He would often ask, “Did God say anything through you yesterday worth repeating?” , or words to that effect. Obviously he and I had a similar sense of humor, though as Pentecostal pastors we did expect God to give us words to say in the pulpit that were not pre-planned. I have no idea why that phrase has stuck in my mind down through the years. I would probably now answer by quoting the first verse of the well-known hymn “How Firm a Foundation”:

I now have a much higher value of God’s Word and its foundation for every part of a believer’s life than I did back then. “What more can He say than to you He hath said…?” We need to take a real solid stand on the Word at every turn and twist of our lives. “If God said it, that settles it” is the reality. “If God said it, I believe it, and that settles it” may be a fact in a particular situation but it is not the truth. There are many things that God has said in His Word that will happen whether I believe it or not. A good example is Hebrews 13:6 — “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”

Your daily life will be enriched if you believe what He said, but even if you don’t He will never leave you. “If we are faithless, he remains faithful; he cannot deny himself” (II Timothy 2:13 NKJV). “If we give up on him, he does not give up — for there’s no way he can be false to himself” (Message Bible).

The chorus goes…

And the third verse says…

The song is presumed to be based upon Ezekiel 34:26, a prophecy given to Israel, “And I will make them and the places all around my hill a blessing, and I will send down the showers in their season; there shall be showers of blessing.” The problem is that I’m not living in Ezekiel but in Acts 29 (still being written), and in the current administration of God’s grace He tells me that I am “blessed… in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 1:3). Can you see the challenge?

God will honor His word to Israel, but His word to me is that I’m already blessed! So why sing a song that contradicts what God says about New Testament Christians? “Pick a verse and write a song” is still a favorite method with today’s praise and worship groups, regardless of whether it fits with who we are and what we have in Christ.

In one hymnal I found an attempt by an unnamed author to bring the song into present-day reality…

Now that’s more like it! — Peter Wade.

Fanny Crosby got it right when she wrote that what we have now is a “foretaste” of the Father’s provision for our eternity. And at the start of yet another year it is a good thought to dwell upon. Writing about a new heaven and new earth, John wrote: “And he who was seated on the throne said, Behold, I am making all things new” (Revelation 21:5 ESV).

The word “new” here means “new in quality” (Wuest), and is the same word used in II Corinthians 5:17 where Paul had the revelation of the New Creation: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he [or she] is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” The Amplified Bible renders it “the fresh and new has come!” That is, something “quite different from anything previously existing, not merely recent, which is expressed by a different Greek word” (JFB). [The word is also used in Matthew 13:52.]

Interestingly, we read “the old has passed away” (II Corinthians 5:17) and “the first heaven and the first earth had passed away” (Revelation 21:1). This statement is given to emphasize that in both cases, our individual life and the whole universe, the change is not just a “paint” job, a touch-up here and there to give the illusion of freshness, but there has been and will be a complete change. I find the hardest truth for Christians to believe is that “the old has passed away,” and this is because the memory of the old is still in their brain, yet the spiritual reality is that the old has gone, vanished. You are a new creature in Christ!

In the same way, the old year has passed, vanished. We will never recover the moments again. Yet ahead lies a new year of opportunity, of challenge, of growth. What will it bring? You will hear a lot about the end of the world coming in 2012, December 21st actually. That is the end of the Mayan calendar, produced by an advanced civilization wiped out by the invasion of a “Christian” nation. What will happen? The calendar will flip over and start again, just like ours will on January 1st. What does it mean to a Christian? Nothing. Our times are in His hands!

So as a Christian believer, I am going to echo Fanny Crosby and in the New Year enjoy the “foretaste” and remind myself that “I in my Savior am happy and blest.” May the coming year be a prosperous one for you and yours, in health, wealth, and happiness.

Above, was the sweetest music, the music of heaven. Three times the music of heaven is mentioned: at the creation, at this coming of Jesus, at the coming crowning of Jesus in John’s Revelation. Below, the only music was that of the babe’s holy young mother, God’s chosen one to mother His Son, crooning to her babe; and the gentle lowing in minor key of the oxen whose stall He shared. Above, the great glory shining, the messenger of God speaking a message of peace and love. Below, only darkness and silence.

Among the cultured leaders of the city of David, and of Solomon, and of God’s once glorified temple, there were no ears for the message, nor eyes for the glory. They had gone deaf and blind Godward long before. To them came no message, for no door was open. To simple men of nature who lived with the stars and the hills and the sheep, came the new shining of the glory, and the wondrous messenger and message. Their doors were open. They practised looking up. Of course neither city nor country mattered, nor matters. God always speaks into the upturned ear and looks into the upturned face.

And so Jesus came. With all of its contrasts it was a winsome coming. A pure young mother nursing her babe; the babe with its sweet wondrous face, a fresh act of God indeed; the simple unselfish cattle; the bright stars; the Glory shining; the sudden flood of music; the Lord’s messenger; the message — a very winsome coming.

He came into the peculiar climate of Jerusalem. Jerusalem is Judea. Out of the Babylonian remnant of Israel had come great men, true leaders, with great zeal for the city, and the temple, and the temple service, and for the law. They made the mould in which this later Jerusalem was cast. But that mould retaining its old form, had now become filled with the baser metals. The high ideals of the new makers of the city had shrunk into mere ideas. The small, strongly entrenched ruling circle were tenacious sticklers for traditions as interpreted by themselves. That fine old word conservative (with an underneath meaning of “what we prefer”) was one of their sweetest morsels. Underneath their great pride as Moses’ successors, the favored custodians of the nation’s most sacred treasures, was a passionate love for gold. The temple service was secretly organized on the profit-sharing plan, with the larger share, as usual, for the organizers.

That hardest thing in the whole range of human action to overcome, either by God or man or the devil — prejudice — they had, in the Simon-pure form, superlatively refined. The original treasure of God’s Word was about as much overlaid and hidden away by writings about it as — it has been in some other times. Of course they were looking for a Messiah, the one hope of their sacredly guarded literature. But He must be the sort that they wanted, and — could use.

Herod the King was a man of great ability, great ambition, great passion, and great absence of anything akin to conscience. But the virtual ruler was the high priest. His office was bargained for, bought and sold for the money and power it controlled in the way all too familiar to corrupt political life in all times, and not wholly unknown in our own. The old spiritual ideals of Moses, and Samuel, preached amid degeneracy by Elijah and Isaiah, were buried away clear out of sight by mere formalism, though still burning warm and tender in the hearts of a few. This was the atmosphere of the old national capital into which Jesus came.

Then it was that Jesus came. Strange to say, there is a shadow over His coming from the beginning. A gray chilling shadow of the sort of gray that a stormy sky sometimes shows, gray tingeing into slaty black. Yet it was the coming that made the shadow. It takes light, and some thick thing like a block, and some distance for perspective, to make a shadow. The nearer the light to the block thing the blacker the shadow. Here the light came close to some thick blocks; of stupid thickness; human blocks grown more toughly thick by the persistent resisting of any such transparent thing as light.

This was a foggy shadow. A fog is always made by influences from below. A lowering temperature chills the air, and brings down its moisture in the shape of a gray subtle pervasive mist, that blurs the outlook, and often gathers and holds black smoke, and mean poisonous odors and gases from bog and swamp. Such a fog endangers both health and life. This was just such a shadowing fog. There was a decided drop in the temperature, a sudden chill, a fog formed that sucked up the poison of the marshes, and threatened to stifle the baby breath of the new-born King.

A subtle, intangible, but terribly sure something haunts and hunts the King from the first. His virgin mother is suspected by the one nearest her of the most serious offense that can be charged against a woman. The shadow that later grew to inky blackness came ahead of the man, and, under the stable eaves, waited grimly His arrival. The feverish green of Herod’s eyes will be content with nothing but a new, bright, running red, and plenty of it. Satan’s plan of killing was started early. He was not particular about the way it was done. The first attempt was at Bethlehem. The venomous spittle oozed out there first. But he must move along natural channels: just now, a murderous king’s jealous dread of a possible rival.

The first hint of the actual coming of the long expected One is from the star-students of the east. Their long journey and eager questioning bring the birth of Jesus before the official circle of the nation. It is most significant that His birth causes at once a special meeting of the nation’s ruling body. Herod was troubled, of course. But — all Jerusalem was troubled with him. Here is a surprising sympathy. It reflects at once vividly the situation. It was strangely suggestive that news of their King coning should trouble these national leaders. These devout star-watchers are wise in the source of information they came to. These leaders knew. They quickly pointed out the spot where the coming One should be born.

A pure virgin under cruel suspicion, a roomless inn, a village filled with heart-broken mothers, a quick flight on a dark night to a foreign land by a young mother and her babe, the stealthy retirement into a secluded spot away from his native province, a fellow feeling between a red-handed king and the nation’s leaders — ugh! an ugly, deadly fog.

From the book Quiet Talks About Jesus by S.D. Gordon.

Every Christian is a citizen of heaven, for the Father “has rescued us out from the power of darkness and has transported us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Colossians 1:13-14). And every believer is a member of the royal family, “For God knew his people in advance, and he chose them to become like his Son, so that his Son would be the firstborn, with many brothers and sisters. And having chosen them, he called them to come to him. And he gave them right standing with himself, and he promised them his glory. What can we say about such wonderful things as these? If God is for us, who can ever be against us?” (Romans 8:29-31 NLT).

Now, can you see the difference between being a citizen and a member of the royal family? I’m not putting down the importance of our citizenship. I’m simply emphasising the advantage of seeing yourself living in the palace with all its privileges. I’m proud to be a citizen of my country, well, most of the time, but I’ll never be a member of the royal family. Yet as a believer I am one of the “many brothers and sisters” of Christ Jesus, who is the son of the King of Kings! So I’m in the royal family. Glory!

Decades ago, when a boy, we would sing at church, “My Father is rich in houses and lands, He holdeth the wealth of the world in His hands! Of rubies and diamonds, of silver and gold, His coffers are full, He has riches untold. [Chorus:] I’m a child of the King, A child of the King: With Jesus my Savior, I’m a child of the King” (Harriet E. Buell, 1877). We also sang, “I walk with the King, hallelujah! I walk with the King, praise His Name! No longer I roam, my soul faces home, I walk and I talk with the King.” Yes, I’ve believed that for a long while!

One of my favorite Southern Gospel songs is from the 1960s and was sung by the great Statesmen Quartet. Written by Mosie Lister in the late 1940s it says “The King and I walk down life’s road together Where many people go passing by. The greatest One and I a lowly beggar, Walk hand in hand The King and I. [Chorus] Why He should care for me will always be a mystery, He holds the whole world in His hand but what am I? And so my heart somehow can’t help but wonder, Why we’re together The King and I.” (Listen to it on YouTube.)

So while there are around 14 references to “kingdom” in Paul’s writing, the major emphasis is on what E.W. Kenyon called “the way of a Father with His family.” Start today seeing yourself as a child of the King while still being thankful for that your “citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ” (Philippians 3:20 ESV).