Eternity is a Long Time

  As we enter this Advent season we naturally focus on the birth of Jesus. However, Luke’s story of the birth does not start in chapter 2 but in chapter 1 of his Gospel and it highlights one of the most vivid contrasts of “heart attitude” among the faithful.   This is represented in the responses of Zecharias and Mary to the angel Gabriel. A quick read of what each of these people said to Gabriel seems similar. But when you look at the way it is worded, and what God expects from His people, you see why the Gabriel deals differently with them.   Zecharias was an older man who had been a priest in the Temple for many years. His knowledge of Scripture was immense – easily dwarfing our own. Mary was a teenager who, likely, had no formal training in the Scripture . Knowledge, as we will see, does not equal faith.   When Zecharias went into the Holy of Holies to exercise his priestly duty, Gabriel appeared to him with an appearance that must have almost stopped Zecharias’...

  There are so many things that we do that are known but to God. There are some good things and some real bad things that we have done that absolutely no one knows anything about – except God. God will judge you for all those things you did wrong, each and every one, unless you put on the righteousness of Jesus. There is nothing you can do, on your own, that can save you from this judgment. The great thing is, once you open your heart to Jesus and trust Him, you can deal with all the stuff life throws at you so much better. Jesus is your absolute best friend and comforter.

God's timing is always perfect for us. Unfortunately, so many of us are too anxious and too self-centered to realize that He sees the entire picture and knows every possible outcome from every possible action.  We, on the other hand, just have our narrow, imperfect view of things filtered through our illogical, irrational, emotional brains. We simply don't want to trust His timing. When you truly absorb the above truths, you appreciate God's longsuffering nature with us.  When we get to eternity and we are able to look back at our lives we will see that when we let God handle it, great things happened that we were never aware of. However, when we tried to "help" God by doing things by ourselves on our timetable we actually made things worse.  For Biblical references of this you just have to look at Abraham and Sarah. They thought it was a great idea to have Abraham have relations with Sarah's handmaiden, Hagar, in order to "help" God get them an heir...