Perfectly Helpless

"The cubs are born blind and helpless."  This is the sample sentence for "helpless" in the thesaurus.   Other words that can be used in place of "helpless" are incapable, powerless, impotent, and vulnerable. These words, as good a description as they are, still don't convey the completeness of this adjective.  Therefore, I also looked up "completely" in the thesaurus: totally, entirely, wholly, thoroughly, utterly, absolutely and perfectly.  I chose "perfectly" as you can't get any more complete than perfect.  But, as a person that sees more clearly using pictures, even those words as good, solid and simple as they are, cannot convey the magnitude of the point that I want to get across in this post.  I will, then, use an illustration to make it more imaginable.  For we do, indeed, need to get this.

The verse I want to illustrate is from Romans 5:6: "For while we were still helpless..."  Helpless!  Imagine a newly born infant lying on his back or stomach on a bed, the floor or whatever.  He is absolutely powerless to do even one thing to change his circumstances.  He can't turn over, get up, feed himself, take care of himself or survive at all.  He is "perfectly helpless"!  That is us apart from the power of God.  We are "perfectly helpless".  "For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly."

Those who read this post were or are like this helpless infant.  If you are in Christ, it is not a position you powered yourself into.  And if you are an unbeliever, you have no ability of your own to accept the claims of Jesus Christ without His divine power energizing your understanding.  We are, everyone, helpless.  The people are born blind and helpless.  And I will add, born with a sin nature that will need transforming.  That transformation has been gifted us by God and God alone.  "God demonstrates His own love for us in this that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us."  (Romans 5:8)

Perfectly helpless though perfectly powered by the hand of God through Jesus Christ our Substitute and the Holy Spirit, our divine and daily Enabler!  Praise God for His unspeakable gift.

Heaven Bound Part II

Francis Schaeffer goes on to say in his book, True Spirituality, "Can't you imagine this man as he came back from heaven?  He had seen it as a propositional truth, as a brute fact.  He had been there, and looked at it, and then come back.  Would anything ever have looked the same to him again?  It is as though he had died.  It is as though he had been raised from the dead.  Just as the Mount of Transfiguration gives us a different perspective when we are in the perspective of the kingdom of God, how different this man's perspective would have been all his life.  The constant pressure to conform to the world about us, the social pressure and every other kind of pressure of our day--surely it would have been broken.  How could he conform to this, which is so marred, so broken, so caught up in revolution against God, so disgusting?  How could he, in comparison with what he had seen?  What would the praise of the world be worth when one had stood in the presence of God?  The wealth of the world, what would it look like beside the treasures of heaven?  Man longs for power.  But what is earthly power after one has seen the reality of heaven and the power of God?  All things would look different.  Sure all of this is involved in the statement that we are to live by faith now, as though we had already died, and already been raised from the dead."

So, what can be added to that??  Amen.  Let's do this!

Heaven Bound, Part I

In the disciple's prayer (Matthew 6:9-15), Jesus instructs them to pray, "thy kingdom come".  John MacArthur says in his commentary on Matthew that "our greatest desire should be to see the Lord reigning as King in His kingdom....His program and His plan should be the preoccupation of our lives and of our prayers."  He goes on to say that "sinful man could not be a part of a divine reign.  That is why we do not advance God's kingdom by trying to improve human society.  Many good and worthy causes deserve the support of Christians, but in supporting these causes we neither build the earthly kingdom of Jesus Christ or bring it closer.  Even the best of such things are but holding actions that help retard the corruption that will always and inevitably characterize human societies and human kingdoms,  until the Lord returns to establish His own perfect kingdom."

In thinking about God's perfect kingdom and our purpose in prayer to call for that kingdom to come, another great writer sheds light that correlates with this kingdom subject.  What if you died and became a part of God's perfect kingdom and came back to earth.  How would that change your thinking?  Dr. Schaeffer writes, in reference to Romans 6:10-11, "by faith we are to live now as though we have already died...live by faith now...as though we had been raised already from death...in our thoughts and lives now we are to live as though we had already died, been to heaven, and come back again as risen."

For my 200th post, I do something I've never done: Part I.   I will continue another time to think a bit more of the subject of dying, being raised to heaven and coming back to earth.  This is strictly hyperbole but I believe it is very important pondering in order to evaluate our present Christian thought, words and work.  We must be wise and efficient for there will be a time, a day when all opportunity will be over.