hebrews

The Great Inside, 2025

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It’s 2025, 3 days in… Thank God it’s Friday – that sentiment is great and the relief of whatever this relief is, going into a weekend, is palatable. Thank God it’s Friday is a known in a world of unknowns, especially 3 days in what we think is a new fresh year… yet already there’s been tragedies and continuing wars, fear and fear mongering hype, and hype for everything including the weather… the hype there comes deeper than the snow…

Deeper than snow or hype is evil, and we have seen enough this year alone, it’s sad that we deal with a broken world and there’s not going to be solid relief until Jesus returns (I urge “any cloud now” as we pray “Lord return quickly”) and because Jesus will put the devil out of business permanently, once and for all. We DO need to know Jesus already commanded Satan to backdown and we have to call upon Jesus to keep moving. We have hope day to day in Peace that people are trying to forge, us too – that’s where we also should be the peacemakers. “Blessed are the peacemakers“, Jesus said, “for they shall be called children of God.” Most of all we need to be the children the Lord calls us to be.

And that’s where, in this new year, we can find our strength, in Jesus as PRINCE OF PEACE. Jesus, as Lord, understands us and the efforts to be peacemakers, especially urging us to see further than the now. We know of future peace and can apply that ourselves mentally for His sake. Like a blessing of new years, or any day off, or a Friday on a Friday, we can apply a peace mission as an overlay each day and keep moving forward. 

Finding peace as a mission is not an impossible task like pushing an elephant up the stairs or bending spoons as a magic trick, both of which are mentioned in a great song by REM, “The Great Beyond” – singing about looking for answers in the great beyond, whatever the lyricist thought that is or was. The “trick” of living is not in mastering tricks or ease of living as much as it is in living in ease with knowing God’s in charge. We might be in a milieu of a messy world now, which hasn’t been non-messy ever since the Garden of Eden, but we can pause to pursue the peace inside, our peace which a PEACEMAKER made that for us, HolySpirit-style, and that is by Jesus Himself. Jesus IS a child of God, Who is God Himself. We must hold on to Him. 

The Great Beyond has nothing compared to looking at JESUS’S FACE RIGHT IN FRONT OF US – better yet is feeling His arms wrapped around us. 

I’ll listen to the song of the Great Beyond – but for this year, I will cling to Jesus in the Great Inside. Jesus put His peace protectively inside. The Great Inside. 2025…

Amen

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Hebrews KJV chapter about Jesus, 10:20-25, By a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh; And having an high priest over the house of God; Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering; (for he is faithful that promised;) And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works: Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching.

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The fun haunting REM song The Great Beyond, for the movie Man on the Moon:https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=CzVDLAmoUkQ&si=zLjaiR_Y2Aw43LvU

More than an Olympic Race of Faith

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I love the Olympics! Yet there’s one race longer and more consuming: our race of faith…

And a torch never to go out: “our God is a consuming fire.”…

A mountain we don’t climb but has come down to get us: “Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem”…

A crowd unbelievable in number and roar of support: “an innumerable company of angels”…

God the Judge of all, calls us His children “to the spirits of just men made perfect“…

And our torch bearer of Holy Spirit…

and our driver, deliverer, pit crew, water-giver and pick up wagon if/when we crash in our race: Jesus “the Mediator of the new covenant”…

And along the journey of our race?

“Pursue peace with all people”…

In the games, we must show up in the right Olympic uniforms. In life? Pursue “holiness, without which no one will see the Lord…” 

Don’t let yourself get in the way of the Way!

Amen

Hebrews 12:1-3 NKJV

Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

Hebrews 12:12-29 NKJV

Renew Your Spiritual Vitality

Therefore strengthen the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be dislocated, but rather be healed.

Pursue peace with all people, and holiness, without which no one will see the Lord: looking carefully lest anyone fall short of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up cause trouble, and by this many become defiled; lest there be any fornicator or profane person like Esau, who for one morsel of food sold his birthright. For you know that afterward, when he wanted to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no place for repentance, though he sought it diligently with tears.

The Glorious Company

For you have not come to the mountain that may be touched and that burned with fire, and to blackness and darkness and tempest, and the sound of a trumpet and the voice of words, so that those who heard it begged that the word should not be spoken to them anymore. (For they could not endure what was commanded: “And if so much as a beast touches the mountain, it shall be stoned or shot with an arrow.” And so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, “I am exceedingly afraid and trembling.”)

But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven, to God the Judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect, to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than that of Abel.

Hear the Heavenly Voice

See that you do not refuse Him who speaks. For if they did not escape who refused Him who spoke on earth, much more shall we not escape if we turn away from Him who speaks from heaven, whose voice then shook the earth; but now He has promised, saying, “Yet once more I shake not only the earth, but also heaven.” Now this, “Yet once more,” indicates the removal of those things that are being shaken, as of things that are made, that the things which cannot be shaken may remain.

Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us have grace, by which we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear. For our God is a consuming fire.