Infection of the world

The life of faith is a life with God. And life with God is a communal reality, because all at once we are brought into the community of God that transcends the ways of this world—it is a community that is more than a simple gathering, it is an intimate family (Eph. 2:18-21). You have brothers and sisters who are yours, and you have a God who is calling you to Himself in love. And together we are to become the ultimate gift to this world.

Yes, as a follower of Christ the Holy Spirit beckons our hearts to come to the fountain of life. We are called into the truth of our foundation so that our actions, our lives are defined by being in Christ. This is what makes us His body, His community, His Church; it is what separates us from the world so that we might infect it (the world) with the crazy insane Love of Jesus.

The infection of the world through the church comes when our hearts let go of our worldly perspective so as to grab hold of a Christ-centered perspective. That is, when the joy of His love saturates our souls to such a depth that our thanksgiving overflows into the ocean of unending praise and giving. Yes, when we finally wake up to the truth of His sacrificial giving for our sake. When we cry out to the Spirit so that we might seek to imitate the bloody and beaten One draped over the cross of love by giving of ourselves for the other’s sake.

The world is crying out for the church to be the church. For the witness of our thanksgiving to be the complete giving of our hearts—relentlessly giving all of ourselves, withholding nothing because the only thing Christ withheld from us was the death sin is so deserving of. How can we not be thankful for the fact that He didn’t simply withhold death, but He swallowed it up in the victory of the cross? And then unashamedly has the audacity to invite us into His victory so as to share with us His eternal weight of glory that overcame sin and death.

How can we not be anything but joyously thankful and always giving?

Let us this day, as Christ’s disciples, as one body, one community—as His church, say yes to the Spirit so that through His presence and in His power we might live out our faith by living out Jesus’ commands—Love the Lord your God, Love your neighbor as yourself. Let us this day drench ourselves in prayer such that we lose ourselves in Christ’s heart so as to gain the victory of the cross. And let us step into the Holy Spirit so that through our lives of insane love the world might come to know the surpassing knowledge, peace and love of Jesus Christ.

Waters of thankfulness

Have you ever stopped to think where your focus is? Do you see self before you see Savior? Is the image of your creation self or Savior?

Many might balk at the aforementioned questions, but reality is, if one does not know who they are, they can never know what they have or where they are going.  For if we don't know who we are, then the reflection we will see in the water will not be the One who is the Almighty, but the one who is me. 

As we enter into the season of thanksgiving, a knowledge of who we are is crucial if we ever want to jump into the waters of thankfulness. Thankfulness is a state of the heart, and thus, it is rooted in who we are. Engaging who we are in light of who Jesus is calls for a heart that is passionately pursuing God. That is, when we seek the light of Christ so that His will might increase as my will decreases we find the truth of life. But so much of faith today witnesses not the increase of Jesus, but His decrease.

The decrease in Jesus has led to the decrease in thankfulness. For true thankfulness comes when the center of our hearts is occupied not by self, but by Savior. That is, we cannot find contentment, peace or joy if our focus in life is the increase of self. Only when we find ourselves seeking to live out the truth of decreasing will we find our joy, our peace, our contentment, our thankfulness increasing.

John the Baptist’s response to Jesus is one that many in his day as well as ours today, find unintelligible—namely, abounding joy and thankfulness over himself getting smaller and Jesus getting bigger.

“The friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom's voice. Therefore this joy of mine is now complete. He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3.29-30).

Talk about perspective. John does not try to climb to the stars, seize heaven’s throne or take matters into his own hands; he receives everything he has, including his station in life, from God. And unlike many today, John’s Messiah complex was not about self but about living for the Messiah. And in his decrease, John’s joy was complete.

To decrease is not a popular concept because it calls for us to let go of our control in life. It calls for us to give ourselves wholly to the way from above as opposed to the ways of the earth. And make no mistake about it, Satan will strike against our attempts to decrease. He will find what you are good at and make it your god. If you are good at finances, leadership, communication, athletics, music, academics, you name it, Satan will use your strengths so as to strangle out any thoughts of decrease. Daily he pushes us toward a mentality of increase so that eventually our lives seek to live out the truth of my will as opposed to Thy Will.

Only when we embrace the Spirit can the truth of our lives become, “He must increase but I must decrease.” And in our decrease we come to witness the beautiful truth of increase. We come to an increasingly greater understanding of the love that has been shed for our sake. Yes, in Christ and through the Spirit our hearts are filled with heaven’s joy creating an uprising in thankfulness that can do nothing but overflow into loving the other just as we have been loved.

Unleashing the power of the word

Each day is a gift from the Lord—a day that should be consumed with a desire to renew our zeal for Him. When we come before the throne of mercy and grace in order to spend time with the Lord, our hearts are renewed so that we might face whatever the day holds. In fact, followers of Christ should begin and end each day in prayer with thanksgiving.

What is more, our prayer life finds its vibrant energy when we use this time to meditate on the Word of God. In prayer and through the Word, the path of holy love becomes illumined so that we might remember all that has been done on our behalf, know how deeply loved we are and believe in the power and presence of our Risen Savior. Truth is, everything gets old and worn and weak without a re-awakening so as to renew and restore. Prayer is our awakening.

The crazy truth of life is that the further we press into faith in Christ the more resistance we will face from the insolent and accursed ones who wander away from the Word of God (v21). The more we resist the ways of the world the greater the scoffing and mocking we will encounter because our life of faith does not fit into the constructs of this world . We are “a sojourner on the earth,” (v19) whose heart has been awakened and consumed by the commandments and testimonies of the Lord our God, not the false teachings of the world (See Andrew Powell's sermon on False teachers ).

We need to saturate ourselves in prayer so that the word of God might become the tidal wave of hope that floods our hearts with the truth of divine love. We cannot know Christ on our own; we need the help of the Holy Spirit. In prayer and through the Holy Spirit we can incarnate the words of Scripture even in the midst of scorning and contempt (v17). Prayer is essential to Christian living, because it is the key to unlocking the power of the Word in our lives.

In Eph 1.18 Paul prays, “that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of His calling . . .” Paul knows that when we open the word of God so that we might know the Word of God our hearts are renewed so that the redemption and restoration of Christ becomes the truth of our lives in and through the Holy Spirit.

Let us this day seek to consume the word of God so as to be consumed by the Word of God. Let us this day meditate on His commandments so as to grow more and more like Him. Let us this day be in prayer, crying out with the Psalmist, “Lord open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law” (v18).

Unexpected Ways

The Gospel is good news. But what is so good about it? It is so much easier to place bumper sticker answers on one’s car than it is to bump up against these questions.

Jesus will only connect in an age when he remains radically different in our daily lives, breaking us out of our complacency, comfort, and self-imposed “normalcy.” When we truly see Him as the way, the truth and the life…

Fear and faith cannot occupy the same space in our hearts. For in Christ we are embraced by the perfection of love and perfect love casts out fear. Christ came to be our peace, “Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you…Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid” (Jn 14.27).

Crazy to think about it, but just hours before Jesus was crucified he was concerned for the peace and the joy and the faith of his followers. Think of it. He is about to be tortured to death with one of the most horrific means of torture ever devised, and His burden was to solidify in the souls of His followers peace and joy and faith.

Jesus fought hard against the “false teachings” of the day so that those who would place their faith in Him, might experience the everlasting joy of heaven. Jesus suffered on behalf of those who place their belief in who He is—He sacrificed His life so that we who believe in Him might have the beauty, the peace, the truth of eternal life.

There on the cross Jesus says to humanity, “I want you to have peace. I want you to be deeply joyful. I want you to believe in what I say and what I do — to have unshakable faith. I want you to have the kind of peace that I give, not the world. The kind of joy that I give, not the world. The kind of faith, I give, not the world. I want you to have the truth of love and the truth of faith—I want you to have Me.”

Let us this day stop trying to control the storms and instead, by the power of the Holy Spirit, step into the calming power of the Savior. Let us this day place all our care upon Jesus, “for He cares for us” (1 Peter 5.7). Let us this day ask the Spirit to increase our faith by taking us deeper into the unexpected ways of Jesus.

Stepping into leadership...Christ-like

What does it mean to lead like Christ? My thoughts...https://vimeo.com/123298231

The Religion Game

Are you saved? I guess before answering this question one might ask, saved from what?

Seems that in recent years the definition of “saved” has been shrunken and freeze-dried by today’s relative thought process reducing it to nothing more than “personal savior” talk. That is, our religious endeavors have become acts of convenience and self-promotion as opposed to sacrifice and surrender.

In modern times salvation follows the lines of my personal society. That is, I may have a personal home, personal car, personal computer, personal identification number, personal assistant—all I need now is personal salvation from my own personal savior.

Sure Jesus is personal, but unlike our iPhones, iPods, computers and the like, He is not robotic, plastic or programmable. We need our heart’s thoughts reoriented – we don't need the latest and greatest savior. We don’t need our own personal Jesus who is programmable; we need the Jesus of the cross. For it is the Jesus of the cross who personally steps into life, relates to each one of us and seeks to save us. What we need is to personally step into Jesus…

This leads us to John 3—the ultimate passage from the Bible on the need to have a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ. Here Jesus tells Nicodemus, a religious leader and member of the Jewish ruling council (Jn 3.1), that he needs to be born again—to become a spiritual newborn baby: “I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again” (Jn 3.3).

Jesus gets personal with Nicodemus—very personal. Jesus knows what’s in Nicodemus’s heart, just like He knows what’s in everyone’s heart, and so does not need human testimony about people (Jn 2.24-25). Jesus knows that Nicodemus has been playing the religion game way too long and that he has flawed faith based on the traditions and testimonies of his old boys’ club (the Jewish ruling council) rather than true faith based on God’s Word and the Spirit.

That’ why Jesus responds to Nicodemus in the way He does—up front and directly. As Jesus connects with Nicodemus, He is not scorning him, but He is seeking to crack his hard heart bound up with the pride of his position and the praises of his peers. How often do we do what we do for the praise of others or another notch in the belt of pride? Like Nicodemus, we need new flesh, a new heart, a new birth. We need Jesus.

And so are you saved? Saved from the hustle and bustle of the world? Saved from the necessity of “keeping up with the Jones’?” Are you saved from a life of self-promotion, self-righteousness and self-elevation?

Being saved is the realization that everyday, every moment, every thought, every action—all that I am needs Jesus. Everyday our prayer should be: “Holy Spirit lead me deeper into Jesus and save me.” Are you saved?

Living Out Christ

Living out the gospel can be rough, troublesome, tumultuous, joyful, illuminating, exhilarating, etc…One thing is for sure, living out the gospel is not stagnant. So why is this? Truth be told, that man on the cross questioned down to the bottom of hell, for our sakes, is the ultimate question that God puts to us. What we do with Jesus determines not only who we are but how we will live. 

As followers of Christ we are called to be imitators of Him – that is, to participate in His ministry of reconciliation. This can only happen when: First, we recognize our need of Jesus; and second, see the needs of others before our own. Being in Christ is a process of growth – it is a daily movement into His movement. I like what John Newton (author of Amazing Grace) writes:

I am not what I ought to be.I am not what I wish to beI am not even what I hope to by.But by the cross of Christ,I am not what I was

We can only live out our love of Christ as well as suffer for his sake when, through the Holy Spirit, Christ becomes the pattern of our life and the person after which we would sculpture our person. As Paul wrote to the Ephesians, “Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children ²and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” (Eph 5.1-2). 

Take this moment and ask the Lord to highlight areas of your life that you could better imitate Christ.  Stop, and take in this moment – take to heart the proverb, Carpe diem – which simply means, “Seize the day!”  Thank God for this moment and celebrate your life by living out Christ in your love to God, to yourself, and to the other!