2013

The last day of 2013.

A year where I fought to make myself clean.
All the while, Jesus was there holding a sign saying "Lean on ME"


He whispered, "I am your stronghold"
I thought I could do it on my own though.


He screamed, "I PAID IT FOR YOU!"
As I thought it was all about what more I could do.


When I fell, He pulled me up with his mighty hand.
But there was no feeling of redemption for this man.


Until one day He opened my eyes.


The things I once held onto just could't suffice!
The things that once held me captive were finally thrown into the light.


Now I know what I'm up against.


Sin can only entertain for awhile.


That's why when the ball drops this eve, I'm not going to be able to help but smile.

Because this year, time and time again, my God came to the rescue.
Better than any emergency number you could dial.

With God's power and sovereignty, there is no fear.

So go ahead.
Start the countdown.

His promises are good.



Bring on the New Year.















image: wantickets.com

Bitter Grounds

One step forward.

Two steps back.

Communication is what we lack.

Not conformity, not a new tolerance.

Not some hipster or business executive stance.

The cultural song may sing “be different; embrace who you are”

But when the band starts to play, the music is replaced with argument.

We follow the cultural choreography.

We bend and sway under accusations of intolerance and then for the appearance of being “tolerant” or “loving towards differences”, we slow dance with the mainstream belief.

But what does it mean to love someone, really?

Do we continue to pat them on the back while they head down the road to eternal separation with the Eternal Light?

AKA- Hell.

Or do we love people enough that we TEACH Christ-followers how to engage culture in such a way where we are saving people instead of just commenting on their Facebook page?

You can Instagram your Bible verse and a coffee mug in that perfect position,

Or you could position that Bible and that coffee in the middle of a conversation with a lost soul.

And let the coffee be the only thing that’s bitter between you.

Love people.

But Love them enough to correct them when they stray.

White Knuckles & Blinders

Physical fitness has exploded in the interest of our culture today. People are running more 5K’s then they can make up silly names for and people are becoming more concerned with physical health.

I think that one of the main ideas that makes athletic training appealing is the idea that your performance and progress often depends on your own motivation and drive to change and transform your body.

“Get off the couch and do something!”

“You can do it!”

[Enter inspirational athlete quote here]

The point is that physical fitness, by placing such an emphasis on our motivation and drive, gives us a sense of control in regards to whether we progress or not.

And we like that.

“Therefore since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely and let us run the race with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God” - Hebrews 12:1-2

This verse identifies with Turkey Trotter’s and Ironman’s alike because races and endurance are something they use and train for.

But there is a serious disconnect from our version of running a race and the race that is mentioned here and it stems from our own perception athletic training and what the focus is.

“Rise and GRIND”

Our version of running a race includes a lot of things.

The first step is to get up, dust off your Nike’s and be ready to commit to whatever new fitness craze you Googled or your best friend pinned on Pinterest, go out and get some healthy food and, for the men especially, go and get one of those obnoxious bottles of protein supplements.

You’re ready to change YOU.

This includes a lot of work.

White Knuckles

Our view of training for a race translates into our spiritual lives by letting us tell ourselves that we can “white-knuckle” or manhandle our way to salvation and holiness.

We misuse this verse’s meaning to motivate, by using the motivation it brings to somehow train harder, as if that how we run the race.

The verse isn’t:

           

“Therefore let us run the race with exhaustion and guilt, only using practical methods and neglecting our savior because we got this!”

Am I saying that using practical steps to combat sin and having accountability is bad?

No.

Am I saying that believers need to lay back and let sin remain in their life?

No.

What I am saying is that practical steps only go so far.

A website filter isn’t going to save you.

The friends you tell your struggles to cannot offer salvation.

A rehab meeting isn’t going to justify you before God.

The Holy Spirit has to come into you heart, and completely WRECK SHOP.

Jesus Christ is the only source of power and redemption and if you are walking with all of the practical steps, your Nike’s laced up, and you try on your own power to change yourself, you’re rejecting the Gospel and you will run yourself to exhaustion.

It starts with the HEART.

Blinders

“Run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to JESUS, the founder and perfecter of our faith…”

It’s not about the training. It never was.

It’s not about our work. It never was meant to be.

If we run our spiritual race with our heads down and our blinders on, then we are exhausting ourselves in vain because with Jesus, its like we started the race at the finish line.

The point isn’t to “run hard and do more”.

To think so is to devalue God’s sovereign plan of sending his son, Jesus, by not fully acknowledging what his sacrifice on the cross really meant.

This is why so many people are spiritually stuck. They are so focused on having the "right Nike’s" and drinking enough "Gatorade" that they don’t realize that if they would just pursue the finish line, they would actually run the race.

Photo cred. - http://clouddragon.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/

Rubbing the Lamp

Psalm 37:4

“Delight yourself in the

            Lord,

                        and he will give you the desires of your heart.”

This verse is a tricky one, possibly hard to grasp for some and is a dangerous one to quote undoubtedly.

But what does this verse really mean?

Does delighting in the Lord make all my dreams come true?

Is this another one of those “magic eight-ball-rub-the-lamp- three wishes” verse?

Let’s take a look.

“Delight yourself in the Lord…”

First let’s look at what the word delight actually means:

“ a strong feeling of happiness”

“a high degree of gratification”

“a great pleasure or satisfaction”

-Webster dictionary

To take delight in the Lord means to hold Him in the highest regard; to be satisfied with his presence and ways about your life even when it seems his hands are removed from your circumstances or they are quite obviously holding your world together.

Having this attitude and taking true delight in the Lord takes a large amount of faith.

It is sometimes hard because it often removes things from out lives that we very much enjoy even if that thing isn’t necessarily sinful.

 When we abandon something out of delight for the Lord, we are putting faith in Him that His reward is going to be worth it. Sometimes though, our abandonment doesn’t have immediate, visible, or tangible reward.

This lack of “reward” can sometimes lead to bitterness towards God.

This feeling is stems from the fact that we are psychologically conditioned to receive a reward by the circumstances in our life in which God has provided immediate joy in following Him, basically a spiritual “high”.

It is when the reward or the “high” doesn’t happen that we become uncomfortable and untrusting.

Continued prayer and continued delight in the light, whether your prayer is answered or not is what produces genuine faith.

Throughout this process of chasing after the Lord, if your motivation isn’t clearly set, you will burn out.

If you are delighting in the Lord only to get what YOUR heart desires, I am afraid you are missing the point altogether.

Last time I checked, my God didn’t fit into a genie lamp

Our motivation after the Lord should reflect the way that he loves us:

Unconditionally.

When you delight in the Lord with emphasis on the reward in the background, you are using the thought of delighting in the Lord to somehow hope to gain what you want.

Ummm… so what about that thing I desire? What do I do to get that?

If you are delighted in the Lord, then by definition you should be satisfied with the Lord.

When we encounter the Gospel, a heart change takes place.

            “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.

                        The old has passed away; behold the new has come” 2 Corinthians 5:17 (ESV)

With this heart change, our motivations and desires change because, if our heart belongs to him, in our delight, our heart should burn with desire for him to have his way with us and give us more of him!

We get the desires of our heart when we delight in the Lord because the Lord IS our heart’s desire!

What this verse is NOT:

-       A hope that we can gain our fleshly desires

“For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on things of the flesh,

            but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on things of the spirit” Romans 8:5

-       It’s not “try and be good and you get what you want”

-       It’s not “want me because I can get you cool stuff”

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways declares the Lord.

     For as the Heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” Isaiah 55:9-8

Praise God that I don’t get what my fleshly heart desires.

 As much as you could want something, eventually you would end up with a life full of stuff you would regret.

With Christ, there is joy and satisfaction in delighting in him.

There may not be much up front; in fact it will probably become more difficult at times…

But delighting in the Lord means that we are constantly delighting in the fact that we aren’t living for reward on this earth;

He’s coming back.

Hollister-Lumberjack

This week I gathered with a group of 3 other guys that I went to camp with prior to coming to Texas A&M. We have been meeting weekly and going through the book Manhood Restored: How the Gospel Makes Men Whole by Eric Mason.

First off, if any of you guys out there are looking for a good book to read or introduce into your small group, this is the one.

In the third chapter, “The restorer of manhood”(page45), Mason says

            “All of us men are only as manly as it relates to the standard set by Jesus”

Ok, read that again.

I busted out my highlighter and went to town on that sentence right then and there.

I’m not about to blow your mind and back it up with a ton of cherry-picked verses but I just want to encourage the guys out there:

Jesus was the ultimate man; the standard of what manhood should be.

Jesus was a loving and caring man who never sinned, he cried, he made a huge decision in the Gethsemane before his murder, he was around women and never lusted, he was around money but never coveted, he set the perfect standard for everything we could never do.

Then he died for us because of that very reason.

Jesus wasn’t some ripped, log-chopping, steroid-infused, lumberjack/Hollister model with a sick hairstyle and tons of money to throw at all the women that came his way while shredding on his electric guitar.**

**I am not even sure the scenario described above would actually be cool…

He came.

He lived.

He did it perfectly.

You may be thinking, “Sweet, as a Christian, I am supposed to be like a man than I can never fully be like? That’s a little depressing.”

The answer is “Yes, you’re already there, but you’re not even close but you will be. How? Oh, you can’t do anything about that really, so just wait.”

What…

The whole idea revolves around a phrase that Mason brings up (also the name of a very good album by Mars Hill’s band Citizens)

“Already, but not yet”

Now you may not be a big paradox person and it’s ok, because neither am I.

 Let me try my best to explain this to you:

Jesus died for our sins. Therefore we have been justified. (Ephesians 2:4-6)

But clearly, we still sin. (Romans 7:19)

BUT Jesus is coming back to make all things new (Revelation 21:5)

So this leaves us in the middle ground.

With the truth of Jesus’ death and resurrection, and promise of him coming back to restore creation and make all things new, we are without condemnation (Romans 8:1) our souls should cry out:

“We rejoice in the hope of the glory of God!”

-Romans 5:2

(Check out “Made Alive” by Citizens)

We already made holy by Christ’s death, and the Holy Spirit is making us more holy until Jesus comes to finish what he started.

“Already, but not yet”

How awesome that day will be!

“All of us men are only as manly as it relates to the standard set by Jesus”

You can either take this two ways.

1)   “Well I am never going to be perfect so life sucks and I will never be good enough. I am tired of trying to be perfect for Jesus so I can be a Christian”

or

2)   “Thank you, Jesus, for being a perfect man and for dying for me because I am not and will never be. Thank you for the cross. Thank you for grace. Thank you for who you are and for the beautiful plan of redemption you have created and will carry out.”

Which one do you find yourself thinking or even saying out loud?

Our hearts should be screaming the 2^nd one.