RETURNING TO THE RIGHT PATH

“Jesus went into Galilee, where He preached God’s Good News. ‘The time promised by God has come at last!’ Jesus announced. ‘The Kingdom of God is near! Repent of your sins and believe the Good News!’”  (Mark 1:14b-15 NLT)

In the Greek New Testament, the word for repentance is metanoia (and several other related words. It means “to change one’s mind and one’s heart, leading to a change in behavior.” If sin is stepping off the path God intends, repentance is returning to the right path. True repentance is not simply feeling bad about what you did and asking for forgiveness, although those steps are essential as well. You’ve also got to commit to change. 

-- Adam Hamilton in “Forgiveness: Finding Peace Through Letting Go”

#5403

FINISHING WELL

Those who end well have disciplined lives… To get to this point, the New Testament uses numerous athletic images. In 1 Corinthians 9:25-27, Paul pictures a runner. He said run in such a way that you win. But then he added, “Every athlete exercises self-control in all things.” Therefore he said, “I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.” The writer of Hebrews said, “Since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.” (Hebrews 12:1) He too is talking about discipline.

A Christian who finishes well will practice spiritual disciplines… There will be the disciplines of abstinence such as fasting, silence, solitude, frugality, sacrifice, and chastity. But there will also be the disciplines of engagement such as prayer, fellowship, worship, study, service, confession, and submission.

These will help guard our inner lives. The disciplines will not become an end in themselves. For they are really disciplines in response to God’s grace. Grace and discipline are spiritual friends, when kept in the right order. Spiritual disciplines become a means of grace that help us get to the finish line. 

-- Donald W. Sweeting & George Sweeting in “How to Finish the Christian Life: Following Jesus in the Second Half”

#5402

WITH EVERY FIBER

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.”  (Mark 12:30 NIV)

In his book “The Everyday, Anytime Guide to Christian Leadership,” Walt Kallestad wrote, “I saw a plaque in a shopping mall that contained the words of the great [Green Bay Packer] football coach Vince Lombardi on what it takes to be number one. The words on the plaque reflected the importance Lombardi placed on enthusiastic participation. I remember the plaque reading something like this: Every time a football player goes to ply his trade, he’s got to play from the ground up -- from the soles of his feet right up to his head. Every inch of him has to play. Some guys play with their heads, that’s OK. You’ve got to be smart to be number one in any business. But more importantly, you’ve got to play with your heart, with every fiber of your body. If you’re lucky enough to find a guy with a lot of head and a lot of heart, he’s never going to come off the field second.”

I believe that concept similarly applies to our walk with God. It involves every inch of the Christian -- one’s heart, soul, mind and strength. We are to love God with every fiber of our being. 

-- David T. Wilkinson, SOUND BITES Ministry

#5401

VICTORY IN JESUS

“Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. Here a great number of disabled people used to lie -- the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, He asked him, ‘Do you want to get well?’ ‘Sir,’ the invalid replied, ‘I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.’ Then Jesus said to him, ‘Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.’ At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.”  (John 5:2-9 NIV)

Anyone who can be in a landscape of joy while maintaining immunity to it hasn’t come to the end of himself. He hasn’t experienced how good the good news really is. He should see that someone else’s victory over hopelessness is our own victory, because Christ has brought the same liberation to every single one of us willing to say yes, to stand, and to walk. Once we’ve been to the end of ourselves and the beginning of Christ, we share our victories together, and parties break out at unpredictable moments.

-- Kyle Idleman in “The End of Me: Where Real Life in the Upside-Down Ways of Jesus Begins”

#5400

THE LAST WORD

“But to the Son He says: ‘Your throne, O God, is forever and ever; a scepter of righteousness is the scepter of Your kingdom.’”  (Hebrews 1:8 NKJV)

Christians sing, especially at Christmas and Easter, “And He” – that is, Christ – “shall reign forever and ever.” We stand for the singing of it, and for those moments when the Hallelujahs ring, we feel that someday, somehow, He will reign. But then we go back to reading the paper and listening to the evening news as if the end will be a whimper rather than a hallelujah.

At this point, it’s time to immerse ourselves in the good word of God. We need to know that though our political and social and economic structure seems so often to have some kind of fatal, deteriorative illness, so that every good scheme we develop turns only to embarrassment, these are not the last word. Even our best words are not the last word. I’m very sure that monarchy is not the last word, nor is dictatorship. I’m equally sure that socialism is not the last word, nor is communism. And although I happen to be a passionate believer in democracy and in those forms of economic freedom which foster democracy, I don’t think democracy is the last word, nor responsible capitalism. None of these! The last word is GOD. And then there’s an exclamation point. 

-- J. Ellsworth Kalas, from a sermon entitled “In the End, the Exclamation Point”, February 28, 1990

#5399

GOD’S UNEARNED GRACE

“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 NLT)

Thank God that He doesn't make us finish some sort of spiritual ["to do"] list before He accepts us. As the old hymn title summarizes so well, He accepts me "just as I am."

That's the uniquely Christian message of grace. Unlike other faith traditions where a person must do good works to earn God's favor, we as Christians understand that we do good works precisely because God favors us in spite of ourselves and our sin. 

-- Matt Donnelly, ChristianityToday.com

#5398 

GOD’S GUIDING WORD

“Your Word is a lamp to guide my feet and a light for my path.”  (Psalm 119:105 NLT)

Many people get very nervous when ordinary human beings speak about being spoken to by God. I get nervous about the idea myself. It has often been abused…

However, we cannot be transformed if we close ourselves off to the guiding power of the Holy Spirit. We must come to believe -- mind-stretching as it sounds -- that God really can and does personally attend to us. As long as we are going to pray to the God who spoke the creation into being, who communicated to prophets and priests and kings -- and ordinary people, who wrote a thousand page book we know as the Bible -- and who refers to His Son as "the Word made flesh," then surely we can accept the possibility that sometimes He may want to get in a word or two with us.

-- John Ortberg in “The Life You've Always Wanted”

#5397

MAINTAINING THE GLOW

“Let us not neglect meeting together, as some have made a habit, but let us encourage one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.”  (Hebrews 10:25 BSB)

One of the distinguishing characteristics of the Methodist awakening in the 1700s was organizing people into groups in order to "maintain the glow" that the Lord had ignited in the hearts of so many. Thus, every Methodist conference (or regional group) would be subdivided into classes, every member expected to participate in a class -- 12 persons with a leader. And the classes, like home groups today, would meet once a week between Sundays. Under the class leader, these small groups would pray together, discuss Scripture, share their experience with each other, and try to encourage each other. 

-- Marshall Shelley in “Leadership Journal”

#5396

SIN IS INSURRECTION

Sin is to state, “God, I do not want You to be my king. I prefer a kingless kingdom. Or, better still, a kingdom in which I am king.”

Imagine if someone did the same to you. Suppose you go on a long trip and leave your residence under the supervision of a caretaker. You trust him with all your possessions. While you are away, he moves into your house and claims it for his own. He engraves his name on your mailbox, places his name on your accounts. He plops dirty feet on your coffee table and invites his buddies to sleep in your bed. He claims your authority and sends you this message: “Don’t come back. I’m running things now.”

The Bible’s word for this is ‘sin.’ Sin is not a regrettable lapse or an occasional stumble. Sin stages a coup against God’s regime. Sin storms the castle, lays claim to God’s throne, and defies His authority. Sin shouts, “I want to run my own life, thank you very much!” Sin tells God to get out, get lost, and not come back. Sin is insurrection of the highest order, and you are an insurrectionist. So am I. So is every single person who has taken a breath. 

-- Max Lucado in “Grace: More Than We Deserve, Greater Than We Imagine”

#5395

WORSHIP IS A LIFESTYLE

“Ascribe to the Lord the glory due His name; worship the Lord in the splendor of His holiness.”  (Psalm 29:2 NIV)

Worship is far more than going to a church service. Worship is a lifestyle of enjoying God, loving Him, and giving ourselves to be used for His purposes. We worship God by enjoying Him! C. S. Lewis said, “In commanding us to glorify Him, God is inviting us to enjoy Him.” God wants our worship to be motivated by love, thanksgiving, and delight, not duty. When you use your life for God’s glory, everything you do can become an act of worship.  The Bible says, “Use your whole body as a tool to do what is right for the glory of God.” (Romans 6:13 NLT) 

-- Rick Warren in “What on Earth Am I Here for?”

#5394

FORGIVING OUR GRIEF-GIVERS -- Part 3 of 3

Based on 1 Samuel 24.

David faced Saul the way he faced Goliath – by facing God more so.  When the soldiers in the cave urged David to kill Saul, look who occupied David’s thoughts:  “The Lord forbid that I should do this thing to my master, the Lord’s anointed, to stretch out my hand against him, seeing he is the anointed of the Lord” (I Samuel 24:6).

When David called out to Saul from the mouth of the cave, “David stooped with his face to the earth, and bowed down” (24:8).  Then he reiterated his conviction:  “I will not stretch out my hand against my lord, for he is the Lord’s anointed” (24:10).

In the second scene, during the nighttime campsite attack, David maintained his belief:  “Who can stretch out his hand against the Lord’s anointed, and be guiltless?” (26:9).

In these two scenes I count six times when David called Saul “the Lord’s anointed.”  Can you think of another term David might have used?  Buzzkill and epoxy brain come to my mind.  But not to David’s.  He saw, not Saul the enemy, but Saul the anointed.  He refused to see his grief-giver as anything less than a child of God.  David didn’t applaud Saul’s behavior; he just acknowledged Saul’s proprietor – God.  David filtered his view of Saul through the grid of heaven.  The king still belonged to God, and that gave David hope.

-- Max Lucado in “Facing Your Giants”

#5393

FORGIVING OUR GRIEF-GIVERS -- Part 2 of 3

 Based on 1 Samuel 24.

Vengeance fixes your attention at life’s ugliest moments.  Score-settling freezes your stare at cruel events in your past.  Is this where you want to look?  Will rehearsing and reliving your hurts make you a better person?  By no means.  It will destroy you.

I’m thinking of an old comedy routine.  Joe complains to Jerry about the irritating habit of a mutual friend.  The guy pokes his finger in Joe’s chest as he talks.  It drives Joe crazy.  So he resolves to get even.  He shows Jerry a small bottle of highly explosive nitroglycerine tied to a string.  He explains, “I’m going to wear this around my neck, letting the bottle hang over the exact spot where I keep getting poked.  Next time he sticks his finger in my chest, he’ll pay for it.”

Not nearly as much as Joe will, right?  Enemy destroyers need two graves.  “It is foolish to harbor a grudge” (Ecclesiastes 7:9 TEV).  An eye for an eye becomes a neck for a neck and a job for a job and a reputation for a reputation.  When does it stop?  It stops when one person imitates David’s God-dominated mind.

-- Max Lucado in “Facing Your Giants”

#5392

FORGIVING OUR GRIEF-GIVERS -- Part 1 of 3

Read 1 Samuel 24.

As we think about the purveyors of pain in our own lives, it’s one thing to give grace to friends, but to give grace to those who give us grief?  Could you?  Given a few uninterrupted moments with the Darth Vader of your days, could you imitate David?

Perhaps you could.  Some people seem graced with mercy glands.  They secrete forgiveness, never harboring grudges or reciting their hurts.  Others of us (most of us?) find it hard to forgive our Sauls.

We forgive the one-time offenders, mind you.  We dismiss parking-place takers, date-breakers, and even the purse snatchers.  We can move past the misdemeanors, but the felonies?  The repeat offenders?  The Sauls who take our youth, retirement, or health?

Were the scoundrel to seek shade in your cave or lie sleeping at your feet…would you do what David did?  Could you forgive the scum who hurt you?

Failure to do so could be fatal.  “Resentment kills a fool, and envy slays the simple” (Job 5:2 NIV).

-- Max Lucado in “Facing Your Giants”

#5391

FORGIVE OUR SINS

Forgive them all, O Lord:
our sins of omission and our sins of commission;
the sins of our youth and the sins of our riper years;
the sins of our souls and the sins of our bodies;
our secret and our more open sins;
our sins of ignorance and surprise,
and our more deliberate and presumptuous sin;
the sins we have done to please ourselves
and the sins we have done to please others;
the sins we know and remember,
and the sins we have forgotten;
the sins we have striven to hide from others
and the sins by which we have made others offend;
forgive them, O Lord, forgive them all for His sake,
who died for our sins and rose for our justification,
and now stands at Thy right hand to make intercession for us,
Jesus Christ our Lord.
 
-- John Wesley, quoted in “Witness for Christ” by Harold K. Bates 

#5390

KEEPING THE FIRE BURNING

"Let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching."  (Hebrews 10:24-25 NRSV)

One winter night we were sitting near the fire and warming ourselves while our eight-year-old son tended the fire, a task he enjoys. He would take out a small coal from the fire and watch it burn for a little while. It would soon go out. Then he would put the coal back into the fire and watch it begin to burn brightly again.

This experience helped me to see a truth about our Christian lives: we need fellowship with other believers to keep our spirit burning within us and to encourage us as committed witnesses. Sometimes we stop going to church or to a particular fellowship because someone hurt us at some time or we did not like something about that place. But when we distance ourselves from other Christians, we can quench the fire of the Spirit within us and lose our enthusiasm to witness for Christ. 

-- Pramila Barkataki (Uttar Pradesh, India) in “The Upper Room Devotional”, published by The Upper Room, Nashville, TN.   Used with permission.

#5389

OFFERING WARMTH AND LIGHT

Jesus said, “Remain in Me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in Me.”  (John 15:4 NIV))

We who want to witness to the presence of God's Spirit in the world need to tend to the fire within with utmost care. It is not so strange that many… have become burnt-out…, people in whom the fire of God's Spirit died and from whom not much more comes forth than their own… ideas and feelings. It is as if we are not sure that God's Spirit can touch the hearts of people; we have to help Him out, with many words, convince others of His power. But it is precisely that wordy unbelief that quenches the fire.

Our first and foremost task is faithfully to care for the inward fire so that when it is really needed it can offer warmth and light to lost travelers. 

-- Henri J.M. Nouwen in “The Way of the Heart”, adapted

#5388

A COMMUNAL AFFAIR

“For just as we have many members in one body and all the members do not have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.”  (Romans 12:4-5)

Paul not only proclaimed the message about Christ and brought people into an intimate relationship with God, but drew the consequences of that message for the life of his converts and led them into a personal relationship with one another. For Paul the gospel bound believers to one another as well as to God. Acceptance by Christ necessitated acceptance of those He had already welcomed (Romans 15:7); reconciliation with God entailed reconciliation with others that exhibited the character of the gospel preaching (Philippians 4:2-3); union in the Spirit involved union with one another, for the Spirit was primarily a shared, not an individual experience (2 Corinthians 13:14). The gospel is not a purely personal matter. It has a social dimension. It is a communal affair. 

-- Robert Banks in “Paul’s Idea of Community: The Early House Churches”

#5387

 

A REDEMPTIVE COMMUNITY

There are, I should say, four elements in a redemptive community.  It is personal, with things happening between people as well as to and in them individually; it is compassionate, always eager to help, observant but non-judgmental toward others, breathing out hope and concern; it is creative, with imagination about each one in the group and its work as a whole, watching for authentic new vision coming from any of them; and it is expectant, always seeking to offer to God open and believing hearts and minds through which He can work out His will, either in the sometimes startling miracles He gives or in steady purpose through long stretches where there is no special "opening".  It may fairly be said that unless one enmeshes oneself in this "redemptive fellowship" of the church, one lessens one’s chances of steady growth and effectiveness, in one’s Christian life and experience. 

-- Samuel M. Shoemaker (1893-1963) in “The Experiment of Faith,” adapted

#5386

INTERDEPENDENCE DAY

“If you’ve gotten anything at all out of following Christ, if His love has made any difference in your life, if being in a community of the Spirit means anything to you, if you have a heart, if you care -- then do me a favor: Agree with each other, love each other, be deep-spirited friends. Don’t push your way to the front; don’t sweet-talk your way to the top. Put yourself aside, and help others get ahead. Don’t be obsessed with getting your own advantage. Forget yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand.”   (Philippians 2:1-4 The Message)

July 4^th, Independence Day in the US, is now in our rearview mirror. We have celebrated our independence and our freedom, and rightly so. And yet it seems that today our drive for independence and freedom means I can do whatever I want, no matter the consequences on others. The polarization of society and the news headlines seem to indicate as much. Maybe we need another holiday – Interdependence Day, a day that we embrace interdependence without seeing it as a threat to our freedom.

The Christian life is an intensely personal matter, for the Spirit of Christ dwells at the very core of our beings. But it is never a private affair just between us and God. The interdependence found in Christian community provides the means of support to stay on the right road and the corrective against going down our own paths of self-obsession and sometimes self-destruction. It also provides a witness to the world that an other-focused interdependence is much healthier in the long run than a self-absorbed independence. 

-- Rev. David T. Wilkinson, SOUND BITES Ministry

#5385

FREEDOM IN CHRIST

“Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage.”  (Galatians 5:1 NKJV)

Those who are critical of Christianity say: God limits people's freedom. The very opposite is true. Only by committing oneself to an infinite freedom can a person be free in a world that in all things seems finite.

Those who are critical of Christianity say: God enslaves people. The very opposite is true. Only by committing oneself to God and His will can a person be set free from slavery to the powers and possessions of this world, of society and of history.

Those who are critical of Christianity say: God lets people say "yes" and "amen" to everything. The very opposite is true. Only his or her relationship with God enables a person to say "no."

Faith, then, gives us the strength to act, to be free, to be decisive, and to persevere.

-- Hans Kung in “Why I Am Still a Christian”

#5384