“That’s plain enough, isn’t it? You’re no longer wandering exiles. This kingdom of faith is now your home country. You’re no longer strangers or outsiders. You belong here, with as much right to the name Christian as anyone. God is building a home. He’s using us all—irrespective of how we got here—in what he is building. He used the apostles and prophets for the foundation. Now he’s using you, fitting you in brick by brick, stone by stone, with Christ Jesus as the cornerstone that holds all the parts together. We see it taking shape day after day—a holy temple built by God, all of us built into it, a temple in which God is quite at home” (Ephesians 2:19-22, The Message).
Just you forgot where your real Kingdom is, here’s a reminder. It’s easy to make this world feel like our forever home, but it’s not. As my pastor used to say, at best life on this side of heaven is like a very clean bus station (or airport terminal). You can enjoy the stay, but you wouldn’t want to live at a Greyhound or at the nearest international airport.
When you understand where your real citizenship lies, it makes elections way less stressful. You know that this world is passing away along with all the messed up brokenness and injustice. The world that’s coming is so much better not because of pearly gates or streets of gold or even all those people you love being there, but because Jesus is there.
By the way, the Kingdom of God isn’t only an after we die thing. It’s a here and now thing. Every time anyone is born again, that person goes from being a captive to this world’s Godless way of doing things to the freedom of being a child of God and a fellow heir with Christ.
So don’t let the doom and gloom get to you. Remember that the best is still yet to come.
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.
I heard a very cool story in my life group tonight. It started when a group of believers was building a church in Russia. They didn’t have an abundance of money or resources, so they were using stones from a Gulag from back during World War II. The were using the stones that had formerly been part of a prison.
One of them discovered a letter inside of a cannister amidst the stones and took it to one of the Russians because they couldn’t read the writing. The Russian, who was a pastor, immediately started crying. He said that the letter was from a believer who had been forced to build the Gulag from the stones that had formerly been his church building.
He had prayed that one day those very stones would be used for God and for a church again. Little did he know that 70 or 80 years later, his words would prove to be prophetic.
The Bible says Jesus that the stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. That was a prophecy about how the Messiah who was rejected by the religious leaders ended up being the foundation of the Church that is still going strong 2,000 years later in spite of all the attempts to eliminate God and faith.
I think G. K. Chesterton said that Christianity has died and risen many times over the centuries because it has a God who knows the way out of a grave. We may seem defeated at times. We may feel overwhelmed. But God has not stopped working on our behalf and we can be assured that the ultimate victory that matters has already been won.
We as believers are a Church of living stones, rescued from bondage and our own prisons. We were held captive by sin and the enemy but we are now free in the Lord and God’s own hands and feet to our world.
“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 Book of Revelation is weird. It can be intimidating. A lot of people don’t like it because it gives them anxiety. Usually, that’s because they were taught to focus on the wrong things. Like what does this symbol mean? Are there tanks and atom bombs in this book? Are Russia and the United States in there somewhere, and when does World War III start?
But the book is not primarily about warfare. It’s about worship. It all centers around the throne room in heaven where all the saints and angels are gathered around the Ancient of Days. So much of the dialogue is familiar to a lot of people, especially if they’ve ever listened to Handel’s Messiah.
Once you understand that the main theme is Jesus ruling and reigning in victory, the rest makes a little more sense. At least I’m not nearly as concerned about what this dragon means or that woman giving birth. All of it points to how evil is finally getting its comeuppance. All the injustice in the world is finally vindicated. There is a battle, but it’s over before it even begins. Spoiler alert: Jesus wins.
I saw a quote a while back that sums it up perfectly: Revelation wasn’t written so that we’d build bigger bomb shelters in the back yard but so we’d build bigger tables and invite our friends over for meals and tell them about Jesus. John Piper says that missions exists because there are places in the world where worship of the one true God doesn’t exist yet. Missions leads to worship when everyone on earth has heard the good news.
Revelation is a celebration of the victory that is now and not yet. It’s about a Kingdom and a rule that is now and not yet. We see it in part and in certain places, but one day everyone will see it and every eye will see Jesus whom they pierced with the nails to put Him on the cross. Every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord, whether in worship or under duress when they realize it’s too late to choose.
The enemy is a defeated foe, but he’s lashing out in his death throes, trying to take as many with him in his downfall as possible. But his time is short. All pain and suffering has an expiration date, and that date is getting closer and closer. And one day it will end. Death will end. And then real eternal life will truly start.
I used to be afraid of the deep end of the pool. I think it started when I was little and wandered into waters that were above my head. I panicked and started freaking out, even though the ladder to get out of the pool was literally right behind me. All I could think about was being stuck in the water and not being able to breathe.
Sometimes, anxiety will sneak up on you like that. You feel the worry starting to take over. You feel yourself slipping closer and closer to the edge, about to go under. I’ve had moments in the past where I was paralyzed with anxiety and unable to do anything or think clearly.
But sometimes it helps to take some deep breaths. Focus on breathing in and breathing out. Say a short prayer as you inhale and exhale. Focus on the Father instead of the fear. You can say something like “Abba Father” as you breathe in and “I belong to You” as you breathe out.
That doesn’t make everything suddenly perfect. The fear is still there, but it no longer has the loudest voice in the room. Suddenly, you remember that God is for you, and if He is for you, who can be against you. You remember that the Lord is a safe place, a refuge and a strong tower in time of trouble. You bring to mind that God will never forsake His chosen ones or allow the righteous to be shaken.
Worry may be the default setting, but it doesn’t have to take root, It doesn’t have to have the last word. Jesus can speak peace over you and fear has to flee. Whatever you’re worried about will inevitably end, but the love of God will not. Take a few more deep breaths and cling to that hope.
“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.
