Someone is Lying to You

Someone Is Lying to You

 

Temptation comes from our own desires, which entice us and drag us away. These desires give birth to sinful actions. And when sin is allowed to grow, it gives birth to death.

JAMES 1.14-15

Live as God’s obedient children. Don’t slip back into your old ways of living to satisfy your own desires.

1 PETER 1.14

Take delight in the LORD, and he will give you your heart’s desires.

PSALM 37.4

 

You know what it’s like to really, really want something, right? There’s nothing wrong with wanting, desire is a good thing. We all come equipped with desires we need for life — like the desire for food, relationships with other people, approval, greatness, rest. God gave us these desires for our good, to serve us.

But sin takes healthy desires meant to serve us, and turns them into unhealthy obsessions that make us slaves. Sin twists our healthy desires so they become liars. Our desires, when clouded by sin, lie to us with half-truths, like “It will feel good.” And it might feel good — for a while. But eventually sinful desires turn on us and destroy us. Sin turns our God-given desire for food into the lie that eating more food than we really need will make us happier or that denying ourselves food will make us more acceptable. Sin turns our God-given desire for love into the lie that we have to do whatever someone wants us to do in order to get it. Sin twists our desire for security into an addiction for money and more stuff. Sin takes our healthy desire for success and makes it an obsession with work and competition. Sin twists the truth, and lies outright. So we have to recognise the voice of the liar and confront the lies of sin with the truth of Scripture. And the truth is God wants all our desires to be fulfilled — in him. 

Born a Second Time?

 Born a Second Time?

 

Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth, unless you are born again, you cannot see the Kingdom of God.”

“What do you mean?” exclaimed Nicodemus. “How can an old man go back into his mother’s womb and be born again?”

Jesus replied, . . . “Humans can reproduce only human life, but the Holy Spirit gives birth to spiritual life.”

JOHN 3.3-4, 6

You have been born again, but not to a life that will quickly end.

1 PETER 1.23

 

The majority of people who live in theUnited Kingdom or the United States describe themselves as “Christian.” But that means different things to different people. For some, since they are not Muslim or Buddhist or Jewish, and they believe there is a God and that Jesus was real, they call themselves Christians. But many of those people would not be willing to call themselves “born-again” Christians. This is a label given to believers who are a little more radical about Jesus than those who simply want to go to church and follow the teachings of Christ that fit comfortably into their lives.

But there’s no such thing as a Christian who has not been born again. That’s what Jesus said. He said that the only way anyone has any sort of genuine spiritual life is if he or she has experienced the miracle of being born a second time — not physically this time, but spiritually. Being born again is not just about changing — although a person who has been born again will change. It means the birth of a whole new life brought about by the Holy Spirit.

Jesus said that being born again is not just one form of saving faith or an addition to it, it is the only form of saving faith. He said that “no one can enter the Kingdom of God” without it (Jn 3.5, emphasis added). It is impossible to become a baby and be born all over again. That would require a miracle.

And that’s the point.

News Flash! You Were Dead

 News Flash: You Were Dead!

 

Once you were dead because of your disobedience and your many sins.  But God is so rich in mercy, and he loved us so much, that even though we were dead because of our sins, he gave us life when he raised Christ from the dead.

EPHESIANS 2.1, 4-5

You were dead because of your sins and because your sinful nature was not yet cut away. Then God made you alive with Christ, for he forgave all our sins.

COLOSSIANS 2.13

 

Sometimes people will say, “I have good news and bad news; which do you want first?” And though Scripture is filled with good news (gospel actually means “good news”), it also contains some very bad news. In fact, the bad news may be worse than you think.

A number of people might think of themselves as spiritually sick and in need of assistance. They recognise that they are not who they need to be or want to be, and they admit that Jesus can help them become a better person and keep them out of hell. But the doctor’s diagnosis on every one of us is much worse than “very sick.” We’re dead. We need much more than a self-improvement project or a boost of goodness. We need a miracle. The miracle of a dead person coming alive.

How can a dead soul come to life? Only God himself can do it. Just as God breathed into Adam the breath of life and formed the world out of nothing, God can make a dead person alive.

If you’re a believer, the reality of your past is that you were dead and completely without hope. You had no spiritual pulse, and there were no signs of potential life. But then God breathed his life into you! Now you are alive to God — thinking about him, wanting him, listening to him speak to you through Scripture, allowing him to change you and shape you. And your future reality is no longer death; it’s life — eternal life.

We’re all poor

 We’re All Poor

 

No one is righteous — not even one. No one is truly wise; no one is seeking God. All have turned away; all have become useless. No one does good, not a single one.

ROMANS 3.10-12

 

God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it.

EPHESIANS 2.8-9

 

You say, “I am rich. I have everything I want. I don’t need a thing!” And you don’t realise that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked.

REVELATION 3.17

 

Is there something you really want? Something that you want so much that you are willing to work for it and save for it so you can buy it?

What if what you really want is to be in good standing with God? Can you save up enough good works, enough proper behaviour, enough denying yourself to buy God’s favour? Unfortunately not. God doesn’t accept people who think they have some sort of spiritual currency or money to be able to buy his blessing. In fact, he says that the only people he accepts are those who recognise that they not only don’t have enough to offer God but that they have absolutely nothing to offer God. “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” Jesus said (Mt 5.3, NIV). He wasn’t talking about people who are financially poor but people who are spiritually poor, people who are spiritually bankrupt.

Only when we see that we have nothing to offer God to gain his favour — no family connections, no self-sacrifice, not even any natural tendency to love him — only then are we in a position to receive what God wants to give to us. And then he gives us everything. Jesus is the one who receives all things from God the Father, and he shares all those good things with us — when we come to him with empty hands and empty pockets, empty of our own efforts, with nothing to offer him.

Our last breath

 Our Last Breath

 

Teach us to realise the brevity of life, so that we may grow in wisdom.

PSALM 90.12

 

Your life is like the morning fog —it’s here a little while, then it’s gone.

JAMES 4.14

 

Better to spend your time at funerals than at parties. After all, everyone dies — so the living should take this to heart.

ECCLESIASTES 7.2

 

Have you ever thought about the question, What would you do if you found out you only had a few months to live? Some people say they would go on an extended exotic vacation. Others say they would spend all their time with people they love.

Many people are forced to face that question when they receive a diagnosis for a fatal illness. But the Bible says that asking ourselves that question — thinking about the reality of the shortness of life — is a wise way to live all the time. Understanding death is a healthy part of life.

When we are healthy and everyone we love is healthy, it is easy to avoid thinking about death. But when someone we know gets very sick or when someone we love dies, we are forced to face the reality that our bodies will die at some point too. While we tend to expect to live eighty or ninety years, there are no guarantees of how long we’re given on this earth.

Thinking occasionally about dying is not a morbid, depressing thing. It can actually be a life-giving exercise. It forces us to remember what Christ has done for us on the cross, and it builds our confidence in his victory over eternal death. We exercise our faith muscles when we seriously consider our own deaths someday and, by faith, choose to believe that death will not be the end for us. Because of our connectedness with Jesus, we will take our last breath here and our next breath in his presence, where we will never have to face death again

A book worth rereading

 A Book Worth Rereading

 

The instructions of the LORD are perfect, reviving the soul. The decrees of the LORD are trustworthy, making wise the simple. The commandments of the LORD are right, bringing joy to the heart. The commands of the LORD are clear, giving insight for living. . . . They are more desirable than gold, even the finest gold. They are sweeter than honey, even honey dripping from the comb. They are a warning to your servant, a great reward for those who obey them.

PSALM 19:7-8, 10-11

 

Can you think of any book you’d want to spend your whole life reading over and over again? There probably aren’t many books like that, but the Bible is no ordinary book! Psalm 19 gives us a list of good reasons why we’ll never outgrow our need to keep reading and studying the Bible.

Reading the Bible brings life to our souls. It helps us come alive again when we feel dead toward God and weary about life. 

It makes simple people wise. In other words, we don’t have to be afraid that we can’t understand the Bible or will be confused by it. When we are seeking to know him, God gives us more understanding than we could have on our own. 

It brings joy to the heart. When we keep getting to know someone we love, it makes us happy. Studying the Bible helps us know God better. 

It gives direction for how to live. Reading the Bible gets us thinking about what really matters and moves us beyond superficial stuff. 

It is better than money. Reading God’s Word feeds our contentment in God rather than our greed and our desire for more. It makes us want what will truly make us happy forever. 

It is sweeter than honey. Reading the Bible isn’t an unpleasant duty; it’s an enjoyable privilege. It’s a satisfying treat, not a boring chore. 

It is rewarding. Reading God’s Word pays off — now and in the future. 

It’s a worthwhile investment we will never regret.

God’s agenda

 God’s Agenda

 

I will make you into a great nation. I will bless you and make you famous, and you will be a blessing to others. I will bless those who bless you and curse those who treat you with contempt. All the families on earth will be blessed through you.

GENESIS 12.2-3

 

From his abundance we have all received one gracious blessing after another. For the law was given through Moses, but God’s unfailing love and faithfulness came through Jesus Christ.

JOHN 1.16-17

 

Through Christ Jesus, God has blessed the Gentiles with the same blessing he promised to Abraham.

GALATIANS 3.14

 

When people hide what they really want or what they’re really trying to accomplish behind something else, we say they have a hidden agenda. It is a compliment when we say that someone is straightforward and honest, with no hidden agenda. And that is something we can say about God. He has made his agenda clear from the beginning. God’s agenda is this, He plans to bless us. In other words, he wants to give us a full, rich life. God wants to pour out his goodness on us. That’s his agenda.

Our problem with God’s agenda is not that it is hidden, but that it simply seems too good to be true. We don’t deserve God’s blessing, and we can’t earn it, it is a gift. In fact, when God chose to bless Abraham, he was no saint-in-training; he was more likely an idol-worshiper-in-training since his father worshiped other gods (see Josh 24.2). But in his promise to Abraham in Genesis 12, God declared his agenda for all of history, to bless people from all nations of the earth through Abraham and his descendants. The blessing promised to Abraham comes to us through the most important of Abraham’s descendants, Jesus Christ. Jesus is the blessing of God, given to us with no hidden agenda.

Preserve, Shine

 Preserve! Shine!

 

You are the salt of the earth. But what good is salt if it has lost its flavour? Can you make it salty again? It will be thrown out and trampled underfoot as worthless. You are the light of the world — like a city on a hilltop that cannot be hidden. No one lights a lamp and then puts it under a basket. Instead, a lamp is placed on a stand, where it gives light to everyone in the house.

MATTHEW 5:13-15

 

You must have the qualities of salt among yourselves and live in peace with each other.

MARK 9:50

 

Live clean, innocent lives as children of God, shining like bright lights in a world full of crooked and perverse people.

PHILIPPIANS 2:15

 

When we say, “Pass the salt” at the dinner table, it’s because we want to sprinkle some on our food to enhance the flavour. But in Jesus’ day, long before refrigerators, salt was used not just to season food but to preserve it. By calling us salt, Jesus was saying that we are part of his ministry of preservation, part of his plan to keep people from spoiling in a decaying world. As Christians, we are to promote healing and wholeness in a culture that is going bad without God.

Jesus also called us light, saying that we are part of his work of piercing through the darkness in a world that often does not want God. We are to shine the light on truth and show people how to find their way home to God. We are to be living examples of the difference Jesus makes in people’s lives.

Our ability to preserve and shine is dependent on our connection to the source of true light and true saltiness, Jesus. On our own we cannot save or sustain anything, but Jesus has drawn us into the task he is already doing. His work has become our work. That goal begins to define not only what we do but who we are. When we are salt and light, we get to play a part in God’s plan to redeem this dark and decaying world.

Planting the right seeds

 Planting the Right Seeds

Don’t be misled — you cannot mock the justice of God. You will always harvest what you plant. Those who live only to satisfy their own sinful nature will harvest decay and death from that sinful nature. But those who live to please the Spirit will harvest everlasting life from the Spirit. So let’s not get tired of doing what is good. At just the right time we will reap a harvest of blessing if we don’t give up.

GALATIANS 6.7-9

Those who are peacemakers will plant seeds of peace and reap a harvest of righteousness.

JAMES 3.18

When you plant flower seeds in your garden, do you expect to grow a pumpkin patch? Or when you plant a field of corn, do you expect to harvest green beans? Of course not! You know that what you harvest depends on the seeds you’ve planted.

It works the same way in our lives. We harvest what we plant. Sometimes we’re surprised by the conflict and pain that our lives produce. But it is often because we’ve planted seeds of sinful attitudes and actions, and we are simply experiencing the natural outgrowth of what we’ve sown in our lives. It works the other way too. When we are more patient with others, when we respond to challenges with faith instead of fear, when we love people who are not very lovable, it is an outgrowth of seeds planted by the Spirit of God in our lives.

This is why we have to be careful about what kind of seeds we’re planting in our hearts. If we want our lives to produce a crop of attitudes and relationships and accomplishments that are pleasing to God, we have to ask him to help us plant the right seeds.

What is sin?

 What Is Sin?

 

Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness.

1 JOHN 3.4, NIV

Everything that does not come from faith is sin.

ROMANS 14.23, NIV

The world’s sin is that it refuses to believe in me.

JOHN 16.9

 

Remember the first day of school when you were given a list of class rules? No chewing gum. Raise your hand before you speak. No talking while the teacher is talking. Many people see sin as simply breaking God’s list of rules. They look at the Ten Commandments and the teachings of Jesus and think they are doing pretty well.

But we have to define sin the way the Bible does — in relationship to God’s law and his perfect character. John writes that “sin is lawlessness.” This goes to the root of all sinful actions and attitudes — our failure to trust God. Lawlessness is more than breaking the rules. It is living as though our own ideas are superior to God’s. At the heart of all sin is a lie that says to each of us, “What you are doing or thinking or feeling or wanting is not really that bad, because other people are doing things that are much worse. Besides, you can’t help it.”

Sin isn’t just limited to our failure to live up to a list of dos and don’ts given to us by God. In fact, many people have been deceived into thinking that things are okay between them and God because they don’t do the things from the “don’t” list, and they do at least a few things from the “do” list. But what they don’t realise is that this is just being moral or a good citizen or a nice person. It isn’t faith. And that means it won’t be enough to save them. Only Jesus can do that.

An Easy Load

 An Easy Load

 

Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.

MATTHEW 11.28-30

Loving God means keeping his commandments, and his commandments are not burdensome.

1 JOHN 5.3

 

Have you ever worn a pair of shoes that were too tight? Ugh! You feel the squeeze and can’t wait to get them off! Or have you had to carry a backpack or suitcase that is too heavy for you? You can’t wait to set it down.

When God gave his people the law, it was a high standard, but it wasn’t unreasonable. Then, over the years, Jewish religious leaders added to the law God had given them, heaping up ridiculous rules no one could keep. People began to see God’s law as confining and uncomfortable, like shoes that are too tight, and burdensome, like a load that’s too heavy to carry.

This is what Jesus had in mind when he said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. . . . For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.” A yoke isn’t something we hear much about today, but the people listening to Jesus would have known exactly what he was talking about. A yoke is a bar of wood that attaches to farm animals so they can carry their load. Perhaps Jesus was thinking of his days as a carpenter and how a carpenter adjusted every yoke he made to the build of the ox. In Jesus’ day a farmer brought his ox to a carpenter, who measured its shoulders and then made a yoke to fit. Jesus was saying that his expectations fit just right.

Jesus invites everyone who is suffering under the burden of meaningless religion, ridiculous rules, and defeating guilt to come to him. He promises that he will not place a heavy set of unreasonable rules on us, and that what he asks of us will lead us into rest, not misery.

Turn around

 Turn Around

 

Jesus began to preach, “Repent of your sins and turn to God, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near.”

MATTHEW 4.17

I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners and need to repent.

LUKE 5.32

The kind of sorrow God wants us to experience leads us away from sin and results in salvation. There’s no regret for that kind of sorrow. But worldly sorrow, which lacks repentance, results in spiritual death.

2 CORINTHIANS 7.10

 

Have you ever driven or ridden in a car with a Satnav that uses a computerised voice to give the driver directions? “In 300 yards, turn left,” it will say. When you’re using a system like this and you go off course, it will say, “Turn around when possible.”

Jesus had a similar message for people who needed to go in a different direction in life. His message was, “Repent of your sins and turn to God.” He was telling them that they were headed in a direction away from God, and now was the time to turn around and start moving in his direction.

Some people think that repentance is something we do one time when we turn toward Christ. But for the believer, repentance is really a way of life. As we walk with Jesus, the Holy Spirit continues to show us areas of our lives where we are headed in the wrong direction. He calls us to turn toward him and enter into the rest and freedom of repentance.

The most godly people you know are godly not because they never sin. They are godly because they are quick to repent. Rather than resisting God’s instruction to turn around, they listen for his voice and quickly respond to his instruction, running in his direction.

God’s dream

 God’s Dream

 

They sang a new song with these words: “You are worthy to take the scroll and break its seals and open it. For you were slaughtered, and your blood has ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation. And you have caused them to become a Kingdom of priests for our God. And they will reign on the earth.”

REVELATION 5.9-10

People will come from all over the world — from east and west, north and south — to take their places in the Kingdom of God. And note this: Some who seem least important now will be the greatest then, and some who are the greatest now will be least important then.

LUKE 13.29-30

 

In August 28, 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. stood in front of the Lincoln Memorial and said, “I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. . . . I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.” His was an amazing, God-honouring dream. But it was just scratching the surface of God’s ultimate dream, his plan for the redemption of all races.

God’s dream is really more than a dream. It is a sure and coming reality that all of history is moving toward — the restoration of all things. It’s bigger than how people of different skin colours and backgrounds relate to each other. It’s about people from every race, every language, every tribe on the planet worshipping together around the throne of God. God’s desire is for people from “every tribe and language and people and nation” to be united by our worship of our one and only King.

When we overcome our natural prejudices and join hands with people of other races to glorify God together, we experience a little bit of heaven here on earth.

What are you building on?

 What Are You Building On?

 

Anyone who listens to my teaching and follows it is wise, like a person who builds a house on solid rock. Though the rain comes in torrents and the floodwaters rise and the winds beat against that house, it won’t collapse because it is built on bedrock. But anyone who hears my teaching and doesn’t obey it is foolish, like a person who builds a house on sand. When the rains and floods come and the winds beat against that house, it will collapse with a mighty crash.

MATTHEW 7.24-27

Don’t just listen to God’s word. You must do what it says. Otherwise, you are only fooling yourselves. . . . But if you look carefully into the perfect law that sets you free, and if you do what it says and don’t forget what you heard, then God will bless you for doing it.

JAMES 1.22, 25

 

Do you know the song “The Wise Man Built His House upon the Rock”? It says that when the rains came down and the floods came up, the house on the rock stood firm, while the house on the sand went splat.

So what was the difference between the wise person and the foolish person? When we read the parable Jesus told, we see that they had many things in common. Both of them heard God’s Word. In modern terms, it is as if they both attended church and sat through the sermon Sunday after Sunday. And both of them experienced the storm. They each faced trouble and difficulty. But the story tells us that the wise person’s house did not collapse, while the foolish person’s house fell with a mighty crash.

What does it mean to build your house on solid rock versus unstable sand? The difference is in the way you respond when you hear God’s Word. One Bible version says that the wise person not only hears God’s words but also “puts them into practice” (Mt 7:24, NIV). The foolish person heard God’s Word but ignored it. It is as if this person thought being in church was good enough. Wise people let God’s Word change and shape them, strengthen and prepare them for when the storms of life come.

Impossible to understand

 Impossible to Understand?

 

The teaching of your word gives light, so even the simple can understand.

PSALM 119.130

All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realise what is wrong in our lives.

2 TIMOTHY 3.16

Such things were written in the Scriptures long ago to teach us.

ROMANS 15.4

 

Have you ever opened the pages of a book only to discover it is written in another language that you don’t know? Or have you ever opened a high-level textbook about a subject you know nothing about and it seems completely impossible to understand?

Sometimes people can feel that way when reading the Bible — it seems like it’s in a foreign language or it’s written at a level they can’t comprehend. It’s true that the Bible is like a treasure of knowledge that can be opened over and over throughout your lifetime, offering deeper levels of understanding. But no advanced degree or special experience is required to understand the Bible. Everything we need for salvation and for living the Christian life is clear in Scripture.

Understanding the Bible is more of a spiritual ability than an intellectual ability. God is the one who opens our minds so we can grasp what we read in his Word. “People who aren’t spiritual can’t receive these truths from God’s Spirit. It all sounds foolish to them and they can’t understand it, for only those who are spiritual can understand what the Spirit means” (1Cor 2.14).

God makes Scripture understandable for people who don’t know him but are reading it to find him. And he makes Scripture understandable to people who do know him but need help making sense of what they read. So when we come to something in the Bible we don’t understand, we know that we have a fresh opportunity to discover something about God. We can ask for God’s help and search the Scripture intently, believing that God will show us what we need to learn.

Examine yourself

 Examine Yourself

 

Not everyone who calls out to me, “Lord! Lord!” will enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

MATTHEW 7.21

Examine yourselves to see if your faith is genuine. Test yourselves. Surely you know that Jesus Christ is among you; if not, you have failed the test of genuine faith.

2 CORINTHIANS 13.5

 

Have you ever known someone with diabetes? Many diabetics have to prick their fingers several times a day to draw blood to test the level of sugar in their bloodstreams. It is not something they can know just by feeling. They have to test themselves.

The Bible says that we need to test ourselves. Not by pricking our fingers, but by examining ourselves for evidence of genuine faith.

One way we can examine ourselves is to ask this question. Am I trusting Christ right now to make me right with God? Or is there something else I am trusting in to save me (like doing good works or coming from a family of faith or attending church)? Trusting Christ to save you is not a one-time thing, and it’s not about reciting details about a conversion experience in your past. The work he did to save us happened one time, but he keeps saving us each day. If your testimony of saving faith is real, it should be a testimony of ongoing trust in Christ to save you and keep you faithful today and every day.

A second question to ask yourself is this. Is there evidence of the Holy Spirit making me new? Do I see growth in my life as the Holy Spirit works in me, producing love, joy, and peace? Do I have a growing love for God’s Word and an increasing desire to centre my life around God?

God doesn’t intend for us to go through life fearful of whether or not our relationship with him is real. He wants us to be confident in our relationship with him — confident that he has his grip on us and won’t let go. But Scripture also says, “Examine yourselves to see if your faith is genuine.” It is a good thing to do a checkup on ourselves to see if the faith we claim is a reality in our lives.

What makes Jesus cry?

 What Makes Jesus Cry?

 

When Jesus saw [Mary] weeping and saw the other people wailing with her, a deep anger welled up within him, and he was deeply troubled. “Where have you put him?” he asked them.

They told him, “Lord, come and see.” Then Jesus wept.

JOHN 11.33-35

He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever.

REVELATION 21.4

 

We cry for all kinds of reasons — when we watch sad movies, when we’re celebrating joyous occasions, when we graze our knees, when our feelings get hurt, when we’re reunited with people we love, and when we say good-bye.

The Bible tells us about several times that Jesus cried. Jesus was fully human, with emotions like ours. What brought Jesus to tears? Jesus wept when his friend Lazarus died. But in some ways that’s strange, because Jesus knew he was about to raise Lazarus from the dead. So why would he cry?

It troubled Jesus deeply when he saw Mary’s despair over her brother’s death and when he saw the wailing mourners with her. Perhaps he could see in her weeping and hear in their wailing a kind of unbelief. This unbelief robbed them of being able to grieve with hope and left them with only despair. As followers of Christ, we can’t escape the pain of grief. But it is different for the believer than it is for those who do not know Christ — at least it should be. Jesus’ tears weren’t just because he was frustrated over their despairing grief. Jesus wept because he was personally pained at the hurt that death caused to people he loved. His tears were tears of compassion for Mary and Martha, and tears of determination, perhaps, to finish the work he came to do — to win a victory, once and for all, over the power of death. It breaks the heart of God that death has so much power to hurt those he loves. We see tears on the face of God because he feels the hurt and emptiness that death leaves in its wake, and he longs with us for the day when death is destroyed forever.

Who’s in Charge?

 Who’s in Charge?

 

Jesus came and told his disciples, “I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth.”

MATTHEW 28.18

The Father . . . has given the Son absolute authority to judge.

JOHN 5.22

This is the plan: At the right time he will bring everything together under the authority of Christ — everything in heaven and on earth.

EPHESIANS 1.10

 

Have your parents or your teachers ever left you in charge of things at your house or in your classroom? “You’re in charge,” they say as they walk out the door. Authority means power and privilege. When people have authority, that means they’ve been trusted to lead other people. They have been given more responsibility than others have. They are able to determine and decide things, to make judgments, and to oversee certain rights and privileges.

Jesus said that God gave him “all authority in heaven and on earth.” Jesus is in charge of this world and everything in it, as well as everything beyond it! There is nothing Jesus doesn’t have authority over — nothing he doesn’t have the right and the power to do with as he pleases.

Jesus showed this when he walked the earth. He had authority over disease, healing the sick. He had authority over nature, telling the storm to be still. He had authority over demons, commanding them to leave a man and enter into a herd of pigs. He had authority to forgive sin. He had authority over his own life, giving it up on the cross when it was the right time, and taking it up again three days later when he rose from the dead.

Many people in this world don’t recognise the authority of Jesus. They think they’re in charge of their own lives. But that is just an illusion. The day is coming when “at the name of Jesus every knee [will] bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord” (Phil 2.10-11). On that day, no one will question who’s in charge.

That’s not fair!

 That’s Not Fair!

 

When God our Saviour revealed his kindness and love, he saved us, not because of the righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy.

TITUS 3.4-5

Have mercy on me, O God, because of your unfailing love. Because of your great compassion, blot out the stain of my sins.

PSALM 51.1

God had mercy on me so that Christ Jesus could use me as a prime example of his great patience with even the worst sinners. Then others will realise that they, too, can believe in him and receive eternal life.

1 TIMOTHY 1.16

 

We live in a world that teaches us, “The early bird gets the worm,” “No pain, no gain,” “There is no such thing as a free lunch,” and “You get what you pay for.” We buy the idea that people get what they deserve, at least in theory. Whenever we experience hardship or difficulty, we quickly say, “I don’t deserve this!” Believing we have a right to fairness, we feel violated when we think we haven’t gotten what we deserve.

On the surface, a perfectly fair world appeals to us. But would we really want to live in such a world? In a completely fair world, there is no room for grace — receiving what you don’t deserve. There would be no room for mercy either — being spared from getting the punishment you do deserve. We deserve punishment but receive forgiveness, we deserve judgment but experience love, we deserve death but get showered with God’s mercy.

Since we live in a world where we don’t always get what we deserve and where we sometimes get what we don’t deserve, we will experience loss. But this also means we can receive mercy. Ultimately it is not “fairness” we want from God. If he gave us what is fair — what we really deserve — we would have to pay for our sins. What we really want from God is justice (doing what is right) and mercy (not giving us the punishment we’ve earned). And we can be confident that his abundant mercy will keep us from getting what we really deserve.

The Holiness of God

 The Holiness of God

 

No one is holy like the LORD! There is no one besides you; there is no Rock like our God.

1SAMUEL 2.2

Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of Heaven’s Armies! The whole earth is filled with his glory!

ISAIAH 6.3

Who will not fear you, Lord, and glorify your name? For you alone are holy.

REVELATION 15.4

 

You get a completely different answer when you add 100 + 100 + 100 than when you multiply 100 x 100 x 100. When the angels cry out that God is “holy, holy, holy!” they aren’t just repeating themselves or adding up God’s holiness like a sum. They’re saying that God’s holiness is like perfection to the nth degree. It’s perfection times perfection times perfection!

Holiness is a biblical term that means “to be set apart.” It also describes purity or freedom from sin. The Bible speaks of “holy ground” (Ex 3.5), a “holy nation” (Ex 19.6), “holy garments” (Ex 28.2, NASB), a “holy city” (Neh 11.1), “holy hands” (1Tim 2.8), a “holy kiss” (Rom 16.16, NIV), and “holy faith” (Jude 20). Almost anything can become holy if it is separated from what is commonplace and if it is devoted to God.

What does it mean that God is holy? God’s holiness is simply his God-ness in everything he is, everything he says, and everything he does. He is not like us. He’s not just a bigger, stronger, or better version of human beings. He is in a different category from us altogether. He is one of a kind, completely separate. He is holy. His holiness is his perfect self, to the nth degree. His holiness is what he is as God, which no one else is or ever will be.

Do you feel the burn?

Do You Feel the Burn?

 

Train yourself to be godly. “Physical training is good, but training for godliness is much better, promising benefits in this life and in the life to come.”

1 TIMOTHY 4.7-8

He holds the whole body together with its joints and ligaments, and it grows as God nourishes it.

COLOSSIANS 2.19

Mark out a straight path for your feet so that those who are weak and lame will not fall but become strong.

HEBREWS 12.13

 

Have you learned in science class how muscles develop and get bigger? Muscles develop by being pushed beyond their limits, which causes them to actually break down. It is in the recovery process that they are rebuilt stronger, firmer, and larger.

What this means is that if we want to build up our physical muscles, we have to repeatedly lift more weight than what is really comfortable for us. We have to keep lifting until we can feel our muscles beginning to burn a little. This burn is a sign that the muscle is breaking down and will come back bigger and stronger.

It’s the burn that is uncomfortable when we exercise our bodies. And it’s the burn that makes us uncomfortable when we exercise our spirits and souls. The truth is, we want to become stronger spiritually without struggle or suffering or pain. We want to develop spiritual muscles without the burn. But it doesn’t work that way.

Do you want to keep going and keep growing in your faith? Do you want to know God better and love him more next year than you do today? Do you want to be more like him and do more for him? If so, then you’ve got to keep building your spiritual muscles by trusting him in new and bigger ways — even when it burns. 

Joined to Jesus

 Joined to Jesus

 

If you look carefully into the perfect law that sets you free, and if you do what it says and don’t forget what you heard, then God will bless you for doing it.

JAMES 1.25

Let the message about Christ, in all its richness, fill your lives.

COLOSSIANS 3.16

The word of God is alive and powerful. It is sharper than the sharpest two-edged sword, cutting between soul and spirit, between joint and marrow. It exposes our innermost thoughts and desires. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God. Everything is naked and exposed before his eyes, and he is the one to whom we are accountable.

HEBREWS 4.12-13

 

When two people get married, it’s usually because they want to be together. They want to spend the rest of their lives talking and listening to each other, spending time with each other, and caring for each other. Can you imagine two people who go through a marriage ceremony and never talk to each other again? Would that even be a real marriage?

When we join ourselves to Christ, we’re not just going through a religious ceremony or one-time experience. We’re entering into a personal relationship, a love relationship. And if we want to have a real connection with God, then we will spend the rest of our lives talking to him, enjoying being with him, and listening to him. It’s not that we expect to hear an audible voice when he speaks to us. We listen to him by reading, thinking about, and memorising his Word, the Bible. We draw strength from it and rely on it to help us make decisions. It makes us happy, and we like to listen.

If you were married to Mr. Smith, you might call yourself Mrs. Smith to show you were connected to Mr. Smith. Calling yourself a Christian is the same idea. It means that you are intimately connected to Christ. And the ways we relate to Christ day by day are through his Word and prayer. These are the ways we stay connected to him in an authentic and not just a ceremonial way. We get close and stay close to God by talking to him through prayer and listening to him as we read the Bible.

Knowing God versus Knowing about God

 Knowing God versus Knowing about God

 

Those who wish to boast should boast in this alone: that they truly know me and understand that I am the LORD who demonstrates unfailing love and who brings justice and righteousness to the earth, and that I delight in these things. I, the LORD, have spoken!

JEREMIAH 9.24

This is the way to have eternal life —to know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, the one you sent to earth.

JOHN 17.3

Everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.

PHILIPPIANS 3.8

 

Do you know your postman? How about your grandparents? How about the Queen of England? How about your best friend? There are different ways of “knowing” people, aren’t there? Some people we actually just know about. And even among those we know personally, there are different levels of knowing — we know some more intimately than others.

The Bible says that we are made to know God. But a person can know a lot about God and not really know him. We can be interested in theology (which is a fascinating subject!) and know the books and stories of the Bible, and hardly know God at all. We can also go to church and read lots of Christian books and be up on the latest teaching and yet not know God at all.

We get to know other people through personal interaction and involvement, by sharing life with them. We listen to what they say, observe how they interact with others, see what they value, find out what they enjoy. And it is similar with God. God is so magnificent that he is worth spending the rest of our lives listening to and studying and enjoying, so that we are constantly getting to know him better. As we get to know God better, things that confused us before about how God works begin to make more sense. Knowing him better helps us trust him more.

What we want

 What We Want

 

The one thing I ask of the LORD — the thing I seek most — is to live in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, delighting in the LORD’s perfections and meditating in his Temple.

PSALM 27.4

Take delight in the LORD, and he will give you your heart’s desires.

PSALM 37.4

In my inner being I delight in God’s law.

ROMANS 7.22, NIV

 

Do you know how to get what you want from your parents or a teacher or a boss or a friend? Is it all in how you ask or in choosing just the right timing?

When we read Psalm 37.4, “Take delight in the LORD, and he will give you your heart’s desires,” we’re tempted to see it as a formula for getting what we want from God. We might read it as, “Get close to God, and then he’ll give you what you want.” We might think that if we give God our obedience and interest and compliments, we can get what we want from him in return.

But delighting in God is not a way to get what we want from him. That is manipulation or bribery. Genuine delight has no ulterior motive, no additional demands. Delight is saying thank you to God for his many blessings, such as good food to eat, a house to live in, people who love us, and a school or a job to go to. But delight also means saying to God, “I will not worship these things by making them more important than you. And I will not demand them from you.”

If we see this verse as a formula for getting what we want from God, we’re settling for much less than what God is offering. God wants to change what we want. He wants to free us from the slavery of wanting what will never completely satisfy us. He wants to give us what he knows will completely satisfy us forever, himself.

We’ve Never Heard Anyone Speak like This!

 We’ve Never Heard Anyone Speak like This!

 

The people were amazed at his teaching, for he taught with real authority — quite unlike the teachers of religious law.

MARK 1.22

When the crowds heard him say this, some of them declared, “Surely this man is the Prophet we’ve been expecting.” Others said, “He is the Messiah.” . . . So the crowd was divided about him. Some even wanted him arrested, but no one laid a hand on him.

When the Temple guards returned without having arrested Jesus, the leading priests and Pharisees demanded, “Why didn’t you bring him in?”

“We have never heard anyone speak like this!” the guards responded.

JOHN 7.40-41, 43-46

 

Some speakers are hard to listen to — sometimes it is something about the person’s voice, and other times the speaker is just boring, or what he or she is saying seems unimportant. So we tune the speaker out and daydream rather than listen.

No one who listened to Jesus speak got bored and tuned him out. People listened to him all day, not even wanting to take a break to eat. They followed him wherever he went, wanting to hear more. It wasn’t that he was humourous, although he did tell interesting stories. And it wasn’t that he was always easy to understand. People were often mystified by what he said, trying to figure out what it meant. His messages often caused controversy and discomfort, and he asked people to do hard things.

The people were amazed at Jesus’ teaching — no doubt they got goose bumps. There was a sense of reality and authority to what he said that made their hair stand on end. What he said was profoundly true and in some cases profoundly troubling. What Jesus says both convicts us and comforts us. He speaks both judgment and salvation. No one else speaks like Jesus. And no one’s teaching matters as much as his does.

Better than Chatting

 Better than Chatting

 

I pray that your hearts will be flooded with light so that you can understand the confident hope he has given to those he called — his holy people who are his rich and glorious inheritance. I also pray that you will understand the incredible greatness of God’s power for us who believe him.

EPHESIANS 1:18-19

We keep on praying for you, asking our God to enable you to live a life worthy of his call. May he give you the power to accomplish all the good things your faith prompts you to do.

2 THESSALONIANS 1:11

 

Some social situations call for the skill of “chatting,” or the art of casual conversation. It’s the ability to talk pleasantly with someone you don’t know well about stuff that doesn’t matter all that much.

If we’re not careful, we can find ourselves reducing prayer to “chatting” with God, limiting prayers to superficial topics, surface issues, never getting to the heart of things. Have you ever noticed that when people offer prayer requests, they are usually about physical needs and rarely about spiritual needs? We ask God to heal physical ailments, to provide safe travel, and to “be with us.” It’s not that God doesn’t care about these things. He cares about us, and what matters to us matters to him. But prayer is much more than that. It’s a spiritual process toward a spiritual end. God wants to do a deep work in our inner lives, rubbing off the rough edges and cleaning up our character. So why do we settle for talking to him only about the shallow stuff?

When our prayers move from the superficial to the significant, we find ourselves inviting God to do no less than a deep, transforming, life-changing work in our lives and in the lives of those we’re praying for. We talk to him about our fears, we invite him into our failures, we confess the ways we fall short. We open up our lives for him to do a significant spiritual work.

Are you a sinner?

 Are You a Sinner?

 

When Jesus heard this, he told them, “Healthy people don’t need a doctor — sick people do. I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners.”

MARK 2.17

The person who keeps all of the laws except one is as guilty as a person who has broken all of God’s laws.

JAMES 2.10

Everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard.

ROMANS 3.23

 

Have you ever known someone who had the chicken pox? Maybe it started with one little, red, itchy spot. Pretty soon that person had several itchy spots and it became obvious that the person was sick. But there didn’t have to be a bunch of visible spots to know it was the chicken pox. When there was just one spot, it showed that the chicken pox virus was in that person’s system.

Sin is like that. Just thinking or doing one wrong thing shows you have the fatal disease of sin. Just one sin reveals that you’re a sinner.

“Now, wait a minute,” you might want to say. “I’m a good person. I may have made some mistakes, but I’m not a sinner.” None of us want to think of ourselves that way. But until we see ourselves as sinners, we’ll think we have no need for Jesus. Jesus came to save sinners, not good people. He actually resists people who think they’re good, and he is drawn to people who recognise their own deep sickness of sin.

We are not sinners because we sin. We sin because we’re sinners. It is inside us, running through our bloodstreams. Sin is not merely a matter of breaking the Ten Commandments or any other list of dos and don’ts. More than what we do, it is who we are. We are all natural-born sinners.

But that’s not the end of the story — there is hope for sinners like us. God knew we’d never be good enough, and he knew we’d need someone to save us from our deadly disease of sin. So he sent Jesus to be the cure for us. The good news of the gospel is that we can be transformed from guilty sinners into forgiven sinners through faith in Jesus.

Knowing His name

Knowing His Name 

Moses protested, “If I go to the people of Israel and tell them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ they will ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what should I tell them?” 

God replied to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM. Say this to the people of Israel: I AM has sent me to you.” God also said to Moses, “Say this to the people of Israel: Yahweh, the God of your ancestors — the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob — has sent me to you. This is my eternal name, my name to remember for all generations.” 

EXODUS 3.13-15 

We interact with a lot of people without ever knowing their names. But when we learn people’s names, they become more real to us as unique people, with their own unique personalities and histories. God wants us to know him — not in a generic or shallow way (as in “the Man Upstairs”). He wants us to know him personally. He wants us to recognise that he has his own personality and character and preferences. So he has told us his name. He doesn’t have a name like Joe or Christopher or Sarah or Emily. His name is unique and holy, just like he is. 

In fact, the Jewish people saw God’s name as so holy they didn’t say it out loud. The name used most often for God in the Old Testament (almost seven thousand times) is a name that is translated into English as “I AM WHO I AM.” You will see this name written as LORD in all capital letters in your Bible. In Hebrew this name had four letters — YHWH — and was pronounced something like “Yahweh.” Out of honour and reverence to how holy God is, Jewish people substituted the word Adonai, which means “my Lord,” rather than saying “Yahweh.” So when we read LORD in the Bible, it refers to God’s proper name. When we see it, it tells us that God wants to be known — not as a vague, distant deity, but as a person. And then he took another step toward us when he became a human in the person of Jesus, who said, “Come to me!” By covering us in his own holiness, Jesus made it possible for us to be known by a holy God.

Think Change

Think Change 

Let the Spirit renew your thoughts and attitudes. EPHESIANS 4.23 

Don’t copy the behaviour and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. 

ROMANS 12.2 

Those who are dominated by the sinful nature think about sinful things, but those who are controlled by the Holy Spirit think about things that please the Spirit. So letting your sinful nature control your mind leads to death. But letting the Spirit control your mind leads to life and peace. 

ROMANS 8.5-6 

Our minds are not just computers that process data. We all have what we might call a mind-set (the way we think about life) and a viewpoint (the way we see the world). Our minds have attitudes and thought patterns that are ingrained in us — like habits. And our natural ways of thinking aren’t perfect — they’re fallen, like everything else in this world. None of us naturally think good and right thoughts about God. In fact, it’s worse than that. On our own, we have thoughts about God that make him out to be less than he is, thoughts that set our hearts against him. Romans 1.28 says, “Since they thought it foolish to acknowledge God, he abandoned them to their foolish thinking.” 

So how do we change our minds? How do we begin to think differently? We feed them better food. We fill our minds with truth from Scripture, conversations about God, and ways of thinking about God and the things of God that are right and true and worthy of someone so great. We welcome the Holy Spirit to show us our old ways of thinking — me first, got to get ahead, if it feels good, do it, I deserve it, I am the master of my own destiny — and we invite the Holy Spirit to change how we think, what we want, and even how we feel. 

The Holy Spirit can change our natural ways of thinking about things as he helps us understand and apply the Bible to our lives. The Bible gives us a new filter that all our thoughts run through — an eternal perspective that reshapes our value system, realigns our priorities, and reworks our personalities.