Why Are We Here??

We are revisiting our Cor Unum values this week.

If one has been a student of the Word of God for many years, how great might be the weight of intent upon the heart?  Loving the Father, having been set at liberty to love through the atonement of His Son, we fully intend to live out the glorious truth and responsibility that are ours.  After five or ten years in the Word and in church, most of us have at least a nodding acquaintance with a wealth of spiritual realities.  Let’s look at just three.

“The fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.”  (James 5:16, KJV)

“Give, and it shall be given unto you, good measure, pressed down and shaken together and running over, shall men give into your bosom.”  (Luke 6:38, KJV)

“But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.”  (Matthew 6:15, NIV)

Three verses, three out of hundreds, probably thousands, that can prick our consciences, inspire our confidence, warm our hearts, or cause us to tremble.  These three and all those hundreds and thousands more, all packed into our minds and hearts.  How many are yet unfulfilled, unanswered, unattended?

We are about to get personal in Cor Unum – with ourselves!  We have heard many challenging, sometimes illuminating sermons.  We have read the Words in Red, the very mind and purpose of Jesus Christ, just as He said them, as true for us as for those who were privileged to walk with Him.

We are privileged to walk with Him, and here in Cor Unum we do not say we cannot hear Him as they did; He told us that heaven and earth would pass away, but not His words.  Three of the four Gospels record Him saying that His words will never pass away.  Look!  More than two thousand years later, we just looked at them, and more than two thousand years later, we may take them to heart.  They will do for us today what they did for the disciples, and more than when they first heard them, because He has gone to the Father.  It was expedient for them that He went to the Father.  Those are His words, too.  (John 16:4-15)

What we need is our personal commitment to stability, abiding in Christ, with His words abiding in us (John 15:7) . . . “Conversatio,” the commitment to conformation into His image (John 17:26) . . . and obedience toward that end and for the sake of our joy in this life and our glory in the next.  (John 15:11 and Matthew 25:23,) architectural enclosure not required, here in the monastery of the heart.    

Senanque Abbey
by permission,
Marion Schneider and Christope Aistleitner,
public domain