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"Come follow me and I will make you fishers of men." Matthew 4:19

Month: April 2019

Your Coming Out! Luke 24: 5-6.

April 28, 2019 /

“As the women bowed their faces to the ground in terror, the two men asked them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; He has risen! Remember how He told you while He was still in Galilee…”

We’ve each done it. Those of us with the strongest of faith have failed, on one occasion or another, to take Jesus at His Word. Regretfully, I know I certainly have. We allow our fleshly expectations to overshadow—sometimes, completely shade, our pure spiritual beliefs. And then we wonder why we miss out on what it is God is doing right before our eyes! Is it any wonder then, when we show up with so low an expectation, failing to believe to our core that every promise He has made is sure and True, is absolute; we will, like our sisters and brothers before us, end up expecting to find death rather than the new life Jesus promised us?

I know, I know! They were at His grave and, it is reasonable to expect that what has been buried is, in fact, dead. It’s quite reasonable to our carnal mind that is. Conversely, if we are to truly rise above what we have allowed ourselves to believe truth to be—we must allow for our minds to be transformed, renewed. We should be willing to die to our preconceived, carnal truths and, instead, allow ourselves to be opened to The Truth—to God’s Truth—as He enables. Enables us to move past our feelings, which are ever in flux, and, instead, to fix our minds and hearts on Him. To exchange our every lie for His Truth…

So then, if we who believe know this, that His Word is Truth—why do we continue to doubt? Why do we forget this unfailing Truth? Forget His unwavering character and promises—His power to accomplish within us what He has already accomplished around us—above and below us? Why do we forget He truly is the All-Powerful God? That His Resurrection isn’t a one-day celebration.

At least it shouldn’t be. Easter Sunday may have passed, but Jesus remained on the earth for 40 days after His resurrection. He could have just as easily ascended to the Father in an instant. After-all, His earthy work, His birth, death, and resurrection were finished. Sin has been defeated on His Cross. And death lost its sting the moment breath entered the chest it thought it had stilled.

So why did He stay with us?

I share the belief that our Lord knows our frail weakness. He knows we, being the sheep that we are, would need to see certain on-going proofs before we’ll allow our hearts and minds to hope again. To rise up once more and soar. Jesus knows us better than we know ourselves—just ask Peter. We are like sheep. And, like sheep, we forget far too quickly. We will no sooner turn our face from our Bibles, walk out of a service, more, come away from a life-changing revelation given us by God and, then, in the next instant, get angry, or pick up that cigarette or drink or drug again, or lose patients with our spouse or child—for as long as we walk in this body. Yet even in our sin and shortcomings, our hope lies in the grace of God and the same power that raised Jesus from the dead. Hope that  we are being ever transformed into His likeness. Leaving our dead ways behind us. Demonstrating more of Him and His love, more of what God can do in a heart surrendered to Him—and less of us and our weaknesses.

Jesus knew that Peter would forget—Matthew and Mary and Andrew too. Forget all that He’d told them about how the Son of Man must endure all that the scriptures speak of concerning Him—and that He would rise again on the third day—even though it would appear that death had won…

Jesus loved these women who came to His tomb heads downcast, spices in hand, ready to prepare Him for the time, they believed, He’d spend entombed. He knew that they would come to His grave one way yet leave another! That hope restored would wipe out all traces of their despair. That joy would throw its coat over their mourning shoulders enlivening them once again. He knew weakness would be replaced by a strength not their own. A strength that would carry them all the way to the finish line! Now imagine too, their disbelief. The shock and confusion and excitement and the joy they felt when they found His tomb empty! How do you imagine yourself feeling when you realize that the hopes you thought were dead, the ministry you though had passed you by, the child or husband or wife you’d long given up on—finally happens?

Death and despair has a plan for our lives. An empty tomb put a certain end to that plan…

So let me ask you: In light of what you believe has passed you by, what loss has hit you so hard it’s robbed you of life and time—of hope? Of allowing yourself to believe, as you once did, that your life can be joy-filled, hope-full. What are you mourning the loss of? What has caused you to let go of that vision God gave you? That dream that made you get out of bed every morning ready to engage with the world. What happened to that spark of the Divine deep down in your belly? Might it be possible that God has been preparing you? That all is not lost? Rather, it’s just getting started! Is it possible God has allowed you to experience this tomb, the seeming end of a thing so that you to be an eye-witness to His resurrection power? Your dead hopes and dreams, those promises you held dear, infused now with new life! Resurrected. Remember brothers and sisters, Jesus drew only those that loved Him, followed after Him, yearned for Him, had yielded their hearts to Him—to His empty tomb. Then, He spent the next 40 days demonstrating to these friends—and all those whose hope was lost at His crucifixion that He truly was alive. That He alone has the power to not only forgive our sins, to heal our bodies, to bring us from death to Life in His Son, but now to teach us too, that God has the final Word over death!

That God alone has the power to resurrect our long dead hope and dreams as surely as Jesus was resurrected. You have not lost what God has promised you. God is not a man that He can lie. He said death could not hold Him—and it didn’t. If He has spoken a Word into you, given you a plan for some ministry, a vision to build, a desire to serve and grow and bear fruit for Him—then He will bring it to pass—in His time not yours. His friends thought they’d lost their reason to hope too. Thought all that they had loved and yearned for was sealed—dead, inside a tomb. It took a herald to remind them not to go looking for life among places that serve only dead things. You’ll never see your hopes come to pass if you continue to show up ready to bury them…

My brother, Jesus said He would restore. Said He would provide. Said you’d go and do and plant and water and reap. Be open to see the vision God has given you through today’s eyes. You didn’t get it wrong back then—you just needed to go through 3 more days of preparation…

Dear friend, if you have yet to meet this Jesus who breathes new life into us. The One who resurrects dead hopes and dreams, who uses what others see as useless, then I encourage you today, right now, to ask Him to come into your heart. Ask Him to forgive your sins. To restore within what life has taken out of you. He will. He wants to. He’s just waiting for you…

A Living Hope! 2 Corinthians 1:3-4.

April 21, 2019 /

“Blessed [gratefully praised and adored] be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort, who comforts and encourages us in every trouble so that we will be able to comfort and encourage those who are in any kind of trouble, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.”

Despondency and hopelessness have been their constant companions—shame too, since their Master was unjustly dragged away in chains; since they’d abandoned Him in fear of losing their own lives. While Jesus stood before a mock jury of viper’s intent on seeing Him dead, as He was ushered off in the wee hours, brought before Pilot, a ruthless man, whose bloody rule was marked by merciless brutality. Then, flogged to near death and rendered unrecognizable, crowned with thorns, and spat upon. Condemned and left standing before those He had been born to save. All the while “crucify Him, crucify Him” rang out in place of the, “Hosanna in the Highest” that had filled His ears mere days before. His Cross let fall on His bloodied shoulder—as heavy as the weight of the sins of the world. Those He carried now, within. He holds His Cross tightly to Himself, as one holds a precious lover, Gods mercy towards us demonstrated in this embrace. Determined to save us, Jesus starts off for Golgotha, and all that awaits Him there…

How can we give what we do not possess? Demonstrate what we do not know ourselves? Is it any wonder than that Paul wants us to know these life-sustaining attributes of The Father who sent His only Son, this same Jesus, to die in our place? That He wants us to fully take in as our own that, not only does He show us mercy—He is the Father of mercies—that means every mercy. That means every type of mercy you and I have ever, or will ever be shown—forever!

Every time we might have died, and didn’t. Every time we should have felt the sting of our poor choices but instead, mercy showed up. When our child came home safely. When the test results came back clean. When our hearts were breaking, and that one word we so needed to hear was spoken. And, more, in our every moment of pain, of suffering, heart-break, and disappointment. In that life-shattering diagnosis, the death of that child, in the heart-break of witnessing a loved one in the throes of addiction—or rebellion; He is the God of all comfort. The One who comes along side us, just as He walked along-side Jesus on His exacting journey towards Golgotha, comforting and encouraging us, too. Whispering to the very marrow of our bones that there is a purpose in our pain. Some marvelous life that will be birthed from this death that is trying to ravage us. And only then, only armed with His strength, His comfort and mercy, with His assurance, can we walk toward what looks like certain death fixed in our faith. Resolute. Knowing  there is a purpose in it all…

Love does not guarantee we will escape trials and pain and losses, in fact, in love, Jesus told us to expect these things for as long as we live in this fallen world. “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” –John 16:33. Our hope, our comfort and strength, our ability to move forward after these things take our very legs out from under us, rob us of our breath, is found in the Truth of Sunday morning. Just as it was for our brothers before us.

Life—new life, will come out of all this pain. We will live. We will love—again!

So, then, imagine their great joy when this same Jesus appears to them alive once more! Imagine for a moment the great comfort, the renewed reassurance they experienced! Peter, and all those that ran when they had pledged to follow Him always; that shame-filled, terror filled day. The death of their every hope and dream restored now! All of the hope that had died in them, in His dying, resurrected now, as He is resurrected! How can this be! Their hope restored once more! Their very lives restored!

This is the heart of our resurrection story: A heart once dead in its sin and shame, pain, brought to life once again by the sacrifice of One who was born to die that they, and you, and I, might live! To forgive our sins. To wash us clean in the very Blood He’d just shed. This blessed hope is what every believer has then been commanded to go, and share with a lost, hurting, and broken world. A world in need of the love, mercy, and compassion of God. In need of being re-minded that hope truly is alive! Now. This day! And, to help with instructing the world around us as to just who this great hope is, Jesus Christ, the One and only God. The Hope of Glory!

This is a message of mercy is the essence of the comfort Paul is speaking to us about. The mercy and comfort that restores life and hope and strength where only moments ago the heavy weight of loss or betrayal or despondency rested, where the weight of our sins had all but done us in. This comfort is the Lightness of His Mercy replacing, with great Love, the heavy garment of our sin and shame. If, we’ll but accept it, wearing it as our own. This is what happens in the human heart—in the very soul of the one who experiences the dawn of Sunday morning—the hope of His Resurrection! Those who experience the mercy and comfort and encouragement that our brother Paul is speaking of. We are comforted by God that we might intimately know His great Love and mercy within; then go and share that same comfort and mercy and encouragement given us, with another. Just as Jesus did, as all those in the faith that have gone before us have. “Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed, that her sin has been paid for, that she has received from the LORD’s hand double for all her sins” –Isaiah 40:1-2.

There is no grave, no stone weighty enough to hold back the love, the mercy, the unfathomable compassion that has burst forth from them both! “God so loved” us, that He sacrificed, poured every ounce of His Mercy and Compassion out for us, in the Person of His only Son so that He might have us in Himself—restored, cleansed, made new. This same God whom Paul informs is the Father of these same mercies, the God of all comfort, who displayed the depth of His love, His heart towards us, in Christ Jesus. Freely His love was lavished upon us, poured out for us, spent on our behalf, freely then, we must lavish, pour out, spend our lives loving others…

This Resurrection morning exists, this hope we have is surely alive solely because of this God who is the Father of mercies, the God of all comfort. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. … For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” John 3:16.

Be encouraged this hour, my brother. Be refreshed! Your strength renewed by the same power that raised Jesus from His grave!

And dear friend, the Father has allowed me to share His message of Love once again. You are loved by God—whether you believe that, or not. In fact, His love for you is so great that if you were the only soul to be found on this planet—Jesus would have died solely for you. The Truth is—He did. Won’t you ask Him into your heart and life now, today? There’s no guarantee we’ll meet again next year…

No-thing. Romans 8:38-39.

April 14, 2019 /

“And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Paul is assuring us that contrary to how we may be feeling—whatever we may be experiencing at any given moment, God loves us. More, there is absolutely nothing that will ever change that…

No amount of self-doubt, no failure or deep short-coming, not even our sin can separate us, cause His love to fail us; if we are His.  He knows that in a moment of doubt the strongest of us can be reduced to feelings of insecurity, of weakness. On this journey of death to self one may feel as though God has abandoned them, turned His face away from them. The reassuring warmth of His nearness suddenly cooled in that moment He asks us to lay a thing down. To choose His way over our own. To trust Him when we think we know better—can do better than He can. To give up what we want in exchange for what He has for us. Some part of ourselves, some habit or choice, some possession that does not reflect who He is to the world around us. Instead, it reeks of the flesh—of self-indulgence, greed, entitlement, or lust. It reeks of us.  At one moment or another in our lives, on our walk, we will each be guilty of this…

And, yet, even in this—even in our deep flawed-ness, in the midst of our most sinful, shameful, selfishness, even here—He does not withdraw His love from His children. He does not remove His loving-kindness from us. Verse 3 of Romans Chapter 8 helps, in part, to explain why. “For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering.” In this one great sacrificial choice, God proved His great love for us by sending Jesus to the Cross in our place. If His love for us is so great that He would not withhold His only Son from us, and it is, is it any wonder than that He would not allow any-thing to ever separate us from Himself? Those He’s chosen in Himself before the foundation of the world? “The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father”—Romans 8:15.

Not even death with its apparent finite-ness can separate us from God…

We see the Truth of this early one Sunday morning. Friday has passed. Jesus has borne the shame and torture of the Cross. His Body, broken and bloodied now lays in its borrowed tomb. The night will pass. The following day with its night too. God uses the passing of time to teach us so many lessons; one of those being things are not always as they appear. Sunday morning comes, and what the world though had happened, what evil had intended to happen, did not prevail. People though they had put an end to Jesus. Instead, God used their sin-fullness for His glory, and our good. To bless us and save us. To give us the greatest of Gifts. The only One whose Blood alone is worthy to atone for our sins…

So then, if Gods giving us His most precious possession—His only Son to die in our place that we might be restored to right relationship with Him, how can we allow ourselves to buy into the lie that any-thing could ever separate us from the One who has chosen us in Himself?  How can we allow any-thing, ourselves include,  to condemn us? More, believe that God will not provide for us? He has, after all, already given us His absolute best, all we will ever need, in Jesus! “What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies” Romans 8:31-33.

Why then do we struggle still? Why are we so reluctant to believe Him? To simply hand Him whatever it is He may be asking us to give or give up?

Sunday morning sealed every Word God has ever spoken. Paul is assuring us that, contrary to how we may be feeling—whatever we may be experiencing at any given moment, God loves us. More, there is absolutely nothing that will ever change that. So beloved, if you are struggling with doubt today, wrestling with His will for your life, troubled about handing over to Him that thing He may be asking you to let go of—fear not! He alone is faithful to exchange your weakness for His strength. And, once armed with that strength He will re-minded you that He’ll not allow anything, no-thing “neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Take heart friends, soon and very soon Sunday morning will dawn in your hearts and the stone of doubt, fear, rebellion, hesitation, will be rolled away eternally!  Then, all that we thought we knew of ourselves, our faith, about our God, will be rightly revealed to us by the Truth of His Presence among us. Soon and very soon my friend!

But in the meantime remember this: Just as Jesus struggled with accepting the Fathers will, however briefly, in the garden, you too will struggle. Nonetheless, once you have struggled a little while, you too must come to the place where you say with an obedient heart—seeking His will above your own, His glory above all else; “Father, if you are willing, please take this cup of suffering away from me. Yet I want your will to be done, not mine” –Luke 22:42.

Take heart my brother, the battle is not yours it’s the Lord. Stand firm, even so, do all that must, are called to do, in Him and then stand back and watch your Daddy do what only He can! Watch, as He brings His will about in your heart and life…

Dear friend, don’t miss yet another opportunity to allow this Jesus to draw in your heart. As we prepare ourselves for Easter morning, for His dawning in our lives afresh, won’t you ask Him to come into yours, too? He’s been waiting for three days for you to ask…

 

 

Settle the Matter! Ephesians 1:4-5.

April 7, 2019 /

“For He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless in His presence. In love. He predestined us for adoption as His sons through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of His will…”

Today, I’m speaking to the one who wrestles with doubting their salvation—then uses the guilt that wrestling produces as a reason to flog yourself. The Truth is you really do know Him in that deepest part of yourself—you know you are truly His. That He came to you and chose you. So why all this questioning? Why the doubts and the fears that follow after them?

The answer beloved is that your focus is out of focus. Your looking to yourself and not to Christ for the Truth of who you are. Is it any wonder then that you’re struggling? “My old self has been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” Galatians 2:20. As we begin to fully take in just what it is that God has done for us, in Christ Jesus, the weight of that revelation will send us to our knees! We’ll then begin to know true humility on a first named basis. Not only did God specifically choose Christ to fulfill His redemptive plan—He equally chose you as a part of it as well!

First Christ, then you in Him. Humbling, isn’t it? The thought of you and Christ found in the same sentence…

The thought that you are so loved by God. Predestined to be His now, and for all eternity. He doesn’t want you to miss one second of time spent in His presence! The Sovereign God of the universe, Creator of heaven and earth, and all that fill them, has chosen you! And all of this before one single blade of grass had ever broken free of the soil. More specifically—before there ever was soil; or stars, snails, clouds, rain, sun, deer, or Adam. Long before it all—God had chosen you for Himself—in His Son. You were already His as they stood—the Trinity, over the dark void. You are saved in Christ Jesus because God chose you to be! Yet, though chosen, you are nevertheless responsible to guard this precious salvation as one guards his home and his most prized possessions from robbers, with greatest vigilance and care…

Our salvation is from God alone; we cannot boast in our being able to bring it about, somehow offering it to ourselves. Willing it, by hook or by crook, into existence; as a child wills their imaginary friend to come and help fill their empty hours with play. Yet, we must care for it, guarding it. Our being chosen in Christ and our responsibility in His choosing of us that is. These are inseparable.

“But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption” –1 Corinthians 1:27-30.

You, my struggling brother, my sister, wresting still with the surety of your salvation, are those foolish, weak, lowly, and despised “things” God chose when, looking at us, no one would ever have believed we’d one day belong to Him. We the broken and filthy, the lowly and guilty, all those who know that we know, had it not been for His election of us; for that merciful reaching-out of His most precious hand across time and eternity—at precisely the right time, salvation would not be ours. Certainly we said yes. But which came first, His calling us, or our answering Him? As for me, I lean into His calling of us. I was too broken—too incapable, to sin-stained to even think about my name and Christ’s in the same sentence. Of His wanting me—never mind choosing me; of His having a plan for my life or of being useful or used by God.

If redemption were our choice (if we could choose to be saved, to somehow ask Jesus to come into our lives, truly—minus His first tugging on our hearts, offering Him the place of honor at the table of our lives, surely) our salvation would have passed us by—busy as we were wallowing in our sins, chasing after them; as blindly and as fully as our prodigal brother did. That goes for you too—son or daughter of the pastor. Raised in the church yet full of resentment and doubt and rebellion—longing to be free from it all. To live your own life. Or you, the one who strived to do it all right. You who genuinely wanted Christ. Who believed what the priest said—what your parents said—you, whose heart never chose to wander off chasing after what others did—or wanted to do. Nonetheless, sin separated you too from ever having a right relationship with God.

And now though, now that it is yours, you must do all that you can, by the grace of God, to safe-guard your heart and mind against everything that will try to steal that Truth out from under you. Leaving you foundation-less. A builder who cannot build. The Truth is this. If you, any of you, have truly been chosen in Christ, by God, then you are saved. Period. How do I know this for certain? Because God Himself said it. And, as He also said, “God is not a man, that He should lie, or a son of man, that He should change His mind. Does He speak and not act? Does He promise and not fulfill?” –Numbers 23:19.

If you have faith in Jesus Christ beloved it is solely because it was given you by God, our Father. It is a free gift. As is your salvation and the Holy Spirit who indwells you…

We all get momentarily lost, my brother and sisters, when our focus shifts between Christ’s finished work and our ever-changing situations, circumstances, and trials. More specifically, on to how we feel about the Truth of our salvation. How  we view its certainty, its guarantee. But we must fight through those false and shifting feelings using the armor Christ has provided us. As John says: “I write this letter to you who believe in the Son of God. I write so that you will know that you have eternal life now” –1 John 5:13. What John is saying, in other words, is that our sure fidelity to Christ does not guarantee that we will always have so firm a confidence in Christ. John Piper says it this way: “Faith can be real when the feelings of assurance are weak.” Our flesh is weak and will always fails us. Hence, why we must, we must, always trust God. Trust only what He says about us. After all, it is His finished work in Christ Jesus that will forever have the final Word. Now, with that in mind beloved, let us settle this matter of our being saved in Christ—chosen by God—once and for all. God is as faithful to bring the whole Truth of this revelation about, this certainty you possess, as surely as He was true in His choosing of you. Therefore, concerning being settled on this blessed assurance which we possess—have been entrusted with, let no man, no circumstance, trial or test, no battle or temptation, neither any competing voice of the enemy of our soul, nor your own words, negate Gods Truth “Who dares accuse us whom God has chosen for his own? No one–for God himself has given us right standing with himself” –Romans 8:33.

My Brothers and sisters remember that there is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus. Therefore, I pray your strength today. May God do a quick work of re-minding you of His Truth.

Dear friend, if you’re here today for the first time, or if you’ve returned, feeling somehow drawn back, I pray this Word has spoken to your heart. Know that it is this same God who you’ve just read about that is calling you to Himself. Won’t you please invite Him into your life as both Lord and Savior now?

If you were of the world, it would love you as its own. Instead, the world hates you, because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world –John 15:16.

 

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