law.  The word ‘redeemed’ means to ‘recover’ or ‘gotten back’;  much the same as you ‘redeem’ an item from a pawn shop.  So Jesus literally ‘bought us back’ from the curse of the Law.  He did this by becoming a curse for us through his submission to being crucified.

  Gal 3:13 “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree.”

   After Jesus was crucified, the NEW TESTAMENT came into effect.  For a testament is of no effect until the testator has died.  This is what we celebrate on what is known as Good Friday and Easter.

 The New Testament brought in a whole new set of ‘rules’ for God’s people.  We were set free of the Law and now come under God’s Grace which he has extended to us who accept his Son –the price God paid- for our redeeming (redemption.)  The curse of the Law has been lifted off of us, and through Grace and the Faith in it we show back to God, we are made to be partakers of the Blessing of Abraham. 

Romans 4: 22 And therefore it was imputed to him [Abraham] for righteousness. 23 Now it was not written for his sake alone, that it was imputed to him; 24 But for us also, to whom it shall be imputed, if we believe on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead;

  Gal 3: 29 And if ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise.

  So we are now living with the Blessing of Abraham upon us through New Testament Grace, and not under the curse of the Old Testament Law.

    This is the GOOD NEWS given to us by the saints who wrote the New Testament.

     Unfortunately, the church seems to have been –and still is – preaching the Old Testament message of the Law and condemnation to those who do not live up to it.  Such teaching makes the work of Christ to no avail.

Galatians 5: 4 Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; ye are fallen from grace.

We can never hope to achieve righteousness through our works.  We are of a fallen nature and impure.  That is what the law came to show – and the message that I learned in that house so many years ago by parents who loved me.

  We can only hope to be righteous [living right] though Grace and the unconditional Love of God.  Faith is but our gift back to Him for Faith works by the law of Love, and when we see the love that our Heavenly Father extends to us, the only response is to accept it in Faith and show it back to him through our actions.  God is Love.   Love always makes you want to respond in kind.

   And Love is always the right motive.

Rick Mortimer