All My Boast is in Jesus

I have had so many things swirling in my head to write about, and sometimes things just get stuck! We had a lovely lunch with family after church yesterday and loved being together. But family is not where we place our hope. Things are not where we place our hope. Money is not where we place our hope. Security is not where we place our hope.
We sang the song yesterday "All My Boast is in Jesus". It has been swirling around in my head all day today. I have sung it, played it on the recorder, and now I'm writing about it. He is where I place my Hope and He is Who I boast about!
The Song ends with singing 3 x's "MY BOAST IS JESUS CHRIST!" What exactly does that mean?


The only thing I can Boast in is Christ and Christ Crucified and what HE has done in my life and in the lives of my family and what HE continues to do! All praise to HIM. We live in a finite, material world, but we are both finite and spiritual. Everything was created by God and HE created everything that was made. There is nothing we know of that does not have the hand of God in its creation. That is one of the reasons I love nature so much. I can see it visibly. I can see the layers in the Grand Canyon, I can see the intricate details of a blade of grass under a microscope. I take for granted much of the time that I can plant a simple seed and it will grow into a plant for delightful flowers, or food; each after its own kind! If God is so detailed with nature, and animals, and he knows the hairs on my head and a feather that falls from a sparrow, then He knows me.

He knows my flaws and my faults, he knows my repentence and my rebellion. He knows ALL. And.... HE LOVES ME. He loves not because I am good or do good, but because he has chosen to love me. He delights in His children. His Character is perfect, and that is where I struggled for many years, misunderstanding the true character of God. Many times we hear that the God of the New Testament is different than the God of the Old Testament. This is not so. In Fact, in Exodus 34:5-8 "Now the LORD descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the LORD. And the LORD passed before him and proclaimed, “The LORD, the LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children to the third and the fourth generation.” So Moses made haste and bowed his head toward the earth, and worshiped."

The same is true today. THE LORD, our LORD is merciful and gracious and forgives sin. He IS just in his judgments. He does NOT just brush sin off. THAT IS WHY He sent His Son. Jesus, the second person on the God Head, who created all things, THE WORD (John 1) who walked among us, entered the very creation HE spoke into existence, humbled himself, EMPTIED himself and became a man, born of a virgin, FULFILLED all prophecy from the Old Testament perfectly, willingly laid down his life and took the punishment for our sin.
Sin was not ignored, Sin was PAID for! We who were born into sin, and know no other world, trust that Jesus paid what we deserved; the price of death. Jesus was the perfect lamb! The Lamb with out blemish, the FINAL and COMPLETE sacrifice for sin. BUT HE DIDN'T remain in the grave. Without the resurrection there would be no hope. The Resurrection, bodily, not just spirit, happened! GOD raised HIM from the dead! The Stone was rolled away! The Curtain at the Temple that separated the Holy Place from the Holy of Holies, that was a barrier between God and man, was torn from TOP TO BOTTOM and exposed the Ark of the Covenant! Roman Soldiers stationed around the tomb could not hold him there. Satan could not hold him there. HE CONQUERED and WON, and ALL who are HIS he will never lose.

Right now, He is preparing a place for us, if it weren't so he wouldn't have said it. (John 14:2-3) He says something else in John. I will not abandon you as orphans! This speaks loudly to my heart. No matter what heartbreak happens in this world, GOD will NOT ABANDON me! And this does NOT depend upon my perfection, but HIS faithfulness! So yes, ALL MY BOAST IS IN JESUS!