“The work of salvation means that in your real life things are dramatically changed. You no longer look at things in the same way. Your desires are new and the old things have lost their power to attract you. If you are born again, the Spirit of God makes the change very evident in your real life and thought. It is this complete and amazing change that is the very evidence that you are saved” (Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest).
The gist of salvation is that you’re not who you were before. The Bible says that anyone who is in Christ is a brand new creation. It’s not old you with a new outlook. It’s not an improved you with better morals. It’s a brand new you with a new nature and a new heart.
One of my favorite sayings is that the gospel isn’t about making bad people good. It’s about making dead people alive. Before salvation, we’re all dead spiritually. We’re dead to the things of God and unable to respond to God’s call or even hear His voice. But when the call comes and we’re made alive, then it’s a whole new world opening up.
If you claim to be born again but there is not difference in your life, people have a right to wonder if your faith is genuine. I don’t mean you’ll be perfect or even close to perfect, but you should be different from before. People should be able to tell. You have a testimony to share, but the way you live should speak as loudly as the words you use.
Lord, make us different. Not in a weird or obnoxious way, but in a way that shows that we’re becoming more and more like You. May that difference be what draws people not to us but to You and makes them want to know more about You. Thank You for saving us. Amen.
“Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn’t. Worship is ultimate, not missions, because God is ultimate, not man. When this age is over, and the countless millions of the redeemed fall on their faces before the throne of God, missions will be no more. It is a temporary necessity. But worship abides forever” (John Piper, Let the Nations Be Glad! The Supremacy of God in Missions).
I’m getting to where I don’t even want to know what’s going on with the world. I don’t want to see news headlines or read any current events. I know from what little I’ve seen lately that everything just seems to be getting crazier and crazier with each passing day. Sometimes, it feels like evil is winning.
But then I remember the last few chapters of Revelation. One day all that evil will have its comeuppance. One day evil will be no more. In the meantime, it’s helpful to remember that those who are promoting the insanity are not the enemy. They are the mission field. They are among the ones Jesus sent us to when He told us to go and make disciples of all nations.
I’ve read all sorts of books on heaven and I still can’t wrap my head around it. I still can’t visualize what heaven will be like or what we’ll be doing there. I know it will be great. I know it will be better than my best moments here on earth, multiplied by a bazillion times a bazillion.
Still, the older I get, the more I long for heaven. How can I long for some place I’ve never been? How can I look forward to something I know so little about? I love the illustration of a doctor who was trying to comfort a man who was afraid of dying. He drew the man’s attention to a scratching and whining on the other side of the office door.
He opened the door and his dog came bounding in. He said in essence, “This dog had no idea what was on the other side of the door. He had no clue what awaited him, but he wanted to badly to be there because I was there. In the same way, we long to be in heaven because our Master, Jesus, is there.”
That’s enough for me. The end of all the insanity is a bonus, but the real reason is Jesus. And one day, I’ll be there. So will everyone who has ever bowed the knee and made Jesus Lord and Savior of their lives. Will you?
I ran across another gem of a post on the social medias today. Specifically, it was the Facebooks. There’s so much wisdom in it that I’m going to copy it and share it as is. It’s called “Habits I Stole from My Grandma that Make me Disgustingly Calm & Unbothered.” Of course there will be a link to the actual post after:
“1. Wash the stress off in the shower, then leave it there. She said your bed is for rest and your shower is for release — never mix them up. Let the water carry the day’s weight down the drain, step out, and start clean. Some things are meant to be rinsed off, not slept with.
2. Move slow, especially when everything feels fast. She walked slow, spoke slow, poured her tea slow. Rushing tells your body there’s an emergency even when there isn’t one. The calmest person in any room, she said, is almost always the one who simply refused to hurry.
3. Say your no plain, with nothing after it. No apology, no explanation, no reason someone can argue with. “That doesn’t work for me” was a full sentence to her. She said every excuse you add is just a handle for them to pull. Give them nothing to grip, and they let go.
4. Keep a little money tucked away that’s only yours. Not for secrets — for peace. She said a woman with her own quiet cushion never stays anywhere for the wrong reason. Calm isn’t just a feeling, she told me. Sometimes it’s a small amount saved that nobody can touch.
5. Don’t argue with anyone who needs to be right. You can’t reason a person out of a story they’ve chosen to believe about you. So she let them keep it and kept her own peace. Unbothered, she said, isn’t winning the fight — it’s quietly deciding not to show up to it.
6. Eat something warm when the sadness comes. Not for comfort — for the body. She said a cold meal on a cold mood makes both of them worse. Warmth is the oldest signal there is that the danger has passed and you’re safe now. Let your body hear it and settle.
7. Leave while you’re still enjoying yourself. She ended the call first, left the gathering early, walked away from talk that only circled. Staying past your limit, she said, is exactly how resentment is built. People remember the woman who left while things were still good.
8. Treat other people’s panic as their weather, not yours. Their urgency is a report on their own planning — it’s not an alarm your body has to answer. She paused before absorbing anyone’s emergency, and most of the time, she simply chose not to pick it up.
9. Keep your hands busy when your mind won’t quiet. Knead the dough, tend the garden, fold the washing slow. Idle hands, she said, let worry take the wheel. Give the restlessness something useful to do, and the storm inside quiets while something small gets made.
10. Set the grudge down — you’re the only one carrying it. The anger you hold punishes you, not them; they sleep just fine. Letting it go, she said, wasn’t forgiveness for their sake. It was finally unclenching the hands you’d kept in fists for years. Set it down.
11. Sit in the quiet every day, even for a few minutes. No radio, no chatter, no phone — just you and the silence most people run from. She said you can’t hear your own life over everyone else’s noise. The answers you keep searching for are already waiting in the still.
12. Keep one small ritual that belongs to no one but you. Tea at the same hour, the same slow evening walk, the same quiet moment before bed. Never shared, never explained. A truly unbothered woman, she showed me, always keeps one room that only she holds the key to.”
“When a truth of God is brought home to your soul, never allow it to pass without acting on it internally in your will. Record it with ink and with blood–work it into your life. The weakest saint who transacts business with Jesus Christ is liberated the second he acts and God’s almighty power is available on his behalf” (Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest).
My pastor once said that if you don’t live it, you don’t believe it. If you say you have a private faith, but it doesn’t affect the rest of your life, then it’s not faith at all. Faith may be personal, but it is never supposed to be private. People should be able to tell by how you live.
Something else I’ve heard from the pulpit is that you need to take what you just heard in a sermon and immediately apply it to your life. Otherwise, it stays in the room, and you walk out unchanged. If it’s more head knowledge that has no effect on your behavior, you basically wasted an hour of your time.
The good news is that God is looking for a saint who is ready and willing to obey. You don’t have to have perfect motives or perfect results for it to count as obedience. You just have to be willing to step out in obedience to put into practice what you’ve learned.
Jesus says that the one who hears the Word without obeying it is like people building houses on shifting sand. It won’t last. But if you go out and obey what you’ve heard, you’re building your house on a solid foundation. No amount of storms or winds can tear it down when Christ the solid rock is the foundation.
So the takeaway is this: if you don’t live it, you don’t believe it. If you believe it, you will live it.
“We have no merit, no claim, no righteousness of our own. Dear savior, we look up to you. Oh, that some might look for the first time, and those of us that have long looked would fix our happy gaze again upon that blessed substitutionary sacrifice wherein is all our hope. Dear savior, we do take you to be everything to us, our sin-bearer and our sin-destroyer. We do not have a shadow of a shade of hope anywhere but in you, your life, your death, your resurrection, your ascension, your glory, your reign, your second advent; these are the only stars in our sky. Amen” (Charles Spurgeon).
That’s my prayer every Sunday — that many people will hear the gospel and believe. That many people will become disciples who make disciples and not just seat warmers. That God would call out missionaries and ministers to take His gospel to the ends of the earth. That we would fall more in love with the gospel and the Jesus of the gospel every single day until Jesus comes back to take us home to stay.
Tonight was the appreciation dinner/information gathering/unofficial kickoff to the next season of Room in the Inn. It’s a homeless ministry where local churches provide a place to sleep and a warm meal during the colder months. Many of those churches, including Brentwood Baptist Church, also minister to their spiritual needs by providing a Bible study where we share the hope of the gospel with these men.
Room in the Inn is one of my favorite ways to serve. I’ve been a part of this amazing outreach for something like 15 years. I’ve seen a lot of men come and go through the ministry. I keep thinking that I’ll be the one doing the blessing, but so often I’m the one who ends up being blessed.
So many of these homeless men have a faith that puts mine to shame. They see their current status not as a hardship, but they see so many blessings and are so thankful even in the midst of not having a physical roof over their heads while I complain about my iPhone being slow.
I love being able to teach in our Bible studies, but I really love sitting down and listening to the stories. My whole outlook on homelessness has radically changed since I started serving in Room in the Inn all those years ago. Most of them are a lot like me. Many are where they are because of unfortunate financial hardships or because of making some bad decisions when they were younger. I keep reminding myself there but by the grace of God go I.
I can’t wait to see their faces and hear their stories. I hope to be more intentional about getting to know some of them and letting them minister to me as much as I hope to minister to them. So many have a kind of wisdom that you only learn the hard way through years of hardship and suffering.
Lord, bless these men and even now begin preparing their hearts to encounter you through the volunteers at Brentwood Baptist Church every Monday night. As much as I’d love to see them find permanent housing, I pray they find their true home in You and know You as a shelter and a safe place no matter what they face. Amen.
“THE GOSPEL IS BAD news before it is good news. It is the news that man is a sinner, to use the old word, that he is evil in the imagination of his heart, that when he looks in the mirror all in a lather what he sees is at least eight parts chicken, phony, slob. That is the tragedy. But it is also the news that he is loved anyway, cherished, forgiven, bleeding to be sure, but also bled for. That is the comedy. And yet, so what? So what if even in his sin the slob is loved and forgiven when the very mark and substance of his sin and of his slobbery is that he keeps turning down the love and forgiveness because he either doesn’t believe them or doesn’t want them or just doesn’t give a damn? In answer, the news of the Gospel is that extraordinary things happen to him just as in fairy tales extraordinary things happen. Henry Ward Beecher cheats on his wife, his God, himself, but manages to keep on bringing the Gospel to life for people anyway, maybe even for himself. Lear goes berserk on a heath but comes out of it for a few brief hours every inch a king. Zaccheus climbs up a sycamore tree a crook and climbs down a saint. Paul sets out a hatchet man for the Pharisees and comes back a fool for Christ. It is impossible for anybody to leave behind the darkness of the world he carries on his back like a snail, but for God all things are possible. That is the fairy tale. All together they are the truth”(Frederick Buechner).
That’s the beauty of the gospel. The same good news that gets you in the door will be the path you walk up to heaven and the password that gets you in the gate. None of us ever outgrow our need of the gospel. We need to preach it to ourselves every day, multiple times a day, or we’ll start to think that we’re good enough for God or clever enough to believe in the right things or saintly enough to make it to heaven on our own.
But the gospel says this: You can’t, but God can. You tried, you failed, but God gave you His success and took your failure. None of us can ever get to God by any road or by any means, but God in Jesus has come down to us. That’s the gospel.
You still love me, You still like me, You still lavish me with acceptance.
When I am fed up with me, You invite me to Your feast,
When I am done — with me, with life, with everything,
You whisper, ‘Hang on — I am making *all things* — *you* — new.’ (Rev21:5)
And when I want to quit, You cup my face: ‘This great work I started in you? I won’t stop that beautiful work until you are fully, completely, gloriously beautiful’ (Phil1:6, 1Cor2:7)
So this becomes our brave & broken-hearted hallelujah, the one we sing into the dark, even when it’s hard to believe:
I am His Beloved, His Beloved, His Beloved… and even now I will be held.
In the name of the only One who loved us to death & back to the real & forever life… Amen” (Ann Voskamp).
I think we can have a harder time accepting the fact that God likes us than believing He loves us.
We can say that God loves me because He has to. He’s God. It’s His job. We can think of a million and one reasons why God must love us.
But saying that God likes us? That He actually wants to be around us and spend time with us? That’s a whole different story.
But it’s true. God loves me AND likes me. Even when my parents don’t like me? He does. Even when my spouse doesn’t like me? He does. Even when my kids don’t like me? He does.
God loves and likes you because He made you and redeemed you. He spoke you into life and then gave His life to bring you back to life.
Lord, thank Your for loving me. Thank You for liking me, You didn’t have to like me, but You did . . . and You still do. Everything I am is because of You. Amen.
I’m still loving my return visit to Downton Abbey. It hits different when you know how everything and everyone turns out, plus the setting and the extraordinary attention to detail still stands out.
My favorite character is probably Thomas Branson. I didn’t like him much when he first showed up, but he had the best character arc of anyone in the series. He mellowed quite a bit and lost some of the self-righteousness that made him a but annoying in the beginning.
I love how he comes to the place where he’s finally able to speak truthfully but in a loving way. And isn’t that what we all need — to have the truth spoken in love?
I think everyone should have a Tom in their lives. We need someone in our corner who goes to bat for us, so to speak. We need a champion who will fight for us and believe for us when we can’t believe for ourselves.
But we need someone who will tell us the truth. We need someone who will firmly but gracefully help us to see our own blind spots and gently remind us when we’re not our best selves.
It seems like the best movies and series are that way because they all point to something beyond themselves. In this case, the clear reference is that the character shows what Christ is like for us.
I don’t mean to imply that Downton Abbey is by any means a Christian series or that the character Tom is in any way a type of Christ. But it seems that the way he is able to show both grace and truth is something that definitely points to what Jesus does for us.
When confronted with a woman caught in adultery, Jesus showed mercy. He didn’t stone her or allow her to be stoned by others. He told those with rocks in their hands to throw them if they themselves were sinless. Not one did.
He also spoke to the woman to show that while He did not condemn her, He did not condone her. He told her to go and sin no more. She was free from the penalty of her sinful choices, but that was a freedom not to do whatever she wanted but to choose a better way of living — a righteous way of living.
We too should be willing to tell and be told the truth. I’d be lying if I said that I’m the first to say it and the last to receive it well when it comes my turn. I’d rather not be told that I’m in the wrong, but sometimes I need to hear it. We all do. To enable someone in a lie or concealed truth is not love but denial.
Lord, make us people who love truth because You Yourself said that You are the truth. Help us to be truthful always, but in as gracious and loving a way as You have been to us when You showed us the truth. Help us to bring out the best in each other because that’s what You do for us. Amen.
“This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life. It’s adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike ‘What’s next, Papa?’ God’s Spirit touches our spirits and confirms who we really are. We know who he is, and we know who we are: Father and children. And we know we are going to get what’s coming to us—an unbelievable inheritance! We go through exactly what Christ goes through. If we go through the hard times with him, then we’re certainly going to go through the good times with him!” (Romans 8:15-17, The Message)
I think too many of us are guilty of thinking that eternal life starts after we die. We think that the resurrection life when the good stuff starts and that doesn’t start until we’ve been dispatched to our heavenly rest. But if I read my Bible right, it starts the moment we say YES to Jesus.
Too many of us go through our lives without ever tapping into that resurrection power. Too many of us are like that old lady back in the day who only turned on her electric lights so she could see to light her candles. We’ve settled for trying to do God-sized work with human-sized strength, and that never works.
Did you know that the same power that raised Christ from the dead now lives in you and me? It belongs to anyone who belongs to Jesus. Yet most of us live defeated because we either don’t know the victory has already been won or we’re too distracted to care. Our lives are small because our view of God is too small.
Lord, help us to remember how big You are. You’re bigger than all our problems put together. You’re bigger than anything we’ll ever face. You’re bigger than the whole world. Remind us that Your resurrection power is ours for the asking. Help us to live victoriously because the battle is already won. Be glorified in each and every one of us today. Amen.
