Today is your encounter with a holy God

[Rick C. Hodgin]

This message is for those who will be saved. Listen to the
contrast between the false Christian, and the true, circumcised
heart, of the life changed from within by Jesus Christ:

From 15:10+
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5baWgvEqbeg&t=15m10s

God has a new relationship in store for you. No longer the
God you've mocked. He is opening your eyes to see Him as
He is, with a consuming fire that will purge your soul, and
bring about real change that will endure.

God awaits you, oh sleeper.

--
Rick C. Hodgin

[Rick C. Hodgin]

I was asked this today by someone in email:

-----[ Begin ]-----
> Xyz wrote:
> If God can do everything why does He need any of us to do something?

My reply:

He doesn't. We are invited to be a part of His Kingdom. It is a gift,
but it is also part of His plan.

Consider: If you were wealthy, and had great skill, you could build vast
buildings, large campuses, fill them with machines and devices to build all
manner of things from chairs and shoes to superconductors and everything in-
between. But, you would not want to build everything and do everything all
by yourself alone. You would want to hire people to come and do work in
your buildings, with your machines. It would be to your credit what you did
in building everything, but it would also be lonely to do it alone. You
would want companionship, fellowship, and for people to see what you have
done.

God created the whole universe. He has purposes for fellowship with us on
those scales.

We (mankind) were the only beings of all creation made in His image and
likeness. We literally look like God, just as your child would look like
you. Your child wouldn't look like a dog or a deer or a fish, and even
though God created angels and planets and gold and dolphins and horses and
everything else, we were the only creation made in His own image and
likeness.

God is creating for Himself a family. He made Adam first, and he was alone.
God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone," so He put Adam to sleep
and took a rib and made a woman for Adam and brought her to him... the first
marriage. Flash-forward to Jesus' death at the cross, and the thing He did
there on the cross was take away the sin of those who put their faith in
Him, so that they could be saved. The last thing that was done to Him
before He was taken down from that cross was for Him to be poked in the side
after He died, and out came blood and water, the very thing that comes out
during a new birth. Jesus, by His own death at the cross, birthed all of
those who believe in Him to eternity. We are called "the bride of Christ"
in the Bible, which means He made for Himself a bride, which was also taken
out of His own side at the cross in His death. He purified us and made us
spotless by His own grace and mercy, so that we could be with Him rightly
in Heaven.

We are all sinful wicked evil people. Even if we're not that way all the
time, there are times when we do horrible things. But God is and remains
perfect. He could not have a bride for Himself that was basically a cheap
woman, one undeserving of honor because of her bad behavior. So, God has
made His own bride completely spotless by His own sanctification.

There is such a teaching here, Xyz. It's the greatest conveyance of love
and creation we could ever know. It is God Himself making Himself a bride,
and making her full of honor and glory and chastity, which is that which
Christ gives us at the cross.

--
Rick C. Hodgin