Month: May 2018

Living in ideals . . .

Living in ideals . . .

Ideals. An ideal to me is like the bullseye on the target. When you live your life in the realm of idealism you are aiming square for the bullseye of the target of life. Much like in target shooting, you are not going to hit the bullseye every single shot you take. Sometimes you hit dead center, right on the mark, and other times you just miss the mark and by just a hair. Now when you are aiming for ideals, you will miss as if you were shooting with your eyes closed, over your shoulder, at a moving target that isn’t even there, now that’s missing the target.

Jesus sets up a pretty nice target in His sermon on the mount found in Matthew 5-7. It’s a big target full of ideals. Heavenly stuff. In Matthew 6 He teaches his disciple how to pray. Our Father…and so on. Now this line, Your (the Father’s) will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. What makes heaven heaven, the will of the Father is being done. The ideal is being lived out in tangible ways every moment.

Could you imagine if we began to pray this prayer with authority, with mission, with purpose, with desire, with sincerity, with a pure heart…Let Your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven? And then, with as much fervor lived within those ideals? Not as a yoke of bondage but as a response to the grace we live under, knowing that our miss isn’t condemnation but an opportunity to realign our sights. And as the Father leads us by His Spirit into His perfect will, lined out for us through the Word, Jesus, we are made more and more into His likeness.

Romans 12:1-2 “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect. Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.”

2 Corinthians 5:17 “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.”

Malachi 3:16-17 “Then those who feared the LORD spoke to one another, and the LORD gave attention and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written before Him for those who fear the LORD and who esteem His name. “They will be Mine,” says the LORD of hosts, “on the day that I prepare My own possession, and I will spare them as a man spares his own son who serves him.”

Life

Life

Life ~ Living matter and, as such, matter that shows certain attributes that include responsiveness, growth, metabolism, energy transformation, and reproduction. This definition of life was taken from Britannica.com. It describes life as having five attributes.

Responsiveness ~ Peter’s words pierced their hearts, and they said to him and to the other apostles, “Brothers, what should we do?” Acts 2:37 . . . To be alive in Christ, to have life, one must respond. After hearing the message presented by Peter in Acts 2 many were cut to the heart and asked, what they should do, in response to the love of Christ.

Growth ~ “So that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.”  Ephesians 3:17-19 . . . Life requires growth. To be alive spiritually one must have growth.

Metabolism ~ The chemical processes that occur within a living organism in order to maintain life. The metabolism is the process of our bodies taking what we eat and drink and turns it into energy for the life of the body in its many processes. Jeremiah 15:16 says, “When your words showed up, I ate them— swallowed them whole. What a feast!” In Matthew 4:4 ‘Jesus replied, “It’s written, People won’t live only by bread, but by every word spoken by God.’” In order to be spiritually alive we must devour the Word of God.

Energy Transformation ~ Romans 12:2 says, “Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.” We must take the energy we receive from God and be transformed. To be truly alive, to have life in Christ we must be transformed.

Reproduction ~ If we are alive in Christ, the sign of life is that we reproduce! Jesus said, “Go and make disciples…” (Matthew 28:19) James tells us to be “But don’t just listen to God’s Word. You must do what it says. Otherwise, you are fooling yourself” (James 1:22)

To be spiritually healthy, to have abundant life in Christ, these five attributes must be functioning. And not just functioning but working in tandem . . . If you feel sick or stuck in your relationship with Jesus, it may be time to see a doctor, Jesus is the great physician, asking you these questions:

  1. Are you responsive to the Holy Spirit?
  2. Are you seeking to grow in your knowledge of Jesus?
  3. Are you feasting on His Word?
  4. Are you allowing that energy to be transformative of your body, mind, and soul?
  5. Are you reproducing, are you making disciples?

You are loved,

cj

Pentecost

Pentecost

There are few points in History where we can honestly say our entire eternity hinged on it. The birth of Christ, the garden of Gethsemane, the Cross, the resurrection, Pentecost . . . etc. The list doesn’t end there but i want to focus on Pentecost. The marvelous day in which the promised Holy Spirit landed in the heart of the believer. The promised “helper” the very presence of God in our lives! That is pretty spectacular. And, it is absolutely necessary!

Take Romans 8:2-6 for example:

“2 The power of the Holy Spirit has made me free from the power of sin and death. This power is mine because I belong to Christ Jesus. 3 The Law could not make me free from the power of sin and death. It was weak because it had to work with weak human beings. But God sent His own Son. He came to earth in a body of flesh which could be tempted to sin as we in our bodies can be. He gave Himself to take away sin. By doing that, He took away the power sin had over us. 4 In that way, Jesus did for us what the Law said had to be done. We do not do what our sinful old selves tell us to do anymore. Now we do what the Holy Spirit wants us to do. 5 Those who let their sinful old selves tell them what to do live under that power of their sinful old selves. But those who let the Holy Spirit tell them what to do are under His power. 6 If your sinful old self is the boss over your mind, it leads to death. But if the Holy Spirit is the boss over your mind, it leads to life and peace.” 

Do you see how important it is for us to have the Holy Spirit? It doesn’t stop there we could explore for days upon days the absolute work or the Holy Spirit and still not exhaust it absolutely. He empowers us on in love and good deeds. He is the one in us and through us enabling us to do even greater things! That is a really awesome thought, isn’t it? i hope that you will take time to sit in this passage. The fullness of His work in us, and the contrast of Him not being in our lives. The Spirit vs. the flesh. It is an eternity issue. Let us remember the day of Pentecost in the line of other “Holidays” because it is as important!

Praise the Lord!

Praise the Lord!

The shortest chapter in the Bible is Psalm 117, it is just two verses. Yet these two verses are immensely profound in their simplicity. You want to boil things down to the minimum and just look at the core of human existence? Then here you go:

“Praise the Lord, all you nations! Worship Him, all you peoples! Because God’s faithful love towards us is strong, the Lord’s faithfulness lasts forever! Praise the Lord!”

It doesn’t get much simpler than this, Praise the Lord. Worship Him. Because, He is faithful. His love is strong towards us and He is forever faithful. Thus, we should, Praise the Lord! No matter what you are facing, no matter what difficulties or trials befall you, Praise the Lord! In the good and in the bad, Praise the Lord! In the sun and in the rain, Praise the Lord! In life and in death, Praise the Lord! In sickness and in health, Praise the Lord! In the hardest of times and in the best of times, Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord!

Praise the Lord,

you are loved,

cj

Perfection!

Perfection!

How many of you are perfectionists? You do, and do and do until, in your eyes, the thing you were doing is perfect, unless in your eyes perfection isn’t attainable. In which case you don’t even attempt it for fear of failure! How many of you have given up on perfection as an unachievable mark? There is no way it will ever be perfect so why bother! Then there are those that do without any prejudice or thought it is just that you do things and good is good and bad is bad; therefore you strive for good, which varies by activity. We have talked before about how we should aim for the target. Why would we aim or shoot for anything else?

If the goal is to love our neighbor as ourselves, why would we, on purpose, act any other way? He is an enemy? “Love your enemies, pray for those that persecute you,” it says in Matthew 5, as Jesus teaches on the mount. If we are to take after the widow and orphan, why then would we on purpose neglect them or ignore them? Of the hungry, naked, sick, in-prisoned, should we not do for the least of them as we would even Jesus Himself. As Jesus declares in Matthew 25, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”

Now if these are the goals, “To love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and to Love our neighbor as ourselves.” If we aim for that target and somehow miss the mark . . . the pessimist will say, “see an impossible goal is met with imperfection!” A perfectionist will say, “I will fail, therefore, this task is not for me!” While the doer will say, “But I do this one thing:” One thing, is the difference between apparent failure and never trying, “But I do this one thing: I forget about the things behind me and reach out for the things ahead of me. The GOAL I pursue is the prize of God’s upward call in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3:13-14)

“Failure isn’t falling down. Failure is not getting up after you have fallen down.” ~Richard M. Nixon