Ed Christian's World

One Redeemer – Many Names…

In Psalm 103:4, it says of the Lord “who redeems your life from the pit”. But in Hebrew, it doesn’t say that. It uses a much more specific word, the Hebrew “goel”. It would read something like “who goels your life from the pit”.

The “goel” was the kinsman-redeemer, the man who would redeem the life of a barren widow by marrying her and making her fruitful with children. So, in Psalm 103, it’s not just that God redeems us, it’s that He becomes our “goel,” our kinsman-redeemer. He redeems us by marrying us, by joining Himself to us by becoming one with us so that our lives can’t help but bear fruit.

And that is the secret. Do you want your life to become overflowing with fruitfulness? Do you want to fulfill your purpose and calling? Do you want your life to be abundantly blessed? Then make it your aim to get as close, as intimate, as joined, and as one with God as possible in everything and it will be. For the Lord is not only your Redeemer – He’s your Goel!

Our Redeemer, the Lord Almighty is his name, is the Holy One of Israel. Isaiah 47:4

Make it your aim to get goeled! Get as close, as intimate, as joined, and as one with God in every way possible.

Walk daily with God at your side!

Love always,

Ed

Illegal Miracles?…

In the writings of some Bible scholars, there are accounts bearing out Jesus’s miracles. One involves a Jewish man who needs healing. A Jewish believer tells him to pray in the name of Yeshua, Jesus. He does and he’s healed! So he runs to the rabbi to tell him what happened, to which the rabbi responds by telling him never to get healed in that name again!

Amazing! The rabbinical writings confirm that in the name of Yeshua, Jesus, is the power of healing, but then give the counsel never to pray in that name. So here waits the healing of the Jewish people, and yet they’re not ready to receive it.

So, too, God’s will for all is healing and restoration— physically, emotionally, and spiritually. And it’s not as if that healing and restoration isn’t there— it is. It’s just that we might not be ready to be healed or to become whole. And until we are, it will still wait.

God wants you healed, whole, and restored. Don’t make the mistake of the rabbis. Open up your life and let it happen.

Now he is far above any ruler or authority or power or leader or anything else—not only in this world but also in the world to come. Ephesians 1:21

Open your heart to the healing and restoration that the Lord has for you.

Walk daily with God at your side!

Love always,

Ed

Love… Our Cup Runs Over…

If you’ve ever been chased around the dining room table by a parent, most likely it wasn’t your mother, but your father. My father would count up to three. My mother would count up to three thousand and beyond. In fact, she’s still counting. A mother’s love is a picture of the love of God.

Often we picture God as a severe judge ready to lose his temper, but the truth is, the love of God is as compassionate and tender as the love of a mother, only more so. And that means He must be very patient. In fact, the Bible says that the reason the age has gone on so long is solely because of the patience of God for people to repent and get saved.

Thank God that He’s patient, and that He puts up with you and me and all of us. What should that make us do? It should make us all the more zealous to bless Him, to please Him, and to make Him smile. God has the patience of a saint. And even more than a saint, He has the patience of a mother, and even more than that. And in that is our salvation.

Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” Matthew 22:37

Make it your aim in life to bless God, to please Him, and to make Him smile.

Walk daily with God at your side!

Love always,

Ed

Always Be faithful…

While Paul was in Athens, he sought to preach the Gospel. It was the city council that was in charge of granting such permission. We don’t’ know that he ever obtained that permission, and we have no record of him spreading the Gospel throughout the city. So did he fail? Not at all.

Paul preached the Gospel in Athens at least once – on Mars Hill. And that one sermon on Mars Hill, the sermon of the Unknown God, was recorded and transmitted to thousands and millions of people and launched countless missions to countless more peoples.

In the same way, sometimes it may seem as if you’ve failed in the Lord. You didn’t achieve what you set out to achieve and you feel like a failure. But if you’re in God’s will, there is no such thing as failure. It’s only a matter of obedience.

Paul was obedient, and in his “failure,” countless lives and nations would be touched for the Gospel. So it is with you and God. If you’re faithful, you can never fail— you just may have no idea how successful you are.

It will be good for those servants whose master finds them watching when he comes. Truly I tell you, he will dress himself to serve, will have them recline at the table and will come and wait on them. Luke 12:37

Do your best to be faithful in what God has called you to and trust that He will accomplish His will in your life.

Walk daily with God at your side!

Love always,

Ed

In The Promised Land…

It was a warm afternoon, during my tenth year, and we were down fishing on the river. There as nice breeze and we could smell the sweet fragrance of the nearby wild flowers. Then with a soft voice Grandfather said: The Promised Land has two seas, one is called the Kinneret or the Sea of Galilee. The Sea Of Galilee receives it’s water on its northern end from the inflow of the Jordan River. On its other end is its outflow. There it becomes the Jordan River again and flows southward down the Jordan Valley.

And the other sea?

The other sea is called the Sea of Salt, or the Sea of Death.

The Dead Sea, I responded.

Yes, he said. It’s called the Dead Sea because virtually nothing can live there. There’s no fish and no vegetation. It’s salt and minerals preventive growing.

I asked and where does The Dead Sea get it’s water from? Grandfather looked at me and said from the Jordan River and the Sea of Galilee.

So it’s the same water, then why is it dead?

The difference is that the Dead Sea only has one opening to the north where it receives water from the Jordan, but it has no outlet. The water only pours in…and becomes dead. But the water of the Galilee is alive, freshwater filled with fish. And yet the very same water flows between the two. So how can the same water produce life in one place and death in the other?

Because of the outlets I responded. That’s right, said Grandfather, but why? I don’t know, I was only guessing.

Grandfather continued on. The Sea of Galilee is always giving what it receives. It is always flowing. But the Dead Sea only receives and never gives. It is the same in life. The life that gives of what it receives, the life that blesses others, that life is the Sea of Galilee. It’s waters are always fresh. It’s always filled with life. But the life that only takes and doesn’t give, that life becomes dead and barren…and all with the same waters.

You see, said Grandfather, it’s not what you have in life, how much or how little, that, in the end, will matter. It’s what you do with what you have. If you only take, the waters become dead and your life becomes a sea of Death. But if you give, then your waters become alive and your life becomes…the Galilee.

One person gives freely, yet gains even more; another withholds unduly, but comes to poverty. Proverbs 11:24

Live your days after the pattern of the Sea of Galilee, always receiving and always giving. Live to be a blessing in the flowing of His love.

Walk daily with God at your side!

Love always,

Ed

A marriage from the heart…

Imagine a marriage where the husband and wife each have a list of what the other must do and a script for what the other must say. So when they speak to each other, it’s all from a script. What would you think of such a marriage? It would all be outward, external, empty, and fake.

But that’s exactly how many believers live out their relationships with God. They look primarily at what they have to do for Him, and what He should do for them. They say the right words and sing the right songs, but because they have to and not because it’s really coming from their hearts.

A marriage that’s alive and blessed is the one where each blesses the other from his or her heart. So, also, a relationship with God that’s alive and blessed is one that flows from the heart. It’s about seeking to know God’s heart, to have God’s heart, and doing the right thing not because you have to, but because you want to. Live with God from the heart, and your marriage to Him will be blessed and full of life.

Take me away with you–let us hurry! Let the king bring me into his chambers. Friends We rejoice and delight in you; we will praise your love more than wine. She How right they are to adore you! Song of Solomon 1:4

Spend intimate time with your Beloved and seek to know His heart.

Walk daily with God at your side!!

Love always,

Ed

The Cocoon…

It was one of those warm afternoons where Grandfather and I sat beneath a tree reminiscing, when his attention was drawn downward to a small dark object moving across the ground. It looks like a worm, he said, but different from a worm, a caterpillar, a fascinating creature, the child of a butterfly. A furry crawling wormlike creature born of a beautiful winged creature. It has no idea of its origins or who its parent is. It goes through life crawling on the ground. The only life it knows is a wormlike life. He then picked up the caterpillar and placed it on the tree.

But one day the caterpillar climbs a tree, hangs itself upside down and begins to form around it’s body a hard protective shell, a cocoon. In the cocoon, that which was the caterpillar comes to its end. Only in its dying as a caterpillar can the creature undergo a metamorphosis. And when the metamorphosis is complete, a new being emerges from the shell of the cocoon. The new creature no longer has anything wormlike about it. It is now winged and beautiful. It will never again crawl through and never again be earthbound. It will live in the image of the one who gave it life, as a winged creature it was always meant to become.

It is an amazing phenomenon, I said, like the circle of life. Yes, Grandfather said, but within a shadow. A shadow of what? I asked.

The caterpillar is given life by the butterfly. We are given life by God. As the caterpillar crawls through life, earthbound and unaware of the purpose for which it was born, so man goes through life earthbound and unaware of the purpose for which he was born. We see with earthlike eyes, think wormlike thoughts and live wormlike lives. But to some of these earthbound creatures a miracle happens.

They allow themselves to die to the old, to the earthbound wormlike life. And yet in their dying of their old self they begin a metamorphosis. The earthbound life dies. But what emerges in its place is a different life, a new creation, beautiful and no longer earthbound, but heavenly and made to dwell in heavenly realms, and what it was always meant to be, a heavenly being in the image of Him from whom it was given life in the first place.

The new birth, the new creation!, I exclaimed. Yes, Grandfather replied, the metamorphosis of the children of God, born as earthly creatures, but reborn as children of heaven… the Gospel of the butterfly, by the grace of God!

We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. Romans 6:4

What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the Master calls a butterfly. Move away from the earthbound, everything in your life that is tied to the world, to the flesh and sin. Move into the realm of the heavenly. Start flying.

Walk daily with God at your side!

Love always,

Ed

The Jesus Vaccination…

In Isaiah 1, it’s written: “Though your sins are as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.” How can sins become as white as snow? When God forgives a sin, and when we receive it, our past sins become as white as snow. What was evil is neutralized and is used for good. But a sin forgiven and repented of becomes something else altogether.

In the same way, a deadly bacteria is something dangerous, but if that disease is neutralized, rendered ineffective, and put into the form of a vaccination, its nature is changed. It becomes something altogether different. It becomes an inoculation that prevents and protects the person from the very disease it once was.

So too, to have your sins forgiven and truly receive the fact that your sins are forgiven and your past is wiped clean, and that you’re free because of the grace and mercy of God – this is what inoculates you against sin and causes you to become new. For your sins forgiven and your past redeemed by the blood of Jesus is what truly makes them as white as snow.

Though your sins are like scarlet,
they shall be as white as snow;
though they are red as crimson,
they shall be like wool. Isaiah 1:18

Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Psalm 32:1

Truly embrace the fact that your sins are forgiven and your past is wiped clean by the blood of the Lamb.

Walk daily with God at your side!

Love always,

Ed

The Secret Of The Cup…

Granfather used to tell us a story about an old farmer who advertised that he would give away 40 acres of good farmland to anyone who was perfectly satisfied with what he had.

One day, a man seeking the land came up to the farmer and said, “I would like to have the land.” The farmer asked him, “Are you perfectly satisfied with what you have?” “Yes,” answered the man, “I am perfectly satisfied.” “Then,” said the farmer, “why on earth do you want this land?”

Thus the old farmer never parted with his land, because the only ones perfectly satisfied with what they had weren’t interested in getting it, and those who wanted the land weren’t perfectly satisfied.

Jesus told us, “If you will lose your life for My sake, you will find it.” And He told the rich young ruler, “If you wish to be complete, go sell your possessions and give the money to the poor.” It’s a paradox, but it’s true. If you want to be full, empty yourself. If you want to be content, then let go of your want. For having nothing but God is to have everything— an abundant life and perfect satisfaction.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Matthew 5:6

Empty yourself and seek His righteousness that fills and satisfies.

Walk daily with God at your side!

Love always,

Ed

The Cup Of The Fruit…

Adam fell through the partaking of a fruit. Jesus came as the second Adam to undo his fall. As Adam partook of the fruit of the trees, so Jesus, on the sixth day, also partook of fruit as He drank the cup of the fruit of the vine.

This time, the fruit was crushed, as Jesus’s life would likewise be crushed. Adam ate the forbidden fruit and was sentenced to death. Jesus drank the cup of crushed fruit and then was led to his death. Adam was taken from a garden to the place where he would die. Jesus would also be taken from a Garden, the Garden of Gethsemane, to his death.

We who follow the Lord are told to partake of that same cup— the cup of the Lord’s Supper. It’s not just a cup of fruit, but of crushed fruit. For by partaking of the crushing of Jesus and His death and dying to self is the power to overcome the curse of Adam. The more we do so, the more we will overcome, for the blessings of the Tree of Life now come to us in a cup of crushed fruit.

But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities;upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. Isaiah 53:5

Today, partake of the crushing of Jesus by dying to yourself and overcoming the curse.

Walk daily with God at your side!

Love always,

Ed