Matthew 5:23-24 English Standard Version

23 So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, 24 leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.

This passage has been on my mind for days now. My older brother passed away without his issues with me being resolved. What he held against me my whole life was the fact that I was ever born. That was something that was not my fault but it has been held against me for 76 years.

Reconciliation has to be found on reasonable terms. The problem with reconciliation in my situation is that the wronged party was the wrong party. It does not work that way. It was impossible to restore a relationship we never had, never, not one day.

This is not the biblical meaning of reconciliation. In order to have a relationship with God the guilty party cannot make amends to a God they have never had a relationship with to begin with. Adam broke faith with God and sin entered into the world and we all come into this world as broken people. There is nothing we can do to reconcile what Adam did in original sin.

Reconcile in spiritual terms is a book accounting practice. It means to move one party out of the red, debt owed, into the black, debt paid.

Colossians 2:14

by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.

I could not reconcile my birth to my brother and none of us can reconcile our birth to God. Justice demands that a debt has to be paid and since we are a bankrupt people empty of any righteousness, God the Father had to send God the Son to reconcile our debt as an acceptable sacrifice for all mankinds debt. His atonement blood was the only blood sacrifice that held the power to satisfy such a great debt.

Sadly there are many out there that refuse to acknowledge their sin debt to God. In so doing they also reject the free will offering for the cancellation of that debt in the atoning work of the Cross of Christ.

Once we are in the grave it is too late. We still have time to reach them.

1 Chronicles 29:11 (English Standard Version)

 Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, for all that is in the heavens and in the earth is yours. Yours is the kingdom, O Lord, and you are exalted as head above all.

Once again, my routine brings me back to the point where I want to hear from the Lord. Yesterday made it clear enough to me that I should address my prayers to God the Father and yet once again I find myself addressing the One in charge, the Lord.

This seems so old school and having been saved by Christ’s work on the Cross, and a sincere desire to follow Jesus, I find myself focused on HIs Word and tell myself if I am to do any good in this world, I will find my directions here in His Word.

That attitude seems to forget that nothing gets done without the will of the Father being done. Our prayer is specific on that point, “thy will be done”. The Father’s glory is His Son and as such we tend to want to sidestep the will of the Father by trying to glorify the Son.

Jesus sits on the right hand throne of God and all things have been placed in His hand. In saying that, have we forgotten that He is again One with the Father and does not sit on that throne alone?

Do we seek the Father’s will or are we only concerned with those things that trouble us?

If we are to be One with God as His Word implies, then our orders come down in a very specific manner. The Father makes His will known to the Son, the Son speaks and the Holy Spirit tells us what the Son has said. The Unity of the United Trinity is once again in a position to act.

So the sectrest to see the power of God to act in this world is not focused on our whining but rather on what is right and just according to the Father’s will.

John 16:24

Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.

I can hear Father God on the throne of heaven when He hears my prayers, “That doesn’t sound like You at all Son?”

Now that is a wake up call.