Today is Palm Sunday and marks the beginning of the last week of Jesus’ earthly ministry, the week leading up to Good Friday and Easter Sunday. I’ve been here before, but I feel like so many times I’ve rushed to get through it to what’s next.
This time, I want to slow down a bit and sit under the cross. I want to be still long enough to hear God speak a word over me about what this week means for me and for all those who call on the Messiah out of a genuine faith. I want to be moved to tears and fully take in the price that Jesus paid for me.
I finished an incredible devotional by one of my favorite writers, Charles Martin. It’s called It Is Finished and spends 40 days walking the path that led from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday, sparing no details and leaving no stone unturned. It was one of the best books I’ve read in a long time, and I hope to read it again some day.
I want Easter to mean more than the Easter Bunny or Cadbury chocolate eggs (though I am very much a fan of both). I don’t want to look at the date on the calendar and miss the point of the day — Jesus who knew no sin became sin for me that I might become the righteousness of God in Christ.
I don’t want to be the same person in seven days as the person who is now writing these words. I want to be more like Jesus, more aware of the sacrifice He made, and more willing to count the cost and take up my own cross. I want to be more of a disciple and less of an admirer. I want to be more of a follower and less of a fan. I want to be a truly biblical Christian and not a watered-down, American Christian.
I’m thankful that God is far more patient with me than I am with Him and takes far more time with me than I ever have with Him. At this point, I say, “Lord, do whatever it takes to make me Yours, Your disciple, Your own. Have Your way in me. Amen.”
This year, I tried something new. I signed up through the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention to pray 15 minutes a day for Muslims during the season of Ramadan (February 28-March 30).
It was the first time I’d ever signed up to pray daily for any length of time. I quickly learned that 15 minutes of praying can seem like a loooong time when it’s just you trying to pray what’s in your head. Thankfully, the IMB posted daily reminders to pray with several prompts to guide my intercession. Plus, I found some other helpful websites to guide my prayer time.
Hopefully, this is not a humble brag. It should be something like if I can do this, so can you or anyone else. I believe that all of the greatest revivals in history began with people on their knees in prayer (or in my case laying in bed in prayer). I believe this time is no exception.
One particular website that caught my attention was from an organization called Missio Nexus. They have a radical prayer goal of seeing 10% of all the Muslims in the world come to saving faith in Jesus by 2028. By my reckoning, there are 1.8 billion Muslims in the world currently, so that would mean 180 million worshippers in heaven who formerly prayed to Allah. Or better yet, round that number up to 200 million. Can you imagine how amazing of an impact that would have on the entire world?
I hope every one of you will find a prayer passion, whether it be for an unreached people group or people from a different religion or even people whose paths you cross wherever you live, work, or play. It really does open your eyes to the great big world that exists outside of your and my needs and wants. Definitely keep praying for those needs and wants because God tells us to do that, but also be mindful of the Great Commission to take the gospel into all the world and the Revelation 5 scene with worshippers from every people group, language, continent, color, and nationality. That’s truly where God’s heart lies.
“It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time: repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community. I could go on. This isn’t the first time I have warned you, you know. If you use your freedom this way, you will not inherit God’s kingdom. But what happens when we live God’s way? He brings gifts into our lives, much the same way that fruit appears in an orchard—things like affection for others, exuberance about life, serenity. We develop a willingness to stick with things, a sense of compassion in the heart, and a conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people. We find ourselves involved in loyal commitments, not needing to force our way in life, able to marshal and direct our energies wisely” (Galatians 5:19-23, The Message).
I think that says is all perfectly. Trying to live any other way than the way of Jesus is a facade. It’s like a carnival funhouse where things you encounter may be amusing, but none of it’s real. Everything is an illusion or a deception.
But that’s not how it is with God. What you see is what you get. Or sometimes, what you don’t see is what you get. It’s about trusting in advance what will only make sense in reverse, as I heard it put one time. But it’s also living in the unshakable confidence that nothing can ever separate us from the love of God, that suffering is temporary, that the best really is yet to come.
The Christian life is really just a series of oases in the wilderness where we can rest and be refreshed. The wilderness is where we grow and learn. As much as we want our lives to be one continual oasis, God knows we’d never learn dependence on God that way. We’d never mature beyond baby believers. Plus, God is with us in the wilderness as He was with the children of Israel, leading the way the entire time.
Here’s my favorite lesson I’ve learned recently. Jesus + nothing else = everything. End of story.
Today, I got an email from CarMax congratulating me on my one year anniversary. On this day in 2024, I purchased Clifford the Big Red Jeep, my 2018 Jeep Wrangler with a little over 29,000 miles on it. That was a good day.
Sometimes, you need little reminders of God’s blessings to tide you over. Honestly, if I were to really pay attention and take note of each blessings, I’d be too busy thanking God to have any need for anything to tide me over. I’m literally overrun and overwhelmed by blessings, most of which I routinely take for granted.
But Clifford is a visible, tangible reminder of God’s goodness to me. Many times, I’ll be anxious over God’s ability to meet a need or to help me in a certain area and then I’ll see that red Wrangler and recall how faithful God was in that moment and how He will be faithful again.
Also, I am reminded of God’s faithfulness through family and friends who genuinely love me and want God’s best for me. Sometimes there are days when they will believe for me when I can’t believe for myself. Hopefully, I will return the favor when they’re in times of weakness.
The best reminder of all for me is the promise that every single morning God’s mercies are new. Just like that hot now sign at Krispy Kreme means there are new donuts, every new sunrise is a billboard for God’s new mercies. Every new day filled with birds chirping and flowers growing is a gift. I’m sure God’s mercies are abundant enough so that one dose could last me a lifetime, but still I get fresh new mercies right out of the oven every single day.
That Lamentations 3:22-23 promise is one that I’ve read countless times, yet the more I let it sink in and soak in the more I am blown away by the magnitude and the generosity of the promise. I pray that everyone who reads these words will be just as blown away by this one of many promises by God to us. And may we all claim this verse every single day.
I know I’ve probably posted this previously, but it’s still worth checking out. I remember distinctly being blown away by the radical sentiment of the author. I found out recently that he was a young pastor in Zimbabwe who was martyred for his faith and a little poem was found among his papers that went something like this:
“I’m a part of the fellowship of the unashamed. The die has been cast. I have stepped over the line. The decision has been made. I’m a disciple of Jesus Christ. I won’t look back, let up, slow down, back away, or be still. My past is redeemed. My present makes sense and my future is secure. I’m done and finished with low living, sight walking, small planning, smooth knees, colorless dreams, tamed visions, mundane talking, cheap living, and dwarfed goals.
I no longer need preeminence, prosperity, position, promotions, plaudits, or popularity. I don’t have to be right, or first, or tops, or recognized, or praised, or rewarded. I live by faith, lean on His presence, walk by patience, lift by prayer, and labor by Holy Spirit power. My face is set. My gait is fast. My goal is heaven. My road may be narrow, my way rough, my companions few, but my guide is reliable and my mission is clear. I will not be bought, compromised, detoured, lured away, turned back, deluded or delayed.
I will not flinch in the face of sacrifice or hesitate in the presence of the adversary. I will not negotiate at the table of the enemy, ponder at the pool of popularity, or meander in the maze of mediocrity. I won’t give up, shut up, or let up until I have stayed up, stored up, prayed up, paid up, and preached up for the cause of Christ.
I am a disciple of Jesus. I must give until I drop, preach until all know, and work until He comes. And when He does come for His own, He’ll have no problems recognizing me. My colors will be clear!”
One of the things God is reminding me lately is that there is such a thing as timely grace. I think most of us spend way too much time thinking about possible future scenarios involving us or our loved ones. Or in my case, sometimes obsessively thinking about these things.
It’s easy to get caught up in imagining what we would do if we lost the job or wrecked the car or had a terminal illness in the family. Usually those kinds of thoughts lead to great anxiety as we picture ourselves overwhelmed in such a scenario.
First of all, those what-if cases rarely ever happen. Second, we tend to leave God out when we bring anxiety into the picture where it’s just us trying to figure out what to do and managing it all by ourselves.
Most importantly, we forget one very vital piece of information. In my experience, God will often give you the grace to deal with any of these situations should they ever actually happen. But God doesn’t give you that grace ahead of time. It’s only at the exact moment you need it most that it comes.
Hebrews 4:16 says “Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need”.
The problem is that we want to be like Israel in the desert with the manna. We want to hoard and stockpile grace in case it might run out. We want plenty of grace in plenty of time to be prepared. But that’s now how God works.
God knows what we need when we need it. Faith means trusting in God’s timing as much as God’s provision. Seeing God come through in the clutch makes our faith stronger and reminds us that all things really do work together for good because God designed it that way.
“My faith demands that I face the uncertainty of the future in the confidence that in any meeting of affliction, I am held by the tether of God’s grace. My way is well known to my Master, and therefore I walk in confidence. No testing will come that will not be accompanied by sustaining grace. If I failed to believe that, I would be impoverished beyond measure and would deny the truthfulness and example of Scripture. God’s provision has been adequate in the past; it will be adequate in the future. The secret of our courage lies in our confidence that the future is controlled by the providence of a sovereign God” (James Means, A Tearful Celebration).
I saw this testimony on Facebook and I had to share. It’s the power of Jesus to save and transform anybody at any point to be a true disciple. I’m copying and pasting the post but also providing a link to the original post in case you want to check it out as well:
“I get a lot of messages from gay men and women asking me how I came out of homosexuality. Many of them tell me they want out of the lifestyle but they still feel sexually attracted to the same sex. What do I do they say and they all ask that same question.
There is no shame in asking those questions or feeling that way because in His time he will show you.
I didn’t want out of the gay lifestyle when Christ came to me. I was happy being gay. I had a boyfriend. I saw no need to change. Christ came to me while I was yet a sinner and began to deal with my heart FIRST. He came to me FIRST while I was living in my sin. I hadn’t repented or anything when he began to deal with my heart. That’s important to note. So many times we want people to repent at an altar in front of everyone and people don’t even know why they are doing what they are doing or why they are even repenting. As Christians we need to be sensitive to the needs of sinners.
When God began to deal with my heart I began to see in the Word of God where I was wrong about the way that I was living. I still felt gay but I began to read in the Bible things that I didn’t want to do…..BUT YET I began to follow what the Word said and NOT how I felt. And so I repented of my sins but at times I still felt gay.
If you will follow the process of Jesus Christ then he WILL change your life! God gave me a poweful revelation of the Love of God that immediately broke the chains that held me bound to that lifetsyle. I felt instant freedom but I still didn’t feel convicted about it.
After repentance I walked away from a lifestyle that I knew and loved and began to follow after a man that I didn’t know and his name was Jesus…..but still felt gay. I told God that if he would help me that I would never go back to that life and it’s now been 6 years now and I have never one time went back to it and I have never slept with a man since then. Never ever.
It was about 2 years into my walk with Christ after repentance that Jesus began to show me why I was wrong. I’ll never forget the day that conviction came to me over the lifestyle that I once lived. I felt so
ashamed that day. I cried like a baby. 2 years AFTER becoming a Christian Jesus Christ sent a strong conviction to me. Think about that. I felt so grieved that day knowing that I had grieved the heart of Christ with my old sinful lifestyle but it was 2 years later. Why are we rushing new converts?
I am free from that life today, thank you Jesus!!!
Here’s what I want to tell you today. Repent of your sins whatever they are and wait on the Lord. Do all that you know to do according to the Word of God. Don’t live by how you feel but rather by what the Word says and Jesus Christ will lead you into ALL truth.
Christ is a powerful process if you will just follow. He will deliver you in his time….not someone else’s. He has changed my life little by little by little. Not with BIG things but with the smallest things. He’s still changing my life today.
Today I am delivered. Today I am not gay. Today I don’t have the feelings that I used to have. I am free in my mind. I am so thankful to a God who has saved my soul from eternal fire.
Listen to me when you’re coming out of this lifestyle I want to be honest with you…..most Christians do not know how to help you. It’s no fault to them. They just don’t understand AT ALL. If you are putting your trust in man then you are going to be let down. I want to encourage you to TRUST in God and TRUST what the word of God says….with your whole heart. There are mean ministers who slam gay people for that sake of handclaps from the audience. I’ve been in those services. There are mean Christians who hate the way the way you are. There are mean people everywhere especially in the world. Don’t keep living like you are because someone was mean to you. You are seeking something else because when you lay your head on your pillow you feel deep down that something isn’t right.
When you start coming to church you’re doing to deal with all kinds of nonsense but let me tell you what else I found. I found a group of Christian people who know the power of God and how he changes lives. They have loved me while Christ was changing me. They have helped me more than I ever thought possible. You might be surprised who is sitting in your congregation who have been exactly where you are right now. The enemy wants to bring meaness to the forefront but the LOVE of God is the most powerful thing that there is! Jesus loves you even when others don’t. He died for YOU!
Be honest with God. Tell him exactly how you feel. Tell him that you still feel attracted to the same sex. Talk to God. He knows. He understands. Be honest with him but walk away from anything that doesn’t align to his word. Then give him time to bring you OUT of it.
I found out what coming out of the closet really means….it’s when I came OUT of the world and into His marvelous light!! When I came out of the world I became a new creature in Christ. Old things have passed away and ALL things have become new to me!
I was ‘trans’ formed by the renewing of my mind (Romans 12:2) NOT ‘trans’ formed by mutilating certain body parts. Trans is a Christian word. We are transformed through the mighty name of Jesus Christ.
The Holy Ghost will lead you into ALL truth! didn’t become gay overnight and I’m thankful that I serve a God who has given me space to make powerful changes in my life.
I am learning what it means to be a man….a Christian man…..because I used to feel like a woman.
“After centuries of handling and mishandling, most religious words have become so shopworn nobody’s much interested anymore. Not so with grace, for some reason. Mysteriously, even derivatives like gracious and graceful still have some of the bloom left.
Grace is something you can never get but can only be given. There’s no way to earn it or deserve it or bring it about any more than you can deserve the taste of raspberries and cream or earn good looks or bring about your own birth.
A good sleep is grace and so are good dreams. Most tears are grace. The smell of rain is grace. Somebody loving you is grace. Loving somebody is grace. Have you ever tried to love somebody?
A crucial eccentricity of the Christian faith is the assertion that people are saved by grace. There’s nothing YOU have to do. There’s nothing you HAVE to do. There’s nothing you have to DO.
The grace of God means something like: “Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are, because the party wouldn’t have been complete without you. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid. I am with you. Nothing can ever separate us. It’s for you I created the universe. I love you.”
There’s only one catch. Like any other gift, the gift of grace can be yours only if you’ll reach out and take it.
Maybe being able to reach out and take it is a gift too” (Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking).
I always like the acronym for GRACE – God’s Riches at Christ’s Expense.
That means it is undeserved.
It’s the flip side of mercy. If grace is getting what you don’t deserve, then mercy is not getting what you deserve. And salvation involves both.
I know several people who are dealing with grief and the loss of a loved one. It’s never easy, especially with the recent end of the Christmas season that makes loss even more difficult to bear. I found a post with the lyrics from a Michael W. Smith song from his second album. Let these words sink in and express your own grief and loss:
“Sad goodbye Never quite got said Now the time is gone We’re moving on Even though it hurts so bad
If I could I’d turn back the days And I’d love again To be your friend In a hundred different ways But we can’t turn back the time The days
So if I never said, all I needed to say I’ll say it now You know I loved you once I love you stronger today Please love, find me a way Words, I still need to say But I don’t know how
Can’t stand still Still I can’t move on Lord, I need your strength Need you and me ‘Cause a part of me is gone
In time, I will know What I’ve yet to see That through all the pain You hurt the same And you’re standing here with me More than anything it’s you I need
So if I never said, all I needed to say I’ll say it now You know I loved you once I love you stronger today Please love find me a way Words, I still need to say Please show me how
Words, I still need to say
So if I never said, all I needed to say I’ll say it now You know I loved you once I love you stronger today Please love find me a way But I don’t know how Please love find me a way Please show me how” (Amy Grant / Michael W. Smith).
For as long as I can remember, I’ve been drawn to tiny books. The smaller, the better.
I have a tiny testament that easily fits in the palm of my hand. I also have a small Latin dictionary and an even smaller hymnal. All these tiny books are super old as well as super small.
This one is the smallest prayer book I’ve ever seen. For me, I love the idea of carrying around these precious promises of God in my pocket and having a handy prayer guide for whenever I can’t find words of my own to pray.
I’m reminded sometimes of how small I am in comparison to God. More like infinitesimal and microscopic next to the Creator whom the whole of creation can’t contain.
Yet, the verse says He is mindful of me. He knows the number of hairs on my head and when I stumble or fall. He knows every word on my tongue before I speak it.
That’s comforting when the universe seems so big and dark and void of hope. I need the nearness of an Incarnate God more than I need the majesty of an Infinite Being beyond my comprehension.
Well, I need both. I need a God close enough to know my need and a God big enough to meet it. I need a God who’s near to hear my prayer and a God mighty enough to be worthy of my prayers.
I suppose my next thing to collect will be tiny books. Now I just need a tiny shelf to put them all on. I can stare at all my small books and remember how small I am in the eyes of God, yet He still knows me by name.
As Christians we need to be sensitive to the needs of sinners.
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