Every Christian heart cries, "Give me more of Christ." We long to see Him. David said, "One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord" (Psalm 27:4). When Peter sees the glory of the Lord on the Mount of Transfiguration, he believes he has arrived. There is nothing left on his "bucket list;" he is ready to camp out and stay for all eternity. The saint longs to see the glory of Christ. And the greater the longing, the more mature the saint. He knows that there is nothing better.
In our fallen state, we obviously lack the perfect ingredients of perfect happiness, and thus can never expect to attain to it in this world. However, insofar as we grow in wisdom, goodness, holiness, etc., we will also grow in happiness. And what we sow in seed form here, will one day bloom into perfect and eternal flower.
Pastors sometimes say stupid things. Sometimes those stupid things are catchy and wind up being repeated by many other pastors. One of the more preposterous pithy statements I have heard many preachers say is, “Sheep are dumb.” They say this as shepherds and are referring to the sheep of the church—the congregation. The idea is that sheep are dumb, and must be led well. We shouldn’t be surprised when they do stupid things. My problem with this statement is that it disrespects people made in God’s image and redeemed by God’s Son.
“For Everything There Is A Season...” So says the Preacher in Ecclesiastes 3:1. Our God has ordained whatsoever shall come to pass, according to His most wise and free counsel. He has set the limits for every hour, day, week, month and year. He has also ordained the seasons. We live our lives by the divine designations of days and seasons. We mark our births and deaths, we plant and pluck up, break down and build up, all according to the times that God has designated. We live our lives by calendars.
we learn why it is absolutely necessary that sinners must be born again of the Spirit. We can no more produce spiritual life in ourselves as we could produce earthly life when we were born into this world. We need the ability to make right choices (to repent and believe), but for that to happen, we need hearts that are changed to love what is right and true, thus having a foundational change to the motivational structure of our heart. Nothing short of a resurrection of spiritual life is needed for sinners to be saved. You must be born again because your heart must be changed so that you love differently.
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