You're Not Just Holy Pipe

When God gives you something good, do you have to make sure that you understand it’s not for you but for someone else? Are those the strings He attaches? Does God's grace need to be managed more than enjoyed?  The good people at Surrendered Image have just published my article.

To read or watch it, click: http://surrenderedimage.com/…/youre-not-just-holy-pipe-34984.

God's Grand Setup of Love On Father's Day

On Father's Day, a lot of legalistic-based condemnation will be exposed when sons and daughters praise us dads. Oftentimes we don't give highest value to the beauty of the love we've shared as THE MOST IMPORTANT THING, but rather to the things we should have done but didn't. And that hurts us. Fathers are set up to love and to be loved in return, and praising us today because of love shared will be a terrific assist in reminding us of God's Grand Setup of Love.

A Heavenly Progress Report

My brother, my sister, you will likely have years of accidentally practicing the pretended non-presence of Jesus in you, looking for Him “out there” instead of “in here.”  It will probably take time and teaching and reading and praying and events and people and losses and benefits and crying and rejoicing and catastrophes-turned-triumphs in truly finding and regularly enjoying “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27).  It might not be overnight that you fully accept and grow accustomed to the fact that you are the earthly mansion of The King, that He knows and cares for every room and every corner, but it will happen.  In His mansion—in you—He is the manager, He is the janitor, He is the inside gardener, He is the plumber (He moves you!), He is the maid, He is the brains, He is the builder, and He is the King.  He is there, He is here, and you will know Him and how He is.  After all, you are His workmanship—even if His pace seems slow.  You are on His timetable.  Heavenly progress reports are more about Him than about you. 

Colossians 1:27 To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.  28 He is the one we proclaim, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone fully mature in Christ. 29 To this end I strenuously contend with all the energy Christ so powerfully works in me.

(This is a transcript of yesterday's video, "A Heavenly Progress Report," and is for those who might rather read than watch. To see the video, click http://youtu.be/GWgoxYGpPJQ, or simply scroll down this page.)

A Heavenly Progress Report

Got 3 minutes?  God is active and capable with you, so you can relax. Confidence?  Hope?  Knowing who and how He is with you will produce plenty.

Navigating Forward

While we want to respectfully pay attention to what people say about us, we must not let their opinion truly identify us. It will nearly always be less than who and what we truly are, which is found with Jesus and His opinion. He knows exactly who and what you are, since He regards you by what He did through the cross and resurrection. Remembering what He thinks—accepting and enjoying it—will help you navigate the day and those who think less.

A Great Resource

Sarah and I thoroughly enjoyed watching our friend, Andrew Farley, speaking to the church he pastors at Lubbock, Texas, this morning. He is a fantastic speaker and a terrific man, which makes live streaming so good. Fortunately, all of his messages are recorded in both video and audio formats, so you can get to them at any time you like.

Here’s the link: http://www.churchwithoutreligion.com.

Recognizing the Perfect Work of God

What People Need to Hear on Sunday Morning

You’ve got enough confusion, so how can we help each other to avoid it and to receive the truth that God intends should build us up?  Click the link below to read on—or watch—to find out.

http://surrenderedimage.com/Blog/recognizing-the-perfect-work-of-god-34936

The Thing I Do

I have a habit of viewing God’s relationship with me (and, therefore, mine with Him) through the lens of the cross and resurrection of Christ. Both events included me. I was crucified with Christ (Romans 6:1-7 and Galatians 2:20) and the life I live—the thing I do—is to believe what He says of me. From the fact of my crucifixion and resurrection in Christ (Ephesians 2:6-10), I offer myself, not to God “out there,” but to God now “in here”—inside of me. He made me a perfect place in which to live and from which to show Himself to the world. That was the plan—for Him in me. (See Romans 6:11-14.) I don’t first offer to do stuff for Him, I believe what He did for me and to me, and then offer to Him the “parts of my body.” In other words, I look for Him inside before I ever look for Him outside.

Sunday Evening Satire #1

I'm simply having fun with a 3.5 minute, "Sunday Evening Satire.” (Satire: the use of humor or exaggeration to expose and criticize a specific point or practice.) I hope you enjoy it, and DO NOT TAKE IT SERIOUSLY AT ALL. It's for fun. It's a joke. Okay?

A Perfect Connection

As ministers of reconciliation, we are not serving people only a perfect condition with God (as good as that is), we are also serving a perfect connection with Him. It's Him, remember? And He is Life! Life with personality. Life with feeling. Life with direction. Life with vision. Life that had no beginning and has no ending. Not just length of time life, but a new kind of life connected with Him. “I am the way, the truth and the life.”

Raise Your Hand

Would every holy and blameless Christian please raise your hand? If you’re reluctant, then the great conspirator has moved you away from the gospel of Christ concerning you, perhaps focusing you upon your life apart from Jesus, and you’re suffering from the pain of accusation. It’s a lie and it hurts. Move back to the gospel. Remember and recover. Through the crucifixion and resurrection, you have been made holy and blameless – even flawless.

Colossians 1: 21 Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. 22 But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish (flawless) and free from accusation – 23 if you continue in your faith, established and firm, and do not move from the hope held out in the gospel. This is the gospel that you heard and that has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven, and of which I, Paul, have become a servant. (Parenthesis mine.)

Raise your hand?

A Healthy View

Just in case you’ve become transfixed and trampled by the aches and pains of this world (as I sometimes am), here’s a vital verse from which to be renewed and transformed in the midst:

2 Corinthians 4:18 So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

This doesn't mean that we ignore the aches and pains of this world, but that we view them from who we are and where we are -- in Christ -- which “graces us” to live as sons and daughters of God, aliens in this world.

Be Careful How You Motivate

Be careful how you motivate. While there are those who point to Matthew 5 as a way of motivating each other to be salt and light in this world, remember: Jesus did not tell us to TRY to be salt and light in this world, He said that we ARE salt and light. In view of the New Covenant, telling people to TRY to be what Jesus thinks they already ARE might well imply that Jesus failed to actually make the change He intended to make, and that people need to become rather than to believe, to change rather than to embrace, to work rather than to rest. That is not Christian.

Through faith in Christ’s cross and resurrection, you have already been made holy (you’re not going to get holier), you have already been made righteous (you’re not going to get righteouser), you have already been made perfect with Him (you’re not going to get perfecter). You’ve been made clean and close, fit with Him forever, just as He intended. Before you go to heaven, there will be no last minute modifications, no bit of re-tooling or re-engineering, and no final scrubbing, because you’re fit for heaven now. You’re heaven ready.

And salt and light? You already preserve and display the handiwork of God, you already add invaluable flavor to a world in need of it, and you already are a beacon of God’s grace in an otherwise dark and frustrated world. He did it. The cross and the resurrection actually worked.
Believing that, and believing it again and again, will provide motivation enough. (For your kids, too.) You ARE salt. You ARE light.

Embrace who you are.

(This is a transcript of yesterday’s video, “Be Careful How You Motivate,” and is for those who might rather read than watch. To see this video—and there are more than 100 others on my YouTube channel—click http://youtu.be/u87Wg81OkGI, or just scroll down my blog page. Photo credit, Jesse Millan: https://www.flickr.com/photos/stopdown/.)

Be Careful How You Motivate

There’s a lot of junky, stress-producing motivation coming at you, stuff that frustrates and wears you out.  Take 2.5 minutes to find out what’s truly motivational because it’s accurate and deeply effective.

Love Covers

My favorite day to be on Facebook is Mother’s Day. Most of my friends are fairly gushing about their mothers and their appreciation and love for them. There are beautiful and sometimes ancient pictures of mothers and grandmothers, gorgeous family scenes and family stories, and I love these people. Like. Like. Like. Like. On and on I go, “liking” my way down my Facebook newsfeed, loving people with whom I have so much in common, I am reminded. Love does that.

I deeply enjoy the New Covenant letter of 1 Peter. And there’s this particular verse that comes late in the letter that I want to highlight. Leading up to that verse, Peter reminds the readers (including you and me) that, because of Jesus’ death and resurrection, they had been given everything God could give them for free. They all shared in an incredible glory, which means that we share in it, as well. “Grace and peace be yours in abundance,” Peter writes in chapter one. In other words, you all have everything with God because of Jesus, and you have peace with God also because of Jesus. You’ll never lose what you haven’t earned.

Peter then tells them that they had been given a rich inheritance already that could never be diminished, which was being kept for them by God Himself, even as they bashed around in trials and suffering. No matter what, they were secure because of God, The Security Expert. The Word Himself had re-created them of an imperishable, indestructible nature, the same as their Father’s—for always.

Peter continues by writing about their personal significance, their glory shared with God in that they were by design God’s chosen people, royal priests, and together a holy, set-apart nation so that, united with Him, they may proclaim the goodness and greatness of God. Can you imagine the joy they must have had at the reading? He then cautions them about ugly and confusing desires they might experience, which, while having nothing to do with their security and purpose, might hinder and harm their experience. “Watch out for those, don’t let them get you,” he warned.

Peter then wisely counsels them about suffering, which they were evidently experiencing to a higher degree than most, telling them that, while remaining aware of God with and in them, they were to endure it with God, just as Jesus had. Peter elevates their expectation as to what might happen with God in the ugliness of their days: “Think of what He might do with you and in you, right where you are.” He then sets some light guidelines for wives and husbands, as well as for those who might suffer for doing good. The saving grace of all relationships is to keep in their hearts and minds the knowledge that Jesus is their perfect benefactor—their Lord—in everything. He will see to it that they have everything they need for life and godliness. That’s how He is in relationships.

Further, Peter tells them that he understands that they will all suffer abuse from friends and maybe even family, who, because they did not understand the change Jesus’ had made in these believers, strongly denounce and ridicule them for their lifestyle changes and beliefs. “Why aren’t you at our wild parties?” These believers, changed by God, had suffered enough with sin in the past, and now enjoyed being free of it. They were no longer slaves to sin. Of course, not everyone was going to appreciate that. Right?

And finally, Peter writes this little, exalted and magnificent sentence: “Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins” (1 Peter 4:8).

My goodness. In this day when, in my view, we are calling out and seemingly bent upon exposing fellow-Christians for their sins, thinking we must confront them or they’ll get away with it, Peter commands that we truly love first, which covers them over. Wow. He’s not alone in this, either. Paul said as much in Ephesians 5, and elaborated upon it in his first letter to the Corinthians by saying that love keeps no record of wrongs, and that love protects by covering each other. It doesn’t mean that you just cover something over (a wrong or a sin) or that you keep no record; it means that authentic love from God does that. God’s love does that for you. God’s love isn’t looking to expose your sin; instead He covers it. (See 1Corinthians 13:4-8.) In other words, in the security and Love that you know from God, love deeply and be safe places for each other. That will be effective for each other. You all have so much in common, including security from God and suffering in this world, so walk together in love.

(This doesn’t mean that a habitual abuser of people, for example, is to be tolerated and enabled; people need to get away from that person and deal with him. Paul wrote about such things in 1 Corinthians 5 and 1 Timothy 1.)

In the light of all that has happened to you through Christ, in the light of who you are in this world (royal priests!), and in the light of all of the pressures coming against you in this world, “Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.” Just like love covers on Mother’s Day, when just about all we write and talk about is love.

That’s what was pictured for me on Mother’s Day, when just about all we wrote and talked about was love. It was beautiful, because love covers.

(This is a transcript of yesterday's video, “Love Covers,” and is for those who might rather read than watch. To see the video, click http://youtu.be/bWBi_RYYsuk, or scroll down this blog page. Theme pic © Nicki Varkevisser https://www.flickr.com/people/clickflashphotos/)