THIS WEEK I went with my cousin Kyra to the first Youth Quake Live event of the season. It was very exciting. This season's theme is "Resistance," referring to resistance against temptation. Pamela Burchard was very funny as a hobbit girl.
One of the skits particularly got my attention. The characters did not speak, but it was set to the song "Set Me Free" by my favorite band, Casting Crowns of course. There are maybe ten people dressed in black shirts, each with a word like "Hatred," "Cruelty," or "Addiction." A young man in blue came by and these people trapped him in chains and would not let him go. As he struggled, a man in white, representing Jesus, came toward the scene. As soon as the song came to the line, "Jesus, rescue me!" and the man in blue called out to Jesus, the man in white put his hand toward the chain-weilding people in black and they all fell back. The man in blue was free to go. As soon as they stood up, the people with the chains bound up the man in white, who did not stay down for long. He lifted his hand in the air and they all fell back for good. He embraced the man in blue, and the song ended.
This got my attention because it reminded me of something too awesome to let slip my mind for a moment. God, God Himself, sets us free. Try reading the lyrics to that song. It's a really wonderful reminder of what a great change God makes in our hearts.
Today I finished reading through the book of Matthew again, so I've very recently reread the part where Jesus Christ dies, and where He rises up again. It's good to keep it fresh in our minds. I've even found that the more I read, the more I notice that I did not notice before. For example, Jesus was crucified around the time of the Passover, a Jewish holiday meant to celebrate an event which was symbolic of what He would someday do. The Passover commemorates the day the children of Israel, then slaves in Egypt, showed their faith in God by slaying a perfect lamb per household and marking their doors with its blood. Because they did this God would spare them from the plague which He brought on Egypt: the killing of the firstborn of all men and livestock. This sign was sybolic of the way our faith in Jesus, who died as the Lamb who was Slain, marks us and saves us from punishment.
Besides the skit, another thing that got my attention was the following verse:
Ephesians 6:11 "Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil." I really started to notice this one when my devotional book referenced Ephesians 6 on Saturday, the day after Youth Quake. I suggest this chapter to you; it's very useful in learning how to prepare to live in a world that does not know Christ.
This verse is followed by a list of the armor of God. It's a long metaphor meant to make us understand that, like it or not, following Jesus involves living in a battle.
Ephesians 6:14-17 "[14] Stand therefore, having girded your waist with truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness, [15] and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace; [16] above all, taking the sheild of faith with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one. [17] And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God;"
Let's break this down. To prepare for the battle, often called "spiritual warfare," of which all believers are part, we need:
1. Truth. John 14:6, "Jesus said to him, 'I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.'" God is the absolute truth, who stands strong and faithful against the lies we meet in the world.
2. Rightousness. Matthew 5:6, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled." Also MAtthew 5:16, "Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven." If people see us acting according to God's will, they will have nothing of which they may rightfully accuse us.
3. The Preparation of the Gospel of Peace. Romans 1:16, "For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek." We must be prepared to stand for this life-saving Gospel.
4. Faith. 2 Corinthians 5:7, "We live by faith, not by sight." Notice that God gives us sufficient reason to believe. He does not command us to live by blind faith, but by faith which is more reliable than our own perception of the world. We must trust that God sees things much more clearly than we can.
5. Salvation. John 3:16, "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life." Jesus is the only source of salvation. People all over the world seek it by trying to get to God in one of many ways people have invented. Our salvation is acheived by what God did to reach us.
6. The Holy Spirit / the Word of God. John 14:16-17, "[16] And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forver - [17] the Spirit of truth, whom the worl cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be with you." It would be impossible for us to go to battle by our own strength. So God guides us with His Holy Spirit.
When I read this passage, I remembered something Jesus said. Mark 8:34, "When He had called the people to Himself, with His disciples also, He said to them, 'Whoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me." Something important that I learned from God this week is that we should neither go to battle without the armor of God, nor put on the armor without going to battle. To take up our cross is to go to battle, meaning to stand up for the truth, to spread the truth with boldness, to face difficulty and pain for the truth when we must. It also involves resisting temptation, imitating Christ's character, and keeping His commandments. We can't do this without the armor of God. In the same way, the armor is going to be most useful when we are in battle.
The battle is difficult, but we can win by clinging to Jesus. Our God is a God who always wins. He beat death, after all. The best part of spiritual warfare is that we are on the victorious side of this war!
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Pain
THIS WEEK I had a memorably horrible experience for which I am truly grateful.
On Friday I got very sick. I had severe pain in my abdomen and I sweated and felt chilly. I ended up throwing up and having to leave school early. I took a nice nap and felt better.
Now, before I share the important thing I learned from being sick, I'll let you know that I'm perfectly fine now. No need to worry or to ask what was wrong. I'm just telling you so you can understand what my pain made me understand.
I don't have severe pain very often. Generally I go day to day feeling only the tolerable and forgettable amounts of pain that we all feel every day. But when I was sick, I felt like I couldn't imagine being in more pain. I was cold and sick and nauseous and my belly hurt all at the same time. But what this pain made me realize is that it's absolutely nothing compared to the pain people are going to feel in hell. Nor does it compare to the pain Jesus felt on the cross to keep us out of there.
On my long walk to the Student Services Office at school, when I was trying my best just to keep from vomiting, I remembered something I heard once at Youth Group. I don't remember the quote exactly, or who said it. Someone said that if he believed that there were people going to hell, and that he could do something to prevent it, he would be willing to walk across the length of England on land covered with broken glass for the chance to stop just one person from going to hell. On that walk I realized that I have a long way to go before I'm the kind of person who goes such great lengths to see people saved. I could hardly deal with my own personal suffering, which only lasted a few hours. It made me realize that I need to be willing to face any level of discomfort or pain to make a difference in somebody's eternity.
When I was waiting on the bench in Student Services, gasping and panting and praying, I kept remembering Jesus. I remembered His great pain that He suffered through to save us from hell - and I couldn't think about it for long. Not then. You may think that reflecting on somebody else's greater pain might reduce your own, but at that moment it just made me sadder because He suffered so greatly. But now that I can see past the fog of my own discomfort I think about how much He went through to keep us from going to hell.
Isaiah 53:5-6, "[5] But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed. [6] All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, every one, to his own way; And the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all." This was written about Jesus hundreds of years before His birth.
Everything within Jesus was in extreme pain. He was bruised. He was scratched and covered in the red stripes left by whips. He had nails through the main nerves in His wrists and feet. He had a crown of thorns on His head. He was lifted up where everyone could see Him crying. He couldn't breathe easily, and He was losing blood. He had been abandoned by His dear, devoted disciples whom He loved so much. He had been betrayed and falsely accused. His heartbeat became irregular and eventually stopped. His body, His soul, His heart, His mind were all in ultimate agony. He didn't have to do it - He's God. But He did, so that we wouldn't have to. He did, so that He could take us home where nothing could ever separate us from Him, or Him from us. That's the greatest pain ever, and He faced it for the sake of the greatest love ever, which, we now see, utterly conquers death: His and our own.
Let me explain why I am grateful that I had to be so sick on Friday. Try to imagine the greatest pain you've ever been in. Maybe you broke a bone, or had a bad fall, or faced some struggle, or lost somebody. I think it's good for a person to be in physical or emotional pain sometimes, because it reminds us about the reality of pain. We can't be comfortable all the time. From my usual perspective, the days when I'm not sick and everything is okay, it's hard to imagine that anybody could be in particularly severe pain. This is probably because I don't want to imagine it. Having some pain of my own opened my eyes to the urgency of the problem: People won't be okay without Jesus. People who die without Him are going to suffer pain much greater than any pain that any of us has ever felt. We need to face a little pain (or sometime alot) to start advancing God's kingdom. Being bold to share love with strangers is alot easier to face than the consequences if we don't. We need to remember that people are going to die and face alot more pain than we could ever face on earth - forever - if they don't have Jesus to face it for them.
I'm also reminded me of just how great Jesus' suffering was. The distance of time doesn't make His sacrifice any less severe. It's relevant right now. It's changing lives right now. It is a bold, powerful demonstration of God's love. He reached across every barrier to bring us back into His arms. The least we can do is to give Him the most we can give. He deserves no less than our best. So I'm praying that I and we all will be so full of love for Jesus, and for those whom He loves, that we could not do otherwise than to share His love with other people.
Mark 12:29-31, "[29] Jesus answered him, "The first of all the commandments is: 'Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. [30] And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.' This is the first commandment. [31] And the second, like it, is this, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these.""
Matthew 28:19-20, "[19] Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, [20] teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age."
Let's all show His love brightly, this week and every week. It's why we live.
On Friday I got very sick. I had severe pain in my abdomen and I sweated and felt chilly. I ended up throwing up and having to leave school early. I took a nice nap and felt better.
Now, before I share the important thing I learned from being sick, I'll let you know that I'm perfectly fine now. No need to worry or to ask what was wrong. I'm just telling you so you can understand what my pain made me understand.
I don't have severe pain very often. Generally I go day to day feeling only the tolerable and forgettable amounts of pain that we all feel every day. But when I was sick, I felt like I couldn't imagine being in more pain. I was cold and sick and nauseous and my belly hurt all at the same time. But what this pain made me realize is that it's absolutely nothing compared to the pain people are going to feel in hell. Nor does it compare to the pain Jesus felt on the cross to keep us out of there.
On my long walk to the Student Services Office at school, when I was trying my best just to keep from vomiting, I remembered something I heard once at Youth Group. I don't remember the quote exactly, or who said it. Someone said that if he believed that there were people going to hell, and that he could do something to prevent it, he would be willing to walk across the length of England on land covered with broken glass for the chance to stop just one person from going to hell. On that walk I realized that I have a long way to go before I'm the kind of person who goes such great lengths to see people saved. I could hardly deal with my own personal suffering, which only lasted a few hours. It made me realize that I need to be willing to face any level of discomfort or pain to make a difference in somebody's eternity.
When I was waiting on the bench in Student Services, gasping and panting and praying, I kept remembering Jesus. I remembered His great pain that He suffered through to save us from hell - and I couldn't think about it for long. Not then. You may think that reflecting on somebody else's greater pain might reduce your own, but at that moment it just made me sadder because He suffered so greatly. But now that I can see past the fog of my own discomfort I think about how much He went through to keep us from going to hell.
Isaiah 53:5-6, "[5] But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed. [6] All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, every one, to his own way; And the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all." This was written about Jesus hundreds of years before His birth.
Everything within Jesus was in extreme pain. He was bruised. He was scratched and covered in the red stripes left by whips. He had nails through the main nerves in His wrists and feet. He had a crown of thorns on His head. He was lifted up where everyone could see Him crying. He couldn't breathe easily, and He was losing blood. He had been abandoned by His dear, devoted disciples whom He loved so much. He had been betrayed and falsely accused. His heartbeat became irregular and eventually stopped. His body, His soul, His heart, His mind were all in ultimate agony. He didn't have to do it - He's God. But He did, so that we wouldn't have to. He did, so that He could take us home where nothing could ever separate us from Him, or Him from us. That's the greatest pain ever, and He faced it for the sake of the greatest love ever, which, we now see, utterly conquers death: His and our own.
Let me explain why I am grateful that I had to be so sick on Friday. Try to imagine the greatest pain you've ever been in. Maybe you broke a bone, or had a bad fall, or faced some struggle, or lost somebody. I think it's good for a person to be in physical or emotional pain sometimes, because it reminds us about the reality of pain. We can't be comfortable all the time. From my usual perspective, the days when I'm not sick and everything is okay, it's hard to imagine that anybody could be in particularly severe pain. This is probably because I don't want to imagine it. Having some pain of my own opened my eyes to the urgency of the problem: People won't be okay without Jesus. People who die without Him are going to suffer pain much greater than any pain that any of us has ever felt. We need to face a little pain (or sometime alot) to start advancing God's kingdom. Being bold to share love with strangers is alot easier to face than the consequences if we don't. We need to remember that people are going to die and face alot more pain than we could ever face on earth - forever - if they don't have Jesus to face it for them.
I'm also reminded me of just how great Jesus' suffering was. The distance of time doesn't make His sacrifice any less severe. It's relevant right now. It's changing lives right now. It is a bold, powerful demonstration of God's love. He reached across every barrier to bring us back into His arms. The least we can do is to give Him the most we can give. He deserves no less than our best. So I'm praying that I and we all will be so full of love for Jesus, and for those whom He loves, that we could not do otherwise than to share His love with other people.
Mark 12:29-31, "[29] Jesus answered him, "The first of all the commandments is: 'Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. [30] And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.' This is the first commandment. [31] And the second, like it, is this, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these.""
Matthew 28:19-20, "[19] Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, [20] teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age."
Let's all show His love brightly, this week and every week. It's why we live.
Sunday, August 22, 2010
A Rebelution
THIS WEEK was the last week of summer, and today is the last day. But that's okay, because this year God is going to do amazing things at my school. I'm going to share with you what I'm learning from God about how to prepare my heart for this exciting school year.
On Wednesday before Engage the Spirit, a special worship event which happens monthly at Southpoint, I prayed with Pastor Ryan and a fellow Stanton student named Dorien.
Besides our request for God to bless the time of worship (which He did) we also prayed that He would lead a revolution in schools this year. It's a particular concern of mine because (believe it or not) I'm about to be a senior! It's now or never. Pastor Ryan said he's excited about this school year at Stanton, and so am I. I think something great is about to happen that's never happened there before.
On Thursday I went with Will to a party for the FISH club, Stanton's Christian Club, where we talked about how things are going to go this year. I have a concern about FISH clob: I love going, but in years past I never saw it doing much. In fact, even as a member I never knew exactly what "FISH" stands for. It turns out that it stands for our four activities, things which it looks like we'll be doing more actively this year. FISH means "Focus, Inspire, Share, and Hook," where 'focus' is a week where we meet in small prayer groups, 'inspire' is a week with a guest speaker, 'share' is a week with a student speaker, and 'hook' is an extra-fun week for inviting non-Christians to hear the Gospel preached.
It sounds really wonderful. It's just too bad that I haven't seen it happen in the past. At least, not with power and passion, diligence and movement. This year I'm praying, and I ask you to pray also, for a Spirit-lead "rebelution," as Pastor Ryan calls it, during which we will actually see lives change and the word spread like fire.
I can't help but wonder, though, why this hasn't been happening much in the past. We've had good leaders, food, prayer groups, student and guest speakers, and lots of great stuff. But why haven't we had a movement? I think part of the problem is the same problem which I have learned that I have been facing. And there's no way it's going to be any different without a solution. The problem is that, although we love Jesus, sometimes other things get in the way. We get worried, or tired, or distracted, and the result is that we take our eyes off the prize.
The theme of my learning this week is summarized in Colossians 3:1-2 "[1] If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. [2] Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth." To "set your mind on things above" means to desire the eternal, to desire God and focus your efforts on serving Him rather than anyone else. It's like Matthew 6:21, "For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." When I read this, I knew I was in for an important lesson. I love Jesus dearly, but if I'm honest with myself I must admit that I sometimes get distracted from Him. It's not that it's wrong to think about the life I'm living, it's just that I often find myself clinging to something I cannot keep. I must look at life through the lens of God's will. It's not that it's wrong to enjoy blessings, it's just that it's wrong for my main desire to be for something which only lasts for a day rather than for what lasts forever.
Desiring God does not consist of being near other Christians and going to church and doing the things that Christians do. I heard Pastor Eric say today that God did not call us to a religion, but to a relationship. Desiring God is actively seeking to know Him more and to serve Him better.
It's difficult as a high-school age person, especially at Stanton, to keep my priorities straight. We have homework, family responsibilities, relationships, extracurricular activites, and many even have jobs. On top of this we have to choose colleges, apply for schools and scholarships, think about our futures, and many of us must fill out forms for service hours. I've been wondering where I'll find time for my morning Bible Study that I've started doing this summer.
Sometimes I get so afraid that some thing or another will become so important to me that I won't give God the attention He deserves. I'm afraid I won't be able to see past my will to see His. So I pray and pray He'll teach me to desire Him first. I know this lesson so well that I'm unhappily surprised I have to learn it again to get it into my head: if we trust God and make Him our greatest desire then He will make everything in our lives work out beautifully. It's wonderful to think that our lives, left to God's guidance, can be designed as perfectly as a tree, or an ocean, or a solar system, so that everything turns out exactly like the Creator, in His wisdom, knows it should be. If we tried to figure it out on our own, which we don't have to do, our lives might turn out more like a kindergartener's drawing of the more beautiful thing God made - not the same thing at all.
I can certainly trust God to work everything out. That's why I'm not more worried about all these forms I have to fill out in the next few months, and why I am not more panicky about deciding on a major and a career. My trouble is that while I'm trusting Him, I'm not sure my mind is "set" on Him. Maybe that's the problem the FISH club has been having. Maybe we have so much going on that we aren't focused enough to stay organized and alive. Well, it's going to be different this year. Something great is about to happen. But I've learned this week that right now I need to 'set my mind' on what God is doing so I don't miss out on it. We need to desire God first. Then we can be part of something meaningful and amazing that He is doing.
Remember in Matthew 13, the parable of the seed sown in different places? Jesus used "thorns" to represent worldly desires. The world can be a pretty 'thorny' place. But if we don't get tangled in thorns then our lives can be fruitful and productive for God's glory. It goes without saying that that's what every Christian wants to do!
Colossians 3 does more than tell us what to do. It tells us how to do it. Verses 1 and 2 tell us to focus on the eternal.
What to stop doing: verse 5, "Therefore put to death your members which are on the earth: fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry." Those things aren't just bad, they're idolatry. That means that they are the kinds of things which stop us from setting our sights on God's will and make us look at our own. God hates idolatry, so we must avoid it like the plague. Instead we should conform our will to His. I've gathered that our own determination and resolve is not enough to do this. We must pray with expectation for the Holy Spirit to make it possible, and He will.
What to do instead: verse 12, "Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindess, humility, meekness, longsuffering;" These are characteristics of Christ. If we imitate Him it will be hard not to conform to His will. If our hearts resemble His it will be hard for the world not to see Him in us. That's what I'm hoping for in the FISH club this year, as well as in the whole body of Christ globally. Verse 16 is also full of guidance on how to live, "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord."
There are going to be amazing things happening both at my school and all over the world. Every day we are closer to the day Jesus will return. To prepare to be part of a difference He makes at my school this year, I and all the other Christians are going to have to really set our minds on Him, seek Him, desire Him, listen to Him, and obey Him. I'm glad He brought this theme to my attention this week because now I can start the busiest year of my education having determined and prayed to put God first.
On Wednesday before Engage the Spirit, a special worship event which happens monthly at Southpoint, I prayed with Pastor Ryan and a fellow Stanton student named Dorien.
Besides our request for God to bless the time of worship (which He did) we also prayed that He would lead a revolution in schools this year. It's a particular concern of mine because (believe it or not) I'm about to be a senior! It's now or never. Pastor Ryan said he's excited about this school year at Stanton, and so am I. I think something great is about to happen that's never happened there before.
On Thursday I went with Will to a party for the FISH club, Stanton's Christian Club, where we talked about how things are going to go this year. I have a concern about FISH clob: I love going, but in years past I never saw it doing much. In fact, even as a member I never knew exactly what "FISH" stands for. It turns out that it stands for our four activities, things which it looks like we'll be doing more actively this year. FISH means "Focus, Inspire, Share, and Hook," where 'focus' is a week where we meet in small prayer groups, 'inspire' is a week with a guest speaker, 'share' is a week with a student speaker, and 'hook' is an extra-fun week for inviting non-Christians to hear the Gospel preached.
It sounds really wonderful. It's just too bad that I haven't seen it happen in the past. At least, not with power and passion, diligence and movement. This year I'm praying, and I ask you to pray also, for a Spirit-lead "rebelution," as Pastor Ryan calls it, during which we will actually see lives change and the word spread like fire.
I can't help but wonder, though, why this hasn't been happening much in the past. We've had good leaders, food, prayer groups, student and guest speakers, and lots of great stuff. But why haven't we had a movement? I think part of the problem is the same problem which I have learned that I have been facing. And there's no way it's going to be any different without a solution. The problem is that, although we love Jesus, sometimes other things get in the way. We get worried, or tired, or distracted, and the result is that we take our eyes off the prize.
The theme of my learning this week is summarized in Colossians 3:1-2 "[1] If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. [2] Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth." To "set your mind on things above" means to desire the eternal, to desire God and focus your efforts on serving Him rather than anyone else. It's like Matthew 6:21, "For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." When I read this, I knew I was in for an important lesson. I love Jesus dearly, but if I'm honest with myself I must admit that I sometimes get distracted from Him. It's not that it's wrong to think about the life I'm living, it's just that I often find myself clinging to something I cannot keep. I must look at life through the lens of God's will. It's not that it's wrong to enjoy blessings, it's just that it's wrong for my main desire to be for something which only lasts for a day rather than for what lasts forever.
Desiring God does not consist of being near other Christians and going to church and doing the things that Christians do. I heard Pastor Eric say today that God did not call us to a religion, but to a relationship. Desiring God is actively seeking to know Him more and to serve Him better.
It's difficult as a high-school age person, especially at Stanton, to keep my priorities straight. We have homework, family responsibilities, relationships, extracurricular activites, and many even have jobs. On top of this we have to choose colleges, apply for schools and scholarships, think about our futures, and many of us must fill out forms for service hours. I've been wondering where I'll find time for my morning Bible Study that I've started doing this summer.
Sometimes I get so afraid that some thing or another will become so important to me that I won't give God the attention He deserves. I'm afraid I won't be able to see past my will to see His. So I pray and pray He'll teach me to desire Him first. I know this lesson so well that I'm unhappily surprised I have to learn it again to get it into my head: if we trust God and make Him our greatest desire then He will make everything in our lives work out beautifully. It's wonderful to think that our lives, left to God's guidance, can be designed as perfectly as a tree, or an ocean, or a solar system, so that everything turns out exactly like the Creator, in His wisdom, knows it should be. If we tried to figure it out on our own, which we don't have to do, our lives might turn out more like a kindergartener's drawing of the more beautiful thing God made - not the same thing at all.
I can certainly trust God to work everything out. That's why I'm not more worried about all these forms I have to fill out in the next few months, and why I am not more panicky about deciding on a major and a career. My trouble is that while I'm trusting Him, I'm not sure my mind is "set" on Him. Maybe that's the problem the FISH club has been having. Maybe we have so much going on that we aren't focused enough to stay organized and alive. Well, it's going to be different this year. Something great is about to happen. But I've learned this week that right now I need to 'set my mind' on what God is doing so I don't miss out on it. We need to desire God first. Then we can be part of something meaningful and amazing that He is doing.
Remember in Matthew 13, the parable of the seed sown in different places? Jesus used "thorns" to represent worldly desires. The world can be a pretty 'thorny' place. But if we don't get tangled in thorns then our lives can be fruitful and productive for God's glory. It goes without saying that that's what every Christian wants to do!
Colossians 3 does more than tell us what to do. It tells us how to do it. Verses 1 and 2 tell us to focus on the eternal.
What to stop doing: verse 5, "Therefore put to death your members which are on the earth: fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry." Those things aren't just bad, they're idolatry. That means that they are the kinds of things which stop us from setting our sights on God's will and make us look at our own. God hates idolatry, so we must avoid it like the plague. Instead we should conform our will to His. I've gathered that our own determination and resolve is not enough to do this. We must pray with expectation for the Holy Spirit to make it possible, and He will.
What to do instead: verse 12, "Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindess, humility, meekness, longsuffering;" These are characteristics of Christ. If we imitate Him it will be hard not to conform to His will. If our hearts resemble His it will be hard for the world not to see Him in us. That's what I'm hoping for in the FISH club this year, as well as in the whole body of Christ globally. Verse 16 is also full of guidance on how to live, "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord."
There are going to be amazing things happening both at my school and all over the world. Every day we are closer to the day Jesus will return. To prepare to be part of a difference He makes at my school this year, I and all the other Christians are going to have to really set our minds on Him, seek Him, desire Him, listen to Him, and obey Him. I'm glad He brought this theme to my attention this week because now I can start the busiest year of my education having determined and prayed to put God first.
Sunday, August 15, 2010
"To the Praise of His Glory"
THIS WEEK I was looking in the Bible and I saw something stand out on multiple occasions and in multiple places. It was the idea that God does the amazing things He does for more than one reason. The way He strengthens us and teaches us, saves us and blesses us, it's awe-inspiring when you think about how big He is and how great it is that He cares about us. That's part of what I learned last week - remember the flies? He rescues people because He loves us deeply and boundlessly. But there is also another end to the things He does: the glory of His name.
You see, people by nature must glorify something. It's how we're made. God by nature must be glorified. It's who He is. He is so high above everything else, so holy and gracious, so powerful and mysterious, so very God, that it's part of who He is to receive glory. That's what we'll be doing in heaven - glorifying Him.
Remember when He parted the Red Sea for the Israelites to pass through and escape from Egypt? It's in Exodus 14. He did it to bless them because He loved them, and He did it so they would remember His grace and power and glorify Him for who He is. Later He gave them the commandments, beginning by reminding them (Exodus 20:2) "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage." The purpose of His commandments in to keep us safe within His will and to keep sin from separating us from Him. If we keep them, He will bless us even more. So we can see that His blessing us leads to His glorification, and His glorification leads to more blessing.
The idea that salvation is both to rescue those in need and to bring God His well-deserved glory began to get my attention when I read Isaiah 61 earlier this week. You may recognize it as the chapter which contains the passage that Jesus referred to when He spoke in the synagogue (Luke 4:17-19) to explain why He had come. It's a prophecy about His mission to rescue those in need.
Verse 3 particularly interested me: "To console those who mourn in Zion, to give them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they may be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified." This is amazing. It shows that He came to bring joy to those who are suffering, in order that God may be glorified. God came to earth in the body of a Man to save His children, and so His children would love Him.
The next thing that caught my attention was Psalm 30:11-12, "[11] You have turned for me my mourning into dancing; You have put off my sackcloth and clothes me with gladness, [12] to the end that my glory may sing praise to You and not be silent. O Lord my God, I will give thanks to You forever." It's very similar to Isaiah 61:3. He takes away our sorrows and teaches us to have joy in Him, and because He has done this we want to glorify Him continually.
This reminds me of Revelation 4:9-11, "[9] Whenever the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to Him who sits on the throne, who lives forever and ever, [10] the twenty-four elders fall down and worship Him who lives forever and ever, and cast their crowns before the throne, saying: [11] 'You are worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power; For You created all things, and by Your will they exist and were created.'"
These people have received crowns as eternal rewards, and they cast them before God to glorify Him. And if you think about it, for all God is and has done, isn't He worthy of all the praise? After all, there is nobody like Him. Nobody who is similar in power and mercy. Nobody else can do what He has done. It's a great blessing just to be His, and knowing this, we find comfort and strength in Him and we praise Him. So when we are saved because of the redemption He gives, He rightly receives praise because of it.
Ephesian 1:13-14 says, "[13] In Him you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, [14] who is the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, to the praise of His glory." Once again, we receive a blessing and He receives His glory. We don't deserve the blessing, but He does deserve the glory.
Today Pastor Russ said that if something is good for God, then it's good for us. I think that that's wonderfully true. Laura Toney, my boyfriend Will's mother, says that God "sees over the fence," or that He sees situations for what they really are when we can't. It doesn't matter if it does or doesn't look like our lives are full of blessing. He promises to bless those who serve Him, so all we have to do is serve and trust. No matter what, God will receive His glory because by nature He must be glorified. And what He wants of us is spelled out in Matthew 5:16, "Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven." God is contagious, unstoppable, able to do whatever He has determined to do. He has determined to build a church strong enough to stand up against hell, and to raise up a nation of people who will serve Him and have no other gods. People who have been redeemed by His mercy through His sacrifice, who get to God through God because God got to us.
We are made for His glory. I hope and pray that glorifying God will be our sole purpose and that He will give us the hearts of servants who love Him with everything in ourselves, because He deserves it all. 1 Corinthians 10:31, "Therefore, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God."
You see, people by nature must glorify something. It's how we're made. God by nature must be glorified. It's who He is. He is so high above everything else, so holy and gracious, so powerful and mysterious, so very God, that it's part of who He is to receive glory. That's what we'll be doing in heaven - glorifying Him.
Remember when He parted the Red Sea for the Israelites to pass through and escape from Egypt? It's in Exodus 14. He did it to bless them because He loved them, and He did it so they would remember His grace and power and glorify Him for who He is. Later He gave them the commandments, beginning by reminding them (Exodus 20:2) "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage." The purpose of His commandments in to keep us safe within His will and to keep sin from separating us from Him. If we keep them, He will bless us even more. So we can see that His blessing us leads to His glorification, and His glorification leads to more blessing.
The idea that salvation is both to rescue those in need and to bring God His well-deserved glory began to get my attention when I read Isaiah 61 earlier this week. You may recognize it as the chapter which contains the passage that Jesus referred to when He spoke in the synagogue (Luke 4:17-19) to explain why He had come. It's a prophecy about His mission to rescue those in need.
Verse 3 particularly interested me: "To console those who mourn in Zion, to give them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they may be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified." This is amazing. It shows that He came to bring joy to those who are suffering, in order that God may be glorified. God came to earth in the body of a Man to save His children, and so His children would love Him.
The next thing that caught my attention was Psalm 30:11-12, "[11] You have turned for me my mourning into dancing; You have put off my sackcloth and clothes me with gladness, [12] to the end that my glory may sing praise to You and not be silent. O Lord my God, I will give thanks to You forever." It's very similar to Isaiah 61:3. He takes away our sorrows and teaches us to have joy in Him, and because He has done this we want to glorify Him continually.
This reminds me of Revelation 4:9-11, "[9] Whenever the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to Him who sits on the throne, who lives forever and ever, [10] the twenty-four elders fall down and worship Him who lives forever and ever, and cast their crowns before the throne, saying: [11] 'You are worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power; For You created all things, and by Your will they exist and were created.'"
These people have received crowns as eternal rewards, and they cast them before God to glorify Him. And if you think about it, for all God is and has done, isn't He worthy of all the praise? After all, there is nobody like Him. Nobody who is similar in power and mercy. Nobody else can do what He has done. It's a great blessing just to be His, and knowing this, we find comfort and strength in Him and we praise Him. So when we are saved because of the redemption He gives, He rightly receives praise because of it.
Ephesian 1:13-14 says, "[13] In Him you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, [14] who is the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, to the praise of His glory." Once again, we receive a blessing and He receives His glory. We don't deserve the blessing, but He does deserve the glory.
Today Pastor Russ said that if something is good for God, then it's good for us. I think that that's wonderfully true. Laura Toney, my boyfriend Will's mother, says that God "sees over the fence," or that He sees situations for what they really are when we can't. It doesn't matter if it does or doesn't look like our lives are full of blessing. He promises to bless those who serve Him, so all we have to do is serve and trust. No matter what, God will receive His glory because by nature He must be glorified. And what He wants of us is spelled out in Matthew 5:16, "Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven." God is contagious, unstoppable, able to do whatever He has determined to do. He has determined to build a church strong enough to stand up against hell, and to raise up a nation of people who will serve Him and have no other gods. People who have been redeemed by His mercy through His sacrifice, who get to God through God because God got to us.
We are made for His glory. I hope and pray that glorifying God will be our sole purpose and that He will give us the hearts of servants who love Him with everything in ourselves, because He deserves it all. 1 Corinthians 10:31, "Therefore, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God."
Sunday, August 8, 2010
The Door to Freedom
THIS WEEK, you'll notice, I've got a brand new background. My old one disappeared for a little while and I have taken it as an opportunity to try a new one. My lovely cousin Rina helped me fix it.
I'm really excited about what I'm going to tell you about today because on Tuesday I had one of what Rina has called "God moments." It's a really cool, seemingly unimportant event which leads you to think more about what God has done and who He is. I had to write this down right after it happened because it was just SO cool.
So I was doing my quiet time on Tuesday, studying John 14. It's a wonderful chapter which includes a description of the Holy Spirit. I found this very useful to me because it reminded me that we don't need to worry that we don't always know what to do to serve God: His Spirit is here precisely for the purpose of teaching us and guiding us.
But my 'God moment' actually happened right after I was done studying that amazing chapter. You see, when I sat down to do my quiet time, there were these two rather annoying flies buzzing around my window. I'm very glad now that I didn't move somewhere else to avoid them. I heard them humming furiously and I watched them slamming their faces repeatedly into the glass as they attempted to obtain the freedom they could glimpse through my window. They were very persistent. Again and again they beat against the deceptive glass. There it was: their goal, their greatest desire, liberty. It was just out of reach, and they could not accept it.
Before my quiet time was completely over I watched them for a little while. Sometimes one would go away from the window to recover from frustration and pain, but he would come back and try again as if he had a reason to think his escape could be more successful now. I began to pity them. It was a sad thing to watch. So I tried my best to open my window: first with my hands, then using a hairbrush for a lever. I even tried asking Jesus for the strength to open it up. But He didn't let me open the window at that time: He had something to show me.
Once I was done looking at John 14 I put on my shoes and went outside into the backyard and went around to the outside of my bedroom window. I used a shovel to open the window a few inches. As I replaced the shovel near the wall and went back inside, I felt like I had done a good thing for the flies.
When I came back into my room, you would guess that they would have flown out into the warm summer air, where they longed to go. But no! The silly creatures were still making a fuss next to the glass on the wood frame of my window. They didn't even notice the opening!
Do you see why this was a God moment? By the time I returned to my room I had noticed that we people are very much like those flies, and that I, like Jesus, had opened up a door to freedom that they did not seem to want to take.
Everyone in the world has a desire for the eternal planted in his heart. Everyone, whether religious or not, tries to acheive eternity in some form, whether it is eternal recognition of an accomplishment, the assurance of a continued existence reincarnated as a human instead of an animal, or, in Christians' case, spending forever with Jesus in Heaven. These flies wanted to go outside the way we want to have eternity and security and joy. But they could only get it one way, and they weren't taking the opportunity.
I rushed back outside and picked up the shovel again. This time I widened the opening even more: even the flies should be smart enough to go through this wide a door. I felt victorious as I saw one fly go past me into the outside world. I returned again indoors and immediately I saw that one fly had retreated to the far end of my room. I waved my arms at him to encourage him to go over to the window again, which he did, but it took a moment for him to understand that the way was open now. Then he flew right outside, finally free.
We're all born like flies trapped on the inside of a window, trying to get out. We try to gain joy and satisfaction and peace and all the things that God offers by trusting in possessions and people and philosophies in the world. But they can't give us what God can, and He knows it. So He Himself went and opened the way for us so that we could come to Him and have everything we need, everything He alone can supply, by suffering and dyind for the sins that kept us from Him. He took away the glass. We just have to go through.
I inspected the areas for more flies and, finding none, shut the window. I got up and left my room, and then I knelt on the floor with gratitude and asked Jesus why He cares enough to do that for me. Why? Why is He interested in what happens to us little, stubborn people? Why did He go to such great lengths and even die to make us His again? The answer is love. It's just who He is. I thanked Him and wrote down my God moment.
While I was writing it down I heard ANOTHER fly next to my window. Can you believe it? It was frustrating. Now, this fly wasn't trying very hard. Maybe he knew that he had missed his opportunity. Maybe he just hadn't noticed the door when it was open. Whatever the case, he is the man who, at the end of the age, missed his chance to be with Jesus. Can you imagine anything sadder? Can you imagine not getting to soar around outside and smell the flowers and feel the sunshine on your wings? Can you imagine knowing that the chance was there and you missed it?
For that poor fly the door was closed. But for us it is still very much open. Will you go through while it's still open? I hope you will. Once you've gone through the door to freedom, you'll never go back.
John 14:6 "Jesus said to him, 'I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.'"
I'm really excited about what I'm going to tell you about today because on Tuesday I had one of what Rina has called "God moments." It's a really cool, seemingly unimportant event which leads you to think more about what God has done and who He is. I had to write this down right after it happened because it was just SO cool.
So I was doing my quiet time on Tuesday, studying John 14. It's a wonderful chapter which includes a description of the Holy Spirit. I found this very useful to me because it reminded me that we don't need to worry that we don't always know what to do to serve God: His Spirit is here precisely for the purpose of teaching us and guiding us.
But my 'God moment' actually happened right after I was done studying that amazing chapter. You see, when I sat down to do my quiet time, there were these two rather annoying flies buzzing around my window. I'm very glad now that I didn't move somewhere else to avoid them. I heard them humming furiously and I watched them slamming their faces repeatedly into the glass as they attempted to obtain the freedom they could glimpse through my window. They were very persistent. Again and again they beat against the deceptive glass. There it was: their goal, their greatest desire, liberty. It was just out of reach, and they could not accept it.
Before my quiet time was completely over I watched them for a little while. Sometimes one would go away from the window to recover from frustration and pain, but he would come back and try again as if he had a reason to think his escape could be more successful now. I began to pity them. It was a sad thing to watch. So I tried my best to open my window: first with my hands, then using a hairbrush for a lever. I even tried asking Jesus for the strength to open it up. But He didn't let me open the window at that time: He had something to show me.
Once I was done looking at John 14 I put on my shoes and went outside into the backyard and went around to the outside of my bedroom window. I used a shovel to open the window a few inches. As I replaced the shovel near the wall and went back inside, I felt like I had done a good thing for the flies.
When I came back into my room, you would guess that they would have flown out into the warm summer air, where they longed to go. But no! The silly creatures were still making a fuss next to the glass on the wood frame of my window. They didn't even notice the opening!
Do you see why this was a God moment? By the time I returned to my room I had noticed that we people are very much like those flies, and that I, like Jesus, had opened up a door to freedom that they did not seem to want to take.
Everyone in the world has a desire for the eternal planted in his heart. Everyone, whether religious or not, tries to acheive eternity in some form, whether it is eternal recognition of an accomplishment, the assurance of a continued existence reincarnated as a human instead of an animal, or, in Christians' case, spending forever with Jesus in Heaven. These flies wanted to go outside the way we want to have eternity and security and joy. But they could only get it one way, and they weren't taking the opportunity.
I rushed back outside and picked up the shovel again. This time I widened the opening even more: even the flies should be smart enough to go through this wide a door. I felt victorious as I saw one fly go past me into the outside world. I returned again indoors and immediately I saw that one fly had retreated to the far end of my room. I waved my arms at him to encourage him to go over to the window again, which he did, but it took a moment for him to understand that the way was open now. Then he flew right outside, finally free.
We're all born like flies trapped on the inside of a window, trying to get out. We try to gain joy and satisfaction and peace and all the things that God offers by trusting in possessions and people and philosophies in the world. But they can't give us what God can, and He knows it. So He Himself went and opened the way for us so that we could come to Him and have everything we need, everything He alone can supply, by suffering and dyind for the sins that kept us from Him. He took away the glass. We just have to go through.
I inspected the areas for more flies and, finding none, shut the window. I got up and left my room, and then I knelt on the floor with gratitude and asked Jesus why He cares enough to do that for me. Why? Why is He interested in what happens to us little, stubborn people? Why did He go to such great lengths and even die to make us His again? The answer is love. It's just who He is. I thanked Him and wrote down my God moment.
While I was writing it down I heard ANOTHER fly next to my window. Can you believe it? It was frustrating. Now, this fly wasn't trying very hard. Maybe he knew that he had missed his opportunity. Maybe he just hadn't noticed the door when it was open. Whatever the case, he is the man who, at the end of the age, missed his chance to be with Jesus. Can you imagine anything sadder? Can you imagine not getting to soar around outside and smell the flowers and feel the sunshine on your wings? Can you imagine knowing that the chance was there and you missed it?
For that poor fly the door was closed. But for us it is still very much open. Will you go through while it's still open? I hope you will. Once you've gone through the door to freedom, you'll never go back.
John 14:6 "Jesus said to him, 'I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.'"
Sunday, August 1, 2010
About John 15
THIS WEEK it's been fun to find a few particularly wonderful things as I was reading in the Word. One thing that really caught my attention was John 15, the chapter which contains the familiar metaphor of Jesus as the "True Vine." I learned something deeper about this chapter than I'd ever noticed before, and I'm going to share it with you.
As Jesus speaks He begins with the image of Him as the Vine and us as the branches which are supposed to bear much fruit. This is supposed to teach us not only to serve Him but to depend on Him for everything, because the branches can't do anything without the life-giving, supportive vine. Here's how it starts:
"[1] I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. [2] Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit." At this point when I was reading I became nervous. What does it mean not to bear fruit? Does it mean not seeing anyone saved, or not trying to? Does it mean not reflecting Christ in one's character, or not demonstrating a great change? I stopped and asked God whether I was bearing any fruit, because I certainly wouldn't want to be 'taken away.' I wanted to make sure.
So I kept reading. "[3] You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. [4] Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me. [5] I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing." There it is! There is how we bear fruit! We bear fruit by "abiding" in Christ, and in the same way He will abide in us.
Now I wondered exactly what it means to "abide." I think it is close to "live," but how is it different? I've looked up the word on the Merriam-Webster website. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/abide
As a transitive verb "abide" means: 1. "To wait for." 2. a) "To endure without yielding." b) "To bear patiently." 3. "To accept without objection." As an intransitive verb it means" 1. "To remain stable or fixed in a state." 2. "To continue in a place."
So I think "abide" means more than "live." It means to stay put or endure in one place, to continue to live somewhere. If a branch stays on a vine and does its job by bearing fruit, it gets to stay on the vine and the vinedresser doesn't take it away. If we stay in Jesus, if we continue on as people who belong to Him and not to the world we live in, which is passing away, then He will stay with us and be ours, and His Spirit will produce fruit inside of us. That is the "fruit of the Spirit" listed in Galatians 5:22-23, "[22] But the fruit of the Spirit is love, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, [23] gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law."
So if we abide in Christ, and He abides in us, we will bear much fruit, and He continues to change us ("prune" us) so that we will bear more fruit (verse 2). Now I know what "abide" means, but exactly how do I go about doing that? I kept reading. I came to verse 10, "If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father's commandments and abide in His love." There it is! That's how we abide in Christ. If we keep His commandments then we will abide in His love. In John 14:15, the chapter just before this one, Jesus said "If you love Me, keep My commandments." He wants us to keep His commandments to show that we love Him. After all, if we do not obey Him we demonstrate that we do not love Him, and anybody who does not love Him could not possibly abide in Him.
Great! So we bear fruit by abiding in Him, and we abide in Him by keeping His commandments, demonstrating our love for Him. Now I ask, exactly how do we keep His commandments? I mean, what, at the root of it all, does He command? I kept reading and I came to verse 12, "This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you." And verse 17, "These things I command you, that you love one another."
By keeping His commandments we demonstrate our love for Him, and we demonstrate our love for Him by loving others! How cool is that?
In this amazing chapter Jesus is giving us instructions not only on what to do, but how to do it. We know that we are supposed to live for Christ, but how? I pray for more and more understanding of how I, personally, can live my own life for Christ, what I can do so that all I do is done for Him and in a way that pleases Him. And this is how. We bear fruit (serve Him and give Him glory) if we abide in Him. We abide in Him if we keep Him commandments. We keep His commandments if we love others as He loves us. If you read the ten commandments, every one of them is either about loving God or loving other people. We need to love God enough not to make idols. We need to love the people whom He loves enough not to kill, steal, covet, etc. He has been commanding us this same this for a very long time. We keep His commandments if we love others and if we love God. If we don't keep them, we don't show that we have any regard for God.
Oh - but how do we love others as Christ loves us? Now we're thinking! The best way to learn how to love people that much is to look at Jesus Himself. After all, He is the perfect example of how to please God. In order to love others as He has loved us, we should look at how He loves us. Check out verse 13, "Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one's life for his friends." This is Jesus telling us the magnitude of His love: it's the greatest love, a love to beat all other loves! He laid down His life for His friends. Wow - we're His friends! Isn't that something? We, with all the messes we make and the trouble we cause and our failures and stains, we're His friends now. And He loves us. That's how much we are supposed to love others.
He loves us with boldness and without hesitation, with a willingness to do whatever it takes to make sure we will be safe with God forever. He heals people and helps people. He treats people kindly and provides for their needs. He goes to great lengths for those in need. He loves us unselfishly and faithfully, paying the gratest cost for us not because we're anything extraordinary but because He is that extraordinary. And we're supposed to imitate His character and actions, with bold love for the people He loves. That's the best way to serve Him. I hope and I pray that I and we all can learn to have that much love for both our friends and our enemies, so that anyone can see that Christ is very much alive in all of His servants.
As Jesus speaks He begins with the image of Him as the Vine and us as the branches which are supposed to bear much fruit. This is supposed to teach us not only to serve Him but to depend on Him for everything, because the branches can't do anything without the life-giving, supportive vine. Here's how it starts:
"[1] I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. [2] Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit." At this point when I was reading I became nervous. What does it mean not to bear fruit? Does it mean not seeing anyone saved, or not trying to? Does it mean not reflecting Christ in one's character, or not demonstrating a great change? I stopped and asked God whether I was bearing any fruit, because I certainly wouldn't want to be 'taken away.' I wanted to make sure.
So I kept reading. "[3] You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. [4] Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me. [5] I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing." There it is! There is how we bear fruit! We bear fruit by "abiding" in Christ, and in the same way He will abide in us.
Now I wondered exactly what it means to "abide." I think it is close to "live," but how is it different? I've looked up the word on the Merriam-Webster website. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/abide
As a transitive verb "abide" means: 1. "To wait for." 2. a) "To endure without yielding." b) "To bear patiently." 3. "To accept without objection." As an intransitive verb it means" 1. "To remain stable or fixed in a state." 2. "To continue in a place."
So I think "abide" means more than "live." It means to stay put or endure in one place, to continue to live somewhere. If a branch stays on a vine and does its job by bearing fruit, it gets to stay on the vine and the vinedresser doesn't take it away. If we stay in Jesus, if we continue on as people who belong to Him and not to the world we live in, which is passing away, then He will stay with us and be ours, and His Spirit will produce fruit inside of us. That is the "fruit of the Spirit" listed in Galatians 5:22-23, "[22] But the fruit of the Spirit is love, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, [23] gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law."
So if we abide in Christ, and He abides in us, we will bear much fruit, and He continues to change us ("prune" us) so that we will bear more fruit (verse 2). Now I know what "abide" means, but exactly how do I go about doing that? I kept reading. I came to verse 10, "If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father's commandments and abide in His love." There it is! That's how we abide in Christ. If we keep His commandments then we will abide in His love. In John 14:15, the chapter just before this one, Jesus said "If you love Me, keep My commandments." He wants us to keep His commandments to show that we love Him. After all, if we do not obey Him we demonstrate that we do not love Him, and anybody who does not love Him could not possibly abide in Him.
Great! So we bear fruit by abiding in Him, and we abide in Him by keeping His commandments, demonstrating our love for Him. Now I ask, exactly how do we keep His commandments? I mean, what, at the root of it all, does He command? I kept reading and I came to verse 12, "This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you." And verse 17, "These things I command you, that you love one another."
By keeping His commandments we demonstrate our love for Him, and we demonstrate our love for Him by loving others! How cool is that?
In this amazing chapter Jesus is giving us instructions not only on what to do, but how to do it. We know that we are supposed to live for Christ, but how? I pray for more and more understanding of how I, personally, can live my own life for Christ, what I can do so that all I do is done for Him and in a way that pleases Him. And this is how. We bear fruit (serve Him and give Him glory) if we abide in Him. We abide in Him if we keep Him commandments. We keep His commandments if we love others as He loves us. If you read the ten commandments, every one of them is either about loving God or loving other people. We need to love God enough not to make idols. We need to love the people whom He loves enough not to kill, steal, covet, etc. He has been commanding us this same this for a very long time. We keep His commandments if we love others and if we love God. If we don't keep them, we don't show that we have any regard for God.
Oh - but how do we love others as Christ loves us? Now we're thinking! The best way to learn how to love people that much is to look at Jesus Himself. After all, He is the perfect example of how to please God. In order to love others as He has loved us, we should look at how He loves us. Check out verse 13, "Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one's life for his friends." This is Jesus telling us the magnitude of His love: it's the greatest love, a love to beat all other loves! He laid down His life for His friends. Wow - we're His friends! Isn't that something? We, with all the messes we make and the trouble we cause and our failures and stains, we're His friends now. And He loves us. That's how much we are supposed to love others.
He loves us with boldness and without hesitation, with a willingness to do whatever it takes to make sure we will be safe with God forever. He heals people and helps people. He treats people kindly and provides for their needs. He goes to great lengths for those in need. He loves us unselfishly and faithfully, paying the gratest cost for us not because we're anything extraordinary but because He is that extraordinary. And we're supposed to imitate His character and actions, with bold love for the people He loves. That's the best way to serve Him. I hope and I pray that I and we all can learn to have that much love for both our friends and our enemies, so that anyone can see that Christ is very much alive in all of His servants.
Sunday, July 25, 2010
What Happens When God Speaks
THIS WEEK I finished going through the last chapter of "The Purple Book" by Rice Broocks and Steve Murrell. Over the last few months this book has been a very useful little guide to understanding various aspects of Christian living based on solid Scripture references. I recommend it. It's helpful for really getting into the Word that really gets into you.
Speaking of the Word, this week I've decided to begin reading the entire Old Testament. I've read a few Old Testament books but not nearly the whole thing, and I think it will be really good if I learn about the whole Bible. After all, God's characteristics and personality are absolutely everywhere through the whole thing, and I'd love to find as much of that as I can.
I made this decision to read the entire Old Testament after I revisited the very beginning of the Word of God. Starting at Genesis 1:1 I read again about the very beginning of the world. And I noticed more wonderful things about those words than I ever had before.
I know there's controversy about how the world got going, but that's not what I'm going to write about today. I say that what the Bible says goes, and either way it's not the story of the beginning of the world that saves souls. What I'm going to write about is God's amazing ability to just SPEAK things into truth, into existence, into goodness and solidity and perfection. He just SPEAKS and it's wonderful!
Go ahead and read Genesis 1 and 2 really quickly. No - read it slowly. Read it so that you can remember what He did every day, and so that you'll notice the care He put into every single thing.
He didn't leave anything out, did He? He didn't just put it together either. He made it out of nothing! God begins by saying, "Let there be light." In just the first 5 verses we see the whole universe turning from a big, vague nothing into a bright, promising something, full of light.
Then He makes the Heavens by dividing them from the waters. God says, "Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and and let it divide the waters from the waters." It's lovely, isn't it? First you see all blackness becoming light, all of a sudden, then you see the sky dividing from the water along the horizon.
Then it's the third day, and God says, "Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear." He gathers up the water so that dry Earth can arise out of it, and He lets plants grow on the ground. Not just any plants, either. They are plants which can reproduce other plants of the same kinds! Such foresight. So you have the sky divided from water along the horizon, and then the rich, rocky dry land begins to rise up out of the vast water, and then it bursts forth with vibrant, dynamic green life of all shapes and sizes and functions.
Now it's the fourth day. Today God will make sure we always have a light shining, day and night. He says, "Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs and seasons, and for days and years; and let them be for lights in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth." And then it happens! There's a sun and a moon, an eleborate and useful timepiece in the sky. They are bright and beautiful, regular and faithful, hanging in the well-lit firmament to keep us from ever living in the dark. He put such care into putting this world together, surrounding it with everything it needs to exist safely.
And the fifth day: God says, "Let the waters abound with an abundance of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the face of the firmament of the heavens." We've never seen anything like it before. As soon as He says it, great fish and whales with glimmering fins and scales fill the vast oceans with life, and there are birds of every color and size soaring across the colorful sky. God is making something very beautiful. Then He tells the sea creatures and the birds, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth." Just as He has done for the plants, He has done for the animals. He has made them so that there will be more of them in the future. Remember that next time you see any animal. It's the descendant of the first one God ever made.
For anybody who is wondering, 'What about me? Where are the people?' Don't worry. It's the sixth day. Time for people and land creatures. God says, "Let the earth brings forth the living creature according to its kind: cattle and creeping thing and beast of the earth, each according to its kind." And there are the animals! Elephants and horses and goats and snakes and frogs and cats. Every creature you can name is now here on the earth - except for man. So He says "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps over the earth." So He made the first people (details in Genesis 2:7 and 18-25) and He told them to be fruiful and multiply, and that they were in charge over the earth and that they could eat any green herb they wanted for food. He gave them only one limitation: "Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die."
I think that one reason God saved people for last is so that we could see all of this amazingness at once. He put it all together and then made people so that we could see and be amazed at what He is giving us. Imagine being Adam for a moment. You look up and God is everywhere. No sin has yet entered the world and separated you from God. There are birds racing in the sky and all the fruit you can eat growing everywhere. Every color is visible in the plants and sky and earth, and fish are jumping in the water, and all kinds of animals are happy to see you. The beauty of this place is very greatly enhanced by the joy of new arrivals and the presence of the Lord. Then God gives Adam a wife who was quite literally made for him, because as He said, "It is not good that man should be alone." And everything was truly perfect and wonderful. It was good. Very, very good.
All of this happened when God spoke. He spoke into the darkness, and light came out. He spoke into the creation, and creatures came out. He speaks into our lives, and all kinds of wonder and goodness and renewal comes out as His wisdom and righteousness transorms us. There is nobody else who can simply speak and cause things to exist. Nobody else whose words can both create life and sustain life.
Immediately after I read Genesis 1 and 2, I went over to Luke 4 and read about Jesus' temptation in the wilderness. He was very hungry, for He had not eaten in 40 days. So the devil, the same one who tempted Eve to eat that fruit and mess up the perfect world, tempted Jesus to command a rock to become bread for Him. We know He definitely could have made bread if He wanted to. He produced enough bread to feed thousands of people (plus leftovers) from just a few loaves on several occasions. But Jesus said to the devil, (verse 4) "It is written, 'Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.'" Jesus knew He was there to be tempted. He resisted the temptation both by quoting God's word and by living on God's word. He says that people won't live on only bread. We couldn't live on only bread! Even if we had all the food we needed it would never be enough without God. He sustains our lives by feeding our souls. Jesus understood the need to set the example of valuing the soul-sustaining 'food' that is God's word as more important than the food the body needs.
The very last question in "The Purple Book" was this: "Why is God worthy of our crowns? Revelation 4:11" That verse says what the twenty-four elders are saying in heaven as they cast their crowns of glory before God's throne, "You are worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power; For You created all things, and by Your will they exist and were created." God is truly worthy of all the glory. Think for a moment about how He made everything. He spoke, and there it was. Think for a moment about How He holds our lives together. His Holy Spirit of truth speaks into our lives. He talks to us all the time and tells us what is right, what He wants us each to do. It's just astounding what God does with His words, because He has the authority to command everything to work how it does, and to set what is right or wrong. When we live by His words, His commands and His guidance, for His glory, only then do we live a life worth living.
Speaking of the Word, this week I've decided to begin reading the entire Old Testament. I've read a few Old Testament books but not nearly the whole thing, and I think it will be really good if I learn about the whole Bible. After all, God's characteristics and personality are absolutely everywhere through the whole thing, and I'd love to find as much of that as I can.
I made this decision to read the entire Old Testament after I revisited the very beginning of the Word of God. Starting at Genesis 1:1 I read again about the very beginning of the world. And I noticed more wonderful things about those words than I ever had before.
I know there's controversy about how the world got going, but that's not what I'm going to write about today. I say that what the Bible says goes, and either way it's not the story of the beginning of the world that saves souls. What I'm going to write about is God's amazing ability to just SPEAK things into truth, into existence, into goodness and solidity and perfection. He just SPEAKS and it's wonderful!
Go ahead and read Genesis 1 and 2 really quickly. No - read it slowly. Read it so that you can remember what He did every day, and so that you'll notice the care He put into every single thing.
He didn't leave anything out, did He? He didn't just put it together either. He made it out of nothing! God begins by saying, "Let there be light." In just the first 5 verses we see the whole universe turning from a big, vague nothing into a bright, promising something, full of light.
Then He makes the Heavens by dividing them from the waters. God says, "Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and and let it divide the waters from the waters." It's lovely, isn't it? First you see all blackness becoming light, all of a sudden, then you see the sky dividing from the water along the horizon.
Then it's the third day, and God says, "Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear." He gathers up the water so that dry Earth can arise out of it, and He lets plants grow on the ground. Not just any plants, either. They are plants which can reproduce other plants of the same kinds! Such foresight. So you have the sky divided from water along the horizon, and then the rich, rocky dry land begins to rise up out of the vast water, and then it bursts forth with vibrant, dynamic green life of all shapes and sizes and functions.
Now it's the fourth day. Today God will make sure we always have a light shining, day and night. He says, "Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs and seasons, and for days and years; and let them be for lights in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth." And then it happens! There's a sun and a moon, an eleborate and useful timepiece in the sky. They are bright and beautiful, regular and faithful, hanging in the well-lit firmament to keep us from ever living in the dark. He put such care into putting this world together, surrounding it with everything it needs to exist safely.
And the fifth day: God says, "Let the waters abound with an abundance of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the face of the firmament of the heavens." We've never seen anything like it before. As soon as He says it, great fish and whales with glimmering fins and scales fill the vast oceans with life, and there are birds of every color and size soaring across the colorful sky. God is making something very beautiful. Then He tells the sea creatures and the birds, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth." Just as He has done for the plants, He has done for the animals. He has made them so that there will be more of them in the future. Remember that next time you see any animal. It's the descendant of the first one God ever made.
For anybody who is wondering, 'What about me? Where are the people?' Don't worry. It's the sixth day. Time for people and land creatures. God says, "Let the earth brings forth the living creature according to its kind: cattle and creeping thing and beast of the earth, each according to its kind." And there are the animals! Elephants and horses and goats and snakes and frogs and cats. Every creature you can name is now here on the earth - except for man. So He says "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps over the earth." So He made the first people (details in Genesis 2:7 and 18-25) and He told them to be fruiful and multiply, and that they were in charge over the earth and that they could eat any green herb they wanted for food. He gave them only one limitation: "Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die."
I think that one reason God saved people for last is so that we could see all of this amazingness at once. He put it all together and then made people so that we could see and be amazed at what He is giving us. Imagine being Adam for a moment. You look up and God is everywhere. No sin has yet entered the world and separated you from God. There are birds racing in the sky and all the fruit you can eat growing everywhere. Every color is visible in the plants and sky and earth, and fish are jumping in the water, and all kinds of animals are happy to see you. The beauty of this place is very greatly enhanced by the joy of new arrivals and the presence of the Lord. Then God gives Adam a wife who was quite literally made for him, because as He said, "It is not good that man should be alone." And everything was truly perfect and wonderful. It was good. Very, very good.
All of this happened when God spoke. He spoke into the darkness, and light came out. He spoke into the creation, and creatures came out. He speaks into our lives, and all kinds of wonder and goodness and renewal comes out as His wisdom and righteousness transorms us. There is nobody else who can simply speak and cause things to exist. Nobody else whose words can both create life and sustain life.
Immediately after I read Genesis 1 and 2, I went over to Luke 4 and read about Jesus' temptation in the wilderness. He was very hungry, for He had not eaten in 40 days. So the devil, the same one who tempted Eve to eat that fruit and mess up the perfect world, tempted Jesus to command a rock to become bread for Him. We know He definitely could have made bread if He wanted to. He produced enough bread to feed thousands of people (plus leftovers) from just a few loaves on several occasions. But Jesus said to the devil, (verse 4) "It is written, 'Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.'" Jesus knew He was there to be tempted. He resisted the temptation both by quoting God's word and by living on God's word. He says that people won't live on only bread. We couldn't live on only bread! Even if we had all the food we needed it would never be enough without God. He sustains our lives by feeding our souls. Jesus understood the need to set the example of valuing the soul-sustaining 'food' that is God's word as more important than the food the body needs.
The very last question in "The Purple Book" was this: "Why is God worthy of our crowns? Revelation 4:11" That verse says what the twenty-four elders are saying in heaven as they cast their crowns of glory before God's throne, "You are worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power; For You created all things, and by Your will they exist and were created." God is truly worthy of all the glory. Think for a moment about how He made everything. He spoke, and there it was. Think for a moment about How He holds our lives together. His Holy Spirit of truth speaks into our lives. He talks to us all the time and tells us what is right, what He wants us each to do. It's just astounding what God does with His words, because He has the authority to command everything to work how it does, and to set what is right or wrong. When we live by His words, His commands and His guidance, for His glory, only then do we live a life worth living.
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