Wake up and Keep Going!

I Peter 5:8-11

Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world. And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. To him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen.

Imagine with me that you are in a jungle, you don’t know what is in the jungle, you were dropped off there and don’t know how to get out. You are completely dependent on your map to get you out and get you to where you need to be. However as you are venturing through the wilderness, you hear some very very soft rustling of leaves from behind you. At this point, what are you going to do, sit still and take a nap or be on guard while running to the goal, depending on the map to guide you through? 

Here is how the Message translation goes for this same passage:

Keep a cool head. Stay alert. The Devil is poised to pounce, and would like nothing better than to catch you napping. Keep your guard up. You're not the only ones plunged into these hard times. It's the same with Christians all over the world. So keep a firm grip on the faith. The suffering won't last forever. It won't be long before this generous God who has great plans for us in Christ—eternal and glorious plans they are!—will have you put together and on your feet for good. He gets the last word; yes, he does.

Christians, are we spiritually asleep? We are in the middle of a spiritual war and yet we can so often be found napping in the middle of the battlefield, in the middle of the jungle, basically waiting to be taken captive by the enemy. Why? Is it because following God takes too much effort? That you have to give up too much to be a Christian, yet you call yourself one anyways? This life is meant to be a fight, you are supposed to give it your all. No one said it would be easy. Jesus, God Himself, died for you so that you could know God in a relationship, yet we think that this walk consists of solely saying a prayer and going to church. If Jesus had to die for it, why do we believe that we won’t have to give anything for it? We did not deserve His sacrifice. We spat in His face, we hated Him (that is what sin is after all, a demonstration against God by us. Rebellion against the King), and yet He died so that we could know Him through His grace. You did nothing to deserve it. It is all God. But, He chose you so that you may know Him, and experience this grace. It may be difficult for 100 years on earth, but that is nothing in comparison with eternity. It can be difficult now for a brief period of time or it can be difficult for eternity in hell because we did not know Him. We may know of Him, but do we truly know Him? Do we have a relationship with Him that consists of more than prayer for food, a prayer saying we are sinners and attending church however regularly we go? We can go to church every day, but if we do not place our faith in God and follow Him, that relationship cannot be real. Following is an action, it requires effort. Will we put in this effort to be able to know the One that made us and that gives us forgiveness, wholeness, meaning, purpose, love, and so much more. Family, do we know the God of the Bible? If we do not read His Word, then how can we know Him? God has called us to Him. But how many of us really have sought to get to know Him? And even when we do know Him, do we continue to strive to know Him more and more? Or are we content with what we know about God? Are we content with where our relationship is with Him? If we are to have a passionate love for Him, how come we don’t seek Him? How come we are fine with being mediocre Christians? Do we compare ourselves with other Christians instead of looking at ourselves in comparison to God? If you compare yourself with God instead of man, it will make you uncomfortable and you won’t like what you find, but you will realize the extent of the grace you have received and you can’t live a life that ignores it completely. You will either have to push it away constantly and fight with it or you will have to give in to it, realizing that God loves you, even in the midst of your hideous and rebellious sins He decided to die for you. And He doesn’t regret it. He wanted to. But my question is, you have to make a choice about this grace, will you ignore it and live a life belonging to the darkness, hoping that a prayer will get you to heaven and just hope that when you die you will look at God and He will say “I love you, and your prayer said that you believe in me and placed your faith in me so you can come in.” Is that going to be what you want? A simple hope? Not a promise, no guarantee? A life filled with compromise that is ruled by sin and lust but hopefully your prayer cancelled all that out? I have been there. I thought about what God would say to me, and though I don’t know whether or not that prayer saved me, I know that had I continued to live that way and by the grace of God get into heaven, God would’ve looked at me and said, “I love you, but what did you do with everything I gave you? You abused my grace, treating it like a spoiled person treats money. You had potentials to do great things to bring me glory, but you rejected them, instead taking the glory for yourself. You loved your sins, you wouldn’t try to give them up, and when you did, you were happy with the progress you had made and then were content to return to them.” What will He say to you? I pray that He may look us in the eye and be proud of us with a tear of joy running down His cheek because He knows that we love Him and gave Him our everything and He is proud of us.

I believe this following statement 100%: 

“A prayer will not save you, a belief that you place your hope and your faith in will however.”

Family, did you know that nowhere in the Bible does it say to repeat the sinner’s prayer after a pastor in order to be saved? No! It says multiple times throughout the book of Acts to believe on the Lord and we will be saved. Believe. A belief is something that your whole life is formed around. It impacts everything. You fully are behind it. Has your life been fully impacted by God? 

May we believe in God with all of us, our core behaviors to our actions and thoughts. May we be a generation filled with belief about our God.

Blessings

Suffering

I Peter 4:16

Yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in that name.

This is so profound to me. If you are suffering, if you are in the midst of persecution, losing a job, losing friends, a rough time in your relationship, school not going well, rough time at home with family, you are not to be ashamed of it, but you are to turn and glorify God. I won’t lie, that is one of the last things I want to do when suffering hits. I don’t want to glorify God for the hard times I am going through. Family, we are to glorify God everyday. That is our mission, our calling, our purpose is it now? Though these things take such a toll on us and wears us out and it can seem like the walls of life come crashing down, in the midst of this can you glorify God? Can you give it all to Him and trust that He will get you through it instead of taking it into your own hands? Can you know that you are serving a God that is greater than any of your problems and can your life fully reflect that? This concept of suffering reminds us of another, I am reminded firstly about the story of Paul. He sat in the midst of suffering constantly and yet gave God all the glory of his life. He desired God to use him in mighty ways so that he might bring God the glory. He knew that compared to life that God was worth so much more. He knew that whether he died or not, it did not change that he would be glorifying God. he said that “to live is Christ and to die is gain” to say that if he lived, it would be Christ living in and through him instead of Paul living his own life, living by his own agenda, and if he died that he would be spending eternity with the King in paradise, glorifying God constantly,  forever more singing His praises. Another is Jesus’ suffering on the cross. That was done for God’s glory. That you might be forgiven so that you could know the Father intimately and in a real relationship, so that He could take you how you are and form you into the masterpiece that He created you to be, that He could satisfy you. May we not be afraid of suffering. May we know that when we suffer, that we suffer for the King. May we represent Him in those situations, may we respond as He would and not seeking our own benefit but putting others before us, humbling ourselves for the sake of the relationship. May we pursue our love of the King with reckless abandon, letting nothing stand in the way of it. May we seek His direction and guidance diligently so that we may bring Him glory through the situation. Family, through Christ alone will you get through the tough times. Through Christ alone will you ever truly experience peace and comfort in the midst of your world collapsing. Will you just trust him? Peter and the other apostles were in the midst of an insane storm, being tossed around, not knowing if they were going to die, yet when all hope seem lost, they saw Jesus at a distance, walking on the water. Peter called out to Christ that he would get out of the boat and walk to Christ in the midst of the storm if Christ called him to. He did. Peter listened in faith, ignoring the storm around him, completely fixated on his King, and he walked on the water to his Rabbi. Then he began looking around at the seas raging and listening to the roar of the wind and lost focus on God. His problems and circumstances began to look bigger than his God. His storm overcame Him. He began drowning. His life was about to end at the hand of this violent storm. Yet, when it seemed that it was over, Christ grabbed Peter’s hand, He rescued him, pulling him out from the water, pulling him out of the storm. Family, it is the same for us. The only ways that we will ever glorify God in our storms is if we seek Him throughout the storm or if we are saved by Him, through His mercy, when we are about to perish. May we strive to stay focused on our God so that we don’t have to go through the horrific process of losing sight of God and being overcome by our trials and only reaching out to Him as we are about to give up all hope. 

He loves you, enough to suffer for you more than you can ever understand. Can you bear suffering for Him in this one life for the sake of bringing Him more glory that will resound for eternity?

Blessings family. 

One Body

I Peter 3:8

Finally, all of you, have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind. 

This last Sunday night I attended service with some of my best friends out in Costa Mesa at the church they have been attending. We were finishing up Philippians 1 and when we hit verse 27, he raised the question, “family, do we spend more time fighting face to face, toe to toe about the Bible and our faith or do we stand side by side for the gospel?” In all honesty, the church we see today has become so divided, all the hundreds of denominations, all of the fights about who is right, I have to wonder, how badly does it hurt God to see His people more worried about winning a non-salvational theological debate about predestination or free will with a brother or sister in Christ instead of putting all of that effort into ministering and encouraging each other and to anyone and everyone else and spreading the gospel like we are told by Christ in the Great Commission (In Matthew 28)? (Theological discussions are not wrong, it is good to discuss with one another what God has shown us and our views and to discuss them in hopes that we may have a clearer understanding of who God is and His relationship with us, but when it becomes almost a repulsion to people who have differing viewpoints than your own is when it is an issue, that is not the love that God demonstrates to us) In I Corinthians Paul speaks about being ONE BODY, can we honestly say that this is a descriptor of the Church? We need to be united in mind, heart, purpose, and love. We have one mission, to glorify God through having an intimate and real relationship with Him and, consequently, share that relationship with others. We tear each other down so often rather than build each other up. I share this passage not to bash on Christians, but instead to encourage change, beginning in our own hearts. We pray for revival, but do  nothing to bring our own lives to a point of revival. If we cannot be united on the one thing that has saved us from an eternity of punishment for our heinous actions, how can we ever expect someone to want to join the family? Regardless of if we are Calvinists, Arminians, Catholic, Protestant, Baptist, or whatever, we have something in common, the greatest thing in common, that we who were dead in our sins, were loved by God, and He gave of Himself a sacrifice so that we could be redeemed and could experience a real and intimate relationship with Him without sin’s bondage over us anymore and that, through His sacrifice, we now have a relationship with that very God. Though we will have disagreements, we will have conflicts in the Church, we will have issues, it is not to take away from the fact that we are brothers and sisters in Christ, that are living a life in pursuance of Him every single day. We have the same goal, will we live as One Body? We serve the same God, will we unite as one bride? 

Family, may we begin to love one another, friend or enemy alike, in a way that God loves us, without bounds. May we unite as one body, one Church, and go through this life together, pushing one another to grow with the Lord.

May the world see that the Church is one body, serving the One True King

Blessings

A Holy Nation, A Chosen People

I Peter 2:9-12

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.

Christian, what separates you from the world? Do we seek approval from the world, to fit in, to be popular, to be famous, or are we willing to be despised by the world? Though many followed Christ during His time on earth, many people despised Him, death plots ran amuck, people hated Him, He did not fulfill their Messianic expectations, they expected a conqueror over Rome, not over sin. People spat, punched, mocked, beat, Him while He was carrying the cross to Golgotha. Yet we expect the world to love us and receive our message of Jesus’ forgiveness with open and warm arms. Why? Jesus, Himself, told us that people would hate us. 

As John 15: 18-21 says, 

“If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours. But all these things they will do to you on account of my name, because they do not know him who sent me.

Does the world love you? Or are you despised by the world because you do not dwell in darkness. I John says that darkness can have no fellowship with light. Are you attempting to combine the two? It will never be done. There is either light or dark, never both. The two cannot dwell with each other. God is light, He pierces the darkness, exposing the flaws, the deceit, the brokeness, the sorrow, the wandering nature, the desires that are so often drunk away such as a desire for perfect love, not sex, not an emotional attachment, but agape, unconditional love in the perfect form. Such as a desire for meaning, one found not on this world, given by others around us, but a definition that comes from an authoritative source, one outside of all human comprehension, God. Do we live in the light or in the dark? Which do we seek? Which do we love? You must choose. You can only have one, you can’t have both. 

Do we understand that we are chosen by God? That God has personally called us to Him. That He, in all of His glory and honor, desires to know you personally and intimately. He chose you to be His masterpiece. The question is, will you stop fighting, and though it may hurt, will you allow Him to form you how He wants to form you? WIll you give up and just let Him take control? A sculpture does not form itself, rather the sculptor forms it, exactly how He wants, chiseling away where he desires, until the sculpture is complete, a beautiful masterpiece. Will you just give yourself to Him so that He can form you into His masterpiece, into His sculpture? 

We have meaning and purpose and family in God. We were once not a people, but now we are people of the King. That is so amazing! That God, the perfect and just God who can have no part in sin and hates sin, loved us regardless of our sin, provided a way for our redemption and has adopted us as His children though we did absolutely nothing to deserve it. We spat in His face, rebelled against Him, betrayed Him, and yet He loves us more than we will ever know. “For God SO LOVED THE WORLD.” If you don’t strive to understand God’s love, you will never understand what it means to be His child. If you have never experienced His love, ask yourself why not? What is keeping you from finding true and perfect love? A love that will never fade, that will never leave you, a love that will never disappoint, a love that seeks your betterment, a love that will blow your mind, yet we treat it as second rate to our whimsical, self absorbed concept of love? Why? Are we truly content with the “love” that we know, or do we want more? Christian, after much time thinking about this question I must ask, if you are satisfied in your current knowledge of God’s love and don’t desire to experience it more than you are, what or who has your heart? If you don’t have a passion to seek the love of God out, to experience it more and more each and every day, to learn more about it, to live out a life, mirroring that very same love, I must ask if God truly has your heart or if it lies elsewhere?

Lastly, where do our passions lie? Do we desire God and God alone? Or do we constantly tell God that He is not enough for us? That we need to experience a sensual love, a materialistic love, an emotional love, that we need to drink or smoke because we find happiness? Is God not enough for us? Was our old life really that great that we cannot completely leave it behind for love, meaning, joy, satisfaction, peace and so much more? Even more so, was our old life so great that we tell Christ that though we appreciate what He did for us, that it just isn’t enough, that His love, His sacrifice is not enough for us? That we are not content in knowing Him, that instead we must have the world and its desires and lusts in order to find any “satisfaction.” Family, when we say that it is impossible for us to live a day without sin, but yet we live weeks without spending personal, quiet time at the Lord’s throne, our passions are mixed up. We are then living for the wrong things. We are living for the world, and not God. We need to be so dependent on God that without Him, we cannot function, we cannot get through our day without spending time with Him, that we cannot help but spread His message because of the joy it has brought us. 

Family, do we live like a chosen race, a royal priesthood, and a holy nation? If we are true believers, this is what/who we are. Time to start living that way.

Blessings family

May grace and peace abound with you from God our Father and may we experience this walk together, serving our King as one body

Called to Action, Called to Holiness

I Peter 1:13-16

Therefore, prepare your minds for action; be self-controlled; set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed. As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: "Be holy, because I am holy."

I want to encourage you guys, dig into this book. I have been reading through it and have been blown away by the depth, the instruction and exhortation found in this book. 

Before we even begin this study, we need to realize, Christianity is more than a prayer, it is fully trusting God, fully placing all of your faith in Him, becoming His masterpiece. This is not just saying that God is King over all, even the demons do that. This is fully believing that God is King, giving Him all of you, putting all of your faith in Him, placing everything on Him, from who you are, to your struggles, to your problems, to your gifts, Everything. It is not living half for God, half for you, it is being all for God. It is knowing God in a real and intimate way. Spending time with Him. Seeking Him. Following Him with all you are and all you have. Being a Christian is not a call to mediocrity and above average morals and church attendance, it is a real relationship with the King over all creation and giving Him everything. You must experience God. You will never be the same. 

Since we have established a general idea of what being a Christian is, we need to realize that the calling of a Christian is not passive. It is a call to action. We are called to be holy as our King is holy. We are to strive to be perfect, because it pleases our King, because our King is perfect and sin is rebellion against Him and separates us from Him. We are told straightly here that we are not to conform to our evil desires as we formerly did. We are now children of the King. Our lives, our actions, our desires need to be different than they were when we lived in the world. It is heartbreaking family, that we so often live lives that are no different than we used to live. We are caught up in addictions, we are caught up pursuing sin more than our King. What is wrong with this picture? How is this pleasing to our King, that we would push Him aside in order to pursue treasonous actions? Yet, we so often act like our sin is no big deal. This is a huge problem in Christianity, that sin does not have the impact that it should on us because of how horrifying sin is. Consequences aside from sin, it is rebellion against our Father, who has given us a new spirit to pursue holiness rather than sin. This alone should encourage to us to forsake our lusts and turn to the King. If that is not enough, sin’s consequences paint a picture that we should desire to have no part of. It separates us from God, it puts up a wall between us and God, that keeps us from experiencing Him in ways that we can’t even being to imagine. Sin destroys us. It destroys our relationships, our gifts that God has given us are abused, it causes problems that are unnecessary. Lastly, your sin caused the need for a Savior, caused a need to be redeemed, and the only thing that could pay that price was the blood of God Himself, the One that warned us not to give into our passions, and He paid that price. He paid a debt that we could not pay. He did it so that you and I could know Him without sin’s destruction of the relationship. He did it to bring the Father glory in that you can be forgiven. Why would we ever want to deny that? Why would we not give Him our all? Why would we intentionally live lifestyles that are rebellious against Him? Why do we find pleasure in the things that break His heart? 

Family, we know what our calling is. Let’s not brush it aside anymore. Let’s not be content Christians. Let today mark the beginning, or the continuation (depending on your walks), of your complete commitment to Christ, because only in Him will you ever find meaning. Only in Him will you ever find peace, satisfaction, purpose, love, restoration. You have a calling, what are you going to do with it? Will we pursue Him, allowing nothing, including ourselves, to hold us back? Will we live lives seeking our King, so that one day we can stand before Him and just thank Him, and we can sit at His feet, in tears of joy because of His great awe and glory,  and just talk to Him like we did every other day we lived? Will we be a people unashamed of the God we serve and know that though we will make mistakes, we are giving god our all, we are seeking Him with all we are, and are never looking back.

Give God your all, even the core of who you are (the thoughts, regrets, struggles, burdens, depressions, brokeness, gifts, success, your everything), because only through Him can you become the masterpiece you were made to be. 

Blessings family

May grace and peace abound with you from God our Father and may we experience this walk together, serving our King as one body.

Patience

James 5:8

You also, be patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand. 

Are we patient? If you said yes and you live in So Cal, I can prove you wrong.... The 91 freeway.. Sit on that freeway during traffic and even the most patient people I know will crack. With terrible drivers, cops, wasting precious money on gas that is being used to sit still instead of move, places to go, people to see, things to do, Facebook comments to check, the 91 during rush hour just sucks. It is horrible. But, this passage is referring more to patience in a trial. When things around you are falling apart, how do you respond? Are you willing to wait upon God to get you out or do you take matters into your own hands? Does anger get the best of you? Do you rush into or out of things or wait on God’s timing? I have seen from my own life how so many things that I have gone through have now been used for God and to bring Him glory. Even the bad in my life. When I felt that my life was collapsing and that I was being caught in the avalanche of everything falling down onto me, God took all of that, and has used that for His glory. God has even taken my sin, my past, my wretchedness and used it for His glory, used it to break me, used it to develop me. Had I gotten out of my problems, I would never have learned, I would never have grown, I wouldn’t have had to learn to truly trust God with my everything. I don’t want to write much about patience because we know what it is, but we need to live it. We need to be Psalms 46:10 people, “Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!” If we are never still, if we never depend on God, if we never go through the bad times, if we never pause to reflect on how God is God and that He controls all and has everything under control no matter what storm may be around us, He just wants us to walk out to Him in faith, like Peter did in Matthew 14. We need to be patient with our situations and instead of seeking a way out, seek God. We need to be patient with others and instead of getting mad, we give them Jesus. Family, can we do this? Yes, we really can if we believe and depend on God (Phil 4:13). This verse (Phil 4:13) truly means that ANYTHING is possible through God, no matter how insurmountable it may appear, but it must be through God.

Patience involves being patient to the core, our thoughts and emotions are involved in this 100%

Blessings family.

Adulterous People

James 4:4

You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. 

Adultery.. Not being faithful to the one that you have committed yourself to. Usually used in a marriage situation as having any kind of connection with another person that would be considered unfaithful in a relationship. Any kind of emotional or sexual relationship outside of the sacred covenant of marriage... Also used as putting something before the one that you commit yourself to.... Are we adulterous people? Christian, are you adulterous? Though this word usually means in a marriage, I am referring to you and God. Does anything ever come before God in your life? Have you violated the sacred covenant between you and God and allowed something or someone else to come into the picture? Have you altogether replaced Him with another passion? Or even further, have you ever truly had a passion for God? Last question, do you love the world and your sin and yourself or ANYTHING ELSE more than God? 

We are told throughout scripture that God is a jealous God, He loves His children, that He desires to have an intimate relationship with us, where we are, so that we can become the masterpiece that He designed us to be. Are we seeking Him like we ought to or are we content with just being half in the world and half with God? Well first of all, THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS BEING HALF FOR GOD AND HALF FOR THE WORLD!!!! God, Himself, says that “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.” (Matthew 6:24a)... Who is it that you serve? What is it that has been stealing ANY of your heart away from God? What is it that is DRIVING you? Is it success, your friends, a relationship, a job, laziness, a sport, school, Facebook, Hollywood’s productions, your sin, an image, a position, or anything else? What is the thing that gets you up in the morning and gets you through the day? Do you feel that sin is impossible to beat and that you can’t get through a day without it? First of all, with GOD anything is possible (Philippians 4:13), but that involves that you put in effort to get out of it also, not that you halfheartedly say you want to escape. Secondly, if you can’t get through a day without sin, but can go weeks without the Bible, what does that say about who you serve? ANYTHING THAT IS STEALING YOUR HEART AWAY FROM GOD NEEDS TO HAVE LESS OR NO PRIORITY.  Even ministry can steal our hearts away from God. So often we can find ourselves serving, not because we want to serve our King and please Him and bring Him glory, but because it is the “Christian thing to do” or because we have to. When this attitude occurs, how can we expect God to use us, when we have lost sight of Him? How can we expect Him to work in us, if we have replaced Him? Family, are we an adulterous people? 

If we find that we are an adulterous person, how do we escape? First of all, you must identify what is replacing God in your life. Secondly, if you don’t have a desire to reduce its role in your life, cry out to God that He would give you that passion. Third, do whatever it takes to get right with God and back on track with your walk. Family, this is a tough process, I find myself needing to do this all the time. This is a personal struggle of mine all the time. It is so easy to become content in your walk, to become unwilling to grow, to become too busy for God. We allow things and other people to gain more time in our schedules and more prominent roles in our life without allowing our God and Father any more time, and usually take the time that we did have with Him away. We go to church, willing to develop a passion for Him, we worship at His feet, then wake up the next morning and forget about our Creator. We don’t cherish time that we can spend with Him. We constantly tell God that our agendas, our relationships, our sin is more important to us then He is. Family, this is sin. This is a place that we should desire to leave and never return to. We separate ourselves from our Father and become melancholy about our relationship with Him. Family, this is going to be a life long struggle, but how we respond to it now, shapes how we respond to it the rest of our life. Today is the day to restore ourselves with our Lover, our Creator, our Master. Let’s not be an enemy of the most High God. Let’s be the people He loves and that love Him back and are ambassadors of Him to this world...

Even our core should be fully devoted to this relationship with God, not just our actions... No more adultery, no more contentment. Just devotion to Him. 

Blessings