8 If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
The greatest form of deception is self-deception. When we make a conscious decision not to take heed of the knowledge, wisdom, and experiences of those we trust we have set our course toward self-destruction. Continue reading “1 John 1:8 | We are Fundamentally Broken”
This young lady is one of my (former) youth. She was the speaker for the youth Sunday on August 7, 2016 at Cordele First UMC. Continue reading “By a former Youth Student | “Redemption in Community””
Our words and deeds should bring healing to those we encounter. And when they do not, we see the evidence that we have strayed too far from the path that has been set before us as the body of Christ.
I have wanted to comment on the recent events that have gripped the attention and conscience of our country. And, as is often the case, I struggled to find a way to make sense of what was going on. After some time to think and several conversations I have decided to provide some of my thoughts. Continue reading “A Pastoral Reflection: Why we can’t just get along.”
Missing by an inch or missing by a mile is still missing the standard that John establishes here.
7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.
John returns to the subject of light in verse 7. As he does it augments what he means by the relationship that we have with God. There is a particular characteristic to our journey in the light. That characteristic is that it is, or should be, the same light that God is in, or rather that God produces from himself. In other words, when we say that we are in the light, that we are walking in the light, then what we are saying–or should be saying–is that we are living out and embodying and reflecting God’s love and life in our own. Continue reading “1 John 1:7 | Walking in his light”
What a beautiful reminder of what God is offering to us. May the unfathomable grace of God consume and constrain us as we make our way toward Easter!
VERSE 1:
If love endured that ancient cross
How precious is my Saviour’s blood
The beauty of heaven wrapped in my shame
The image of love upon death’s frame
PRE-CHORUS 1:
If having my heart was worth the pain
What joy could You see beyond the grave
If love found my soul worth dying for
CHORUS:
How wonderful How glorious
My Saviour’s scars Victorious
My chains are gone My debt is paid
From death to life
And grace to grace
VERSE 2:
If heaven now owns that vacant tomb
How great is the hope that lives in You
The passion that tore through hell like a rose
The promise that rolled back death and its stone
PRE-CHORUS 2:
If freedom is worth the life You raised
Oh where is my sin where is my shame
If love paid it all to have my heart
BRIDGE:
When I see that cross I see freedom
When I see that grave I’ll see Jesus
And from death to life I will sing
Your praise In the wonder of Your grace
TAGS:
How my soul will sing Your praise
In the wonder of Your grace
How my soul will sing Your praise
If they knew what you knew that God knew about you, how would that affect how you lived your life?
One of the hardest things to do as a Christian is moving on from our past. We all know who we were. We also know who we are, or at least are trying to be. There is no escaping the memories of our history. We are all inescapably trapped by our own experiences.
This reality has often times caused me to struggle. In particular, I have struggled with bearing witness to the grace of God and the Gospel of Jesus because of fear. Fear of my own ignorance; of my own failures; even of my own fears. The level of emotional and spiritual paralysis can be suffocating at times. I recognize that I have been saved by Jesus. I believe the Good News and have confessed my faith in God. I have started doing all the right things, and still I have felt like there is something missing.
The truth is there is something missing. However, it is not what many of us think. Over the years, I have found that my biggest problem is not the right things I’m doing, but a shame over all the things I know I have done wrong. I think this is because of an essential misunderstanding of grace.
God’s grace does not remove the scars caused by our sin. What grace does is heal the wound. An open wound, one that will not heal, will eventually get infected. We understanding this when we think of our bodies but, what about our spiritual being. When we suffer a spiritual injury how are these wounds healed? What can we do to close a wound we cannot see?
The first thing we have to recognize is that spiritual injuries are exactly that, spiritual. That means looking for natural means of healing them will never work. As a matter of fact, doing this may actually deepen the injury and extend the time needed for healing. Pastor Luis Scott has defined a spiritual injury as a contradiction between what we believe and what we know to be true. An example of this is when a child is being abused by a parent. The child believes that the parent should be caring for and protecting them but, the supposed protector is actually a perpetrator. The injury caused by this contradiction remains present and open far longer than any of the physical wounds inflicted as long as the contradiction remains unresolved. Long after the latter has healed, the former may continue growing and festering.
While it is true that many people suffer spiritual injuries at the hands of others, it is also true that we can become the cause of our own injuries. When w attempt to reconcile a contradiction in our hearts and minds, a contradiction that “we know” is not true, we inadvertently keep amplifying the spiritual damage. What makes this entire process worse is that many of us dying under the weight of more contradictions than we can identify on our own. We need help in sorting it all out. We really cannot do it on our own. But our shame (which is the inverted expression of pride) gets in the way.
My shame over past sin is real. There is no taking any of it back. All of us who acknowledge that we are sinners understand this. The problem is that we cannot continue to believe that we are both horrible sinners and redeemed saints. Before I get accused of being a heretic, understand what I am saying. I am a horrible sinner. That does not change. What does change is that if I am redeemed by the blood of Christ, as the Gospel declares, then I have to see the reality my sinfulness in light of the truth of my salvation.
In other words, the TRUTH of God’s grace, the TRUTH that I have been saved, the TRUTH that I am now being conformed into the image of Christ, these TRUTHs overshadows the lie that I am too far gone for God to save. That I cannot not be saved or that I cannot be changed. These ideas are contrary to what God has proclaimed in his word.
There are too many Christians who have inflicted upon themselves very serious spiritual injuries and they may not even know it. And the root cause of these injuries is that they have believed lies. When we believe lies about God, his grace, and the Gospel we will suffer. And we suffer because we are descending into bondage. But, when we continue to hold on to notions of who we used to be without God when God has changed those circumstances we continue to injure ourselves.
The first step toward healing is to stop doing what is causing the wound to remain open and exposed. We have to discover the lie we have believed that has led to a contradiction in our lives. This is not always easy. It can take some time to find and then accept that we believed a lie. However, in the end, it is vital to our getting spiritually healthy.
Legalism is the belief that the way to please God and secure access to heaven is by complying to a set of regulations. This does two things. First, legalism robs us of any peace and joy the Gospel offers to us. When we are governed by fear we flip faith on its head. We begin to put our trust in something that neither has the power, nor was it ever intended to keep us safe–namely, our own ability. The Gospel reminds us that we are unable and incapable of meeting every regulation that God has for holiness. When we try to live out the Gospel in this way, we kill ourselves a thousand times a day.
Second, legalism distorts the God the Bible describes, who extends grace to sinners. God becomes a tyrant rather than a father. God is capricious and not gracious. God becomes impatient, petulant, and vindictive when we fail to live up to the standards legalism imposes. None of these attribute describe God. And yet, this is how we feel when legalism is the guiding theological lens we see through.
Legalism over promises and never delivers. It fosters a combative mindset and a environment of one-upmanship that is unhealthy for the church and unbecoming of a follower of Jesus. Legalism is a poison withing the soul of a believer and there is only one cure. We have to have a sound and true understanding of what the Bible says. This is the only remedy. The best antidote to legalism is good theology.
This means that every Christian should become a better theologian. We already are theologians. The only difference between many of us is the time we spend getting our theology right.
Last night a terrible act of violence was committed against the pastor and members of Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina. There are no words to describe the dastardly nature of this crime. To enter a place of worship and without any apparent provocation proceed to killing defenseless congregants points to an evil that is beyond comprehension.
What make this tragedy even more infuriating than it already is, is how quickly the conversation moves away from the victims to the “issues.” I am not saying that there are not problems that need to be addressed. What bothers me is that rarely do events like this lead to a conversation about what is really wrong with our world. We keep putting band-aids on the problem, never really stopping to think about the source of the poison that seems to be seeping into the bloodstream of our nation.
Several years ago I attended a missions conference and one of the speakers gave this analogy regarding justice ministry. He described a man standing on the bank of a river. As he stood there he heard the cries for help of another man in the river. He could not fight the current to get to the riverbank. The first man threw a rope to the man and offered him a life line to safety, which was gladly taken. A short time later, another person came floating down the river, this one in the same predicament as the first. Again the rope was offered and again another life was saved. The man stood on the river bank and helped the people as they came. After several people had been rescued in this way, the good Samaritan decided to walk up-stream to see why all these people were falling into the river.
As a Christian and pastor I feel that too many within the Church have become satisfied with lending a hand and throwing a rope to help those who are floating down the river, but we have not done a good job of finding the source of the problem. Throwing a rope to help is an act of mercy for the individual helped. But, walking upstream on the river and fixing the reason people are falling into the river is an act of justice. We have to speak to the true issue if we are going to see lasting change.
Is racism a problem? Yes. Is human trafficking and slavery a problem? Yes. Are there social issues that have to be confronted and addressed? Yes. However, these are not the primary, rudimentary issues the human soul must be rescued from. What humanity needs to be rescued from is its sinful nature. We are all sinners and because of this sin we all are at risk of falling into the river of death. Sin is not just one problem, it is a billion problems described by one simple reality. We all are incapable of avoiding the hole that sends us floating down the river.
As I have read the news reports regarding the shooting of those nine souls I felt this overwhelming sense that the darkness of sin has been deepening in our world. There seems to be no bottom to the depths of human cruelty and depravity. I am saddened by all of this. And yet, I hold onto the hope that the Light of World still shines.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., had it right when he said, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” [Source] What light was he talking about? What love was he pointing to? It was the light of Christ in the Gospel of the Cross. This is the only light and the only love that will dispel the darkness that threatens to envelop our heart, mind and soul.
For the church the only transformative power give to us is the Gospel of Jesus. If we turn to anything else we jeopardize any chance we have been given to see the heart soften, the soul saved, and the mind renewed. Not everyone will agree with me but, that is alright. I have live according to what I believe.
that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. (1 John 1:3)
Here at the beginning of the letter John repeats the word fellowship in two distinct contexts. It appears from the general context of the first three verses that the gospel of Jesus Christ has (among other realities) a binding effect among the community of faith and between the individual believer and the Father and Son. Let’s look at this more closely.
John has made an important point by saying that the proclaiming of the Gospel (i.e., “that which we have seen and heard) is a prerequisite fact to what is to follow. This is why he starts with the proclamation in order to get to the “so that”. This short phrase tells us the purpose of the proclamation. So, what is the purpose? It is so John and those who believe the Gospel that is proclaimed might have fellowship. The unity of the body is vitally important to John because it is eternally important to Jesus. Jesus prayed in John 17.
20 “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, 21 that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— 23 I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. (John 17:20-23a NIV)
The Gospel brings believers together because it has brought those same individuals closer to God. When a person hears the Gospel and believes their relationship with God through Jesus has begun. Now that the vertical relationship has been established, the horizontal relationship must be initiated. The reason that believers in Africa can have fellowship with Christians in China and in North America is because of the unifying power of our common faith in Jesus. According to John, his is one of the main reasons we should proclaim the Gospel.
Fellowship is not just what happens during potlucks at church. Fellowship is the family connection that is forged because of our faith in Jesus. As individual believers, we should seek to grow in our fellowship with those who are members of our local congregations, not look for excuses to not show up. The gathering of God’s people is a gift from God for the benefit of His children. Let’s not take it for granted.
The apostle Paul tells us that the Gospel is the power of God unto salvation (Romans 1:16). This idea has captured my imagination for a couple of reason. First, there is a direct link between the Gospel and salvation. While this may appear obvious on the surface, I get the impression that many people no longer see this link. The Gospel, the good news of Jesus’ life and ministry, is essential to redemption. Without the Gospel there can be no salvation. The church has lost some of its urgency regarding this reality. Continue reading “God’s Power and the Gospel”
