Scripture

Walking in His Strength

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That’s what I’m learning. It’s not about gritting my teeth and living the live of faith in my own strength and willpower. That never lasts. Eventually, I give up or burn out. It’s not a sustainable way to live.

But if I could call on the life of Christ inside of me, then I could live the way Christ lived. The Bible says that God has given us everything we need for life and godliness through the indwelling Christ.

Also, if we could tap into the life of Christ within us, then it would be possible to forgive the unforgivable and love the unlovable. We could demonstrate a lifestyle and character totally opposite to what the world considers normal and would certainly grab their attention.

I’m reading a little book by Watchman Nee called Sit. Walk. Stand, based on Paul’s epistle to the Ephesians. It starts from sitting and resting in the finished work of Christ, then walking in the power of the resurrected Christ within us, and finally standing firm in the victory He has won for us.

I think if we read the Bible less as a how-to manual for behavioral modification and more as a love letter from our heavenly home and a guide for tapping into the heavenly resources God has placed within us through His Spirit, we could see radical transformation not only in our lives but in the lives of those around us.

Here’s a link to the book in case you want to pick it up. It’s a quick read at 77 pages but it is packed full of wisdom and godly insight:

You Can’t Go Back

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“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).

That’s salvation. It’s way more than a mental assent to a set of beliefs. It’s even more than making a few behavioral changes. It’s as dramatic as going from death to life. You become a completely new creation with a new set of desires and actions.

The verse says that the old has gone and the new has come. You couldn’t go back to the old even if you wanted to. You might fall back into sin occasionally but you can’t stay there. It would be like a resurrected man climbing back into the grave and pretending to be dead again. You could try it for a bit, but the natural impulse will be for oxygen.

You could live in sin for a season but you’d be miserable. It’s not natural anymore. The new nature doesn’t thrive in the old ways. The evidence that someone is truly born again is a different way of living. If you say you’ve been saved but keep living like you did, then maybe your salvation isn’t real. If there’s no change, maybe there’s been no transformation.

But the beauty of the gospel is that Jesus is in the business of changing lives and making dead hearts beat again. He takes the old and makes it new. He takes the outcast and makes them wanted. He takes the lost and makes them found. He takes the enemies of God and turns them into sons and daughters of the risen King with all the blessings that come to the King Himself.

If you’re not sure, maybe it’s time to make sure. You can pray a prayer that comes from a heart of faith that goes like this: “Lord Jesus, I want to have a personal relationship with You. I know I am a sinner and I believe You died on the cross for my sins. I turn from those sins and put my faith in You right now to be my Lord and Savior” (Harvest.org).

Maybe today’s the day.

Pointing Fingers and Passing Blame

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“If my sinfulness appears to me to be in any way smaller or less detestable in comparison with the sins of others, I am still not recognizing my sinfulness at all. … How can I possibly serve another person in unfeigned humility if I seriously regard his sinfulness as worse than my own?” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer)

I think we all know that when you point the finger at someone, there are typically four fingers pointing back at yourself. Then there’s the story in the gospels where the religious leaders bring a woman caught in the act of adultery. They’re all about to stone her to death and expecting Jesus to give them the go-ahead, but Jesus instead says “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.”

That’s a genius answer. Obviously, Jesus isn’t condoning her behavior (or the behavior of whoever was the other party in the act of adultery), but he’s saying that their sin of pride is just as evil in the sight of God as her act of adultery. They don’t get to make the call on the woman’s destiny. God does.

It’s easy to point the finger at public figures whose lives are on display. True, many of them have made dubious and questionable choices. To cast aspersions on their characters when we are just as fallen as the rest of humanity would be the height of hypocrisy.

I believe calling out sinful behavior is biblical, as long as it is done in love and humility from the perspective that I could have done the same or worse given the same circumstances.

What did Jesus do for us when we were at our worst? He demonstrated His love for us by dying for us. He paid the ultimate price so that we could be free from the sin that held us captive. He sent His Spirit so that we could have the power to live the kind of holy lives that please God.

When it comes to serving, it helps to remember the line from Philippians to regard others as better than ourselves and not to seek to vaunt ourselves at the expense of others. Love as God defines it seeks the best for the beloved as God did for us. Instead of pointing fingers, may we always point to Jesus.

Have Patience

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For those of you of a certain age, the title of this post triggered a musical memory for you. If you need a little more assistance, think of the words: Have patience, have patience, don’t be in such a hurry . . .” No? Moving on.

I confess that some days I have very little patience. I have what in this day and age could be referred to as a microwave mentality. I want what I want, not sooner or later but now. I think I am a product of this culture of instant gratification.

But I also confess that when it comes to patience I have a very short memory. I forget how patient God has been with me all this time. After all, it’s God’s infinite kindness that leads us to repentance. I am thankful that God is much more patient with me than I am with Him (or anybody else for that matter).

But isn’t that the very definition of love? The love chapter in 1 Corinthians starts off with “Love is patient.”

It’s first on the list of what love should look like. Maybe that’s because God who is the epitome of love is infinitely patient. Maybe that’s because we as His children are notoriously impatient. Either way, that’s the first place to start when you want to know what it means to love.

You begin not with striving in your own effort to be patient. You know how that goes. Remember how you try to pray for patience and immediately run into scenarios that cause you to lose your patience?

Patience begins with seeing how patient God has been with you and me. It’s remembering all the times God had every right to wipe us off the map but chose to wipe the slate of our sins clean. It’s recalling that God should have let us have it by pouring all His wrath on us but instead poured it on His Son Jesus instead and poured grace and mercy on us instead.

Lord, help us to live out the patience you have constantly and consistently demonstrated to us over our lives. May we always remember that you were not willing that we should perish but that we should have eternal life. May we be as patient to others as You have been to us. Amen.

A Prayer for Humility and Sincerity in our Faith

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“We long for a humble and sincere faith in our divine Lord. Lord, if it is necessary to break our hearts in order that we may have it, then let them be broken.If we have to unlearn a thousand things to learn the sweet secret of faith in him, let us become fools that we may be wise, only bring us surely and really to stand upon the Rock of Ages—so to stand there as never to fall, but to be kept by the power of God, through faith, unto salvation.
As Christians, we should be humble. Lord take away our proud look; take away the spirit of ‘stand by, for I am holier than thou;‘ make us condescend to people of low morals. May we seek them out and seek their good. Give to the church of Christ an intense love for the souls of men. May it make our hearts break to think that they will perish in their sin. May we grieve every day because of the sin of this city. Set a mark upon our forehead and let us be known to you as people who sigh and cry for all the abominations that are done in the midst of the city.
Amen” (Charles Spurgeon).

Lord, make us humble in our relations to others and to You. Keep us sincere as we seek Your face and serve our brothers and sisters in Christ. May our compassion never cancel out our convictions nor our convictions cancel our compassion.

Jesus, just as You told the woman caught in the act of adultery that He didn’t condemn her, so may our hearts be far from judging with an eye to condemn. And just as You told her to go and sin no more, may we also be zealous to stir one another to holiness in all our words and deeds.

Help us to love with a holy love that seeks nothing less than the best from the beloved, just as You settle for nothing less in us than for us to be made like Christ in every aspect of our lives. Amen.

Do Something

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“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 often says at the end of his sermons that we need to take what we learned and determine to put it into practice or else it will stay in the room when we leave on Sunday. The Bible tells us not to be hearers only but doers of what we hear.

The best way to hear God’s voice is to do what you already know God has told you to do. You need to take that first step before God will show you the next one. You need to show yourself faithful with the smaller things before God trusts you with bigger ones.

Once you set yourself to obey, you find that you are operating in the strength and wisdom of the Almighty God. Once you surrender and commit to follow, God enables you to obey. You may be the least qualified to do what God has called you to do, but God’s strength is perfected in your weakness and as the old saying goes, He doesn’t call the qualified but He qualifies the called as they step out in faith and not as they sit in their recliners and talk about how they might one day be obedient when it’s convenient.

Following Jesus and falling on your face isn’t failure. Stepping out of the boat like Peter and sinking when you see the size of the storm isn’t failure. Staying in the boat and never taking a step is failure because you never get to see how God might have pulled you up and pushed you forward if you never step out of the boat.

Lord, help us not to read your Word to obtain more information. Transform us and renew our minds through Your word that we might be enabled and willing to obey and do what it says. Amen.

God and the Next Breath

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“Lord, I come to you with empty hands. If all I have today is You and the next breath, that will be enough.”

A friend taught me that prayer a long time ago, and I was reminded of it today seeing it in my Facebook memories. I think that prayer of gratitude and dependence is the perfect antidote to this culture of pervasive entitlement and greed.

Really, all I bring to God is a pair of empty hands. I bring nothing. Anything in me or from me that’s any good at all was first a gift from God to me. All that I have that wasn’t given to me by God is God Himself, and even that is a gift.

If all I have in the next 24 hours is God and nothing else but the next breath, that’s enough. If I have all the riches in the world and all the knowledge in the world and not God, I have nothing. I seem to recall a Bible verse about gaining the whole world and losing your soul in the process being futile.

Basically, every moment from here to eternity is a gift. I didn’t earn the next breath. I don’t deserve the next breath. God’s grace is what sustains me and keeps me going.

I think if I lived like I believed that, there’d be a lot less anxiety and a lot more adoration. There’d be a lot less worry and a lot more worship. There’d be a lot less talk about the weather and sports and politics and more of me sharing the goodness of God out of the overflow of a heart made full by gratitude.

Lord, I really do come to You with empty hands. If all I get from You today is You and the next breath, that’s enough. I’m good. In fact, I’m more than good. I’m blessed. Amen.

For I Am Convinced . . .

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“I’m absolutely convinced that nothing—nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable—absolutely nothing can get between us and God’s love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us” (Romans 8:38-39, The Message).

I think if all of us could memorize one Scripture passage, Romans 8:38-39 would be a good one. If you’re feeling brave, you could tackle Romans 8:31-39. It’s a majestic collection of verses that comforts those who belong to Jesus through the best and worst of times.

I really believe that if we truly understood and embraced that nothing in all the world can separate us from Christ’s love, we’d be different people. We would live and speak and work and play and exist in a different way. We’d be much bolder in our witness. We’d be less fearful in our risk-taking. We’d be more obedient more quickly to whatever God asks of us. There would be no question as to where our allegiance lies and whom we serve. It would be crystal clear.

Then why don’t we live as though we believe it? Maybe because we don’t really pay attention to it anymore. We’ve let CNN and Fox News and TikTok and Facebook tells us what to believe rather than going back to those precious promises found in God’s Word. We let the world around us teach us theology rather than see the world through the theological lens of Scripture.

I believe that if what you practice and what you preach don’t line up, eventually you will end up not living what you believe but instead believing what you live (with all credit to Cardinal Fulton J. Sheen). If you have unconfessed sin and unbaptized desires, you will end up building your theology around your sin and embracing teaching that justifies your lifestyle rather than holding a mirror up to it (and Jackie Hill Perry said it so much better than I just did).

Let the truth of God’s love sink in and let it overwhelm and transform you. As another famous passage in Romans says, don’t be conformed to the world’s way of thinking and living any longer but be transformed by letting God’s Word renew your mind. Then you can live out this passage to the fullest.

Wise Words from Rich Mullins

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Rich Mullins would have turned 70 today. Instead, we remember him and celebrate his legacy 28 years after his untimely passing in 1997. I sometimes wonder how much more great music he could have produced had he lived longer, but I’m thankful for the catalog of great albums and songs he left behind. Songs like Awesome God and Sometimes by Step are still sung in churches and youth groups and retreats all over the world.

I ran across something Rich wrote that was an interesting take on happiness. He definitely marched to the beat of his own drummer and didn’t conform to anyone else’s idea of normal, but I suppose that is what makes his music so memorable and lasting. Here’s what he wrote:

“1. Forget about finding happiness. Happiness is not worthy of your search.

2. Bake a cake – a really rich cake, preferably from scratch and especially if you are an inexperienced baker or a tested, tried, & notoriously awful cook. The value is in the baking more than in the cake.

3. Call up some enemy of yours and invite that enemy to eat the cake with you. If the cake is good you may lose an enemy and gain a friend. If the cake is bad, at least vengeance is sweet.

4. If you can’t think of a single enemy, then call up a friend. Invite your friend over to eat the cake with you. If the cake is good the favor may be returned. If the cake is awful your friend may go buy one from a bakery for you. If you are without any enemies or friends, take your cake to an old folks’ home. Eat it with them! If the cake is good you will no longer be without friends. If the cake is terrible you will no longer be without enemies.

Finding a friend, making an enemy – now those are things worth pursuing. Happiness may come tagged on – but even if it doesn’t, at least you will have done something and established some relationships.

5. Memorize Isaiah 40 or the first Psalm or Psalm 91. Read the closing chapters of the Book of Job. Meditate on the Beatitudes (Matthew 5). Write out one of the Prison Epistles (Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Collosians) and send them to some other unhappy person.

All of this may not make you happy but it will tell you how to be holy. Once you tie that knot you may find yourself in a position to be made happy.

6. Work hard. Clean something. Find new and more space-efficient ways of folding your clothes. Rake someone else’s yard for them. If you are unhappy maybe you can help someone else be less so.

7. Go back to the third chapter of Lamentations and then repeat after me:

“It is good to wait quietly
for the salvation of the Lord.
It is good for a man to bear
The yoke while he is young.
Let him sit alone in silence
For the Lord has laid it on him.”

8. Reread the 23rd Psalm and remember that if the Lord is your shepherd, then you are in a lush pasture. You are by a still stream. If it seems otherwise to you, it may be because you would rather be happy than be God’s. If this is so, then you have more reason to be happy than anyone. God has chosen you – ungrateful, decadent you – and being His is a joy and a happiness that goes beyond anything else you may seek, and in your folly settle for. God will (in His mercy) make you discontent with anything less than Him.

So we have only one step left…

9. Rejoice.”

Showing the Way Out

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When your brain is french toast, sometimes it’s good to let someone else take over. In this case, it’s Uncle Mikey, a reference that us old Kairos faithful will understand while the rest of the world calls him Dr. Mike Glenn:

“I’ve long joked that sympathy is overrated. When things are going bad for me, I really don’t want someone to tell me they know how I feel. I want someone to come and say, “Yes, I know how you feel and I know the way out.”

I think we forget how completely sin messes up our lives. Sin not only messes up our lives, it messes up the way our minds and bodies work. Ever talked to people trying to justify their addiction? In their minds, they’re making complete sense. That’s what happens. Sin destroys relationships, bodies, minds, and souls.

That’s why telling someone what they’re doing is wrong without offering to help them get out of it is, well, pretty much a waste of time. You may feel better, but the person you’re talking to won’t. What’s more, they’ll probably just get mad and walk away, more committed to their destructive choices.

Jesus shows us another way. First, Jesus never confronted anybody without giving that person a way out. The religious leaders of the day, Jesus pointed out, were quick to make a lot of rules but never helped anyone keep them. Jesus would always point the person to the way out of bondage.

Second, Jesus walked with sinners as they found their way. The scandal of the incarnation is that God loves us so much that He came into our world. He walked into our lives and told us if we’d follow Him, He’d show us the way home.

Whenever I talk about abortion, I always mention our partnership with Hope Clinic, a crisis pregnancy center in Nashville. I always want people to know there are people eager and ready to help, no matter what situation they’re facing.

Since the beginning of time, God has been on a Divine rescue mission. We, the local church, are extensions of that work. Finding the lost is great, but telling them the way home—and then walking it with them—is even better” (Dr. Mike Glenn).