You don’t have any baggage. What you have is a testimony. When Jesus looks at your past, he doesn’t see a pile of heavy baggage. What He sees are signs of a life lived as a recipient of His eternal mercy and love. The moment He comes into our hearts, He transforms our baggage into testimonies. He then points to our past and says, “This is what my love can do. This is Who I am. I transform orphans into sons and daughters.”
Church, we are more than we have been told. We are more than brick and mortar, more than saccharine lyrics to re-run melodies. We are more than religious self-help, whose greatest hope is to survive. We are more than dreamers in pursuit of dreams that are bound to our small imaginations. We are more than an institution that has lost its relevancy and is struggling to rebuild its tower of Babel.
We are the Bride of Christ. Loved beyond measure, with no borders to His patience, forgiveness, and grace. We are never beyond repair. Never out of the reach of His transformation.
I believe the Church in America is being romanced by Jesus. We are being redefined as His Bride, and only His Bride. We are being ravished by Him – called by name.
This spoken word poem/skit reminds me of who I am as a friend of God. I hope it does the same for you.
Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man. We say that people are proud of being rich, or clever, or good-looking, but they are not. They are proud of being richer, or cleverer, or better-looking than others. If everyone else became equally rich, or clever, or good-looking there would be nothing to be proud about. It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest.
This quote is from C.S. Lewis in his great book Mere Christianity. You can read more of this chapter here.
With the Christmas shopping season in full swing now, this is a potent reminder to find our deepest satisfaction in Jesus. He is both The Great Gift Giver, and The Great Gift. He is all that we need, all that we could ask for.
Materialism, which is nothing more than competition rooted in Pride, is swarming like a plague in our culture and it is never more ravenous than this time of year. We are bombarded with attempts to compell us to compare ourselves to our neighbor, our friends, even imaginary strangers.
Bigger, faster, stronger. Richer. Smarter. More fashionable. In-the-know and in-the-now.
The antidote to this corrosive sickness, I believe, is not more restraint at the cash register. The answer is to stir up gratitude and joy in The Great Gift, Jesus Himself. To wonder like children at the miracle of His incarnation: the majesty of His divinity joined with the meekness of humanity.
Jesus, make me wide-eyed and amazed at the wonder of You. So much so that all the shining and shimmering glitter of this world cannot distract my gaze.
A great, and encouraging, song from one of my new favorite bands “Gungor”. You can check them out here.
I keep finding myself carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders, repeating “Work harder, just make it happen” like some kind of mantra of self-motivation and pride. I appreciate this song not only for its musical qualities, but also for the gentle and sincere reminder that all of us need strength that is beyond what humanity can give.
It’s a fool that rushes in, tilting at windmills, when divine help is available to him. God help me not to be that fool.
I have lately been fascinated with the life of Abraham. This is in some ways a pragmatic fascination because I have been faced with some major decisions in my life. I have had to make decisions that force me to strike out on my own into foreign territory, leaving the familiar behind. At the same time, I’ve been pastoring other people through similar adventures in their own lives.
Abraham is a fascinating character. He is remembered in the New Testament as a bastion of faith. Certainly this is true of him, but when you study his story you find that there were several moments where he lost faith. In matter of fact, he completely failed. Twice he lied about his wife saying that she was his sister. This lie resulted on one occasion with his wife being brought into the harem of Pharoah. The same would have happened with Abimelech had God not revealed to him that Sarah was in fact married to Abraham.
Despite the obvious failure of these events, God bailed Abraham out each time. Not only that, but Abraham walked away blessed.
The reason is simple. God had made a covenant with Abraham and He meant to keep it. Even if Abraham made attempts to derail his own destiny, his destiny was in God’s hands.
God not only owns the promise, but He also owns the timing and the manner of its fulfillment.
This is a clear picture of grace. God has made a covenant with me, and He holds my destiny in His hands. Despite my impatience, I wouldn’t have it any other way.
As disturbed as I am with materialism this season, this article from Jared C. Wilson is a valuable and balanced perspective. It’s a good reminder to me not to be dogmatic.
Nothing taken for granted; everything received with gratitude; everything passed on with grace. You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink. I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.
I’ve been reading G.K. Chesterton recently, and this quote from him sums up the essence of thankfulness pretty well. Gratitude is worship, perhaps the highest form of worship we have. In that way, all of life can become an act of worship and a song of praise to the One who made it all, and gave all for us.
