Knowing God, Is Not Enough

Good Morning!! We often make a distinction between people who believe in God and those who do not. If someone knows about God, we think that is better than them not knowing about God. But that is not the distinction the Bible makes. The Bible says that people either believe in the true God, or they believe in idols.  Knowledge of God doesn’t change the state of your heart, and it’s the heart that matters the most. It’s in the heart where idols are created. We can touch and see and feel them. We imagine them filling our thirsty souls. They continually lure our faith, and passions away from the true Almighty God.

"Is there any God besides me? No, there is no other Rock; I know not one." All who make idols are nothing, and the things they treasure are worthless. Those who would speak up for them are blind; they are ignorant, to their own shame. Who shapes a god and casts an idol, which can profit nothing?—Isaiah 44:8-10 (NIV)
God, and God alone is Almighty. There is not a single idol on the face of the earth that we can fully depend on to meet our needs. They simply aren’t able to deliver,...so they eventually leave our hearts empty, our expectations broken, and our dreams shattered. Even the idols that appear to be able to sustain us will ultimately crumble at the moment of death,...because they are completely unable to help us beyond the grave.

Idols can be metal or they can be mental,...but there is a constant temptation to put trust in them rather than in God.

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Father God, I say that You are all I need in this life. But, in all honesty, I don’t fully believe it. Speak to me now. Reveal the idols that I cling to. Show me what I am relying on to fulfill my needs and enable me to choose You for fulfillment instead.Amen.

" The Lord loves a cheerful giver,...until he brags about it."

The Bigger Picture

Good Morning!! Without the big picture view of human history, we can lose perspective on some of the most important elements of the Great Story. If you've ever walked into the middle of a movie, you know what I mean. It can be so hard to make sense of the middle and end of the story, if you don't know how it began. It's like that with our Christian faith too. If we don't understand what life was like before Christ and before the cross, we don't get the full picture of God's character and don't get an appreciation of who we are in Christ.

"Woe to me!" I cried. "I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty."—Isaiah 6:5 (NIV)
The problem is, that we don't view sin the way God does. In fact, some of us, if we were really honest, would say, " I'm not even sure that God is a 'wrathful' God. I think He is a God of love, I think He will be nice to everyone in the end." Many of us don’t really believe in God’s righteous wrath,...and only see Him as our " buddy pal." But the Old Testament prophets knew better. The prophet Isaiah was blown away when he was given a vision of the glory of God.

A biblical view of depravity, gives us a much greater appreciation for the love of God,...and the cleansing forgiveness that we have in Christ.

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Father God, apart from what You did through Your Son on the cross, we would still be a person of unclean lips, ruined, living among unclean people. Thank You, thank You that we are now in Christ,...forgiven, cleansed by His blood, accepted by You as an heirs and children! What can we do except raise our voices in praise to You for what You have done for us? Amen! Amen!

" The Lord loves a cheerful giver,...until he brags about it."

A Wall Of Sin

Good Morning!! the Bible starts out pretty darn sweet. In a flash, God creates everything from nothing. It's so good that He calls it, well, "good." After He creates a man and a woman to live in it, He actually calls it "very good." In short, there was God, His perfect world, and a man and woman walking together with Him in perfect unity. This was Eden. It lasted for a good three pages. When the man and woman chose to doubt what God said and chose instead to believe the deception of the serpent, this perfect world was thrown into complete crisis. Adam and Eve were cast out of the garden. One of their sons murdered their other son. Insurance rates went way up. The stock market crashed. The consequences were all over the place,...and all of these consequences emerged from one central, fundamental problem:

Surely the arm of the Lord is not too short to save, nor his ear too dull to hear. But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear. For your hands are stained with blood, your fingers with guilt. Your lips have spoken lies, and your tongue mutters wicked things.—Isaiah 59:1-3 (NIV)
A perfect and holy Creator is separated from the creatures He loves, because of their choice to live independently of Him,...because of the barrier of sin between them. Yes, we built the wall, but Jesus tore it down.

No one sinning ever really considered the full consequences of their sins,...or how they separate us from our Holy God.

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Father God, by the power of Your Spirit and the description of Your Holy Word, allow us to imagine the great gulf that existed between You and Your children, before our redemption. Give us a glimpse of Your staggering holiness. Give us this bigger picture so that we can more fully celebrate the incredible things that Your Son accomplished on the cross. Amen!

" The Lord loves a cheerful giver,...until he brags about it."

It Wasn't Me,...Really?

Good Morning My Friend!! How many times have you said it, or heard it said? "But I'm only human!" Those words were uttered in response to a mistake you made, weren't they? The reason we fail, the reason we offend others, the reason we sin against God is that we are human. If we sin because we are only human, then our sin is not our fault. We are really not responsible for our sin.

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.—John 1:9 (NIV)

Unfortunately, way too many people think this way! But this line of reasoning is a classic example of blame shifting! It is a way to excuse sin by shifting the blame away from ourselves. Adam and Eve provide a good example. When Adam and Eve sinned against God, they made excuses to God. Adam said, "The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me from the tree and I ate." And Eve said, "The serpent deceived me, and I ate" (Genesis 3:12 & 13). In other words, Adam blamed his wife for his sin. Eve didn't do any better. She shifted the blame to the serpent. Adam and Eve refused to accept responsibility for their own sin. We do the same thing today when we use the excuse, "But I'm only human!" The amazing thing is that we shift the blame for our sin to God,...after all God made us the way we are. Then our sin is really God's fault! This is the ultimate in blame shifting,...blaming God for our sins. But do you really think God will accept the blame for your sins? Well, He won't! Using excuses will only compound your problems. When you've sinned, the answer is to accept responsibility,... and confess your sins to God,...like the Bible says.

It's that the message we try to give our children,...Don't lie, don't hide it, I know you did it,...just admit it.

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Jesus, we know there are a whole lot of things that we can do outside of You,...but we can't do anything that's going to matter in eternity unless we rest in You. So Lord and Life, we surrender it all to You right now. We want everything to bring glory to You. So we're giving up doing anything on our own. Teach us to become more and more dependent on You. Thanks!

" The Lord loves a cheerful giver,...until he brags about it."

What Can We Do,...Really?

Good Morning!! You know when Jesus said, "Apart from me you can do nothing," He clearly didn't mean that we can't do anything. There are lots of things we can do. We can drive a car, we can go to work, we can pay our mortgage,...we can do things. What He is saying is, " If you're going to do something of eternal significance,...if you want to make a difference in people's lives, if you want to bear real spiritual fruit that matters eternally,...apart from Me you can't do any of that. You cannot create true fruit in the power of the flesh." If we choose not to remain in His love, if we choose not to abide in Him, not to allow His power to work through us, we’re just like a branch that’s not even connected.
This is to my Father's glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.—John 15:8 (NIV)

There's no difference. Why would we even want to live that way? (Well, pride for starters, but let's just pretend that was a rhetorical question.) The point is this; We were designed to "remain" in Christ and in His love for us, dependent on Him to live His life through us. What happens when we bear fruit? Two things:

1. We show ourselves to be disciples. The true fruit of the Spirit makes it obvious that we really are disciples, because only He can bear this kind of fruit. If it’s borne, then it’s obvious He did it through us, and we’re disciples.
2. The Father gets the glory. And there is something that is just so right about that. It’s like everything falls into its proper place when people look past us and praise God from whom anything good flows.

 

If the life of Christ is in a believer,...fruit and growth are inevitable.

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Jesus, we know there are a whole lot of things that we can do outside of You,...but we can't do anything that's going to matter in eternity unless we rest in You. So Lord and Life, we surrender it all to You right now. We want everything to bring glory to You. So we're giving up doing anything on our own. Teach us to become more and more dependent on You. Thanks!

" The Lord loves a cheerful giver,...until he brags about it."

Only Jesus Is True And Lasting

Good Morning!! When we come to Jesus, and find our rest in Him, our heavy souls are lifted. I think the real challenge is getting to that point. It's so easy and natural to place our hope in so many other things and places. We often don't even notice we are abiding in other things,...until those things fail us. In those moments of personal revelation, we have a choice: will we choose to abide in Christ? Or will we become angry and embittered by the failure of things that were never designed to meet those core needs in the first place?

"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)

When our spouse doesn’t love us the way we thought our spouse was going to love us, and we are disappointed in the lack of love we find there, what do we do?  We leave it to Jesus, we abide and we rest in His love! We find our needs met there, regardless of what our spouse does. When children start to go off the wall, running in every direction except the one we're pointing them toward, what do we do? We trust in Jesus' love, we rest there. When parents are turning up the screws and they just don’t get it, what do we do? We rest in Jesus’ love! We abide there, moment by moment, day by day. The list could go on and on,...because it's not just people that fail us, it's money, jobs, our health, etc. etc. etc. But the pattern remains the same,...only Jesus is true and lasting.

Anytime we face difficulty we have the choice to either become embittered or to embrace our relationship with Christ and remain in Him and His love to bring peace to our souls.

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Jesus, You are the true vine. Give us the wisdom to quickly see when we're trusting in anything other than You. Give us the willingness to readjust our focus quickly away from the things that are doomed to fail us. By faith and the truth of Your Word, draw us into an intimate personal relationship with You,...so that we can find rest and peace for our souls. Lord help us today. Amen.

" The Lord loves a cheerful giver,...until he brags about it."

The Branch, And Prayer

Good Morning!! Some people believe that when prayer was removed from schools, our country headed straight to hell. Prayer. Seems like it should be a simple enough topic. But just take a little sample of what people say about it:

·   "God punishes us mildly by ignoring our prayers and severely by answering them."—Richard J. Needham
·   "When we pray to God we must be seeking nothing - nothing."—Saint Francis of Assisi
·   "Prayer does not change God, but it changes him who prays."—Soren Kierkegaard
·   "Practical prayer is harder on the soles of your shoes than on the knees of your trousers."—Austin O'Malley
·   "I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs."—Frederick Douglass, escaped slave
·   "Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day. Give him a religion, and he'll starve to death while praying for a fish."—Author unknown
·   "When we talk to God, we're praying. When God talks to us, we're schizophrenic."—Jane Wagner

Jesus had a lot to say about prayer, too. Thankfully, we can accept His words and His practice of prayer as truth. In John 15, as He finishes explaining the vine and the branches, He offers us another important facet of prayer to consider:


"If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples."—John 15:7-8 (NIV)


In the context of everything that Jesus has just said about the vine and the branch, this passage is so much more than some sort of formula to get what we want,...it's just so much deeper than that. Note the preconditions to answered prayer: "If you remain in me… if my words remain in you…." Jesus is talking about an intimacy, that is so real that it appears our will becomes conformed to His,...so much so, that anything we ask will be a reflection of who we are in Him, and who He is in us. Isn't this the vine-and-branch relationship at its simplest, most profound level? If we are living our lives in the context of His love on this level, there will be joy, there will be sacrifice, there will be obedience… and whatever we pray, consider the answer YES, because we will be praying for the right things!

"As long as there are tests, there will be prayer in schools."(Author unknown)

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True Vine, align our desires with Your will! We want to remain in You. We want Your Word to remain in us. We want our minds to be renewed, and our life to be transformed so deeply that our prayers will be a natural reflection of Your will. This will require many things to be pruned from our lives, and it will stretch the boundaries of our comfort zone. Lead us and empower us, to be more obedience to the Father’s glory. Amen.

" The Lord loves a cheerful giver,...until he brags about it."