Christian Message Boards: The Abiding Relationship

This is topic The Abiding Relationship in forum Favorite Devotions at Christian Message Boards.

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Posted by knowHim (Member # 8) on :

And God spake unto Noah, and to his sons with him, saying, and I, behold, I establish My covenant with you, and with your seed after you. . . . (Genesis 9:8-9)

God cannot do certain things without the co-operation of man. We continually ask, “Why doesn’t God do the thing instead of waiting for me?” He cannot. It is the same problem as the difference between God’s order and His permissive will. His permissive will allows the devil to do his worst and allows me to sin as I choose, until I choose to resist the devil, quit sinning, and come to God in the right relationship of a covenant with Him through Jesus Christ. It is God’s will that human beings should get into moral relationship with Him and His covenants are for that purpose. “Why doesn’t God save me?” He has saved me, but I have not entered into relationship with Him. “Why doesn’t God do this and that?” He has done it, the point is—will I step into covenant relationship with Him?

All the great blessings of God are finished and complete, but they are not mine until I enter into relationship with Him on the basis of His covenant. Salvation is not an edict of God; salvation is something wrought out on the human plane through God becoming Man. Waiting for God is incarnate unbelief, it means I have no faith in Him, I want Him to do something in me that I may trust in that. God won’t do it, because that is not the basis of the God-and-man relationship. Man has to go out of himself in his covenant with God as God goes out of Himself in His covenant with man. It is a question of faith in God, the rarest thing, we have faith only in our feelings. I don’t believe God unless He will give me something in my hand whereby I may know I have it, then I say, “Now I believe.” There is no faith there. “Look unto Me, and be ye saved,” God says. When I have really transacted business with God on His covenant and have let go entirely, there is no sense of merit, no human ingredient in it at all, but a complete, overwhelming sense of having been brought into union with God, and the whole thing is transfigured with peace and joy.

Chambers, Oswald, Our Portrait in Genesis, (United Kingdom: Marshall Morgan & Scott) c1957.

Posted by helpforhomeschoolers (Member # 15) on :

This is a good word, and doesnt the story of Noah illustrate it beautifully; God Provided all that was needed for the salvation of Noah and his family,He provided the trees for wood and pitch, he gave the instructions and design, he called Noah into the safety of the Ark with him, and sealed the door with His own finger, but only through Noah's hearing, believing, and in faith obeying God could he and his family reap the blessing, mercy and grace of God's provision. There is a definite synergy between God and Noah seen in the lesson of Noah and the ark.