Heavenly Father, we praise You today and every day for your great love and grace and mercy. Please lead us this week as we focus our minds and hearts on you. We desire to do your will, and to fulfill our calling to be salt and light to the world around us. Fill us, Holy Spirit, so that the character of the living God shines through us, allowing you to do a mighty work in and through our lives. We give our lives to you and pray that you use them for your glory. In Jesus’s name we pray, amen.
Paul, in his 2nd letter to the church in Corinth (11:1-4):
“I hope you will put up with me in a little foolishness. Yes, please put up with me! I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy. I promised you to one husband, to Christ, so that I might present you as a pure virgin to him.
But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ.
For if someone comes to you and preaches a Jesus other than the Jesus we preached, or if you receive a different spirit from the Spirit you received, or a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it easily enough.”
From the very beginning of the church the enemy did his level best to deceive God’s chosen. Beware of imitations! False teachings, false gods, false beliefs, false prophets, false miracles and false doctrine are all around.
Do not be fooled.
Know God’s Word so when wolves come in sheep’s clothing you can smell it a mile away. We must be discerning in these last days and refuse to settle for anything less than the pure truth of the Spirit of God that washes us clean and purifies and readies us for the day of our wedding feast with our Bridegroom.
Until then, God has so much in store for us!
Let us put the world behind and be about our Father’s business so that we will have no reason to be ashamed when He comes for us. What a glorious day that will be!
“Never stop learning.”
“Keep learning.”
“Don’t give up learning.”
I must have heard this admonition at least three or four times over the past couple of weeks. Heaven help us if we ever come to the place where we think we have it all figured out. Or that we’re too old or too young or too busy, or too anything to learn new things.
There is no where that is truer than in our walk with Christ on our journey through life.
God is always speaking, as long as we’re listening.
In Peter’s second letter to those living in faith in Christ, he writes:
“For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love.” 2 Peter 1:5-7
Faith is not a badge we put on at the moment of conversion as if the race were over and the rewards already given. Faith is the starting point. Then, with our faith in hand, we run the race.
Virtue
Live with high moral standards. That is a daily, conscious effort in this morally-declining world. Up is down, right is wrong and wrong is right. But we know where to go to cut to the chase and find the absolute truth, and that is always God’s Word.
Knowledge
God tells us in scripture that we are to grow in the knowledge of Christ, grow in the wisdom and knowledge that Christ gives, and, interestingly, that husbands are to live in an understanding (knowledgeable) way with their wives.
Self-control
The more we allow the Holy Spirit to rein in our hearts and lives, the more we will learn to restrain ourselves from the things of the world that create division from Him, and vice versa.
Steadfastness
This is a cheerful, patient endurance through all our trials, ever-increasing in hope that through it all our God is molding us into the image of His Son. We learn to wait – to wait for direction, to wait for discernment, to wait for rescue, to wait for healing, to wait on our God and know that He hears, He loves us, and His timing and ways are perfect.
Godliness
Simply, less of me and more of Him.
Brotherly affection
Daily we are to grow in our love for our brothers and sisters in Christ.
Love
This is agape, the highest form of love. It is the pinnacle of sacrificial, unconditional love that puts ourselves on the alter to serve another.
To grow in these godly qualities takes a willingness to be humble. It takes being able to admit when we’re wrong so we can repent and grow. It is taking regular stock of our hearts through scripture as the Sword “penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.” (Heb 4:12)
It takes walking out of the shadows into the bright and baring light of Christ and letting Him examine us, burning off those ungodly traits through the fire of trial, and knowing that those same flames burn with His love and grace and mercy and forgiveness.
Why? Why do we want to do these things instead of just coasting through life, knowing that we have salvation at the end of it? Peter tells us in the next verse:
“For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.” 2 Peter 1:8
I don’t know about you, but I want to be effective. I want my life to count for good. It was used for enough pain and sorrow before Christ graciously invaded my life. I want to learn and grow and trip and get back up and try again, trust more, pray more, yield more, love more.
In this one life I get, I want Christ to have His way in and through me. I want to learn the way of my Master and be prepared and unashamed when I meet Him face to face.
But it won’t come by osmosis.
So I take the faith handed to me by the Holy Spirit, and together we run…
Grace and Peace in Abundance,
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” 2 Corinthians 5:17
“Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God.” 1 Peter 2:16
Something isn’t a sin just because God says so. It’s a sin because it opposes the very nature and character of God. The more we allow the Spirit of God to live in and through us, the more we will exhibit His nature and give in less to ours.
He had performed miracles, taught in the Synagogues, cast out demons, healed the sick, raised the dead, forgave sin. And if that weren’t enough…
He claimed to be King.
“Tell the daughter of Zion, ‘Behold, your King is coming to you, lowly, and sitting on a donkey, a colt, the foal of a donkey.’” Matthew 21:5
He claimed to be the fulfillment of prophecy.
“Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. Matthew 5:17
He claimed to be the long-awaited Messiah.
“The woman said to Him, ‘I know that Messiah is coming’ (who is called Christ). ‘When He comes, He will tell us all things.’ Jesus said to her, ‘I who speak to you am He.’” John 4:25-26
He claimed to be the Son of God.
“He said to them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’ Simon Peter answered and said, ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.’ Jesus answered and said to him, ‘Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.’” Matthew 16:15-17
He claimed to be the Son of Man.
For the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.” Matthew 12:8
He claimed to be the only way to heaven.
Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. John 14:6
He claimed to be the King of the Jews.
“Now Jesus stood before the governor. And the governor asked Him, saying, ‘Are you the King of the Jews?’ Jesus said to him, ‘It is as you say.’” Matthew 27:11
Jesus was all that and so much more. And the Israelites were thrilled, for a while. But they had expectations of their Messiah that were simply not true.
They expected Him to set up an earthly kingdom, to end their suffering, to take over rule and provide for them, to sit on a throne and be their king.
And it’s in those wrong expectations where things went awry.
Things can go awry for us, too, when we conjure up in our minds a god who simply does not exist. When life happens and what we expect this god of our imaginations – the god we’ve set inside our parameters, in our little box – to be and to do for us does not happen. When we want God to conform to our image of Him, and we set up this false god as an idol and worship him, and then tragedy strikes, prayers aren’t answered, what we hear is silence, we can begin to shout “crucify Him!”
Oh, we may not use those words. We may just stop praying, or reading the Bible, or going to church. We may stop trusting, or witnessing, or believing. We may just stop walking with Him.
Throughout the week we’ll see that the disciples did that very thing. Instead of listening and learning and believing the truth, even in the face of overwhelming fear, instead of allowing their expectations of a limitless, righteous, holy God Who can never put in a box to be changed, instead of throwing away their pride, they turned back. They scattered. They hid themselves in the darkness of the world.
But, there is redemption…