Words of Wisdom for the Weekend ~ Do You Resemble Your Father?

"That you may be the children of your Father which is in heaven:

for he makes his sun to rise on the evil and on the good,

and sends rain on the just and on the unjust."

{Matthew 5:45}

"The Christian man has seen himself as utterly hopeless and condemned ; he has seen himself as a man who is utterly guilty before God and who has no claim whatsoever on His love. He has seen himself as an enemy of God and an outsider.  And then he has seen  and understood something about the free grace of God in Jesus Christ. He has seen God sending His only begotten Son into the world, and not only that, sending Him even to the death of the cross for Him, the rebel, the vile and guilty sinner. God did not turn His back on him, He went beyond that.  The Christian knows that all this happened for him, and it has changed his whole attitude towards God and his fellowmen. He has been forgiven when he did not deserve it . . ."  "The Christian is a man who believes he is going to look into the face of Christ. And when that great morning comes, when he looks into the face of One who endured the cruel cross for him inspite of his vileness, he does not want to remember, as he looks into those eyes, that he refused to forgive someone while he was here on earth, or that he did not love that other person, but despised and hated him and did everything he could against him . . . "  "I will tell you what a Christian is. He is one who has become a child of God and is in a unique relationship to God. That is what makes him 'special'. 'What do [you] do more than others?' He should be special, you should be special, because you are a special person.  You say breeding counts. If this is so, what is the breeding of a Christian? It is this, he has been born again, he has been born spiritually and he is a child of God. Did you notice the way our Lord puts it? 'I say to you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.' Why? 'That you may be like God'? No: 'That [you] may be the children'—and not even of God—'[you] may be  the children of your Father which is in heaven.' God has become Father to the Christian. He is not Father of the non-Christian; He is God to them and nothing else, the great Law-Giver. But to the Christian, God is Father. Then, again, our Lord does not say, 'Be ye perfect, even as God in heaven is perfect.' No, thank God, but 'Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Gather which is in heaven is perfect.'  If God is your Father you must be special, you cannot help it. If the divine nature is in you, and has entered into you through the Holy Spirit, you cannot be like anybody else, you must be different. And that is what we are told about the Christian everywhere in the Bible, that Christ dwells in your heart richly through the Holy Ghost. The Holy Spirit is in him, filling him, working His might power int he depths of his personality, teaching him His will. 'It is God which worketh in you both to will and to do.' And, above all, the love of God has been shed abroad in his heart through and by the Holy Spirit. He is bound to be special, he must be unique, he cannot help it.  Is there anything special about you?  I am not asking whether you are living a good, moral, upright life. I am not asking whether you say your prayers, or whether you go to church regularly. I am asking none of these things. There are people who do all that and still are not Christians. If that is all, what do [you] do more than others, what is there special about you? Is there anything of this special quality about you?  Is there something about your Father about you?  It is a fact that children sometimes do not resemble their parents very closely. People look at them and say: 'Yes, there is something of his father there after all.' or 'I see something of the mother; not very much, but there is something.' Is there just that much of God about you? That is the test. If God is your Father, somewhere of another, in some form or other, the family likeness will be there, the traces of your Parentage will inevitably appear.  What is there special about you?  God grant that as we examine ourselves we may discover something of the uniqueness and the separateness that not only divides us from others, but which proclaims that we are children of our Father which is in heaven." ~ David Martyn-Lloyd-Jones, Studies in the Sermon on the Mount [emphasis added]

{email subscribers: listen to 'Keep Making Me' by Sidewalk Prophets by clinking here.}  "Make me broken So I can be healed ‘Cause I’m so calloused And now I can’t feel I want to run to You With heart wide open Make me broken Make me empty So I can be filled ‘Cause I’m still holding Onto my will And I’m completed When you are with me Make me empty [Chorus:] ‘Til You are my one desire ‘Til You are my one true love ‘Til You are my breath, my everything Lord, please keep making me Make me lonely So I can be Yours ‘Til I want no one More than You, Lord ‘Cause in the darkness I know You will hold me Make me lonely"

{Words for Wisdom for the Weekend: These are words that I have been challenged or encouraged by that I have read throughout my week that I kept pondering; words that I couldn't get off my mind and heart throughout my week. 

For other Words of Wisdom for the Weekend posts see here.}