Our Bridge

Read John 10:1-39

This past Wednesday the Church celebrated Ash Wednesday, and with it, we celebrated the beginning of lent. Lent marks out the 40 days leading up to the greatest representation of love this world has ever come to experience…

It is my hope that over these next 40 days each of us would stop, contemplate and reflect…

How many of us have found our bridge over troubled water?

Not many of us find someone who will lay down their life for us – someone to become our suffering. Sure, most of us have close friends, but even in these friendships we come to find that there is a limit to how much they will sacrifice for us.

In today’s world of consumerism and utilitarianism, it is hard to find someone who is as Simon and Garfunkel sing of in their cover of Elvis Presley’s song:

Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down

Truth is, the world does not promote a sacrificial lifestyle. Our society seeks to make a better America by making a better life for “me.” And the result of this mentality is that life becomes saturated in selfishness. But it doesn't have to be this way… If only we believe…

Jesus came to be our bridge over troubled water. He came to lift us up out of selfishness so that we might begin to see the other—to see the beauty of self because it sees through a heart of selflessness, not selfishness. Yes, when we give our hearts to Jesus and believe in His truth we come to see what it means to actually become a bridge over troubled water for the sake of the other.

As Jesus tells us, He came to be our bridge. He came to lift us up by laying down.

“I lay down my life for the sheep…For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life” (vs 15-17).

Jesus is our bridge over troubled water so that we might become His bridge for the sake of the world. But know this, when we live Jesus, the world (and sometimes those in the church) will think that such living is ridiculous, even insane…

“Many of them said, ‘He has a demon, and is insane; why listen to him?’”

Today we face the same question, “why listen to Jesus?” Why believe in Him?

Do we want a life of abundance according to the world or do we want the abundant life according to Jesus?

Let these next 40 days be a time of reflection—a time when knowing that there is one who was slaughtered for us so as to be our bridge over troubled water elicits tears from the heart. To know someone is willing to traverse the oceans of despair and become our suffering so that we might have peace…and have it abundantly. Let these upcoming days pierce your heart with the truth of His insane love…

Become His grace

Read Hebrews 4:1-16

Have you ever tried to wash away society? That is, have you ever thought of fasting from the world? To attempt to remove all the malice, envy, darkness, evil from your midst… Is this even possible?

Yes and no. Yes, it is possible, no it is not possible by our own means. When we take up the posture of prayer we enter into the power of presence. That is, in prayer we enter into the presence of the Holy Spirit so as to be taken up and consumed by the power of Jesus Christ. So yes, we can fast from the world, but no, we cannot do it on our own.

In prayer the Holy Spirit beckons us to go deep the word of God. To seek to incarnate the word of God by engulfing ourselves in its meaning so as to taste and see the goodness of the Word of God.

The Author of Hebrews writes:

For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. (v. 12)

When we, through the Holy Spirit, enter into the drama of God’s word we encounter the Word of God so as to become engulfed in the active truth of His amazing presence. This is an active presence of God that seeks to change the core of who we are by reaching deep into our hearts so as to fill them with His grace. And in His grace we find the strength, the resolve, the desire to fast from the chaos and confusion of this world so that might taste and see His greatness. And there in His greatness, we encounter our greatness such that we are captivated by His powerful presence in us so that we might be propelled to live out the truth of His life by standing strong in our faith.

Only when we cover ourselves in His truth can we put aside deceit, envy, hypocrisy. And when we put aside the darkness of sin we make way for the beautiful truth of peace, joy, hope, selflessness. When our hearts are consumed in prayer our lives erupt in the grace of God so as to become His grace. Yes, when we become prayer we draw near to the throne of Jesus so as to be pierced with the craziness of His love.

In the Spirit of His truth we are invited to become His ministers of reconciliation. We are called to fast from the world and feast on Christ. What are you hungry for this day? Let us fall to our knees and become pierced by Christ’s love so that our hearts bleed for the sake of the other by covering them in grace...

Believe in love

Read John 13:1-35

Millions watched the Super bowl halftime show and millions were asked to believe. We were asked to “Believe in love.”

What a wonderful call for the world…However, this call to believe will only become life changing if our belief is in the One who is love. That is, the only way for the world to unite in believing in love is if it comes to believe in the One who is love…Jesus Christ.

As the church, we are called to give the world the truth of life. We are called to give the world the reality of what it means to be alive. When the world asks us to believe in love it is asking us to give it love. And as followers of Christ we must know that there is only One who is love-Jesus Christ.

And when we say we believe in Christ we are saying that we believe in His truth of life. As the first century church father, Tertullian, said:

“It is our practice of loving-kindness that brands us in the eyes of many of our opponents. ‘Look,’ they say, ‘How they love one another! Look how they are prepared to die for one another!’” 

This type of love is anything but superficial or vain…I wonder how often non-followers of Christ would describe modern Christians like this?

How many people today could look at the church and say “yes, there in the church of Jesus Christ I see love.”

Today, we who follow Jesus need a wake up call. We need to come to grips as to what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. The world is looking in on our lives and our lives need to be a witness of the crazy insane love of Jesus—a love that elevates the other over self…

Yes, as followers of Christ we are called to go beyond ourselves so as to care for the other. We are called to “wash one another’s feet,” so as to step into life with each other and stretch ourselves to go beyond living simply for self. We, who follow Christ, are called to imitate His life:

“For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you” (v 15).

As servants of Christ, we are called to be servants of one another. The only way for the idea of “believing in love” to become the truth of this world is if the church begins to live out the truth of Jesus. That is, the world will only come to understand the belief in love when the church becomes infected to its core with the love of Jesus such that who we are becomes the truth of living for the other. Yes, when people begin to understand the church as those who sacrificially live for the sake of the other.

As Jesus was quite prone to remind us that “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (v. 35).

Today do we believe in love? That is, do our lives live out His love by our love of the other?

Beautiful Butterfly

Why live? Why get up each day and press on?

Sometimes we need to be reminded that life has purpose... life has a reason... life is worth living...

Sitting in my front room and feeling a little low and dejected, I was confronted by a story of a kid who rocked my world with his toughness, resolve, passion and zest...

Known as the "Butterfly Child," Jonathan Pitre reminded me why we say yes to the daily struggles of life. Because through our turmoil, tension and struggle we come to realize the joy of what it means to be alive... we come to realize the beauty of love and the power of our dreams.

Life wants to beat us down, but if our strength is from beyond this world, then we, like Jonathan, can look at life and respond, "Great things do not come easily. But they do come when you try with your full heart, when you're willing and open to embrace life, when you take things one day at a time and use what you've got."

And so what do we have? We have the ability to live life to its fullest if we are willing to focus on the light rather than the darkness. Jesus came to bring us into the light - we only need to choose the light.

All of us have struggles, all of us have pain. Take a moment and watch the story of Jonathan so that his strength, his resolve, his passion for life might motivate you to step out of your darkness so as to see the light Jesus has prepared for you. Step out of your cocoon and take flight you beautiful butterfly...

http://espn.go.com/video/clip?id=espn:14045517

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See the harvest

Read Matthew 9:27-38

GOGH, Vincent van
The Sower
June 1888, Arles

How do we really know that God loves us?
Ask…

Right now stop…take a knee and ask…Ask the Spirit to speak to your heart. Ask Him to destroy, remove, crush any obstacles that are hindering you from hearing the voice of the Shepherd. Ask the Spirit to touch your heart…

“Then He touched their eyes, saying, ‘According to your faith be it done to you.’ And their eyes were opened” (vs 29-30).

We will only see when we surrender. And it is only through the Holy Spirit that surrender is possible as through the Spirit we recognize the significance of what Jim Elliot said, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”

In our surrender we lose the dead weight of selfishness so as to gain the greatness of Savior. And when we are engulfed in the greatness of Savior we realize the greatness of ourselves. How does the Spirit bring us to surrender? Prayer…

In prayer we enter into the life of Christ through the Holy Spirit so as to find His heart. In prayer we are engulfed in the crazy love of Christ so as to find peace, rest, hope, laughter, life. In prayer we experience the profound joy and freedom of becoming a participant in His ministry of reconciliation.

Prayer is available to each one of us. What we need is the faith to believe and the willingness to surrender to the Spirit so as to be led deeper into the truth and the love of Christ. And the deeper we step into Jesus the more we come to share in His divine life so as to realize the greatness of what it means to be “me,” thereby recognizing the greatness of you.

The greatness of you and me erupts into the greatness of us. And truth is, there is a whole lot of us. Yes, the harvest is plenty. But the question is, "Do we see the harvest?"

Let us this day pray ferociously for the fields to be inundated with lovers of Jesus. Let us this day saturate the fields with prayer so that the heart of the world will come to know the healing power of Jesus. Let us this day fall to our knees for when we are praying for a revival, loving what God loves, we will see the harvest for what it really is: a sea of fruit that is ripe today but may be withered and dead tomorrow.

What will it take for us to believe:

That if we ask anything according to His will he hears us. And if we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have obtained the requests made of him. (1 John 5:14-15)

Have you surrendered your heart to Jesus today?

Choose to be Pro Love

The beautiful truth of being created in the image of a loving God is that we are given a choice... A choice to live for love or a choice to run from love. That is, He loves us so much that He allows us the ability to choose - we can accept that we are His beloved and then live this out by loving the other; or, we can reject His offer of love and live out life by elevating and loving self.

This is how much we are loved...The choice is ours...


And so where do you stand this day? What is your choice? Will you choose to be pro love?

The greatest response we can have to the One who is pro us is to become as He is...love. Yes, the greatest way to give thanks to the One who is love is to become His laborer of love. And how do we become His laborers of love? Prayer… Prayer is how we enter into the Spirit so as to become the love of Christ for the sake of the world. Prayer is how the passion of Christ becomes our passion. We are, in fact, only free as we allow ourselves to be loved by the overflowing fountain of Savior love. Our freedom is not in ourselves but in Christ. After all, we are not dead stones but living ones.

The passion Jesus had for us is life changing so much so that it is not merely about how much Jesus suffered for us, but how much He loves us. Love transforms suffering into sacrifice. His self-offering is the elevation of self because it is the transformation of self-love into Savior love, which erupts in our love for the other. For "Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God" (Ephesians 5:2). This is love: the total gift of self...

When we go to Jesus through the Holy Spirit and commune with Him daily so as to build everything on the One who is love. Only when He becomes our choice can we become His foundation of love here and now. Only when we embrace His choice of pro love can we become the pro love this world needs.

Let us this day bend our knee so as to seek to become His living stones of love. Let us this day engulf our moments in love so as to become the rock of hope this world desperately needs. Let us this day be Jesus to the world.

Against the grain

Let’s be honest, following Jesus is a risk. It calls us to go against the grain of society and sometimes, the path laid before us is one that seems utterly insane, mocked by those both in and out of the church, but when followed, erupts in a lifetime of heavenly reward. 

Truth is, we must be mindful that when we choose to live by faith, to live in Christ, we will meet with turmoil, tension and struggle. And how we deal with such struggle depends on our perspective. That is, if we choose to look through the lens of the world we will hear such things like, "life has thrown you a curve-ball," or "well it will all work out you just need to keep pressing on." But those of us who love Jesus and see life through His heart will hear something different...

When struggle comes into our path, we will hear the Spirit softly whisper, "I have a plan for you for you are my beloved. In Christ and through the Spirit, you are more than a conqueror."

Yes, we can live life in Christ, or we can live life from the world. But when we say we love Christ, we must ask, "does my life erupt in His truth?" That is, as a follower of Christ, does my faith cause me to get lost in the truth of His love and praise?

Thinking about the risk and the reward of faith, Charles Wesley penned these words for his great hymn, “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling”

Love divine, all loves excelling,
Joy of heaven to earth come down;
Fix in us thy humble dwelling;
All thy faithful mercies crown!
Jesus, Thou art all compassion,
Pure unbounded love Thou art;
Visit us with Thy salvation;
Enter every trembling heart.

Finish, then, Thy new creation;
Pure and spotless let us be.
Let us see Thy great salvation
Perfectly restored in Thee;
Changed from glory into glory,
Till in heaven we take our place,
Till we cast our crowns before Thee,
Lost in wonder, love, and praise.

The risk of faith is made possible not because of the glory we might receive. Not because of the riches we will earn. Not because of the accolades we will acquire. No, the risk of faith occurs because in our life, love divine excels all and in this pure, unbounded love we are overwhelmed with the presence of the Spirit so that we might see the greatness of Christ and the beauty of His salvation that lays before us. And when our hearts are awakened and our souls enlivened, it is then that we become lost in wonder, love and praise for our Savior.

Throughout the history of the church, the saints took the leap of faith—they stepped into and embraced the risk of faith, and in doing so, they participated with the God of all creation in the redemption and reconciliation of the world. The question for us today is are we going to continue on in the legacy of the church, to be life-changers, history makers, ministers of reconciliation? Will we be lost in wonder, love and praise so as to become the insane love of Jesus in and through the Holy Spirit...regardless of the cost?