I came across this article and was really struck by it. This is one of those areas of ministry that many times we take for granted. People will die and as pastors we will serve an important role in helping families grieve and move forward in hope.
This is one pastors reflections on his ministry and that of an older retiring ministry. It is worth reading.
Nearness to God brings likeness to God. The more you see God the more of God will be seen in you. —C.H. Spurgeon
via Challies Dot Com.
Ok, so here is the deal. When I get hungry, I eat. When I get tired, I sleep. When I get discouraged, I eat. Just kidding on the last one. I usually go watch a movie or watch my kids play.
On a serious note, though, if hunger is the sign that something needs to be put in our stomach’s, what are we supposed to put in our spiritual belly when we are spiritually hungry? This is a question that I have been trying to get my head and heart around over the last couple of months. I do not have this all figured out, but I think that I am going in the right direction. So, let me share with you what I have been thinking.
There are two places in the Gospel’s were Jesus says something about spiritual food. What makes these two instances interesting is that one has to do with consumption and the other has to do with activity. I am by no means the symbol of fitness or dietary excellence, but I know that if I want to be healthy I have to eat well and exercise or stay active.
This is what Jesus said. The first he said to the devil and the second he said to his disciples.
But he answered, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” (Matthew 4:4, ESV)
31 Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, saying, “Rabbi, eat.” 32 But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” 33 So the disciples said to one another, “Has anyone brought him something to eat?” 34Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work….” (John 4:31-34, ESV)
Continue reading “Spiritual Starvation: The Reason Many Christian’s Struggle”
…And all that is within in me
Bless His holy name
When was the last time that your soul was excited about what God was doing? When was the last time that you couldn’t contain yourself to tell someone that God was moving in your life?
Continue reading “Bless the Lord, O My Soul…”
For our sake [God] made [Jesus] to be sin [even though Jesus] knew no sin, so that in [Jesus] we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:21, ESV)
I will say this from the word go. If you can wrap your mind around this you will be well on your way to living a life that is pleasing to the Lord. If, however, you are like me, then you may struggle to make sense of how it could be possible for us to receive the righteousness of God in Christ.
This is possibly one of the most loving and compassionate verses of scripture in the Bible. It reveals the motivation in God’s heart toward us. Paul is telling us that as we go out into the world as ambassadors for Jesus what we are telling the world is that God has done something so awesome, so mind blowing that if we really thought about it we would break out into spontaneous praise! There are several key points of interest in this ONE verse that I want to highlight. I will break it down so that we can appreciate what Paul is saying.
Paul is saying that the reason that God has acted in the way that he did; the reason that we are the beneficiaries of God’s unmerited favor is because God was thinking about us from the beginning. This does not make us the center of God’s affections. What this describes is that the reason for Jesus dying was because God knew, understood and accepted the fact that without Jesus death there would be no life for anyone.
It was for OUR sakes that Jesus came.
It was for OUR sakes that Jesus lived.
It was for OUR sakes that Jesus died.
It was for OUR sakes that Jesus was raised again on the third day.
This is the why of Jesus entire life and ministry on earth. It was for our sakes! This cannot be understated, overstated, minimized or made too important. What Jesus did is beyond comparison. What Jesus accomplished can never be duplicated. What Jesus did can never be undone.
There is nothing in salvation that can be attributed to my efforts as a sinner. There is nothing that I can contribute to the process or the event. Salvation is such a gift from God that God did not and does not see fit to entrust me with any aspect of it. He knows that if I were to lay my hands on salvation I would so damage it that it would become useless. Not sure about this? Look at what Peter has to say on the subject. (What a wonderful passage of promise!)
3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, 5who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. (1 Peter 1:3-5, ESV, emphasis added)
The wonder of God’s love is that he secures the grace and salvation that he provides. He is unwilling that anyone should lose what he has carefully provided through the death of his Son. God does not even trust me to maintain it. God does that himself. This is grace through and through, from beginning to end.
Right here, at this point we run into one of those theological puzzles. How is it that God has provided for us what we need more than anything else, his righteousness? The Scripture says that Jesus was made to be sin. The idea was that Jesus became sin. Not that Jesus committed a sin; not that Jesus sinned, but that somehow he became the very thing that I am, without actually being guilty of doing anything wrong.
I think you are beginning to see the difficulties here. How is this possible? There is a concept that we have to understand. It is described by a big word, but is can be understood rather easily. The concept is imputation. According to Theopedia “Imputation is used to designate any action or word or thing as reckoned to a person.” If you think of it this way it might help. I love to smear butter on a freshly baked dinner roll. The butter is not a part of the roll, but when I take the knife and I apply the butter, I imputed the butter to the bread.
This is the idea. Jesus did not change who he was, but something was added to him that was not his, in this case the sin of the whole world. This is why Paul says that God made Jesus to be sin, because if God had not, Jesus could not die as our substitute and redeem us from the very sin that was condemning us to hell. This is the miracle of Jesus’ life.
There is a great book by Peter Lewis, The Glory of Christ. In it he writes these amazing few sentences describing what was taking place when Jesus showed up on the scene as a human being, just like you and me.
“It comes to this: for our salvation it is as necessary that the Son of God be truly and fully human as that He be truly and fully divine. If this humanity is less than full and true, then he is inadequate as a mediator, incompetent as a sympathizer and disqualified as a redeemer. If (save for sin) He is not all that we are in our uttermost humanity, the He cannot perfectly represent us either in His life or in His death. If He does not descend to us from God, the He cannot lift us up to God.” (pg. 142)
The wonder and mystery of the incarnation is the linchpin that makes our redemption possible and sure. In the incarnation, God paved the way to the cross. And at the cross, Jesus became guilty of something he never did, your and my sin.
As we move from the “Why” to the “Who” and pass through the “How” we arrive at the “where.” Where is it that God places us after Jesus has taken our place on the cross? This short clause packs a powerful punch in answering that for us. Listen to where God has put us. God has put us in him. But how can it do that? He can do that because that is what the plan was. Those two words, “so that,” right there are the arrows point to God’s design. But, what do those two words mean? What they mean is that
Based on what has been said before, what comes after IS GUARANTEED!
Do not miss that. Do not read this truth and just pass along as if something ordinary has happened!
This is the power of what is happening here in this verse. The reason that God is able to give to us what rightfully belongs to Jesus is because Jesus took from us what rightly belonged to us and made it his own. We are heading toward heaven because Jesus punched the ticket with a blood-soaked nail. This is not a cheap fare. The Gospel moves us from the Glory of God to the Grace of God. The journey from glory to grace goes right through the terrible door of the Judgment of God that falls directly upon Jesus.
The second part of this clause is that all of this takes place “in Jesus.” And here is where true Christianity is separated from all other religions, philosophical systems and ideologies of the world. If a person does not come to Jesus, trust in Jesus, hold to Jesus and rely on Jesus all of the benefits of God’s righteousness will not be enjoyed. And what’s worse they will never be applied to the sinner’s account.
Salvation in Christ is conditional. All of salvation depends on our staying in Jesus and only Jesus.
This is the great truth of the Gospel. The Gospel, I believe answers this question: What is the ultimate goal of God’s redemption plan? The Gospel preaches Christ crucified, buried and raised so that we may become sons and daughters of God. So that we might become heirs and joint heirs with Jesus. So that we might be transformed, conformed, and renewed in every area of life. But, all of this presupposes that we are now something different. What we have become has changed. FOREVER!
God’s plan for salvation was not an afterthought. God knew what it was going to take to redeem a fallen human race. And Jesus willingly stepped down from his thrown at the right hand of God and stepped into the finite, fallen world of sinners. At the heart of this act of undefiled love is the understanding that without sacrifice the price of salvation would never have been paid. Without out Jesus’ death there is no imputed righteousness.
Faith in Christ, the kind of faith that sets a person free from sin, fear and all of the traps that lead to bondage can only come when we freely receive the righteousness of God. It is not something that can be won, earned or coerced. It must be enjoyed, plain and simple. To do otherwise is to jeopardize living into the full reality of God’s grace. Don’t make that mistake.
Receive what has been given. And, then do what you should be doing already, leave it all in God’s hands.
My pastor has been teaching/preaching through a series off the book Not a Fan by Kyle Idleman. Yesterday he spoke on the subject “More than Rules.” As Pastor David preached he said something that just stood out to me. He said,
No body falls in love with a rule.
We all are built with an desire to love and be loved. Rules do not give us this relational reality. We want someone who knows us and accepts us for who we are, fallen and flawed. I guess part of the problems is that we have to see ourselves this way first. It can be so easy to fall into the trap of thinking that if we do something long enough and with enough conviction we will see the love come to us that we want. The relationship has to come first. We have to learn to see one another and received one another first. Then, and only then, when the rules come, we will not use them against each other.
The story of the woman caught in the act of adultery in John 8 reveals this. Pastor David used this story as the back drop for teaching. The gist of the story is this. A woman is caught “in the act” by a group of religious leaders. How they managed to do this is not stated, but we can imagine that it was not lucky timing. This mob drags this woman in front of Jesus and then they put the question to Jesus. “This woman was caught in adultery, what should we do? The law (the rules) say that we should stone her.”
Jesus doesn’t play the game. What does he do? He distracts the crowd from the woman, who is ashamed and terrified beyond description and starts writing on the ground. What does he write? We have no idea, and in the end it doesn’t matter. But, after a few moments Jesus makes his own announcement. “Let any one of you who has never sinned throw the first stone to kill this woman.”
We do not know how it happened, but the image, or rather the sound that fills my imagination is the sound of stone upon stone falling to the ground.
Thud.
Thud.
THUD.
When the crowd is gone there are only two remaining, the sinner, an adulterous woman, and the Judge. Yes, the judge is there. Jesus is the savior, he is the Messiah, he is the greater forgiver of sin. But, what was Jesus question? He said, “Let any one of you who has never sinned throw the first stone to kill this woman.” Jesus was the only one in the crowd who was without sin! He WAS the judge, he had every right to pick up the stone of judgment and strike this sinful woman down for her sin. But, that is not what he did. The judge did not judge because when rules rule, relationships suffer.
This fact in the story is one of the most astounding facts of the event. The one man that could have, did not. If the one man who knew the rules and lived by them did not participate in this execution, what are we supposed to take away from this moment? I think there are three ideas that we can take away from this event in John 8.
Conversations are great. Let me know what you think or are thinking!
I have read all of the Harry Potter books and found them to be entertaining and wonderfully written. I was sucked right into the world of Harry Potter and the rest of the cast. I will not pretend to be able to write a clear and concise summary of the series and how it relates to some of the concerns that some Christians have put out there. What I will do is point you toward two that have. The first is by Jim Hamilton and the second is by Andrew Peterson, contributor to The Rabbit Room.
I came across this great review of the series and its response and rebuttal to some of those concerned about the series.
Here is another very well written defense of Christians reading the Harry Potter series.
So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith. (Galatians 6:10, ESV, emphasis added)
For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. (1 John 3:11, ESV)
Faith is not just what we have inside of us. Faith must find its way out of us into the world in which we live. One of the areas where we must not forget to extend the grace that we have received is to those who are a part of our community of faith. Paul plainly tells us that we should love one another and that we must not miss the opportunities to do good to those of the “household of faith.” It would seem that Paul believed that it was easy to miss. As in most cases, the most familiar things are most often taken for granted.
If we cannot help one another, whom we know and see on a regular basis, how are we ever going to convince anybody else that we care for them? What we will create is a consumption-based relationship. People will come and receive from us because we are willing to give, but true and deep relationship will not be a part of our time together. The heart of the church is the joining of the hearts of its members.
This truth of our faith is an outgrowth of what Jesus taught the disciples. Without a caring church there will be no power in the testimony of the church in and to the world. Jesus’ clearest example shows that if we are not growing and participating in loving actions toward one another, our witness will amount to nothing.
A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. (John 13:34-35, ESV)
Paul also joins in and expands on this point and lets us know that it is possible to fulfill God’s law when we love one another as Christ loves us. The idea here is not that we can do now what we could not do before without Jesus. What this next statement points to is that the purpose of the law was to help us love one another. Unfortunately, the law had the opposite effect on us.
Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. (Romans 13:8, ESV)
And again Paul says,
Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. (Romans 12:10, ESV)
John goes so far as to say that our love for one another is evidence of the very existance of God when he says,
No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love is brought to full expression in us. (1 John 4:12, NLT)
God has chosen to use the bonds of love between members of the body of Christ as evidence of the Gospel, his existence and his ability to change the human heart. Too often we stop short of saying this. If we accepted this as a part of our faith and calling much of the bickering that we see in our churches would have to stop. But, this would mean that we had to live out the love that Jesus demonstrated toward us. We cannot fake this kind of love. We cannot behave our way into loving people like Christ loved the church. That is impossible.
Genuine love can only come by a radically changed heart. Only when we are willing to surrender our own desires to do what we want and to choose whom we will love can we begin to love biblically. An this may be where many of us falter. We want to be able to choose whom we love. But, Jesus had something to say about that (Matthew 5:43-48).
There is a question that I now find myself asking regularly. It is based on a Paul’s declaration in Galatians 2:20. This is the question:
Whose life am I living?
If I cannot answer this question I will not be able to move forward into what God desires for me in my life. What is worse is that if I cannot answer this question I have to ask some other questions about the “change” that was borne as a result of my profession of faith. There is a struggle to live a life of faith. This is natural, but which side appears to have the upper hand? Who keeps winning?
The second verse that started our discussion makes a subtle claim that I do not want us to overlook. John is declaring that the message that he and the other disciples took to the world and the nations was and is the same message that was delivered “from the beginning.” It would be somewhat naive to believe that John was thinking only of Jesus’ ministry. John, in his Gospel and in the letters, tends toward an eternal perspective. John, I believe, is pointing us toward the fact that God has always desired to express his love toward his creation. But, that is not enough. An important component of God’s plan was also to have love be the defining reality of all relationships.
The way that the Bible seems to describe the connection between our faith in Christ and our love for one another, there does not appear to be a way to separate the two. If we claim to have faith in God and there is little-to-no evidence of love for those that are also God’s children, then we are walking on dangerous ground. John said in his first letter that this is, in essence, an impossibility. If we love God then we must love one another.
If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. (1 John 4:20, ESV)
Read that verse again. John calls us liars for saying that we love God and then fail to show love toward our brothers!
Based on this verse, how are you doing? You cannot at the same time love God and hate your brothers in the faith. Love is a positive, intentional action toward those you see. There is no such thing as “passive” love. Love is action. Love is movement. Love is alive. Anything less than this betrays the condition of our own hearts.
In closing, I want to offer this prayer for you to consider and pray for yourself. Let it be a guide.
Dear Heavenly Father,
Your love for me is perfect. You demonstrated your love by sending Jesus to live, die, be buried and to rise again on the third day. Help me to feel deep within my heart the weight and power and breadth of your love in Jesus. Help me to take what you have put within me by the power of the Holy Spirit and share it with those who are a part of my family of faith. I know that I may not always like or approve of what they do, but that does not change that I should love them as Christ loved the church.
Father, help me to prove your love for me by loving others. I no longer want to be a liar. I desire for my life and testimony to agree. The only way that this will happen is by trusting in you to transform my heart. I recognize now that this is a daily act and a life-long process. Give me the strength and courage to surrender to your will, your plan and your purposes for my life.
In the name of Jesus the Savior I pray, Amen!
“1Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand;2 By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain. 3For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; 4And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures.” (1 Corinthians 15:1-4, KJV)
This is, according to Paul’s own understanding, the Gospel of Jesus Christ. One of the things that I am amazed by is that there are a lot of things “missing” from what we have commonly come to believe the Gospel is. There are many things that we must understand about the Gospel, but these come after we have received this simple message and believed what it says.
There are four key aspects that Paul says must be present in order for the Gospel to be “THE” Gospel. Those four revolve around the resurrection of Jesus.
Over the last several months I have been coming back to this simple definition of the Gospel. I think that I have found that many time the message that proclaims the redemption of the human soul is not complicated. It is profound. The heart of the Christian faith is a miracle of unprecedented proportions. The entire Christian faith depends on the resurrection being true. If there is no resurrection there is nothing. Paul tells as much when he explains that if Jesus did not rise from the grave, then we all should be pitied (1 Corinthians 15:12-19). If any point of the resurrection account is questioned the entire thing falls apart.
Let’s take a few moments to look at each of these.
There are many who do not believe that Jesus actually died. The mystery of God becoming a man in the person of Jesus of Nazareth has been a point of contention for many people. But, to think that God would allow himself to be subjected to the humiliation and horror of death is not something that many are willing to accept. What we have to realize is that if Jesus did not die, we cannot live! His death had to be real and total.
The death of Jesus was like every other dead. It was total and complete. There was no life left in Jesus body. If it were not true, then Jesus would not be able to provide for us what we needed. Without a substitutionary death, I would not be able to experience the fullness of Christ’s life in me. The reason I can share in Christ’s righteousness is because he fully, completely and perfectly shared in my death.
If Jesus did not come out of that grave, there is no hope of heaven and fellowship with our heavenly Father. Jesus comforted the disciples by telling them that he was going to prepare a place for them (John 14:1-3). When was that going to take place? After his death and resurrection! That is why the disciples could not make sense of what Jesus was saying. They wanted to follow Jesus, but Jesus let them know that the path that was laid out for him was not one that they could travel with him.
Of the four aspects of the Gospel that are necessary, this last one stands out. It stands out becuase Paul is essentially saying that God has staked his reputation and his “worthiness” as God on his ability to predict and fulfill the resurrection. Everything that happened to Jesus happened exactly how God said that it would. Everything that the Bible has to say about anything hinges on the Resurrection of Jesus having taken place! That seems like a big risk unless it actually happened.
As we have traveled on this exploration of faith, I have found that many times we do not understand the place of God’s Word in the development of faith. God’s provides his word to us to verify and to support everything that he is doing in, through and around us. Whenever we forgo using the word of God as God designed we will find that what we are trying may not work as well as we have planned.
I am thankful that God has awakened me to a this powerful truth. The Word of God, all of the the scriptures are not only sufficient for all that I need, they were designed to fulfill my every need in preparing me for living a life of faith. Paul tells Timothy to never lose sight of this amazing reality.
16 All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. (2 Timothy 3:16, ESV)
With each passing day I grow more convinced that the reason the Word of God does not have the effects that it describes is not because it does not work, but because we do not allow it work in us.
