Three Things I Hate, and Three Things I Love

Well, hello again after so long! Yay!!! Why have I taken so long to get anything new to this place? Well, to tell you the truth, lots of reasons and by no means all of them good ones. So let's not waste each others' time with the shallow stuff, and get on with with what I'm here for: namely, to be about my Heavenly Father's business by giving my teastimony to all the wonderful things He has done for me.
For this posting, I that as it has been such a long time since I have done anything here, I would go back to the wood, as it were, with something absolutely basic to my core principle for being here at all in the first place. As for future plans and so forth, I'll save that till the end.
So what about it, then? I refer you to the title which has probably up until now left you a tad befuddled. There are of course many thing I hate and love, far more than three in either case, as you can well imagine. But those I mention here are, as it were, the irreducable minimum. I can truly tell you that I cannot accept anything less than thos stated below.
Bizzarly, due to the unfathomable vastness that is the Love of God, the capacity to both feel and express hat is actually God-given; but we must not hate people, and we have to hate the right things.
1. I Hate The Devil.
The Devil is the definition of the rejection of God and is in himeslf the spirit now working in the children of disobedience. He is completely self-employed. He does not work for God in any sense. Indeed, he hates God and all who belong to Him. All he wants from any Christian is their death. To the devil, the only good Christian is a dead one. Consider this, that if the devil does the will of God, then the devil is saved, because he has done what God wanted, and was used of God, for, "Who so does the will of God, abideth forever." (1st John 2.17). The devil is also the original superiority complex: he thought he was better than God, but all he succeeded in doing was to bring in the curse of sin and death on all mankind. But Jesus defeated him; in His teaching, by His example of life, by His miracles, on the cross, in the tomb, yes, and even in hell itself, but especially and most emphatically and most spectacularly, on the morning of the Resurrection! Oh yes, I hate the devil, alright.
2. I Hate Fear.
There is not a single part of fear that can be described as "alright" or even "legitimate". The same Hebrew word translated as "respect" in Genesis chapter Four with regard to Cain and Abel, is translated everywhere else in our English Bibles as fear with regard to God. Yet it is the same Hebrew word. Fear is poisonous venom, paralising its victim in mind and body, rendering the poor soul incapable of any good in this world or the next. It has very many disguises. To give a single example by way of illustration here, fear of being hurt spawns an attitude of resentment and self-pity which in itself keeps us in unforgiveness, rendering even God Himself deaf to all our prayers, "For when you stand praying, forgive." (Mark 11.25). Fear also keeps terrible company, its ultimate agenda, of course, being to throw us away in hell among the rest of the fearful. There is absolutely no good thing in fear. I truly hate fear.
3. I Hate Sin.
Sin is the worst of all evils. The devil is not always present to tempt us, and our sense of fear rises and falls with our circumstances and emotions. But sin is always with us, at every moment and at every turn. Nothing we think, say, or do is untouched by it. Even our holiest and most sacred moments, yes even our prayers, are sin in the eyes of heaven. We can recover from tribulation, but there is no cure for sin. God is good, but it is sin that seperates us from Him. It is in this way that sin is the restrainer, and the preventer, keeping us away from everything good. God is not the prohibitor. Most terrible of all, it is because of sin that we will be sent to hell. Trust me on this, I hate sin most of all.
Three Things I Love
1. I Love The Holy Trinity.
There are three Persons who constitute God. To understand this, we have to know how they relate to each other. To put it almost overly simply, this is encompassed in one single word - Covenant (that is, the law of entire giving and entire receiving). The Father loves the Son and the Spirit with all that He is and has, and gives Himself entirely to them; the Son loves the Father and the Spirit with all that He is and has, and gives Himself entirely to them; the Spirit loves the Father and the Son with all that He is and has, and gives Himself entirely to them. But, as amazing and mind-boggling as that is, what either just as amazing or even more amazing (how on earth do you explain these things?) is that in the entire giving of each member of The Holy Trinity is the entire receiving of each member of The Holy Trinity. You see, the truly amazing truth is this, that God is in a covenant relationship with Himself! This is how it is said in the Bible that God is love. This is the Love of God. This is how the Love of God works. This is how God expresses His Love to us - His Covenant Love. The law of entire giving and entire receiving. When we come to God as sinners in need of a Saviour, essentially what we do is give to god everyuthing that are and have. That may sound demanding, but it's not really. Because what you have to consider is this: all that we are and have amount to two things, sin and death. These are the only things that we can bring to God. We do this when we come to Him is what is called repentance and faith. When we do that, God accepts or "gift", and takes them from us. But this is the good part, in exchange for our sin, He gives us righteousness (that is, right standing with Him), and in exchange for our death, He gives us life (that is, the ZoƩ life of God - that can never fail or die! I promise, more of that in future postings). Christians refer to this as The Great Exchange. Oh yes, as you can plainly understand, I love the Holy Trinity!
2. I Love The Holy Bible.
This book is of Divine origin. The Bible is the Word of God. God has set it before us in His Love. In short, the Bible is God's best. And because of that, we must absorb the Bible into the spirit of our innmost being; that throughout our lives we may bear much fruit (what is otherwise known as the peaceable fruits of righteousness) as a rtestimony of the woderful things that God has done for us in His Love; living in peace and contentment lives of love, joy and praise, freed from all ills and evils both in this life and the next (are we/am I there yet? Do we/I live like that? not yet, but that's what faith and patience are for). Yes, I love the Holy Bible.
3. I Love Personal Salvation.
Jesus Christ came into this world to be my Personal Saviour. Everything He thought, said and did was for me - not to me or at me, but for me. He came to defeat the devil,deliver from fear, and destroy sin and death; the power and fury of His love being such that He did all things, the true light that lighteth everyone who comes into this world, dealing to everyone the measure of faith (whether everyone puts that measure of faith to work or not). It is conclusive. I love personal salvation, perhaps most of all.
These are, as I said at the beginning, the irreducable minimum of everything that I consider essentially Christian. It is sadly true, that Christians no not agree on everything, but that has been the case for the whole of the existance of Christainity! In fact, in this day and age, it is the least chaotic that it's ever been. Yet I can, through a combination of both learning and experience, live with that, and happily agree to differ. But those things that I have outlined here (yes, outlined!) are definitely not up for discussion. The reason for this is simple: with the absence of them (any of them) is either the absence of access to God, or the absence, or even the non-existance, of God Himself. And if that is denied then I, and countless millions like me, are living a well-intentioned lie. My very presence here in the first place is to testify to you of all God's loving and saving acts, and to tell you that the same Divine resources that I have are available to you today at this very moment if you will receive them by faith. Please do so, I implore you.
If you have never prayed before, please pray along with me along these lines:
Heavenly Father, I come to You just as I am. I cannot wait until I am better, because it seems everything I do to get better makes things worse. So I come to you now. I admit that this feels very strange, but all I can do is ask You, Sir, to take me as I am. I am sorry for being so sinful. I think of others who are perhaps worse than me, but that seems like a feeble excuse now. Please be merciful to me, a sinner. I am so very sorry. Cleanse me in the precious blood of Jesus, and take me to be with You. I open my heart wide to Your Great Love, now. Come into my heart, Lord Jesus, I accept You as my Personal Saviour. Amen.
I urge you to pray like that, and if you did, please let me know. It would be so encouraging, and I could rejoice with you. Soon, my pdf library will be availble for dounload here. That means that you will be able to get hold lots fo good things to get you going in your new life.
Also, in future posts, I will be making available here, in episodes, my work on the Apocrypha. It is taking far longer than I thought, due to other committments, both writing and otherwise. In my next posting, I will be including some biographies, and some thoughts on how the things that made them so great can be available to us and how we can put them to work in our own lives. Until then, may God richly bless you.

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