Acts 1:7

“He said to them, it is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed to His own authority.”

Oh how easy it is to hate this verse. You're in a tragic moment in life, all relationships are falling around you and you just want to just know, why? You think if you're given an answer than all will be okay again, you just need to know! I have a lot of questions, as many of you know, and nothing eats at me worst than unanswered questions. It will stumble me, cause hostility in me, blind me, cripple me, and basically distract me from all that really matters. What I realized is that if I were ever to get all the answers I wanted, I would no longer have a reason to search. No need to ask God or anyone because I already know. I would slowly watch myself envelop in pride and let fleshly riches enthrall me. Solomon, humbled and wise, was literally blessed with the gift of knowledge and wisdom. He was the smartest most intelligible man in the world at that time. What happened to him? He stopped asking, he stopped seeking a relationship with God. We're not meant to know all things on this earth for a reason, we aren't mature and loving enough to handle it! The journey of figuring out the answer is often times more important than actually receiving the answer. It keeps you diligent, humbled, seeking, attentive, in the word, in fellowship, in prayer, I could go on but I won't. I count it a s a blessing to not know the times or seasons that the Father has planned. He loves us enough to keep us asking. The day will come when all things are known, but they will be known to us while we stare at the face of God. My application is to embrace my questions and use them as an automobile to bring me closer to the Father.

Acts 1:6

“So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom of Israel?”

Lord, will the rapture happen already? Lord, my back hurts so terribly, just kill me now so I can be with you. Lord, I have never sinned so deeply, I repent of my ways right now and just kill me quick before I screw up again. Lord, my heart is broken into the tiniest of pieces, please just end this pain and let me be with You. Many a times I have found myself asking these very questions and definitely more than once. In the depths of the weak, the pained, and the brokenhearted often times we just want the rapture to come right now! Even in the hearts of the strongest men, they long for the rapture to come everyday. Some of Christ's greatest warriors stared at Him and begged for Him to just finish all His work up and give the treasures that they have in store. Too me it only shows a beautiful picture of Christ's love. Say there was a perfect man who let Himself be killed for all the people of the world. On top of that, imagine this man coming back to life and offering a personal relationship with Him even though we let evil rule us everyday. He loves us more than we even know how to understand love and he has to watch us be beaten and marred all the days of this earth. He let His body break for us and still He watches His loved one's in the realm of evil. Who do you think wants to be in close relationship more, You? Or this Man? It must pain Christ to wait for the rapture. But He died for the whole world. We are called to love the world and not stand on rooftops waiting for Him to come. The more days we have before the rapture, the more of an opportunity we have to prove our faithfulness to Him. I will do my best to grasp the mission I am given and love Christ by loving His people.

1 Corinthians 13:7

“Bear all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”

God does not force us to love anyone. He commands us to love, and from that point, we can choose to obey, or disobey. By choosing to love someone you are making a choice to bear the load. We choose to take on the task of loving that person. From that point, the next step we are asked to believe in the person at all times no matter the circumstance. If they have lied, slandered, and hurt you over and over again we are still asked to believe they won't do it again. You don't have to believe the lies they may feed you, or enable them, but we are asked to believe that the person could do better. First we choose to love, from there we must believe in what we love, and from that point we are asked to hope. Hope is having faith in someone and turning it into an action. Praying for them, encouraging them, and more personally, conforming your thoughts into hoping the best for them no matter the sin. Christ does this process for us everyday. He chose to love us, he believes in us through every sin we make, He then hopes that we'll do better next time, the next time, and the next time. He you picks up the pack(love) and strap it to your back. You must believe the backpack will be sufficient enough to fulfill it's purpose, if you don't believe the pack will pull through how will you it ever be able to prove you wrong? Whether your backpack is full of weights, or full of feathers, we have to carry the pack hoping that it will travel with you wherever you go. When we get dreary and want to set it down even for a moment, by love standards, that is unacceptable. After we pick up the pack, believe in its purpose, hope it will live out its purpose, we are then asked to do it every moment of everyday. If it rips, or breaks we must still carry it, hoping it will accomplish the journey. He is always carrying the pack and willing to do whatever it takes to help it complete its purpose. We kick, we scream, we walk away, we slander, and we hate. Yet still He walks for us. Luckily, God does not expect us to be perfect. But to clearly understand how Christ does this for us everyday, gives us that much more motivation to mimic. We will hate the pack, we will turn around and yell at it, and we will drop it over and over again. But because Christ never did, Heaven is still in store.

Proverbs 31:5

“Lest they drink and forget the law,

and pervert the justice of all the afflicted.”

I can't help but replace the word drink with sin. Lest they sin and forget the law, and pervert the justice of all the afflicted. We so often see just a taste of sin in someones life haze the vision in how they see themselves and others. We do it thinking “only one won't hurt” and in the grand scheme of things one little bad thought or idea never really hurts anyone. But by allowing yourself that one little thought you let yourself have another, and another, and another, slowly breeding this sin until the point in which you are doing and thinking things you never had imagined. In comparison, when we find ourselves in a situation with alcohol it is a slow compromise, an action, a splurge of actions, and then a series of very unfortunate events. Alcohol, like sin, in abundance can lead to death. Alcohol little by little can pollute the physical body and mind until it deteriorates from the inside out. Sin little by little pollutes the Soul of a man, till his vision won't allow him to walk down the straight and narrow. The large distinction between the two is that little alcohol in moderation can be acceptable, sin on the other hand is never acceptable. But the parallel image is an interesting one. If we sin we do slowly haze the difference between right and wrong, in affect, forgetting the law. Also by sinning we are perverting the justice of all the afflicted, taking what was meant for good and using it for evil.