Apple of God's Eye's

It is tender mercy.

With gentle, loving touch, he heals the broken in heart, and binds up their wounds.

He is as gracious in the manner of his mercy as in the matter of it.

It is great mercy.

There is nothing little in God; his mercy is like himself- It is infinite.

You cannot measure it.

His mercy is so great that it forgives great sins to great sinners, after great lengths of time, and then gives great favours and great privileges, and raises us up to great enjoyments in the great heaven of the great God.

It is undeserved mercy.

As indeed all true mercy must be, for deserved mercy is only a misnomer for justice.

There was no right on the sinner’s part to the kind consideration of the Most High;

Had the rebel been doomed at once to eternal fire he would have richly merited the doom, and if delivered from wrath, sovereign love alone has found a cause, for there was none in the sinner himself.

It is rich mercy.

Some things are great, but have little efficacy in them, but this mercy is a cordial to your drooping spirits; a golden ointment to your bleeding wounds; a heavenly bandage to your broken bones; a royal chariot for your weary feet; a bosom of love for your trembling heart.

It is manifold mercy.

As Bunyan says, “All the flowers in God’s garden are double.”

There is no single mercy.

You may think you have but one mercy, but you shall find it to be a whole cluster of mercies.

It is abounding mercy.

Millions have received it, yet far from it being exhausted; it is as fresh, as full, and as free as ever.

It is unfailing mercy.

It will never leave thee.

If mercy be thy friend, mercy will be with thee in temptation to keep thee from yielding;

With you in trouble to prevent you from sinking;

With you living to be the light and life of your countenance;

And with you dying to be the joy of tyour soul when earthly comfort is ebbing fast.

A miner once said to a preacher, "I'd like to be a Christian, but I can't receive what you said tonight." "Why not?" asked the preacher. "Well, I'd give anything to believe that God would forgive my sins, but I can't believe He'll forgive me if I just turn to Him. It's too cheap." The preacher looked at him and said, "Have you been working today?" Surprised, the man replied, "Yes, I was down in the pit as usual. Why?" "How did you get out of the pit?" "The way I usually do. I got into the cage and was pulled to the top." "How much did you pay to come out of the pit?" The miner looked at the preacher in astonishment. "Pay? Of course, I didn't pay anything." "Well," said the preacher, "weren't you afraid to trust yourself to that cage? Wasn't it too cheap?" "Oh, no," he said; "it was cheap for me, but it cost the company a lot of money to sink that shaft." Then the implication of what he had said struck him, and he saw that though he could have salvation without money and without price, it had cost the infinite God a great price to rescue lost men.

Let's ask ourselves this question: "Am I concerned about the sacrifices I may be called upon to make in serving Christ?" Two young men were talking about this very thing. One of them said, "I cannot tell you all that the Lord Jesus is to me, or what He has done for me. I do wish you would enlist in His army."
"I'm thinking about it," answered the other young man, "but it means giving up several things-in fact, I am counting the cost." A Christian officer, just passing, heard the last remark, and laying his hand on the shoulder of the young soldier said, "Young man, you talk of counting the cost of following Christ, but have you ever counted the cost of not following Him?"

There was ONE who lived, and was called The Resurrection and The Life! He changed history, brought hope, and the promise of eternal life. Check it out! http://www.atstracts.org. Happy Easter!

We will be glad and rejoice in thee. We will not open the gates of the year to the dolorous notes of the sackbut, but to the sweet strains of the harp of joy, and the high sounding cymbals of gladness.
“O come, let us sing unto the Lord: let us make a joyful noise unto the rock of our salvation.”
We, the called and faithful and chosen, we will drive away our griefs, and set up our banners of confidence in the name of God. Let others lament over their troubles, we who have the sweetening tree to cast into Marah’s bitter pool, with joy will magnify the Lord.
Eternal Spirit, our effectual Comforter, we who are the temples in which thou dwellest, will never cease from adoring and blessing the name of Jesus. We WILL, we are resolved about it, Jesus must have the crown of our heart’s delight; we will not dishonour our Bridegroom by mourning in his presence.
We are ordained to be the minstrels of the skies, let us rehearse our everlasting anthem before we sing it in the halls of the New Jerusalem. We will BE GLAD AND REJOICE: two words with one sense, double joy, blessedness upon blessedness. Need there be any limit to our rejoicing in the Lord even now? Do not men of grace find their Lord to be camphire and spikenard, calamus and cinnamon even now, and what better fragrance have they in heaven itself? We will be glad and rejoice IN THEE.

That last word is the meat in the dish, the kernel of the nut, the soul of the text. What heavens are laid up in Jesus! What rivers of infinite bliss have their source, aye, and every drop of their fulness in him! Since, O sweet Lord Jesus, thou art the present portion of thy people, favour us this year with such a sense of thy preciousness, that from its first to its last day we may be glad and rejoice in thee.
Let January open with joy in the Lord, and December close with gladness in Jesus

Anyone who has ever taken a philosophy class has probably heard this question: Can God create a rock so massive that He cannot lift it? If we answer that He can create such a rock, we admit God's inability to lift or move the rock and thus imply He is less than all powerful. If we say He cannot create such a rock, then we declare Him limited in His creative abilities. If we identify the impasse as a contradiction we must live with, a knot that cannot be untangled, we imply that God may not be consistent logically and is not totally truthful. With this little puzzle, many a non-theist has excused his or her denial or ignoring of God's existence, and many a student has grown less confident about his or her Christian faith.

This "proof" against God takes various forms. One that virtually all believers have faced at one time or another is the "proof" that God must not care or must not be adequately powerful or He would put a stop to evil and suffering. A later chapter will address this particular argument, but we can lay a foundation for that discussion by considering the core fallacy in such challenges to God's omnipotence.

Cannot Versus Will Not

The problem arises in part from a semantic issue, a misuse of the little word can, and in part from a nearsighted perspective. It seems far more appropriate to ask questions about what God will do than about what He can do, especially given the "can do" He demonstrated so amply in the creation.

Some things God will not do. In one sense, He cannot do these things, but the reason has nothing to do with a power limitation. Rather, He cannot do certain things because He is powerful enough and righteous enough to choose not to do them ever. God cannot lie or distort the truth. He cannot do evil. He cannot accept evil. Nor can He ever overlook evil. Why can He not do these things? He cannot because He is perfectly consistent. His character is immutable; it simply does not change. His perfection, holiness, love, truthfulness, goodness, and faithfulness (among many other attributes) remains unchanged and unchangeable. They do not begin and end because He does not begin and end. His unchanging character reveals His power, a power that we do not possess, to maintain complete character consistency. He is not subject to the immaturity ignorance, lack of love, short sightedness or genetic and chemical factors that influence our judgments, decisions, and actions and so often render them inconsistent. We could say He has the power to maintain Himself perfect with perfect self-control.

God's Freedom to Refrain

Time and again, we humans are tempted by our own impatience to question God's inaction. We cannot fathom why He does not intervene in the affairs of humans, preventing or overruling their wrong choices with a display of His extra-dimensional powers. The irony of our question might be humorous if it were not so terribly arrogant. We must ask ourselves how sensible it is for us humans to stand in judgment over what God will or will not do and when He will or will not do it given the immeasurable differences between His moral character and ours, His power and ours, His dimensional perspective and ours, His love and ours.

The Benefit of Moral Perfection

How often have we heard sceptics say "If God is good, why did He . . . ?" or "why didn't He . . . ?" In asking this question, the inquirer has either knowingly or unwittingly exalted his or her judgment of what is good, what is warranted, over God's knowledge of such things. The inquirer implies that God's goodness cannot be believed or trusted.

Jesus set the record straight on this matter when He was approached by a self-righteous religious leader who flatteringly addressed Him as "good teacher." With penetrating insight into the man's puffed up self-evaluation, Jesus replied, "Why do you call me good?" Then He added, "No one is good--- except God alone." Jesus' statement affirms a truth revealed throughout Scripture, as well as throughout nature: God is the one and only source and essence of goodness. What He created He declared "good," and He encourages us to do "good" to both our friends and enemies; but goodness emanates from and is ultimately defined by Him alone.

From a mathematical and dimensional perspective, the Creator's goodness may be described as infinite. Though we humans have the capacity as spirit beings to recognize and express to some degree His goodness, we have no capacity for goodness apart from Him. If God did not exist, or if God were not good, we would not even know such a quality were possible.

The Benefit of Power

How often have we heard sceptics say "If God is good, then He must be weak, otherwise He would. . . . " Again, some fundamental fallacious assumptions lie behind the challenge.

One of the fallacies is the expressed certainty that we can discern the absolute best course of action in a particular situation. All we can really know of absolutes is that they must exist, for God exists. While God has absolute knowledge of everything, we humans possess absolute knowledge of nothing because of our finite limits (see chapter 4).

A second fallacy lies in our mistaking the exercise of power as the measure of available power. A limited expression of power or a restraint of action cannot be used to indicate what power is possible and available. It cannot be used to infer weakness or lack of power. If we see a well-muscled man carrying a twenty-pound backpack along the trail, we would not reasonably conclude that twenty pounds is the maximum load he has the strength to carry. We would demonstrate better logic in concluding that for today's outing, he needs only twenty pounds' worth of supplies. And what if he were to put down his pack for a while as he stops to take pictures or to do a little fishing? Could we reasonably assume that he has lost his strength to carry the pack, that it has suddenly become too heavy for him? A better guess says he does not have reason to carry it right now, but he can and will pick it up again when the time is right.

If God chooses to refrain from exercising a power that He showed He possesses in creating the space and time dimensions, the matter and energy, and the physical laws of the universe, we have no basis for assuming He no longer possesses that immeasurable power or is no longer willing to exercise it. We can only infer that His exercise of that power is subject to His choice. He can and will use it however, wherever, and whenever His goodness and other character attributes direct.

The Benefit of Perspective

"Timing is everything" may exaggerate the case, but the point of this familiar expression merits attention. Who of us has not learned the hard way that right actions at the wrong time thwart our efforts and our purposes? If a man decides to help his wife by making dinner for her, he has done a good thing-assuming he knows how to cook and what she likes. But if he does this right and good thing on an evening when she has plans to eat out, his efforts will probably fail to accomplish the purpose for which they were intended. Perhaps he did not ask, or perhaps she did not tell him when he did ask, but in either case, he lacks the ability to read her mind. He needs tangible clues.

Because God possesses the equivalent of at least one more time dimension than we human beings do, and because His space or other dimensions give Him a complete view of us, inside and out, we can be confident of His timing in exercising His powers and capacities. He not only has the goodness and the power, but also the knowledge and perspective, to time His actions perfectly. As the apostle Peter wrote, "The Lord is not slow in keeping His promise, as some understand slowness." His timing will be based not only on what He knows about us

individually in any given moment but also on what He knows about the entire human race and all the angelic hosts for all time(s) in our current dimensions and beyond.

A swift and loving resolution to the problem of evil and suffering, thus, must certainly be within God's grasp and must be part of His plan. So far, however, we have said nothing about God's specific strategies and means for eradicating evil and suffering. That we will address in chapter 15.

The Ultimate Goal

Scripture tells us that "God is love," and the creation testifies to that truth. As with goodness, God Himself gives meaning to the word. He is love's source and essence. Humanity's hunger for love, a higher love than we can know in any human relationship- as wonderful as that human love can be-- reflects a universal hunger for God. The more love we experience in this life, the keener our anticipation for the love that awaits us in His domain, in His tangible presence.

Whatever love is, we know we want more of it to give and to receive. But our dimensional boundaries hem us in. Loving takes time, because loving takes knowing; and knowing, for us,

takes time. Our three-dimensional bodies for now contain, and in some ways conceal, a more-dimensional or extra-dimensional being, a spiritual being. When we transition to the more-dimensional or extra-dimensional realm, we will gain new capacities for knowing and thus new capacities for loving.

But whatever love is, both here in these dimensions and there in our future home with God, we know it involves choice. Love cannot be coerced and still be love. It cannot be programmed and still be love. If it is not given freely by choice, it is something else, such as duty, and we yearn to give and receive so much more than obligatory care.

Since love involves choice, it also involves risks. In the chapter ahead, we will consider the paradox of an omniscient, omnipotent God who risks giving humanity, and the angels, too, real freedom of choice so that real love is possible. And yet He never relinquishes or compromises His sovereign control.

This statement of the two truths side by side strikes our minds as a contradiction, or perhaps as an inscrutable mystery, because it is a mysterious contradiction-in four space-time dimensions. But remember, we have discovered that there are more than just those four.

Knowing God's reality encompasses more than four space-time dimensions, we can rejoice, too, that God has something better than Eden in store for us. As beautiful and pleasant as

Eden must have been for Adam and Eve before they turned from God's way to their own, God's goal for humanity far surpasses an earthly paradise. He awaits the moment when He

will escort us, who choose to enter, into the new creation. Building and maintaining the new creation involves more of God's extra-dimensional capacities than did Eden. It will involve much more than just our dimensions, too. The new creation is majestic, rewarding, and enduring beyond anything we can think or imagine. When we read the Bible writers' attempts to describe it, we know that the wonders of the place can never be exaggerated.

We will consider some of the specifics of the new creation in chapter 17. However, an appropriate appreciation of those specifics is only possible given a satisfactory resolution of pertinent aspects of the paradoxes of our free-will choices versus God's plans and control; whether believers can be eternally secure in their commitment to God; evil and suffering versus God's love and power; and God's love versus eternal torment in hell. Before considering the glory, majesty, and reward of the new creation, we will devote a chapter to each of these issues…

Thank u! May this new year bring u all that is good and perfect...

Happy new year!...X...

Happy new year! May the blessings of God during this year be yours. Amen...

Whatever the new year may bring, success and triumph will surely be ur's and the blessings of God that makes riches will abundantly abide with u and all yours. Happy new year!

Thanx!! Happy New Year 2u! God bless, A

Before the Sun sets on this year, before the memories fade and before the networks get jammed! -- wish you a Happy and Bright New Year! God Bless u n yr family.

Compliments, May d joy of ds season abide with u & may d new yr bring good tidings to u & ur family Happy new yr in advance.

This year shall be the begining of years, wen you seek be ready to find, you shall be inspired to do great things, be prepared to be d envy of your world. Wishing you d best of the year.

Hi..,hope u had a blessed day yesterday, may God pour out his amazing will on u in d year ahead, love ...

Thanks sir n hope u re enjoying d season as well. May He continually be truly beautiful 2 u in every respect! Have a great 2006!

Happy newyear 2 u may dis year be a fruitful year and a prosperous one...

As the hills surrounds jerusalem, so shal u be surrounded thru ds year & 4eva with God's greater grace. Happy new year. And remain blessed.

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Happy new year to you and wish you all the best for fauter...

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Thanx!! Happy New Year 2u! God bless...

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