Sovereignty and grace waiting At The Gate Beautiful

In the magnificent story of Acts Chapter 3 we read one of the most outstanding stories of Christ’s amazing grace poured out on a lame man who was brought by his friends to seat and beg outside of the gate beautiful of the Herod’s temple.

The word says.. it was the ninth hour

( 3:00p.m.) when prayers were offered at the temple and this poor man who was paralyzed from birth was carried out there to beg.

But this particular after noon the sovereignty of God had a different plan and purpose for him of which he had no foreknowledge or insight, yet His destiny was soon to be altered for eternity.

What is profound here to me is the name of the Gate Beautiful. Although I am sure the name that was chosen for this gate had it’s physical importance to the worshippers who gathered in the physical Temple, yet I am seeing another spiritual significance to this name.

According to some Biblical scholars this was the main door of the temple which was over looking to Kidron valley. However my emphasis is to it’s meaning in the spiritual sense. If for nothing else for the miracle that took place at this location for this lame man on that afternoon which completely transformed his entire life and his outlook on God is spiritual a key to us. The name beautiful is properly used here since it was at this gate that this man’s life received the fragrance of Messiah’s redeeming power. Jesus said I Am The Door and no one comes in any other way and if they would they are nothing but thieves and robbers.

The predicaments caused by this man’s natural birth defect was the sovereign element of God’s future glory in this awesome story of grace. Though this man knew the state of his own physical poverty, yet he was completely unaware of the spiritual condition of his soul.

Even his friends who carried him to the Gate Beautiful of the temple were blinded to both their own need and the need of this sovereign vessel of God’s glory.

It is just if I can visualize him seating at the gate of all eternal prosperity yet every night leaving for home with few alms in his hand, yet completely unaware of his future possibilities awaiting at this gate called The gate beautiful.

He could only see through his earthly eyes and the extent of his expectations were summed up only in few shekels and that from the hand of other men entering from the gate into the temple.

So it was for him a long time only until, that one glorious day when Peter and John passed him by and he found strength to call out to them for alms. What an amazing story of God’s unmerited favor upon the vessels of His glory.

Hearing this man’s plea for mercy Peter and John stop to take notice of the lame beggar, a man who was left there for the most of his life, but this was his day.

In the awesome foreknowledge of the Lord the apostles of Christ on their way to pray and worship their God came across this man by whom the Sovereign King of the universe was soon going to be glorified.

Neither this man nor the Apostles were aware of the miracle that was soon to take place at the gate beautiful out side the Temple walls.

It is the same today many are now seating outside of our congregational setting, yet are soon to be divinely noticed by us.

True ministry is birth out of our love and worship of God. The apostles were on their way to pray and worship God at the their assigned place of corporate worship, and God out of their intimacy of love and devotion to their God blessed them with such a great miracle of a changed life through divine healing.

In the eyes of all it was a legitimate miracle, but in reality it was a transforming power of the Name that is above all names. You see to the lame beggar a few shekels of silver would have been satisfying, yet to the sovereign eyes of the Lord his spiritual poverty was the most urgent need in his life.

The Apostles Peter and John stopped to take notice, but not to the utter lack of this man, but to the inner poverty of his soul.

We too need to take notice of the inner lack of men who are laid at the door of our lives and address it before all their others needs.

They stoop dawn to rich this man’s soul. Peter said silver and gold I do not possess, but what I do possess that I will impart or give to you. This insight in the spirit realm was what very few could take notice of this man’s life condition. His real need to know God over passed his physical needs.

This is the story of many today in our day and age. There are people many times brought to us in our Christian life and are left at the Gate Beautiful of our life of adoration and worship. The Gate Beautiful being the message of the good news of the gospel of Christ, but we often leave them unnoticed and walk away to our own personal time of devotion and intimacy of worship with God.

Many are brought by the sovereign will of God into our path and are left there naked and thirsty for the truth, but we seldom pass them by without offering them what they really need which you and I have.

Jesus’s gift of salvation is what many need, yet they come to the Gate Beautiful and stay there years and years being satisfied with what can not make them whole.

Even us who claim to have known God are many times very much seated just like the beggar at the Gate Beautiful of our spiritual poverty unaware of our real inner need. We are brought there and taken away in our prayers and all we expect to receive is our earthly temporal necessities of this temporary life.

We too are very well aware of our earthly and physical infirmities and needs, yet having neglected our true need we too remain at the gate Beautiful unfulfilled and unsatisfied for years. All we seek at times is what others who go in to worship would do for us.

Oh yes it is very true in our case too, how often we are seeking to move other worshiper’s heart and not the Masters.

Yes we are going just like the Lame beggar year after year after what can not satisfy our true spiritual need and remain in the same condition, since we do not see our true spiritual condition. We too remain as unknown beggars at the Most Beautiful Gate who is Jesus our Messiah the fountain of true life asking for only what could not satisfy our true thirst in life.

How many times lately the Lord has said to me in His word crying out by His Spirit in my inner ear.

“ Ho Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you who have no money, Come and buy and eat yes come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.”

Why do you spend money for what is not bread, and your wages for what does not satisfy?

Listen carefully to Me and eat what is good. And let your soul delight itself in abundance.

Incline your ear, and come to Me, Hear and your soul shall live. And I will make an everlasting covenant with you-

Seek the Lord while He may be found

Call upon Him while He is near.

Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts

Let him return to the Lord and He will have mercy on Him, and to our God

For He will abundantly pardon.

For My thoughts are not your thoughts

Nor are your ways My ways.”

Says the Lord

For as heavens are higher than the earth,

So are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.

Here is where many even in the body of our Lord Messiah have stumbled too.

Leaving the source of abundance and true life, we are staged as beggars in His Kingdom.

Being sons of the Kingdom we have strayed outside as a beggar . Though at the Gate Beautiful we never enter in to lip with true joy of our inheritance in Him , the source of all things.

Being the bride of the eternal Bridegroom we have not yet found our true position in Him. We stay with a begging mentality outside of the Most Beautiful Gate ever offered to men and that is the true abundant living .

We constantly seek and beg what is not the true means of abundance.

In another place our Lord said “ Seek Yee My Kingdom and My righteousness and everything else shall be added on to thee”

Yet we too are seating as a lame beggar outside of His abundant life of the fellowship with Him in intimacy, and are satisfied with what soon bring lack again in our lives.

Instead of leaping with joy as a truly satisfied bride awaiting for the passionate kiss of her bridegroom at Most Beautiful Gate of all Gates, we too have chosen that which men of this world would.

God have mercy on us too