SOPA RANCHERA AND THE KINGDOM: Mmm-mmm Good!

My wife makes a wonderful soup, Sopa Ranchera.  It is fabulous.  It has all kinds of good things in it.  Its suuuuper tasty and healthy.  Mmm-mmm good!  Quite often she will make a big pot of it and give half away to friends, neighbors, and people she hears are having a difficult time (death in a family, sick with the flu, just got out of the hospital, and so forth).  Recently, this past Friday, she made a big pot and gave half to some friends who both work full time and don’t go out to eat much.  They raved about the soup in the past and said they loved it.  Then, with the recipe in hand, our friend (wife) cooked-up a big pot of the soup and shared it with another friend (a third party) who was laid-up and not able to cook for herself or family for a while.  So my wife’s recipe passed on to our friend resulted in her friend also getting a pot of Sopa Ranchera. It made our friend so happy to pass it on and the friend of our friend loved it. 

When I heard about this I thought, WOW!  The gift to a friend made possible passing it to another. So a grace given empowered the giving of the grace again to another.  However, the written recipe, while very good, lacks any value until the heart of a person is moved to make the soup and pass it on, for the benefit and joy of another.  Then it is passed on again, because of the heart of the receiver is moved to be a giver and to be a means of grace all over again.

Thanks be to God.  This is how Kingdom living works.  The good news of the gospel and the love of God is shared with a friend.  The message of salvation by faith is passed on.  The opportunity of holiness of heart by faith is made real and shared.  Then it is shared again, and again.  It’s mmm-mmm good, so good that when God’s love is tasted, it is passed on with love, and then on again.  Jesus said the same to Peter (see John 21:15-19), Peter, do you love me . . . feed by sheep . . . follow me.”

PREMEDITATED LOVE

The word “premeditated” is almost always used in relation to murder.  Its use is not restricted though. The whole event of Christmas may be viewed as divinely premeditated.  While murder is the taking of life, Christmas is God's gift of everlasting life (John 6:40).  The irony is that man’s premeditated act of Christ’s murder made possible God’s premeditated gift of our salvation.  It was a reality that God envisioned and intended from the very beginning.  "For God so loved the world . . ."

 Christmas is far from a celebration of divine impulse.  Our Father did not make a spur of the moment decision to send Jesus his Son to earth for our salvation.  We see this in God’s premeditated plan for John The Baptist, the cousin of Jesus, to go before Jesus with the message of repentance and the good news of the Messiah’s coming.  Well before that, seven hundred years before, He told the prophet Isaiah about his plans (Isaiah 40:3 & 53).  God’s deep love for us has always been premeditated.  He planned our salvation from the very beginning. 

Over the millennia, our Father God has been faithful.  Now his prevenient grace calls us to respond.  How are we to respond to such lavish love?  We respond in his likeness as a people of intentional, premeditated love in celebration.  In his likeness, filled to the measure of the fullness of God, we arise each morning meditating on and remembering how long, wide, high, and deep is the love of God.  Then we go forward faithfully into his day with anticipatory thanks and praise as celebratory expressions of our love for Him and for all others.   We are a people of hope grounded in the optimism of God’s grace.  Hope anticipates. Hope expects.  Regardless of the circumstances, hope believes that God loves us and is faithful. 

Christmas focuses light on God’s premeditated love.  It calls us to celebrate his never failing love seen in His great gift of His Son and the continuing gift of the Holy Spirit.  Thanks be to God for his premeditated love!

THE GOSPEL IN SHORT OR SHORT SHRIFTED?

Jesus Christ came from the Father as pure, holy love incarnate, lived, loved, and laid down his life on the cross for our sins, resurrected and went back to the Father, gave himself to us again as the Holy Spirit and now gives us grace and power to live for Him restoring us to his likeness, the Imago Dei.

There are six distinct points in the Gospel In Short.  Anything less is the Gospel short shrifted:

THE GOSPEL IN SHORT 

• ·      Jesus Christ came from the Father as pure, holy love incarnate,
• ·      lived, loved, and laid down his life on the cross for our sins,
• ·      resurrected and went back to the Father,
• ·      gave himself to us again as the Holy Spirit
• ·      and now gives us grace and power to live for Him
• ·      restoring us to his likeness, the Imago Dei.

Hollywood portrays the Gospel story as only the first two points and usually (almost always) leaves out the third point, the resurrection and ascension.  The church mostly celebrates the first three points.  The two big events in the Christian calendar are Christmas and Easter.  The exercise of faith by many Christians takes the form of intellectual belief in the historical validity of the first three points. As a result, the Christian life remains only a set of cognitive ascents of belief regarding the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. This is the Gospel short shrifted.  It's like sharing only half the loaf of the Bread of Life. It is a Gospel that occasions only half the blessing of salvation when our salvation is not only from sin, but also to "the measure of the fullness of God" (Ephesians 3:19), holiness.

 

The tragedy of Christianity, especially in the West, is that too often only half of the Gospel story is understood, taught, and shared with others.  The fourth, fifth, and sixth points are ignored.  How is that possible when the gift of the Holy Spirit by the Father and the Son is huge?  In a Trinitarian perspective, the indwelling Holy Spirit is yet another way that God comes to us with a desire that we become complete and one with Him and with each other in Him.  Why ?  So that His unending, inexhaustible  pure and holy love can continue to be lavishly poured out into our lives giving us power over sin to live for Him.  In the context of his Holy Spirit dwelling in us, He restores us to what He envisioned from the very beginning, that we would be like Him in essence, holy love.

This is the full Gospel message.  It is a message about God’s heart for humanity.  For God so loved the world . . . By God’s grace, we must live and pass on the whole Gospel message.  We must share all of the Bread of Life.  Anything less is a half-hearted response to God’s love. 

Spirit of the Living God

Fall fresh on me. . .

Break me, melt me, mold me, fill me;

Spirit of the Living God

Fall Fresh on me.