Father gave us His Son

As a believer we have heard many times that Jesus was given for the forgiveness of our sins but I was struck through revelation by the Holy Spirit that Jesus was given to us for all eternity.  In Isaiah 9:6 God's Word says, "For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; And the government will rest on His shoulders; and His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.  There will be no end to the increase of His government or of peace, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and righteousness from then on and forevermore. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will accomplish this."  The Holy Spirit highlighted the phrase "...a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us....", Holy Spirit seemed to blow up the idea that Jesus, the Son of God, was given to us for all eternity.  Somewhere I knew this but then again I didn't really know it.  Jesus was given to us for all eternity, to intercede for us (Romans 8:34), to be human in a resurrected body, to be our counselor, our advocate, and our High Priest, and our salvation.  Somehow I believed that Jesus gave His life and then it was like the Father took Him back and then we were on our own again.  The lies we believe are crazy when they are spoken or written out, brought into the light.  John 3:16 has become a favorite passage, though being the most quoted for evangelism, because it reveals profoundly what kind of Father God truly is.  He is a Father that gives to us the most precious and valued person, His Son because of His great love for us.  Father has not given us a gift that ends, no the gift of His Son is for all eternity with immutable vastness.  

As we boarded a pontoon boat with about 20 other people, we were all nervously excited.  What would we see?  What would the ocean be like today?  Tourists even from different countries with their unique accents and speaking a different language, all came together for the same purpose.  We were in search of the 80,000-120,000 pound giants they call "humpback whales".  As we maneuvered our way through the harbor with sailboats and fishing boats moored, the open ocean beckoned us onward.  As we cleared the mouth of the harbor, passing the rock jetty on our right we began to see the vastness of the Pacific Ocean.  The glistening green of the Pacific, against the blue sky and the brown grass hills of a Central California coast in the midst of drought.  Shortly after playing with a school of very fast dolphins, a member of our little band of searchers called "there she blows" signaling the discovery of a humpback whale on the not too distant horizon.  As the boat maneuvered through the 1-2 foot swells, we got closer to these 80,000 pound plus giants.  Even as we chased them to see them surface and then dive for up to 200 feet for several minutes, only to resurface at another location, I was struck by how small they really were in the vastness of the ocean.  Holy Spirit began to connect the vastness of the ocean, with the vastness of His love.  It has been said that while the ocean covers 70% our planet, that we have explored less than 5%.  I began to wonder about what percentage of God's love and who God is has been explored, His vastness is so much more immense than the ocean.  In Ephesians chapter 3, the love of God "in Christ" is given dimensions that include height, depth, breadth, width, and length.  Yet the Spirit was indulging me in the analogy, as Jesus often used earthly things to point to the substance of things in Heaven.  Scripture tells us that this world is but a shadow of things to come, with the things to come having more substance, being even more real, and being of even more importance.

Christianity is not simply a way out of Hell but a way into an eternal relationship with the amazing and infinite God, we stand on the shore of the most vast ocean that ever existed.  The shore of the ocean of who God is, we have been given an invitation to go on the greatest journey ever offered.  Will you say yes to the journey of a lifetime, that is full of perils, risks, and failures yet offers the greatest reward of all eternity.  To know the invisible God.

To a Fellow Explorer,
Bret