THE MIRACLE OF RESTRAINT

Have you ever thought of the tremendous miracle that we human beings enjoy every day, simply because Almighty God holds back His Omnipotent power from being directed against our casual attitude toward Him? Once you are familiar with the commands given in the Holy Scriptures, that God expects His children to follow, and realize how few believers actually obey them, this fact becomes a reality to us! Just take for example Peter's exhortation in (1 Peter 1:13-16) about being holy because God is holy! Or the words from Paul in (Phil 2:12-15) about being "shining lights in a world full of crooked and perverse people"! How well do you think you and I do on a daily basis toward keeping these commands?

Were it not for the mercy and grace of our loving Father, we would all be destroyed! Thank God that He holds to His decision to create us humans with a free will, and that He refuses to use His Omnipotent power to interfere with our choices, even when He knows they are wrong choices! What love! What grace! The supreme demonstration of this love is expressed in that familiar verse recorded by the Apostle John in (John 3:16) "For God loved the world so much that He gave His one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life."

God allowed His Son Jesus Christ to become a human being, so that we might see what He really looks like. Paul said that Jesus was the visible image of the invisible God, "For in Christ lives all the fullness of God in a human body" (Col 2:9). When we study the scriptures that describe the birth, life, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus we get a realistic picture of the nature and character of God the Father. We see Jesus portrayed as the King of God's heavenly Kingdom, that He wishes to set up on planet earth for eternity. (Rev 21:1-3). When Jesus instructed His followers to pray that "the Father's Kingdom come to earth, and His will be done on earth as it is in heaven" (Matt 6:10), He was expressing God's desire for our planet!

I believe that God expects us as followers of Jesus, empowered by the Holy Spirit, to exert our time and energy in helping this to become a reality. When the world sees what it would look like, to have God's will being done on earth, and believers living by the principles of His heavenly Kingdom, they might be more interested in becoming part of "God's Forever Family"!!

Sincerely submitted

Gramp