Cathy's Corner

Cathy’s Corner

These past few weeks Ive been a part of a Bible study with some ladies on staff at our church. Most of us don't get to attend a small group study on Sunday so we are doing one together during the week. It is called Discerning the Voice of God by Priscialla Shirer. I can't tell you how much I have enjoyed this study and how much God is showing me. I love getting up every morning and getting into God's Word to see what I'm going to learn that day. I can't say that I have always felt this way as it has come and gone over the years. That's not God's fault but mine. God never moves away from us, He's always right there waiting for us to come back to Him. He may be silent at times but He's still always right there. I love how God shows me something and then He confirms what He was saying to me through something else I read or something someone elese might say. That's one of the things in this study that God is teaching us, how to recognize when He speaks. It is up to us to listen to Him and for Him. We can't do that when we never let ourselves slow down and be still before Him. He showed me something this past week and then confirmed what He was saying to me through one of my daily readings in Oswald Chambers. I thought I'd share it with you.

The Collision of God and Sin – Oswald Chambers
“…who himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree…’ (I Peter 2:24).

The Cross of Christ is the revealed truth of God’s judgment on sin. Never associate the idea of martyrdom with the Cross of Christ. It was the supreme triumph, and it shook the very foundations of hell. There is nothing in time or eternity more absolutely certain and irrefutable than what Jesus Christ accomplished on the Cross – He made it possible for the entire human race to be brought back into a right standing relationship with God. He made a way for every person to have fellowship with God.
The Cross was not something that happened to Jesus – He came to die; the Cross was His purpose in coming. He “is the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (Rev.13:8). The incarnation of Christ would have no meaning without the Cross. Beware of separating “God was manifested in the flesh…” from “…He made Him … to be sin for us…” (I Timothy 3:16; II Corinthians 5:21). The purpose of the incarnation was redemption. God came in the flesh to take sin away, not to accomplish something for Himself. The Cross is the central event in time and eternity, and the answer to all the problems of both.
The Cross is not the cross of a man, but the Cross of God, and it can never be fully comprehended through human experience. The Cross is God exhibiting His nature. It is the gate through which any and every individual can enter into oneness with God. But it is not a gate we pass right through; it is one where we abide in the life that is found there.
The heart of salvation is the Cross of Christ. The reason salvation is so easy to obtain is because it cost God so much. The Cross was the place where God and sinful man merged with a tremendous collision and where the way to life was opened. But all the cost and pain of the collision was absorbed by the heart of God.

What an absolutely wonderful loving Father we have in heaven. He wants a realtionship with us and He made a way for us to have that through His Son Jesus Christ.