Ephesians 3 reminds us that God can do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think. I want to revisit that this week. Over and over again I want to come back to that singular thought and remind myself that God can do. He is able. When something does not happen that is good, or when bad stuff happens it is NEVER a deficiency in the ability of God.
Sometimes I think we weaken God out of a desire to make sure that He is understood by the masses. Bad stuff happens in our lives and in the lives of people and in our haste to make sure people know it is not God's fault we diminish the power of God. Paul has no place for this. His God can do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think. This means that the problem is not in the power of God. For most of us the problem lies in where we understand the primary purpose of our lives to be.
When we make ourselves, or even humanity in general the main point of creation and think that God is for us in the sense that we are here to tell God what to do. When we believe that God is obligated in some way to bring about only things that we like, we have misunderstood what God has said to a horrible degree. This world is not about me and it is not even about us. This is a story about God and what God is doing for the glory of God. In this story He promises my good in the long view and has already secured it. I have good coming to me and there is nothing that anyone or anything can do to separate me from this good that God has promised. But that does not mean that everything that I face or everything my friends face will be good. In fact God promises trouble and trials and pain. And when we face these we cry to God and ask why and we do this because we deep down know He had the power to prevent it. But He is not in this for our glory, He is in this for His glory and we are in this for His glory.
So yes, God could have prevented the tragedy. God is bigger than sin and bigger than death and bigger than pain and sorrow. But in the great Plan of God He uses our pain and our sorrow and our death and our life and all of who we are for a far bigger purpose -His glory. And knowing that He will accomplish His glory even through my pain makes this life ok. Even when it hurts.
Monday, May 20, 2019
Tuesday, May 7, 2019
Death
Death is an interesting concept. It is one of those words that we measure not by itself, but by the absence of something. Like darkness is the absence of light and cold is the absence of warmth, death is the absence of life. Biblically this makes sense. We were created with life. We were made for life, and death only enters into the picture because of sin.
One thing that I am grateful for is that Jesus came to conquer death. Jesus did not just come to die to pay the penalty for sin, but He through His perfect life, and his Resurrection conquered death. In other words, death, for those who believe in Jesus, is no longer a reality in the most crucial sense. It is sadly true enough that until Christ returns our physical bodies will still perish. And in this there is still sorrow and hurt and pain. But in deepest reality those who die in Christ do not really die. They really live. Jesus said, "I am the Resurrection and the Life; he who believes in me will live even if he dies." (John 11:25-26)
So that if I am in Christ death has been conquered. So to live is Christ and to die is gain. It is the reason I do not have to fear. It is the reason for my hope in the face of tremendous loss and pain. I will not ever, as a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, cease to live. I have eternal life. We often think we are waiting for eternal life - we place it in what comes next, but I have eternal life now! Earlier in John, in chapter 10 Jesus says, "I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly" (John 10:10) We have eternal life now and forever. And may we remember that all those who have gone on before us are very much alive in the presence of Christ. We WILL be reunited with them because we have the same eternal life in Christ. We will all be bound to Christ and His life for eternity!
So death has already lost. It has no power. It has lost its sting. Praise be to Jesus who gives us the victory!
For the record, I write this through tears as this past weekend I lost a friend and our church has been grieving the loss of a young husband and father and friend, a son, a brother. This message is for me too and I must grieve, but we grieve with the hope of knowing the truth about death. And so we say again and again, over and over until the return of Christ. . .
So death has already lost. It has no power. It has lost its sting. Praise be to Jesus who gives us the victory!
One thing that I am grateful for is that Jesus came to conquer death. Jesus did not just come to die to pay the penalty for sin, but He through His perfect life, and his Resurrection conquered death. In other words, death, for those who believe in Jesus, is no longer a reality in the most crucial sense. It is sadly true enough that until Christ returns our physical bodies will still perish. And in this there is still sorrow and hurt and pain. But in deepest reality those who die in Christ do not really die. They really live. Jesus said, "I am the Resurrection and the Life; he who believes in me will live even if he dies." (John 11:25-26)
So that if I am in Christ death has been conquered. So to live is Christ and to die is gain. It is the reason I do not have to fear. It is the reason for my hope in the face of tremendous loss and pain. I will not ever, as a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, cease to live. I have eternal life. We often think we are waiting for eternal life - we place it in what comes next, but I have eternal life now! Earlier in John, in chapter 10 Jesus says, "I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly" (John 10:10) We have eternal life now and forever. And may we remember that all those who have gone on before us are very much alive in the presence of Christ. We WILL be reunited with them because we have the same eternal life in Christ. We will all be bound to Christ and His life for eternity!
So death has already lost. It has no power. It has lost its sting. Praise be to Jesus who gives us the victory!
For the record, I write this through tears as this past weekend I lost a friend and our church has been grieving the loss of a young husband and father and friend, a son, a brother. This message is for me too and I must grieve, but we grieve with the hope of knowing the truth about death. And so we say again and again, over and over until the return of Christ. . .
So death has already lost. It has no power. It has lost its sting. Praise be to Jesus who gives us the victory!
Tuesday, April 23, 2019
Life
Life. Such a simple word. A word loaded with complexity and meaning and yet so very simple.
Life. It is immediately recognizable and immediately evident when it is absent. It is often taken for granted and overlooked, but its absence brings reminders of all of its glory. Life.
We fight for the right to life. We consider it precious. We want it and pursue keeping it at all costs. Life.
I wonder if you have considered the enormous gift of life. I say it is a gift because apart from the work of another you would not have it. I am not here referring to your mother without whose work you also would not be here, but I am speaking more importantly of the life giving work of the Son of God. Without his work none of us would have even the possibility of life. We might breathe, we might work, we might exist, but we would be dead in our trespasses and sin apart from His glorious Life.
And His Life he freely offers as a gift to all those who would believe that He is not only the Author of Life but that He gave His own Life to be a substitute for my own. So that the Life I now live is not my own but lived by faith in Him! The eternal Life that I receive as a free gift through the faith He enables starts now and continues for. . . you guessed it - eternity! Life. Never-ending Life.
And we owe it all to the man who was crucified. Who died. But death could not hold him. Life cannot be undone in this ultimate sense. Life can only continue. So come to the fount of Living Water. And Live. Life.
Life. It is immediately recognizable and immediately evident when it is absent. It is often taken for granted and overlooked, but its absence brings reminders of all of its glory. Life.
We fight for the right to life. We consider it precious. We want it and pursue keeping it at all costs. Life.
I wonder if you have considered the enormous gift of life. I say it is a gift because apart from the work of another you would not have it. I am not here referring to your mother without whose work you also would not be here, but I am speaking more importantly of the life giving work of the Son of God. Without his work none of us would have even the possibility of life. We might breathe, we might work, we might exist, but we would be dead in our trespasses and sin apart from His glorious Life.
And His Life he freely offers as a gift to all those who would believe that He is not only the Author of Life but that He gave His own Life to be a substitute for my own. So that the Life I now live is not my own but lived by faith in Him! The eternal Life that I receive as a free gift through the faith He enables starts now and continues for. . . you guessed it - eternity! Life. Never-ending Life.
And we owe it all to the man who was crucified. Who died. But death could not hold him. Life cannot be undone in this ultimate sense. Life can only continue. So come to the fount of Living Water. And Live. Life.
Tuesday, April 9, 2019
Grace
As I reflect on the opportunity to preach last Sunday, I think it is always good to remind ourselves that there is more that could have been said. Or at least to remind ourselves of the truth that was spoken. It is really easy to wake up on any given morning and forget that without Christ I am nothing more than a rotten, stinky, filthy corpse.
We go through our days and we see a world filled with merit. Your promotions at work have never been about grace. Your bank does not show grace when you miss a payment on your loan. Even the library does not show grace when you hold a book for an extra week. Our whole world runs on merit. You have to work hard. You have to pay money. You have to accomplish and earn. If you do not, you will not have the things that you want. Grace is something that is foreign to us and so we go to bed in a world that does not exemplify grace and we wake up in a world that seems to hate it.
And yet here I am. I am a rotten, stinky, filthy corpse that has been saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone! What a glorious truth. And this truth drives me to reach out to other corpses who have not yet found themselves alive in Christ! This truth drives me to a humility that binds me to the one who raised me to life. This truth drives me to a better understanding of the life God has called me to live, to a better knowledge of the God who raised me. In one sense, the fact that I was dead must be a foundational truth of my faith. It must be a part of my understanding of myself and the world in which I live. If it is not, my theology will go awry.
If I fail to maintain proper focus on my "corpsliness" (I know this is not a word), I might start to think God owes me something. If I fail to keep perspective, I might think of myself more highly than I ought and I might start to think that church is all about me! SO always remember that you were dead in your trespasses and sin and that you were made alive by God in Christ (you were even passive in the process!) And it is all because of GRACE!
We go through our days and we see a world filled with merit. Your promotions at work have never been about grace. Your bank does not show grace when you miss a payment on your loan. Even the library does not show grace when you hold a book for an extra week. Our whole world runs on merit. You have to work hard. You have to pay money. You have to accomplish and earn. If you do not, you will not have the things that you want. Grace is something that is foreign to us and so we go to bed in a world that does not exemplify grace and we wake up in a world that seems to hate it.
And yet here I am. I am a rotten, stinky, filthy corpse that has been saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone! What a glorious truth. And this truth drives me to reach out to other corpses who have not yet found themselves alive in Christ! This truth drives me to a humility that binds me to the one who raised me to life. This truth drives me to a better understanding of the life God has called me to live, to a better knowledge of the God who raised me. In one sense, the fact that I was dead must be a foundational truth of my faith. It must be a part of my understanding of myself and the world in which I live. If it is not, my theology will go awry.
If I fail to maintain proper focus on my "corpsliness" (I know this is not a word), I might start to think God owes me something. If I fail to keep perspective, I might think of myself more highly than I ought and I might start to think that church is all about me! SO always remember that you were dead in your trespasses and sin and that you were made alive by God in Christ (you were even passive in the process!) And it is all because of GRACE!
Tuesday, March 5, 2019
On Being A Sheep
The other day some folks from my church were doing a nursing home service at the local nursing home. As a part of this, I had the privilege of giving the devotional. In the devotional I talked about being a sheep in the flock of our Savior. I spoke most about the nature of our Shepherd and talked about the quality of the shepherd determining the quality of life for the sheep. After giving the devotional I had the privilege of talking with a man who said that he had actually been a shepherd and wanted to give me some additional insight.
As I listened what he said was profound. He told me that of all the animals on a typical farm, there is only one animal that cannot really be herded well. You can herd cattle, you can herd horses, you can even herd chickens (though why you would want to is beyond me). But he said that you cannot herd sheep well. He told me that the only way to get sheep to go where you want them to go easily is to lead them. Sheep have to be led.
As I reflected on this (I took the man's word for the truthfulness of it) I thought of how fitting. We as people do not get herded well. We want to go off and do our own thing and we do not really want to follow the rules that God sets for us because until we are believers He is not our Shepherd.
I also thought that describes how important the choice of who you are going to follow is and why no body can follow two masters - because they do not go in the exact same direction. We need to follow our Good Shepherd.
I am a sheep. I am thankful that my Shepherd is the Good Shepherd.
As I listened what he said was profound. He told me that of all the animals on a typical farm, there is only one animal that cannot really be herded well. You can herd cattle, you can herd horses, you can even herd chickens (though why you would want to is beyond me). But he said that you cannot herd sheep well. He told me that the only way to get sheep to go where you want them to go easily is to lead them. Sheep have to be led.
As I reflected on this (I took the man's word for the truthfulness of it) I thought of how fitting. We as people do not get herded well. We want to go off and do our own thing and we do not really want to follow the rules that God sets for us because until we are believers He is not our Shepherd.
I also thought that describes how important the choice of who you are going to follow is and why no body can follow two masters - because they do not go in the exact same direction. We need to follow our Good Shepherd.
I am a sheep. I am thankful that my Shepherd is the Good Shepherd.
Tuesday, February 12, 2019
The Winter Storm
We just lived through a doozy of a storm. The hardest part of it all is the hundreds of thousands of people without power. For me it meant that our home got down to 34 degrees in the coldest spot in the house after 48 hours of not having power. What was amazing about all of this is how God demonstrated his goodness to us.
It is always easier in retrospect to look back than it is in the moment to look up. But with the benefit of looking back I want to share some of the blessings.
1. You realize what is really important. I was willing and ready to leave the house behind so long as my kids and wife were warm and cared for. I realized what was really important to me!
2. You are primed to listen to the voice of God. As I struggled with the anxiety, I was ready and willing to hear. I was looking to hear. I was seeking God's voice, and this allowed me to hear lessons from God even in a Keys for Kids devotional shared at the house we were staying in.
3. You realize the blessings of the family of God. During and after we had so many offers for help it is a little overwhelming!
4. You see that your world extends beyond you. There were many people who helped from other states to get everything back in order. The way that God intended us to live is to help one another in times of need.
5. You are grateful for salvation. Even if all I had was taken away, there are things God has given me that cannot be taken away. And for these things you become grateful.
6. Worship becomes sweeter. The words of songs seem to stand out and have more meaning when you have gone through something. Worshiping with God's people on Sunday was that much sweeter!
And there are so many more that I could mention. But for the sake of time I will simply conclude with:
7. You realize that no matter what happens - God is good and brings good out of hardship and even tragedy.
"The Lord's been good to me, and so I praise the Lord for giving me the things I need, the sun and the rain and the apple seed. The Lord's been good to me. Amen."
It is always easier in retrospect to look back than it is in the moment to look up. But with the benefit of looking back I want to share some of the blessings.
1. You realize what is really important. I was willing and ready to leave the house behind so long as my kids and wife were warm and cared for. I realized what was really important to me!
2. You are primed to listen to the voice of God. As I struggled with the anxiety, I was ready and willing to hear. I was looking to hear. I was seeking God's voice, and this allowed me to hear lessons from God even in a Keys for Kids devotional shared at the house we were staying in.
3. You realize the blessings of the family of God. During and after we had so many offers for help it is a little overwhelming!
4. You see that your world extends beyond you. There were many people who helped from other states to get everything back in order. The way that God intended us to live is to help one another in times of need.
5. You are grateful for salvation. Even if all I had was taken away, there are things God has given me that cannot be taken away. And for these things you become grateful.
6. Worship becomes sweeter. The words of songs seem to stand out and have more meaning when you have gone through something. Worshiping with God's people on Sunday was that much sweeter!
And there are so many more that I could mention. But for the sake of time I will simply conclude with:
7. You realize that no matter what happens - God is good and brings good out of hardship and even tragedy.
"The Lord's been good to me, and so I praise the Lord for giving me the things I need, the sun and the rain and the apple seed. The Lord's been good to me. Amen."
Tuesday, February 5, 2019
Quick to Hear and Slow to Speak
"But everyone must be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger. . ." James 1:19 (NASB)
In a world in which we get so angry when we learn of a recent decision in government that disagrees with our position. In a world where we whine when we do not get our way. In a world where we get angry with authority and high school students can assault police officers and teachers and then go viral because the police officers stun them with tasers. In a world where we are divided by all sorts of barriers and choose to focus on the division instead of what has potential to unite us. In this kind of world the words of James almost seem to not make sense. And yet, James is here presenting this truth.
First of all I want to be fair to the text and remind us that he is primarily talking about our need to listen to the text of Scripture. We need to listen and become doers of the Word of God and not simply hearers only. And so when the word of God talks about blessing our enemies - we need to listen and do. When the word of God talks about kindness and love - we need to listen and do. When the word of God talks about taking a stand for what is right - we need to listen and do. When the word of God judges a behavior as evil - we need to listen and obey.
Sadly, so often we only choose one or two of those. So one half talks about love and tolerance but forgets the importance of obedience and absolute truth and authority. The other half talks about the right and wrong but fails to love in any meaningful way. And the two sides quickly degenerate into an argument that gets heated and eventually just gets posted on Facebook. And we missed the point entirely. Both sides (pardon the expression) need to shut up and listen to what God is saying to us. Both sides need to look at God's Word and allow it to develop them into maturity.
So the next time you are being drawn into an argument, stop. Ask God for wisdom. Search your copy of the Scriptures for what God might have already said about this and go out and obey!
In a world in which we get so angry when we learn of a recent decision in government that disagrees with our position. In a world where we whine when we do not get our way. In a world where we get angry with authority and high school students can assault police officers and teachers and then go viral because the police officers stun them with tasers. In a world where we are divided by all sorts of barriers and choose to focus on the division instead of what has potential to unite us. In this kind of world the words of James almost seem to not make sense. And yet, James is here presenting this truth.
First of all I want to be fair to the text and remind us that he is primarily talking about our need to listen to the text of Scripture. We need to listen and become doers of the Word of God and not simply hearers only. And so when the word of God talks about blessing our enemies - we need to listen and do. When the word of God talks about kindness and love - we need to listen and do. When the word of God talks about taking a stand for what is right - we need to listen and do. When the word of God judges a behavior as evil - we need to listen and obey.
Sadly, so often we only choose one or two of those. So one half talks about love and tolerance but forgets the importance of obedience and absolute truth and authority. The other half talks about the right and wrong but fails to love in any meaningful way. And the two sides quickly degenerate into an argument that gets heated and eventually just gets posted on Facebook. And we missed the point entirely. Both sides (pardon the expression) need to shut up and listen to what God is saying to us. Both sides need to look at God's Word and allow it to develop them into maturity.
So the next time you are being drawn into an argument, stop. Ask God for wisdom. Search your copy of the Scriptures for what God might have already said about this and go out and obey!
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