Olympics: the power and the glory - China leaves world awestruck
The online Times posted the above headline on August 9th, you can find it with a quick Google search. I am not recommending that you go there I want to use this to make a simple point. I must confess that over the past several days I have been amazed and awestruck with what Michael Phelps did in the pool in Beijing China. I swam competitively in college and know that somehow he accomplished the impossible...I'm sorry, but he accomplished the impossible, actually Lezak accomplished the impossible in chasing down the world record holder in the 4x100 free relay.
Here is the point...I am a guy who seeks to pursue God, I long to burn after HIM with a white-hot love and passion above everything else. I confess that I don't understand it, but I believe that this passion is a gift from my heavenly Father. In our evening service last night we celebrated the Lord's Supper and while we waited for the bread and the juice to be distributed my eyes poured over these words...I prayerfully read and thought through part of our reading in 1 Corinthians. I prayed, I examined, I confessed and I cried out to God as I read this passage. The point is that I pursued HIM during the Lord's Supper last night.
1 Co 11:23-32 For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, 24 and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” 25 In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” 26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.
27 Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. 28 Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. 29 For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself. 30 That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died. 31 But if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged. 32 But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world.
Now I come to my reading this morning and initially I am unmoved [I HATE to confess that to you, but it is true] as I read this passage again...I read the entire reading for today and felt led here, but nothing specific...still unmoved. Then it the conviction came...following conviction came repentance...HOW CAN MY EYES, my heart and my mind see “This cup is the new covenant in my blood...and not be BLOWN OUT OF THE WATER BY HIS RADIATING GLORY AND AWESTRIKING POWER AND MAJESTY. THE UNSEARCHABLE GLORY, POWER AND HUMILITY MINGLED IN ONE BEING IS overwhelming, it is mind blowing, it fries all my hardware.
What Michael Phelps did is NOTHING! I don't care who's name you stick in there any human accomplishment is nothing...NOTHING, the glory of this universe is NOTHING, NOTHING when it is compared to the GLORY OF CHRIST!
Jeremiah 31:31 “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah,
Matt 26:28 for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.
Luke 22:20 And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.
1 Corinthians 11:25 In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”
2 Corinthians 3:6 who has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.
Jeremiah 32:40 I will make with them an everlasting covenant, that I will not turn away from doing good to them. And I will put the fear of me in their hearts, that they may not turn from me.
Hebrews 13:20 Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant,
NO new covenant and you and I spend eternity in eternal torment, eternal pain, suffering and anguish the likes this world has never witnessed. The most horrific conditions on this planet will be like heaven when compared to hell...there is no hell on earth...we are clueless!
Father in heaven,
forgive me, cleanse me, create in me a pure heart, enable me to seek and pursue you with my whole heart. Enable me to be like Able who "By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, through which he was commended as righteous, God commending him by accepting his gifts. And through his faith, though he died, he still speaks." By YOUR amazing grace enable me to "greatly rejoice in the Lord; my soul shall exult in my God, for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation; he has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself like a priest with a beautiful headdress, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.
Father...we glory in YOU and we boast in YOU and in the Cross of Christ alone...for YOUR glory and our joy in YOU!
love,
m