Victory

This is the last part of I John, my favorite book in the Bible along with Romans. May we apply everything to our lives as we seek to live radical lives because our King lived a radical life.

I John 5:1,4

For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world... And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith. 

Children of God. That is who we are. We have found our identity in Him and have given up trying to make a name for ourselves. Family, as children of God do we overcome the world as we are told that we should? Today, we have become so caught up in diluting the scripture in our personal lives and rationalizing it in our minds. This verse literally means that we can overcome the world and all of its pleasures and temptations, IF we are born of God, meaning that we have been saved by Him and have become imitators of Him. Verse 4 tells us plainly that due to our faith, we have victory over the world, over our former addictions, former selves, former thoughts, future temptations. We can win this fight through God’s grace and power. We can’t do it on our own. Family, do we truly believe this? Do we live as if we are able to overcome the temptation to be like everyone else, or “improve” our life, or to give into addictions? I honestly can say that I didn’t for a long time. I did not live as if Philippians 4:13 was my reality. Family, may we truly believe that through God, ANYTHING is possible. If we are going through God, we have to be with Him and we allow our wills to conform with His when this happens. Faith is the key to freeing us from our bondage. May we realize that GRACE HAS ALREADY BROKEN OUR CHAINS OF ADDICTION, but we need to leave them in order to experience freedom from it. And more importantly, may we live as if we believe that all things are capable through our God if we truly are His children. 

May we seek to please the King

Crazy Love

I John 4:10-11

In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

Today, on Christmas 2010, may we remember that God the Creator and King over all creation, became like His creation 2000 years ago. He came because we rejected Him and His plan for us. We committed treasonous acts against the King and reaped death and other consequences. So then, He humbled Himself in a way that we can never comprehend, going from God to man, He lived a perfect life, experiencing many of the things that we go through so that we can never say that He doesn’t know what we are going through, He died a death after being betrayed by one of His closest friends, and that death was a death of embarrassment, one of agony, one of excruciating pain, and He did that so that we may know Him. He gave us this gift that we did not deserve. We deserve death, and He offers life. We choose darkness and He exposes us in light. He offers redemption for us who have prostituted ourselves to other gods. He offers love to us when we deserve hate. He offers us mercy when we deserve punishment. He offers us grace when we deserve no such thing. This is crazy love my friends. This is reckless love. Love that would stop at nothing to know you and to have your love in return. The price is not much, you take your beaten life, faulted plans, and broken heart and exchange it for fullness and healing, purpose and meaning, and love and grace and mercy. It’s a daily choice though. One day of acceptance does not guarantee something. It is a lifetime of living and walking. You can run a race and never finish it if you stop along the way. May we finish this race depending on the strength given to us from our God. And may we pass on this gift that He has given us to others with reckless abandonment. May we give our all for those who God loves and for our God who loves.

It starts in our heart, this love, and becomes a large part of who we are. May we seek to be people that love like God loved us, with reckless abandonment, not seeking repayment but seeking to love unconditionally regardless of the cost.

May grace and peace and love abound to you my family

Crux Point

This may hurt. This will be deep. This requires us being honest with ourselves and God. As we read from I John 3 may we remember who God made us to be, what He hoped for us. He made us to not experience sin. He desired that we may be blameless and pure and innocent children of His, not knowing the evils that have become so ingrained in who we are. The question should echo in our heads throughout this devotion is “In all honesty, do I devote myself to God a multitude of times more than I do to any form of sin (whether it is blatant sin, disregarding God’s commands, exaltation of oneself over God, or idolatry)?” And “Can I go a full day without sin? If not, why can I so often go weeks without God? Which do I depend on more, sin or God?”

I John 3:6,9

No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him... No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God's seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God. 

Family, though no one of us will ever be perfect until we pass on from this life into eternity with God, one of our goals as Christians is to be holy as God is holy (I Peter 1:16). My question is how much do we pursue to live lifestyles that are pleasing to our King? And I am not necessarily discussing solely actions, but rather intentions and desire. If we go through the actions without the passion to please God and without a desire to serve Him joyfully, then what good do our actions do for anyone? Faith without works is dead, but works without faith is meaningless. If we do not have the belief in our God and the desire and passion to serve Him then why bother serving someone that you don’t love? Furthermore, if we are to call ourselves children of God, shouldn’t we be representatives of Him to this world? Instead, we often find ourselves entangled in addictions and lifestyles that are not pleasing to God and instead camouflage us in this world. Nothing sets us apart from them aside from our statement of beliefs which is not in practice. I say this out of love family. I have often found myself in this place of addiction and that place of living a lie. I know the pain that occurs there, the dark places that we do not want to revisit or have exposed, but if they are never dealt with, are we telling God that He cannot have what is rightfully His, that the Creator of everything known and unknown to us cannot have an area of our lives because we don’t want Him to. My response is, which do we love more? It is easy to reply that we love God more than the addiction, but if we are willing to reject Him for the addiction, the addiction is what our heart truly desires and what we truly love. We must fight this war family. Now is not the time for rest. THIS IS WAR! Will we fight the fight so that we may please our God or will we allow our sin to control us and our desires, causing us to reject the One we call Lord? I, for one, choose to fight.

This choice needs to be a daily one. It is a daily war. Will we fight it? It is a core foundational piece of our life. It is a crux point. This declares our true intentions. May we not be complacent, may we not be compromising, may we not be content.. May we be driven by Grace.

Blessings

Daily Living

1 John 2:15-17

Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions—is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.

Every day of our life that we wake up, we make a decision, a decision that is a declaration of what/who we will live for that day... We wake up to check our phones, eat, go on facebook, or just go through our day. However, how much more significant is it to stop, before anything else begins and just spend a bit of time with God? Though this may not be your personal devotion time, why not spend a few minutes at His throne in order to start your day out focused on Him and prepared by stating your purpose for that day in Christ. Honestly, very rarely do we ever even have a legitimate excuse not to do this. If we think about it, we sleep in to give ourselves more rest, we have other options and even if we wake up earlier, 5 minutes won’t kill us. We check our phones and facebooks and reboot our social life within a matter of minutes it seems, but we tell God to wait for us to finish with our friends and our social life. My family, this should be so heavy on our hearts if we do this, I am one who does this many times and am greatly convicted of it. We are telling God, the Creator of the Universe, the One who gives us life, our Father who saved us from an eternity of hell and has forgiven our heinous actions against Him, and we look at Him and tell Him that our social life is more of a priority to us than spending five minutes with Him. When we think about it that way, it’s a lot more serious. 

In this passage John warns us of loving the world. It is so attractive. Everything is presented to us so nicely. Alcohol  is advertised to take away your problems and help you have a great time, where really it makes you look like a fool, brings problems back stronger, and leaves you with a headache. Sex is presented to be the greatest thing ever and to be pursued in every relationship and hookup. Only thing is, it doesn’t fill that gap that is there. It just widens it. It doesn’t take away pain or make you more or less of a man/woman, it only says that you have given in to whatever everyone else wants you to do, a real man/woman would stand up for their beliefs. Lying is the easy fix, but never really seems to get easier as lies compound among each other. Pursuit of one’s own happiness never gets you to where you hoped you would be. You may reach the pinnacle of fame/success/love/etc... as you hoped, but it isn’t exactly what you had thought it would be. You still aren’t happy with it. This, my family, is the great lie of the world, that if you do/get these things, you will be happy. This is the truth, you will be far from happy. God wants you to find true joy and that can only be found in Him, by searching for Him, by knowing Him, by spending quality time at His feet. Will we do this today? 

May we seek Him from our very innermost being, allowing Him to have the core of who we are and everything else

Lifelong Commitment

I John 1:7

But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin

A prayer is not our salvation as Christians, a lifestyle is. A lifelong walk with God; one that may hit hard spots, pain, and much more, but never ends is what saves you. You don’t really know someone because you spoke with them once. You know someone because you have a true relationship with them. If this is the case, why then do we so often refuse to make God the best relationship in our life? I mean, He died for us, so that we can be forgiven, yet we barely acknowledge Him in our lives anymore. It almost seems like we personally are fine with Him taking the backseat in our life or not even being there at all. It’s so easy to just let life get in the way of knowing God, but God needs to come first.. Life is short and anything can end it at any time.. We need to make sure that we are ready to meet Him before its over because it can end at time. Are we prepared to stand before God? Will He say that He is proud of us, or that we had great potential but didn’t do anything with it, or that He never knew us? I hope that we all live in a way to receive the first statement. I can’t wait to hear God say “well done my good and faithful servant.” He truly has given us so much to live for, what will we give our life for?

Thanksgiving (I know it's cliche, but still...)

Thanksgiving.... Why should we be thankful today?? I mean, we live lives that are so consumed with the latest and greatest, for our gratification and fulfillment, why should we take today to stop, only to pick it back up a few hours later with Black Friday and all its craze. Christmas even has become this way, losing all of its meaning for most, and has become a day to worship self and others through receiving gifts and giving gifts to others out of reciprocity. Yet, Christmas is our reminder of Jesus’ birth, of the humbling that He partook in so that we may know Him and not perish, but be redeemed. He died and that was His gift to us. Something we did not merit, but was given to us without regret. This is our purpose of Christmas, to remember that and to treasure that and to share it. This is our joy. For many, the holidays suck and Thanksgiving signifies the beginning of this time of pain and loneliness. They are reminded of loved ones that have passed away, of the problems that haunt their life, they see portrayals all over of people smiling and worry-free as they swipe their credit cards to purchase gifts and those real people are asking real questions of “why am I not happy,” “why am I alone,” “what is the point of this,” and “what am I missing that they apparently have?” 

The bible tells us in Philippians that we are to rejoice ALWAYS. How can we rejoice always? It’s not easy. Things go wrong, life throws curveballs at you all the time. People hurt you, you let yourself down, promises are broken, people judge, you feel lonely, you feel empty, life feels like it loses its meaning. How can you feel thankful for this? May I suggest that we can because even though things may be going wrong in life, we have life, though we have fights with family and friends, we have family and friends, though work may be rough, we have a job, though school can be so tiring and it may suck, we are gifted with the ability to learn and to gain an education. Most importantly, you have been saved and have the promise of eternal life and your sin and mistakes have been covered and erased, IF you believe in God with all of your heart. If nothing else, you can be thankful for this.

Life itself is a precious gift that we have abused and take for granted.. May we remember how much our life means to our Creator and live like we believe it. 

I am truly thankful for you family. As we walk through life together, may we grow with each other and with our King. May we glorify and please our King.

Be blessed and be a blessing. 

The Church

Matthew 16:15-18, “He (Jesus) said to them (the disciples), “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. And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.” The rock that Jesus refers to is the foundation of Christianity, that Jesus is the Son of the Living God. That there is a living and active God who is involved in our lives and that we have a relationship with and have placed our trust and belief in. Without this, we cannot be saved (John 3:18- Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God). If you believe in Him, you are a Christian, a follower of God. You are part of a much larger group as a Christian. As a true follower of God you are a part of the Church. The body of believers that have been saved by faith and belief in God through His grace. You serve a purpose in this body of believers. What it is, I don’t know. But, God does. His plan for you includes your role in this group. Without you, the body is not as strong as it could be. You have been given specific gifts (discussed in I Corinthians 12) that contribute to the body of the Church. The Bible talks about this body as God’s bride that He will marry (ex: Jeremiah 3:14, Revelation 19:7-9, and 2 Corinthians 11:2). We eagerly wait for His return so that we may be with Him forevermore. Though the Church is usually thought to refer to a group of Christians gathering for an organized service in a specific location, it refers to the universal group of believers of all times. The church (lowercase “c”) typically refers to the local group of believers. This is not the building. We, the people of God, are the Church and anytime we are together, we are the church. God created this group to give His people a community. A sense of family. A group of people that would experience life together, that would learn to be godly people together, exhorting one another in love to strive towards the goal that he has set before us. Paul, in I Corinthians, discusses division in the Church. We are not to be divided with any hostility, though we will have differing views, and problems will arise between people, we are to realize that we are people under God, saved by His grace that now have been transformed through Him and will all spend eternity together. We are to demonstrate the love of God to them regardless of their beliefs or our disagreements. It almost seems that we can be more open to hearing people of a different belief speak rather than people of a different denomination or a differing perspective on non-salvational topics (such as the time of a rapture, whether we are predestined to salvation or have total free will, and many other topics). The church has been given a specific mission by Christ to do until the time of our physical death or until He returns. This is known as the Great Commission. It states, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age (Matthew 28:18-20, NIV).” This is our mission, our hope (our future) is that we will spend eternity with the King.

May we grow as a body with one mind, spirit, joy,  and goal to serve the one God and King. Let’s experience life as one. You are not alone in this walk. Family is always there.

Blessings family

Knowing God And Experiencing His Grace

2 Peter 3:18

But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.

Peter’s closing words in his letter. May we grow in grace, having a deeper desire for grace, a deeper appreciation of it, realizing that thanks to this amazing grace, we have nothing to fear anymore, we have been forgiven, we have been saved, we have been found, we have been given purpose, we have reason to live. We don’t deserve it and we never will. God pursued us with reckless abandon. He gave us a way to know Him, a privilege not to be abused, but so often we abuse it. Do we KNOW God? The next part of the verse corresponds with the theme of grace, knowledge. Do we know God? Truly know God? Know in an intimate manner, in a deep, meaningful relationship that requires effort? The word know in the Bible refers to an intimate way of knowing someone. A way that is sacred. To be considered extremely close knit. To be considered as one. God wants to know us so well and us to know Him so well that we know His will for our lives, and even when we don’t we trust Him, knowing that His plan surpasses our own. He wants to know our problems, our pain, our joys, our requests, and everything else about us and He wants to hear it from us. He already knows all of it, but He wants to communicate with you. He wants to speak to you and you to Him.

Peter ends this with a statement that declares our purpose: to bring Him glory. May we seek to bring Him glory through HIS GRACE TO US AND OUR INTIMATE KNOWLEDGE OF HIM.

Is this our goal? Do we seek to know Him more in this manner and to seek his grace more and more?

Blessings

Where Does It End?

2 Peter 2:14-15a

They have eyes full of adultery, insatiable for sin. They entice unsteady souls. They have hearts trained in greed. Accursed children! Forsaking the right way, they have gone astray.

We are people that desire more. More money, more pleasure, more possessions, more more more.... But where does it end? Is there an end? Peter lays it out straight for us in this passage. Do we have a desire for sin that is not satisfied? We desire more and more sin and sin becomes our driving factor in life, regardless of if we even realize it? It is so easy to lose focus of our original motivation and find ourselves off target and seeking the wrong thing or having the wrong motivation. We serve because of reputation or obligation many times, we get caught up in accepting glory for ourselves in the areas that God has gifted us in, we don’t put in the effort that we ought to in work, school, relationships, or whatever else because we love laziness, we don’t dig deep into our walks because it often brings answers about us that we don’t want to find. We see how ugly we are in comparison to God, the King, the Perfect and Holy God. This verse raises the question of what is our priority, God or sin? Have we turned astray from the King or do we have misplaced passion? Has our religion become our passion rather than our relationship? Do we seek to do things rather than grow close with God? Rather what we do should be a reflection of our growth with God. But family, let us not continue in misplaced passions. May our hearts burn for God rather than sin. May we feel that we cannot go a day, an hour, a minute without our God rather than feeling so captivated by sin that we feel in bondage to it and can’t go a day without it and view a day without sin as a near impossible or irregular task, sometimes not even desirable. May our desire for God surpass and destroy our desire for sin and may we push forward towards the goal set before us (Phil 3:14) and keep in remembrance that ALL THINGS ARE POSSIBLE WITH GOD (Philippians 4:13). Do you believe this?

Misplaced passions end here.

Blessings,

A fellow believer seeking the King, seeking to live a life forsaking misplaced passion daily

Misplaced Passion

Every action requires effort. Any desired result requires you to put in the work to reach the goal. What’s our goal? Where do we put our effort? Do we have misplaced passion? 

2 Peter 1:5-8

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. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

After reading this passage, thoughts flood my mind... I question myself, am I applying these things to my life or am I a CONTENT CHRISTIAN, being happy with where I am and not seeking to do or grow more? Do we find contentment in living a 50-50 lifestyle? Living for God one day and ourselves the next? We NEED to live the Luke 14 lifestyle in that we have such a great love for God that nothing, not even our love for family can compare to or even CONTEST our love for Him. We need to put Him before us, His will, His rules, His power before our own. Our lives are to reflect Him and to bring Him the glory, as that is the purpose in life. And lastly from Luke 14, we need to count the cost. The lifestyle of Christianity is not free.. Anyone who tells you that it is is lying to you. It costs your life. The life that is unfulfilling, the life that is so easily broken, the life that is miserable, the life that seems to have it all perfect in everyone’s eyes, but you know that it is so far from that assumption. WHERE DO YOU STAND? Are you willing to give up your faulty plans, your pain and misery, your vain pursuits of popularity, money, and pleasures and find perfect plans for your life, meaning, peace, joy, satisfaction, and so much more? Above all these though, are you willing to experience grace, the giving of something that is not deserved. Grace which is your salvation. Grace that you can never be good enough for but yet can be given to you. Grace that takes your debt, pays it, and then gives you all you could ever want and more. You sinned, you deserved death, yet God humbled Himself to be like us for 30 years, living among us as a man, with the end in mind that He would die a horrible and excruciating death while experiencing the punishment of your sin FOR YOU, that you may experience this grace. Why? Because He LOVES you. You can’t do anything on your own, nothing good comes from your life. You can find no meaning for yourself that lasts, you can find no satisfaction for yourself, you can find no joy when life falls apart, you can never find pure love that has no bounds and no conditions. You can’t even live up to your own standards many times. Yet, regardless of all this, God loves you enough to die for you and give you and I meaning. This is personal. It was for you that He died. It was for me that he died. He offers grace if you give your life. Not giving Him a prayer, only to disregard it after a given amount of time, but a lifestyle that demonstrates one’s BELIEF in God because that is what saves. If you believe in God you will be saved. If you cry to Him to save you, He will. But you have to believe that He will. You have to believe in a way that alters your life. It has to impact EVERY ASPECT of your life.This means that you are never the same person, you may have some of the same interests, but nothing comes close to God for you, you may have a similar personality to before you believed in God, but you will be changed. 

This passage speaks of the effort that we put forth in our daily walks that we may not be ineffective for the Lord. As Christians we are to be striving to grow, even when life is telling us to be happy with the progress we have made and to take it easy. This temptation hits hard. My life has been hit here so many times. It’s not an easy chain to break, but its one that needs to be broken. If it’s not broken then family may I ask what is our goal? Do we seek to be the best disciples, the best followers of God, that we can be for our King and His glory? If so, then that is great and CONTINUE! Don’t stop. May the Lord give you strength to persevere. If not, then why not? I desire that you search within yourself to see where your belief in God is. Not just a belief that He exists, but a belief that is APPLIED and ACTIVE that He holds you in His hand and loves you and gave Himself for you, can you give yourself for Him? And lastly, a question that I must ask myself often to see where my heart lies, if I saw my King today face-to-face, what would He say to me? Would He ask why I did not give more effort to follow Him and why I wasted the potential He gave me, why I wasted the opportunities that he presented to me so that I may experience being His vessel to be used as desired for His glory, to play a role in a story that will last all of eternity? Or will He look at me in the eyes, smile at me, and say, “I’m proud of you”

What will He say to you?

Is your belief in God an active belief that seeps into every aspect of your life? If not, what kind of belief is it?

Blessings