When I pulled up that 4/2 entry, Father pointed out to me that we spent a lot of time speaking on how His church has gotten out of alignment, but only a mention of how to get back into 'realignment'. He gave me another page as a 'hit list' on how to get back into realignment. I had what would take about 20 - 30 minutes to talk about (or more). Pastor ended up praying for people's needs that day (just about the entire service) and as I noticed that time was slipping away I said to myself "OK, don't think we're going to get to this today. Then as we were winding down my pastor says "OK. Buck is now going to bring us an overview of "Heavenly Alignment." I said to myself "Whoa! Lord, I don't want to keep these folks here any longer than necessary. I need you help me tighten this half hour or so presentation up a bit." A long story short, Father presented all the points of the information I had planned on, with examples, in less than twelve minutes. He didn't use a lot of detail, but enough words to get the point across.
More important, in preparing for this event, again, Father had reminded me how little time was spent on fixing the 'misalignment' of His body. Sooooo today we're going to spend some more time focusing on how to get back into proper alignment with our heavenly Father.
Father started with how our alignment, our relationship with HIm became broken to begin with. Adam and Eve were in perfect alignment with Father until they they 'sinned and ate the 'forbidden' fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God gave them a promise that He would re-establish that alignment, or relationship (Gen. chapter 3). Since that time, Father has been trying to re-establish that relationship. I say 'trying' because He has to deal with us (humans) and He did give us 'freewill' (to choose what we want to do [Joshua 24:14-15]). We have the freedom to tell God "no". Not a good choice, but we can do that of our own freewill.
To help us re-establish our relationship with Him, Father shows us throughout the Old Testament how much He loves us hoping that we might come to the realization that in order to please Him and have a relationship with Him we must yield our hearts to Him. Because Father is a Spirit, we have to realize that we need to worship Him in Spirit and in truth (John 4:23). To help us understand this concept He gave Moses the "Law" to help the children of Israel understand what they needed to do (as well as us today), and the culmination of this understanding comes at the 'cross of Jesus'.
A man has no greater love than to give his life for his friends (John 15:13) and Jesus did just that on the cross. And because the Father and the Son are one (John 1:1 & chapter 14), when we love Jesus, we love Father and as we will see, love is the basis of realignment.
In the Jewish temple of Jesus' time, as it is called "Herod's temple" was broken down into four basic parts, five if you count the area outside the temple. Upon first entering one came into the "Women's" courtyard. He would then pass through a gate entering the "Priest's" courtyard where they offered the sacrifices up to the Lord and in Priest's courtyard stood the "Holy Place". The Holy Place housed the sanctuary and the "Holy of Holies". The sanctuary is where they offered up incense to the Lord and stored all the paraphernalia used in the worship services, clothing, etc. The Holy of Holies was God's room, in the Holy Place, separated from the sanctuary by a curtain, or a veil, and into which only the high priest could enter once a year to make an offering for the people's sin. When Jesus died on the cross this veil was torn from the top to the bottom (Matt. 27:50-51) giving each man (and woman) access to the Holy of Holies through Jesus Christ. As Jesus is our high priest, let us therefore come boldly before God's Throne (Hebrews 4:14-16).
And now, we're going to talk a little more about how we can come back into "Heavenly alignment" with our Father through Jesus Christ, our Lord.
We must accept the fact that God exists (Hebrews 11:6) and that He desires that all men be saved and come into the knowledge of truth, or should I say into fellowship with Him (1 Timothy 2:3-4), or we have nowhere to start.
Father reminded me of the story of the man with the swept and garnished house out whom a devil had been cast (Luke 11:24-26). The unclean spirit wanders about looking for a place to rest and when he can find one he goes back to the man out of whom he had been cast. Finding the house (man) clean, neat and tidy, the devil brings seven more spirits with him and moves back in making the man's new condition worse than before. In other words, if we have a devil (habit or practice) cast out of our lives and even though we're looking pretty good we are susceptible to more problems unless we fill that cleaned out, empty hole with something else. The best way is to fill that open space with the knowledge of God and His love so we can live in accordance to His will. This in turn gives us the strength to resist and protects us against further assaults of the evil one.
To get the ball rolling, we need to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness (Matthew 6:33) and that will bring us to the first step in our journey - realizing that God is the answer to all things.
Of course, that first step is to let Jesus into our hearts (Romans 10:9). If we haven't let the Lord Jesus into our lives, it will be most difficult to get back into alignment when we have no clue what we're trying to align with o how to do it. To do this, we pray a 'sinner's prayer' where we acknowlede that Jesus is the Messiah, He died on the cross to cleanse (redeem) us from our sin nature and sins. Through His blood he 'buys' us back from sin bondage and brings us into the freedom of God's kingdom so we repent of those sins, inviting Jesus into our lives. We determine not to go back into those sinful actions and dedicate our lives to Christ Jesus (Romans 10:9).
Then we seek Him with all our hearts (Matthew 22:36-40). We must decide that God is first and foremost in our hearts and our thinking, that everything revolves around His love which is what we should now be endeavoring to learn exactly what that is and how to apply it to our lives (John 15:1-15).
As we learn and apply God's love into our lives, we discover that this is bringing us into a closer relationship with Him. We need to renew our minds daily (Romans 12:2) by studying to show ourselves approved (2 Timothy 2:15) and that we aren't ignorant of the ways of our Lord. Jesus said "I am the living bread ... the bread I will give is My flesh, which I will give for the life of the world. (John 6:51)". And Jesus in the flesh is the word of God (John 1:1 & 14) and the written word (the bible) is our account of the living Word.
It is not enough to 'just' hear the Word of God because our pastor or an evangelist comes in and preaches a good word, but we have to know the bible for ourselves (2 Timothy 2:15) and be as King David who kept God's word in his heart (Proverbs 4:20-21). We have to 'read' as well as hear.
People will know that we are moving back into alignment with the Father because we are striving to become one with Him through Jesus (John 15:1-10), that is we come to realize that Jesus is the vine and we are His branches (extensions of His love) and we show this by living in that same love because we have grown to understand what it actually is (John chapters 14, 15 & 16). Chapters 14, 15, 16 & 17 of the Gospel of John go into great detail of how we ought to 'hide' our lives in Jesus Christ so we can become 'one' with Him (and the Father), which brings us back into the heavenly alignment Father has intended for our lives.
We need to know the Word for ourselves so we can apply it into our own lives. Learning and knowing the Word begins with the individual, then grows into the family and then beyond. Imagine what it would be like if the whole world truly lived for Jesus.
A slack line means the circles move higher or lower than the center line. The Father and the Son are at the ends of that string of circles (at the beginning of this week's entry), bringing the line taut so that all the circles are brought into perfect alignment. After all, broad is the way to destruction while straight is the gate and narrow the way that leads to life (Matthew 7:13-14).
Choose 'LIFE' as in 'living' for and through Jesus.
Amen
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