Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.

Matthew 5:17-18

For too long, our theology has been laid out by theologians, and not by children.  Ask any eight-year old what it means that the Kingdom of Heaven is like leaven hidden in dough means, and they’ll tell you that it means, more or less, that the Kingdom of Heaven is like leaven!  It takes a real grown-up to tell you, after reading the words of Jesus, that the Kingdom of Heaven is anything other than what He just said it was.

What does the Kingdom resemble?  A little bit of yeast!  (Matthew 13:33).  What must we do to have life within ourselves?  Eat and drink His blood (John 6:53).  Simple, eh?

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When all is stripped away, and nothing else remains, you can trust in His love.  His love remains, when everything else is shaken (Romans 8:37-39), and by it, we live without fear (1 John 4:18).

Into His love we commend ourselves each day.  Further into His glory, His goodness, His mercy.

All we need is His love.  Our only true possession in this life is this place of union.

The life of the flesh doesn’t matter in the end.  What matters is Eternity.  According to Isaiah 40, all of man’s pomp and pride fall away into the dust and ashes they came from, and all that remains is faith, hope, and love (1 Corinthians 13:13).

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For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.  For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.  He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.

This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil.  For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.  But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God.

John 3:16-21

This seems to me one of the most commonly referenced and the littlest truly studied passages in the Bible.  It is one of the best tools for evangelism, for it sums up the entirety of the message of Jesus in one little place.  It may be that it is just this writer’s perception that it is one of the littlest studied passages, it maybe that so few people do much in depths studies in the Gospels or otherwise, or, it may just be that it seems that this section is so commonly understood, it must, of course, be understood already.  When we come to think over these words, we can wrongly assume we understand them all.  Yet, as there is no shadow of turning in God, it stands to reason, that if we could plumb the depths of any passage, without taking it grossly out of context, and know the fullness of the weight of the words in the realm of Heaven, we would know Him much better than we know now.  Suffice to say, these words are spirit, and they are life.

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By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible.

Hebrews 11:3

The whole of the Christian walk is in the unseen, which manifests into the seen.

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Matthew 13:3-8

Then he told them many things in parables, saying: “A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.

Proverbs 4:23 says to keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issuings of life.  Jesus, when confronting Peter after His  resurrection, after that Peter had denied Him, asked Him three times, “Do you love me?” (John 21:15-17).  Three times, He asked Peter if he loved Him the way He himself loved Peter, unconditional, undemanding love.

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There is only one way to walk consistently in the power of God, and that is focus.  What a man beholds, he sees that thing, and it is magnified in his imagination.

If a man set gaze upon it, he can possess it, though it is costly.

Consider the following:

Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.

Matthew 7:7

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One thing I have asked of the LORD, this one thing I seek:

That I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life,

that I may gaze upon His beauty,

and inquire of Him in His temple.

Psalm 27:4

The House of the Lord is my home; I have none other.

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He who thinks he knows something does not yet know as he ought.

1 Corinthians 8:2 (paraphrase)

The most interesting thing about the gospel is that, you could have all the words right, you could say all the right things, have all the right demeanor and mannerism, you could know when to shout and how to dance, but you could be just as much of a devil as Judas was.  That’s right.  It’s what’s on the inside that counts.

You don’t have what it takes.  You never have, and you never will.  If you can do it, it isn’t God, and it needs to die.

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This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God.

John 3:19-21

This is the verdict of Christianity, of God, and of the cross.  This is the judgement.  Jesus didn’t come into the world to condemn the world, but that through Him, it might be saved.  Yet, why didn’t people come to Him?  By and large, they thought they were righteous, they thought they were the ones who needed to be exalted, they were afraid of losing what they had.

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But seek ye first the Kingdom of Heaven and His Righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.

Matthew 6:33

There are many things we see in church today.

We have programs.  We have buildings.  We have ministries.  We have ministers.  But seek first the Kingdom.

James 3:16 says that where there is jealousy and selfish ambition, there is confusion and every evil thing.  Competition between brothers rises, looking to a particular gifting or position in order to get attention abound.  Attempts to fill unmet needs in the soul by some level of attainment in the spirit are present in our ministers.

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