make peace

Your experience is not about what is right in front of you. There is always purpose and it’s always something more eternal. Resisting only increases your discomfort, but it does not stop the process. Face the happenings of life with faith that God is not only in control, but He is also good. Faith gives you hope. Lack of faith steals your hope and leaves you feeling like a victim. Victims have a faith problem.

If you fall to pieces in a crisis, there wasn’t much to you in the first place. -Proverbs 24:10

Buildings built on faulty foundations eventually come down. Poorly organized spaces have to be redone. If you want it to be better, then it will have to get worse. Everything is ripped up and pulled out into the open. With everything displaced, you can see things clearly. If you feel displaced, ripped up and pulled out, don’t be afraid. This isn’t for your end, this is for your new beginning.

Go up through her vine rows and destroy, but make not a full end. Strip away her branches, for they are not the LORD’s. -Jeremiah 5:10 ESV

Raw places and phantom pains. It’s okay to cry. Trust that the hand that prunes can be gentle, too. A shivering twig with so far to go, now knows nothing except Who’s in control. Now you know how little you knew when you thought you knew so much. Resting in dependence, lost without Him, what if something attacks you now? What if someone kicks you while you’re down? The One who keeps vigil hushes your trembles. He sings the song of the Keeper over new branches growing while you rest.

“I, the LORD, am its keeper. Every moment I water it. Lest anyone punish it, I keep it night and day. I have no wrath. Would that I had thorns and briers to battle! I would march against them, I would burn them up together. Or let them lay hold of my protection, let them make peace with me, let them make peace with me.” -Isaiah 27:3-5 ESV

He’ll meet your attackers at the door. Armed with fire to burn them where they stand, yet overcome with compassion if they’re open to make peace.

Yes, let them make peace.

keeping it simple

You have to think about what you believe, look at the way you express that and see if they line up. There is always a beginning of simplicity, but it’s so decorated with fancy speech, smart suits and flashy teeth that it becomes something else. Separate the affects from the requirement. Keep it simple-faith and practice-otherwise faith becomes ‘the result of practice’ and practice becomes criteria.

You know this has happened to you, this mix up, if you are telling someone that they have to ‘do‘ something to increase their faith. You know that you have stepped on the sidelines if you have perceivable standard for a believer.

When a person eats food, they must, somehow, put the food in their mouth, chew it up and  swallow it. As a result, the body takes the food, breaks it down, uses what it needs and gets rid of the rest. The only requirement for the person to receive the nutrients is to get the food in their body. If they get that one thing right, the other things require no discussion. They are all a given.

If the criteria is to get the food in your body, then the way you get it in your body is not a requirement. Your body breaks down food on its own. It’s an effect that is completely involuntary by the host. Discussing the requirement of that process as though the host had something to do with it is a waste of time.

We can discuss the methods of chewing and divide ourselves on the proper ways to chew and how many times to chew before we swallow. We can form groups of people who agree that the saliva begins the digestion process. We can even assume that those with the most saliva may have an edge on this whole process so we find ways to increase our saliva.

There are so many ways to separate ourselves over the process and so many levels of understanding that can polarize. Those who know that saliva starts the process feel smarter than those who think stomach acid starts the process.

Arguments about spit and bile. Crossed arms, furrowed brows, split families and polarized towns over a system no person can control.

This is what our ‘churches’ have become. Split apart, segregated, segmented, divided, opposed, offended, polarized and full of pride.

The requirement is belief. Some will say that you must ‘confess with your mouth’ and then ‘believe’ (Rom10:9). People can have a conversation all day long about ‘confessing’ until it turns into an insurmountable argument, but it’s like saying a person must get the food in the body before it can be digested. It’s a given. Take away the requirement for ‘belief’ and you do not have the requirement for salvation.

In the same way, you can no more tell your digestive organs how to do their job than you can tell your spirit how to come alive. You are a ‘new creation’ by no doing of yourself. If you could manage that process you would not need belief and with no belief, you need no object of faith. With no object of faith, you do not need Jesus. Anything other than belief is absolutely moot because it’s either a given or an involuntary response.

moot: |moōt| adjective: subject to debate

If there is only one point that is not open for debate, then that should be the only thing we stand for. The only thing we’d risk our lives, social positions, family alliances, finances and credibility on: Jesus is the Son of God. He died for the sins (past, present, future: ALL) of every single person and if you believe that, it’s yours. Period.

1) When you stand for what you believe, what belief are you standing for?

I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. -1 Corinthians 2:2 ESV

No amount of wisdom in practice or maintenance will ever inspire faith. Going to church does not save you. Refraining from any activity will not earn you ‘eternal life.’ Reading your bible, feeding the hungry, being ‘joyful’, an ‘example’ or any other kinetic energy will not secure your ‘inheritance.’

God himself is right alongside to keep you steady and on track until things are all wrapped up by Jesus. … He will never give up on you. Never forget that. -1 Corinthians 1:8-9

If nothing else but ‘Christ and him crucified’ can save, then why would you stand for anything else? How do you stand up for the belief that Jesus ended sin as the end all? How do you stand up for your belief that Jesus is the son of God and He came, not to condemn, but to rescue (John3:17)?

When someone falls, do you doubt their salvation or do you thank God with them, over them, before them, after them, that Jesus paid for their failures? Do you stand up for your belief by refusing anything less than perfect effort and remarkable delivery? Or do you stand up for your belief by refusing sin as an end?

God stays beside us, keeping us on track. It’s not by what we do, it’s by Who is beside us. He never gives up on us. If you believe that, then show it.

2) How do you do that?

You don’t stand for what you believe by paying attention to yourself. That is the exact opposite of what you’re supposed to be doing. Stop trying to be something you think you should be and just do this:

So, chosen by God for this new life of love, dress in the wardrobe God picked out for you: compassion, kindness, humility, quiet strength, discipline. Be even-tempered, content with second place, quick to forgive an offense. Forgive as quickly and completely as the Master forgave you. And regardless of what else you put on, wear love. It’s your basic, all-purpose garment. Never be without it. -Colossians 3:12-14

Wear these things:

• compassion: tender mercy, tolerance and fellow feeling
• kindness: warm generosity, selfless concern for others
• humility: submissiveness, your importance is always second to all
• quiet strength: stamina that never lets others know the cost
• discipline: obedience and self control pertaining to these things

Do these things:

• even-tempered: easy going, laid back, not easily offended or quick to assert yourself
• content with second place
• quick to forgive

The way to stand for what you believe is to Love. Be disciplined in Love. Love is all you have to do. The criteria is found in 1 Corinthians 13. You cant’ escape the command to Love. Everything else you do is empty and lost without it. Resolve to do nothing else so that the rest can fall into place.

weighing down the truth with commands other than belief keep the drowning from the only thing that can save them. if they grab on to the Truth, the other ‘effects’ are involuntary responses.

thoughts on ‘pain’s purpose’

Today I’m over at Like a Warm Cup of Coffee talking about ‘Pain’s Purpose’. There are many ways we respond to pain and many ways that pain is introduced to our lives. Be it sickness, injury, or our own failure, pain has a purpose. It makes us weak and it makes us want to let go. It has a purpose because where you are weak, He is strong and where you want to let go, you now have free hands to grab on to Him.

I have an analogy: Pretend that someone gave you a bucket of marbles and told you to use all of them except one of the colors. You don’t know what colors are, they’re all marbles to you. So, you try some way to separate them out based on your guesses, ease of use and feelings. Marbles that don’t roll the way you want them to are rejected for that task and marbles that are not ‘pretty’ are rejected, too. The formula doesn’t work all the time because the colors don’t match up and every task is different. What didn’t work yesterday works today. We get used to the inconsistency and learn how to roll with ‘not knowing everything.’ But there are those times where nothing makes sense and you’re standing there with a mess of marbles and no clue what to do.

Life is like that. God tells us to die to our ’selves’. We have a task to do and we can’t use a particular color of ‘marble’. We don’t know exactly what that is. It’s all ‘life’ and separating spirit from flesh is confusing. Especially if we think spiritual well being feels good to the ‘flesh.’ So, we reject things that don’t roll smooth or look pretty. Sometimes we’ve got it figured out and sometimes what worked before doesn’t work now. Sometimes we see our pain/failure/inadequacy and wonder how to complete the task to get rid of the discomfort. It’s a mess and we need clearer answers. It would be easier if we were told what that color was or what our ’selves’ were so that we could take them out of the picture.

Then it clicks…

Our pain is God telling us what our ’self’ is. Does sickness hurt your spirit or your body? Does a broken leg hurt your spirit or your body? Have you ever sinned and saw the separation between your spiritual desire and your ’selfish’ desire? When someone dies, does it hurt your heart or your spirit? Pain is a tool. Paul was given a ‘thorn in his flesh’. There are many different interpretations as to what that was. I have a few of my own. But, the outcome is the same: His flesh was marked so that he never forgot where it was. When you forget where your flesh is, you get cocky, self-righteous and impatient with others. The ‘thorn’ was a handle, a grip. It was a blessing.

At first I didn’t think of it as a gift, and begged God to remove it. Three times I did that, and then he told me, ‘My grace is enough; it’s all you need. My strength comes into its own in your weakness.’ Once I heard that, I was glad to let it happen. I quit focusing on the handicap and began appreciating the gift. It was a case of Christ’s strength moving in on my weakness. Now I take limitations in stride, and with good cheer, these limitations that cut me down to size—abuse, accidents, opposition, bad breaks. I just let Christ take over! And so the weaker I get, the stronger I become. -2 Corinthians 12:8-10

Pain, sickness, death, failure are all things that show us the difference between flesh and spirit. It only serves as a tool to help you know what not to consider when completing your task. To die to your ’self’ as instructed. These things actually make it easier for someone to do just that.

Check out the original blog and join the conversation here. I’d love to hear your thoughts. (I’ve disabled comments here, so we can all communicate in one place.)

what are you saying?

This week I’ll be focusing on the answers to these questions. I want to get you to think and would love to hear some of those thoughts. How would you answer these questions?

• 1) When you stand for what you believe, what belief are you standing for?
• 2) How do you do that?
• 3) What responsibility is most important for a Christian?
• 4) Are you doing that?
• 5) How do you do that?
• 6) Is your answer to number three the same as your answer to number one?

what does your life say?are you saying what you want?what are you doing here?do you know who you are?do you know where you’re going?are you helping or hurting the message you claim to believe?how can today be different than yesterday?do you know what to do?are you waiting for change?what if that change was you?can you let go of your fear and move forward?what in the world are you doing here?think.move.

faith and death

Sometimes I get letters from people who want to bash their fellow Christians and think I’m game for a little stone slinging.

I am not here to give anyone the ammunition to return the condemnation. I offer evidence of an ocean of grace for the purpose of showing you the unlocked shackles and pointing you to the light under the door. We move in whispers and don’t waste time with small talk and tea, much less showers. This is gritty business.

It angers me to watch the newly free immediately capture a religious bully and shove them in the prison they’re barely out of.

Did they learn nothing during their stay? It’s not possible to receive grace and still want others to suffer. Faith in your own salvation and gift of grace is dead without working out that truth for others. What you give is only the overflow of what you’ve been given.

You can no more show me your works apart from your faith than I can show you my faith apart from my works. Faith and works, works and faith, fit together hand in glove. Do I hear you professing to believe in the one and only God, but then observe you complacently sitting back as if you had done something wonderful? That’s just great. Demons do that, but what good does it do them? Use your heads! Do you suppose for a minute that you can cut faith and works in two and not end up with a corpse on your hands? -James 2:18-20

‘Faith‘ is in Jesus as the savior. ‘Works’ is never denying that to anyone regardless of how they’ve hurt you. When you receive that gift, don’t sit around and start pointing your fingers at others who don’t get it because, then, you’ll be lost to it.

This is important: you are weighed on your own scales and then some. If it’s good, it’s better for you. If it’s bad, it’s worse for you.

“Pay attention to what you hear: with the measure you use, it will be measured to you, and still more will be added to you. For to the one who has, more will be given, and from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.” -Mark 4:24-25

If you have written off a fellow believer who does not understand grace the way you do or they’ve been rude or condemning toward you, then you have set one side of your scale on perfection and put him on the other. When it’s your turn, you’ll be weighed against perfection, too. You are choosing prison over freedom. You have to change what you’re measuring. You can’t remove ‘perfect’ and replace it with you, either. You remove them and put Jesus in their place. That way, when you get weighed, you get to have Jesus in your place, too.

one way

This post is third in a series of three.

You can read part one here and part two here. This post is built on top of those.

“Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” -John 1:29 ESV

Scripture is like a steering wheel. As soon as you veer to one side or the other, it will come in and set you straight. There are many scriptures which seem to contradict themselves and I believe that current ‘understanding’ gets in the way. Scripture supersedes doctrine. No one has it perfectly right, so be where you are, but know that there’s more.

Does Christ’s sacrifice cover every sin?

Yes. Jesus died once for all.

The thing that I haven’t quite figured out and probably never will is that it’s scripturally clear that you cannot come to God unless he calls you, those He calls eventually come running. Then, I read scriptures like this:

He wants not only us but everyone saved, you know, everyone to get to know the truth we’ve learned: that there’s one God and only one, and one Priest-Mediator between God and us—Jesus, who offered himself in exchange for everyone held captive by sin, to set them all free. -1 Timothy 2:4-5

I’m a thinker and I want to know the Truth. I don’t believe that scripture contradicts itself, I believe that my understanding contradicts my understanding. I am flawed, not scripture.

‘He wants not only us, but everyone saved…everyone to get to know the Truth we’ve learned.’

…we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe. -1 Timothy 4:10

He is the Savior of all people. His sacrifice covers every sin. This tells me that what He did is sufficient for every sin, but those who believe will receive the effect. He wants everyone to know the truth. That knowledge keeps me from thinking about who may be ‘chosen’ and who may not be. That is no concern of mine when all I need to know is that God wants everyone to be saved and everyone to know the truth.

Is there more than one truth?

‘…there’s one God and only one, and one Priest-Mediator between God and us—Jesus, who offered himself in exchange for everyone held captive by sin, to set them all free.’

That is the Truth.

Theological elitism and discrimination is on a flimsy layer of ice wearing heavy shoes of pride. We are all connected by One Spirit and any person trying to illuminate divisions should be questioned about who they’re representing. We have separate parts and purposes, but one Source of Blood, one Heart and are led by one Mind.

God wants us all to be saved even though it’s clear that not all will be. It’s our responsibility to do our part to never give up on anyone. Represent God’s forgiving love and mercy to those who seem to be packing for an eternal vacation to Hell.

Repeat these basic essentials over and over to God’s people. Warn them before God against pious nitpicking, which chips away at the faith. It just wears everyone out. Concentrate on doing your best for God, work you won’t be ashamed of, laying out the truth plain and simple. Stay clear of pious talk that is only talk. Words are not mere words, you know. If they’re not backed by a godly life, they accumulate as poison in the soul. -2 Timothy 2:14-17

God’s purposes and plans do not need to be cleared by you. He was at it long before your ancestors could form a thought. He deals with each of us on an individual basis.

Every person is on their own journey. I’ve said this before and I’ll keep saying it: Until a person is dead, their story is not over.

Meanwhile, God’s firm foundation is as firm as ever, these sentences engraved on the stones: god knows who belongs to him. -2 Timothy 2:19

cast out, out cast

“This man received sinners but he repulses none. We come to Him in weakness and sin, with trembling faith and slender hope; but He does not cast us out. We come by prayer, and that prayer broken, with confession and that confession faulty, with praise, and that praise far short of His merits, but yet He receives us. We come diseased, polluted, worn out and worthless, but He doth, in no wise, cast us out. Let us come again, today, to Him who never casts us out.” -Charles Spurgeon

he called, they came

If you haven’t read the first post in this series, please do. This post is built on top of that one.

…he went up on the mountain and called to him those whom he desired, and they came to him. -Mark 3:13 ESV

If God has given you to Jesus, can you reject it?

No, you can’t reject it, ultimately. You can run, but you can’t hide. Think about how many people you’ve heard tell their stories about running from God and God messing with their circumstances enough to break them and cause them to give up the chase. We always find comfort when people say that God’s relentless love outlasted their rebellious flight. God never gave up on them. He’s the breath on the back of your neck letting you know He could do this all day. He has eternity and you’re running out of breath.

If God has given you to Jesus, can you reject it? Ask Paul.

He set off. When he got to the outskirts of Damascus, he was suddenly dazed by a blinding flash of light. As he fell to the ground, he heard a voice: “Saul, Saul, why are you out to get me?”

He said, “Who are you, Master?”

“I am Jesus, the One you’re hunting down. -Acts 9:3-6

Paul did not call Jesus, Jesus accosted him on his way to kill Christians. Jesus told Ananias to meet with him and when Ananias protested, ‘The Master’ said:

“Don’t argue. Go! I have picked him as my personal representative to non-Jews and kings and Jews. And now I’m about to show him what he’s in for—the hard suffering that goes with this job.” -Acts 9:15-16

He was chosen, his circumstances were messed with and now he’s the author of most of the New Testament.

Jesus has a more direct answer to that question:

Every person the Father gives me eventually comes running to me. And once that person is with me, I hold on and don’t let go. -John 6:37

Unless He doesn’t know what He’s talking about, you can run, but eventually you will come running to Him.

Is it possible to not believe something that you believe?

That’s a rhetorical question. I want to get sparks flying in your brain.

Hebrews 6, The Amplified version, calls the following ‘advanced teaching’ and I have to agree. I hope I do well in explaining this scripture. It’s one that is often used against Christians who sin. Such use is so debilitating that it’s very important to me that I explain it well so that it’s not used to condemn people, but to bring them hope.

Faith is a gift. You cannot ‘believe’ without faith. The gift is irrevocable. If the gift is irrevocable, then you can never lose it. It’s impossible.

Insight (enlightenment) is a gift, faith (living water to ‘taste’) is a gift and the Holy Spirit is a gift.

For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. -Romans 11:29

(I’m being redundant on purpose.)

Once people have seen the light, gotten a taste of heaven and been part of the work of the Holy Spirit, once they’ve personally experienced the sheer goodness of God’s Word and the powers breaking in on us—if then they turn their backs on it, washing their hands of the whole thing, well, they can’t start over as if nothing happened. That’s impossible. -Hebrews 6:4-6

You can’t ‘unbelieve’ something. It’s not even a word. You can’t go back in time and start from scratch as if nothing ever happened. It’s impossible.

Picture it like this: Jesus went through hell to bring you to him. He was humiliated and disgraced so that you didn’t have to be. If you enter that gate, walk down the path, then walk backward going through every step in reverse, you end up putting Him on the cross again. You can’t stand there at the beginning as though you didn’t know what lay ahead. You can mess up, you can fall, but you cannot ‘unbelieve’ what you believe.

I want somebody to ask about Judas…anybody…?

Judas was clearly given to Jesus by God, but he walked away. He sold Jesus out for thirty pieces of silver. The place where he died is called ‘The Field of Blood’ or ‘Murder Meadow’ (depending on translation).

The story of Judas sort of debunks what Jesus said about no one being able to be ’snatched out of His hand.’ That is, until you study the scriptures yourself.

God has a plan for everything and every one. He had one regarding the sacrifice of Jesus. Old Testament scriptures spell it out. Here is one of them:

Even my close friend in whom I trusted, who ate my bread, has lifted his heel against me. -Psalm 41:9 ESV

Jesus was praying in John 17 and tells God that He has not lost one person God has given Him. With one exception.

I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled. -John 17:12 ESV

God is not a liar and His word is final. Everything is orchestrated in such a way that glorifies Him and His word.

I know precisely whom I’ve selected, so as not to interfere with the fulfillment of this Scripture: ‘The one who ate bread at my table turned on his heel against me.’ I’m telling you all this ahead of time so that when it happens you will believe that I am who I say I am. -John 13:18-19

Jesus said, “The one to whom I give this crust of bread after I’ve dipped it.” Then he dipped the crust and gave it to Judas, son of Simon the Iscariot. As soon as the bread was in his hand, Satan entered him. “What you must do,” said Jesus, “do. Do it and get it over with.” -John 13:26-27

After everything was finished and Jesus had ascended, Peter referenced this when they were choosing Judas’s replacement:

Peter stood up in the company—there were about 120 of them in the room at the time—and said, “Friends, long ago the Holy Spirit spoke through David regarding Judas, who became the guide to those who arrested Jesus. That Scripture had to be fulfilled, and now has been. Judas was one of us and had his assigned place in this ministry. -Acts 1:15-17

Just for thoughts, when a person ‘walks away’, is it from what they believe or is it from their church or some other part of the culture? You can stop going to church, stop reading the Bible, stop doing a lot of things, but deep down, still know and believe the truth. Many a Sunday morning couch is warm with the bodies of disenchanted believers.

You can run from your call, but eventually, you’ll run home. If you don’t believe something that you believe, then you don’t believe it. Once you know the truth, everything around you looks much smaller and you no longer fit. Denying it is asinine and it’s only a matter of time.

who called whom

It’s so important for you to study the scripture for yourself. There are people within the Christian faith who claim to be leaders and masses of people listen to them. They regurgitate whatever they’re told to believe. How will you know if you’re being lied to or mislead of you don’t know the truth? No man is perfect and everyone will get it wrong in some form or another. What they get wrong maybe you can get right. Maybe you can take what you hear that is right and add it to your own scriptural insight to get a better panoramic view of God and His ‘Kingdom life.’

Scripture is controversial, but mostly in the religious culture. If you can’t believe the Bible, then what can you believe? Sometimes we have to choose to trust the scripture in spite of our doctrinal upbringing. That’s not an easy thing to do, but your ‘real life’ depends on it.

Is it true that some people will not ‘choose Christ’?

Yes, it’s true. The whole thing, at best, sounds irrelevant to them. There is nothing you can do to make people see a need for Jesus in their lives. Any attempt that you make ends up making you sound like a self-righteous butt. If they don’t see a need, you try to poke holes in their existence while comparing their lives to yours. It doesn’t take them long to not want anything to do with you because of your ‘Christianity’.

The only way you were able to ‘come’ was by answering a ‘call.’

‘No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.’ -John 6:44 ESV

If you made the decision to become a Christian because of a lifestyle change, the desire to be a ‘better person’, then your decision originated with yourself. It’s not a conversion it’s a modification. You can decorate every aspect of your lives with His name, work in His name and pray in His name, yet still not have a clue who He actually is. Worse, He doesn’t know who you are.

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven…-Matthew 7:21 ESV

How do you ‘choose Christ’?

You don’t. Nobody can come unless they are called. People can and do respond to the ’seed’ scattered by ‘the farmer’, but when the time passes, they will return to what they believe. (Matt13:18-23) The people who belong to Jesus leave a particular flavor to life that some are receptive to and some are oblivious to. Even reception is a gift from God. You are ’saved by faith’, faith is a gift and that gift is irrevocable.

“This is why I told you earlier that no one is capable of coming to me on his own. You get to me only as a gift from the Father.” -John 6:65

You didn’t choose me, remember; I chose you…-John 15:16

You know how it works. Not everybody has this gift, this insight; it hasn’t been given to them. -Matthew 13:11 ESV

…by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God. -Ephesians 2:8

..the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. -Romans 11:29 ESV

We respond to a call, we don’t initiate it. We are given faith, we can’t summons it. We are given insight, we can’t learn it.

But, can we say no if we’re called? Can we believe the truth but still walk away from it? That’s what I’ll write about tomorrow.

what do you believe?

This week I’ll be exploring some scriptures which seem to contradict themselves. It should be fun. Especially if we let scripture explain scripture instead of letting doctrine explain scripture. (Not that doctrine is bad, but I’m not a fan of believing what I’m told to believe if I’m getting something else from scripture.)

So, I need your help. Will you answer these questions out of your existing belief? We’ll explore them and compare them to what the Bible says. If you want to throw your own scriptural support in, that’s great. I’ll refer to them as I prepare the Bible study for this week.

• 1.) Is it true that some people will not ‘choose Christ’?
• 2.) How do you ‘choose Christ’?
• 3.) If God has ‘given you to Jesus’, can you reject it?
• 4.) Is it possible to not believe something that you believe? (If you believe that the grass is green, can you be convinced otherwise? etc…)
• 5.) Does Christ’s sacrifice cover every sin?
• 6.) Is there more than one Truth?
• 7.) Can you guess which fourth grader is me?
• April guessed it! (I’ll think of your prize later. )