Thoughts which carry me to Jesus, and to His cross…

“For,’ I say, ‘just as shorts cling tightly to a person’s body, so I bound the whole nation of Israel and the whole nation of Judah tightly to me.’ I intended for them to be my special people and to bring me fame, honor, and praise. But they would not obey me.” (Jeremiah 13:11, NET)

I shall tell you a great secret, my friend. Do not wait for the last judgment. It takes place every day.  ALBERT CAMUS

I think it might shock some of us profoundly if we were suddenly brought face to face with our beliefs and forced to test them in the forges of practical living. How many professing Christians boast in the Lord but watch carefully that they never get caught fully depending on Him? Pseudo-faith always arranges a way out to serve in case God “fails.”
What we need very badly these days is a company of Christians prepared to trust God as completely now as they must do at the last day! For each of us, the time is surely coming when we shall all have nothing but God! To the men of pseudo-faith, that is a terrifying thought!
For true faith, it is either God or total collapse, and not since Adam first stood up on the earth has God failed anyone who trusted Him! We can prove our faith by our committal to it—and in no other way!

It almost sounds silly to compare the intimacy God desires to a pair of tight-fitting underwear. Heck it almost seems blasphemous!

But that is how our Lord wants us to be, so…

The reason for it is seen in Tozer’s work, for his words about dependence on God parallel the experience of the people of Israel and Judah. We want a distant faith, with an escape clause for when our faith fails and we do not, perhaps even cannot, see God being faithful to His promises.  Tozer and Camus both point to the day when there is nothing else left but Jesus! Camus goes farther… identifying that day as today.

We need to recognize the intimacy that God not only desires, that He offers at the Cross in baptism, and as He tenderly and with great precision cuts away all our sins as He washes us clean, and as He feeds us His Body and Blood at the altar. This is the God who gives us His word, His promises, and would have us cling to Him, and the hope He provides.

It is such a powerful concept, this intimate relationship that God desires, that the greatest example provides a bit of laughter, a lighthearted but deeply challenging thought.

You and God – as close and as intimate as your underwear!

And from that intimacy comes the faith and trust necessary to live, in this life, through the judgment, into eternity.

You and God, underwear and body – as inseparable as it gets!

AMEN!

Shelley, M. (1986). Helping those who don’t want help (Vol. 7, p. 13). Christianity Today, Inc.; Word Books.

Tozer, A. W., & Smith, G. B. (2008). Mornings with Tozer: Daily Devotional Readings. Moody Publishers.