Blog In Audio:
Greetings,
As leaders we lead others in the path of knowing God and His love. God desires for all to experience His salvation in all things. That salvation is not just a salvation from hell or a salvation to heaven. It’s a salvation of each one’s soul. It is a salvation of our thoughts, reasonings, imaginations, emotions, and desires. The fruit of our salvation is seen in the testimony of love through good works in Christ that exhibit His love in all that we are and do. Leaders don’t oppose lies. They speak the truth in love and lies oppose that truth, only to reap the consequence of that lie.
As leaders we set an example in trusting who God is. God is love therefore all that He does is an act of love. Love is the motivator of His character, nature, way, power, and authority.
1 John 4:16 And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.
God is love, so what is the wrath and judgment of God? The wrath of God is upon anything that destroys God’s life. God gives life therefore anything that destroys life is destroyed by His presence. Death comes against His life, but death is destroyed by that life. God’s wrath is against death.
1 John 5:11 And this is the testimony: that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. 12 He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.
Anyone who comes to God and embraces Him experiences the life of God. Anything that comes against the life of God experiences the wrath of God because the wrath of God is against all wickedness and unrighteousness that suppresses the truth with a lie. God’s ambition is not to destroy. His ambition promotes life in all things. He gives life, breath, and all things. The ambition of anything that opposes God is destructive.
Romans 1:18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, 19 because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them.
When people embrace a way of life that is contrary to God’s way of love, they experience the wrath of God that is against the ungodliness and unrighteousness that they embrace. God doesn’t hate people. He hates what destroys people. Earthly, sensual, and demonic influences seek to destroy what is heavenly, spiritual, and God-inspired. The things of death seek to reject and destroy the life of God, but the life of God destroys death. His light destroys darkness. The attributes of God, our life-giving so when men experience the wrath of God it’s because they choose to attach to something that God knows brings death. As leaders, our focus is not upon destroying ungodliness or unrighteousness. It is upon promoting godliness and righteousness that comes by an internal intimate relationship with God in Christ.
What are the judgments of God? Because God is love we can trust His judgments. If He says, don’t touch that, it will kill you, and we touch it, we will experience the judgment that God made concerning that thing. It’s not God who kills us. It’s the thing that God told us not to touch that kills us. God’s judgments are preemptive not reactive. He makes a judgment of things even as we make judgments of things. We make judgments of things based upon our own experiences, our expectations, what happened or what didn’t happen, because we by nature choose a tree of the knowledge of good and evil and seek to be good in our own site. We end up choosing the judgments of ourselves and others based upon our own views of right and wrong and not upon the judgments that God made. We love our judgment more than His, and thus we experience the negative consequences for not trusting God’s judgments. God’s judgments are judgments from and for a tree of life, not death.
God revealed His ultimate judgment upon our cross when Jesus said, Father forgive them they don’t know what they’re doing. He gave us a judgment of mercy because the truth is, we didn’t know what we were doing. Had we known the love of God we would have willingly embraced Jesus, His Son. Our rejection of Jesus was a rejection of life and rejection of life has a consequence of death. But Jesus made a way for us to exit that judgment of death by receiving His judgment of love. He had the Father‘s heart so He said, Father forgive them. They don’t know what they’re doing. He made a judgment of mercy with an outcome of eternal life for all who believe.
So when we don’t choose the judgment of God, His mercy and love, we end up with a consequence of other judgments. Those judgments carry a consequence of death. God doesn’t kill us, our deception of embracing what opposes His character carries a consequence for not trusting His judgment. Choosing what He has judged as death will kill us. Let this be our understanding and focus as leaders that we might lead others into the path of knowing God’s eternal life in all things. It’s not a path of opposing darkness, but a path of choosing to shine with the light.
Food For Thought,
Ted J. Hanson
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