Monday, October 13, 2008

Amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me; once was lost but now am found; was blind but b/c of me am still having trouble seeing

Prov 13:12

"Hope deferred makes the heart sick,
but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life."

Christ is to be my longing. If I let Him, then He will fulfill His promises and thus fill me. And when I am that tree of life with hope in the Lord, I will be abiding in Him and my branches will become fruit-bearing. Those branches will not be thrown into the fire. When I produce fruit, I will add to His joy and He will add to mine. How Alive that feels- ("Life is Christ, everythingelse is just living.") I don't know why I haven't been chasing it since Pine Cove.

John 15:4-"Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing."

And apart from me you feel nothing. You are dead eventhough you are alive, like a cabbage is to a ball of string and a cat is to literature or arithmatic. You may have blood in your veins instead of chlorophyl and you may even comprehend arithmatic, but you are unresponsive to God, whom you were made to interact with. Your tree exists like a skeleton lacking the blooms that it was created to make. John 15:6 "If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned." 1 Corinthians 3:15 "If it is burned up, he will suffer loss; he himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames." This fruit production and much more the life of your branches, is not something that we can attain through effort. We do not hold our breath and push till our ears pop as if that would make the apples pop out. A tree doesn't make its fruit by its own efforts; He brings forth the blooms. Matt. 6:30 "If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, will he not much more clothe you?"

Eph. 5:15 "Wake up, O sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you."
"The Deeper the Roots the Higher the Reach."-that is on a framed poster on the wall in a Starbucks bathroom in Ennis, TX. Deepen your roots in the Lord by abiding in Him and your tree of life will grow higher and reach farther to others who need your help and need Him. Those century-tree like branches will be bursting with fresh smelling fruit! "The LORD smelled the pleasing aroma." Genesis 8:21. And 2 Corinthians 2:15 says, "For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing."

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