Tuesday, April 19, 2016

4-19-2016



Good Morning All!!                                                                                        
         1 Corinthians 13:10; “but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.
          Incomplete.  The word tends to conjure up some many thoughts and most of those thoughts are negative.  A quarterback in football does not want the pass to fall incomplete.  A student working in class struggles when his assignment is incomplete.  It is not success nor is it failure; what is it exactly, it is in some form of educational limbo.  It is not done; it is not finished; it is in some form of suspension.  Incomplete is never a positive.  A person who feels his job leaves him incomplete or the relationship leaves him incomplete or just the events of his life leaves him incomplete; this is not a happy, content man.  The worst part about feeling incomplete is that you have nothing inside of you.  You are empty, void of anything of matter, listless and without direction or purpose.
     This is a very good description of our life in sin.  When Adam and Eve walked with God in the cool of the morning in the Garden of Eden, everything was perfect; everything was complete.  That really is the biblical definition of perfect: it means to be complete.  Perfection is more about wholeness or being complete than it is about being without blemish.  But when sin came into the world, it pulled man away from God.  Sin put a hole in man and made him incomplete.  Sin leaves you empty and it leaves you without a true purpose.  We see this in this sinful world.  A man without purpose is a man without contentment because contentment is achieved when your purpose is followed.  We see this in the millionaire who needs to be a multi-millionaire who needs to be a billionaire and so on.  Why isn’t it ever enough?  They have no purpose and seeking after money is not filling the hole.
    That is what sin does; it removes our purpose and leaves us empty and without hope.  This is part of what Jesus was saying when he died on the cross.  He said, “it is finished.”  The Greek word means to discharge as in paying a debt but it also means to accomplish or to fill up.  By His death on the cross, Jesus paid or discharged our debt for sin.  By paying the debt of sin, Jesus filled the hole that sin left.  This filling is a process that will last until the perfect comes and the partial passes away.
    We have a part, a taste of what perfection will be like.  We experience it when we are content in God’s grace and we seek our purpose in His will.  We still have bouts of struggles with sin but God’s mercy keeps bringing us back and filling in the hole.  This will occur over and over until He completes the perfection; either when He comes to us in his glory or when He brings us home to himself.  We will be perfect; we will be whole again.  We will know His total and complete love and peace.
Father, fill me with your love.  Keep me from being empty and lost in this broken world.  Restore me to the complete person that you designed me to be.  Drive away sin and renew within in the whole spirit and being.  In the precious name of Jesus we pray, amen.
God’s Peace,
Pastor Bret    

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.