First Love

Revelation 2:4

But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first.

A life desires God more and more, will gain Him more. One that desires Him less and less is getting exactly what they seek.

For many Christians, when they first enter into the lifelong walk with Christ, they have such a passion and zeal for Him. However, as time goes on we begin to lose that love and passion. We desire Him less and that is exactly what we are getting. Jesus is calling many of us out. Family, it is so easy to lose sight of our first love. In a relationship  that takes place over many years between two people, there is an initial rush of emotion, they long for each other’s company, they love everything about each other and they can’t wait to hear each other’s voice, etc. But as time passes, they don’t have that same passion for each other. We have all seen or experienced relationships like this. May we not let this type of attitude invade our relationship with God. His love is all we need family. He is all we need. Yet we find ourselves living for everything else many times. God is our second, third, fourth love. Why not our first? Why, when we are honest with ourselves, do we find that other things and people are contending for the position of most importance in our lives? God should have no competition for that position! In comparison to our love for Him, it should seem that we hate everyone and everything else and even ourselves, as it talks about in Luke 14:25-33. Do we love God like this? If not, why? In the passage in Luke, Jesus CLEARLY states that in order to be a disciple of Him, we must count the costs of following Him, which are to love Him above ALL else and to replace us with Him by carrying our cross daily for Him, allowing no humiliation, personal plans, personal will, or anything else to obstruct our relationship to Him. Basically we must give Him our life and make Him first in our life in order to follow Him. Family, may we not forsake our first love, but may we come back to Him and His open arms and carry on with Him being faithful until death (Revelation 2:26), bringing Him pleasure in us.

To our first true love we must return. To God we must run back to. To the cross we must embrace persistently.

-Ryan

Leaving Bondage and Loving Love

Revelation 1:5b-6

To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen

Simply stated this verse is amazing. I get hung up on the first few words: “to him that loves us.” How often do we really think about the love of God? This love that is so pure, that it isn’t shallow and doesn’t have any fault in it, a love that is undeserved, that after WE rebelled and left Him He still loves us and demonstrated that love by humbling Himself and dying on the cross so that we could be redeemed and spend eternity with Him, a love that never stops, no matter what we have done or will do He still loves us, and a love that is perfect, never ending, never failing, never stopping, never bears a grudge, never turns its back, never leaves. We have all faced disappointment in life, many of us have received much disappointment from the people that we have loved and do love, family, may we remember that God’s love never, NEVER, leaves any disappointment when it is truly experienced. He will never let you down if you keep in respect to your end goal, to finish the race on earth well to hear Him say “well done my good and faithful servant (Matthew 25:21)” and to know God more than you know anything else. Family, may we long to better know this love. 

The next few words are some of the most amazing words I know in scripture, “and has freed us from our sins by his blood.” We chose bondage to sin, bondage to death over life ruling with the King. Needless to say, we chose the wrong side! However, though that could have and should have been the end of the story and we should receive justice for the actions we have committed and the thoughts that have gone through our mind, we have been given an offer to accept or refuse. We have been offered to start over and our mistakes will be erased from past, present and future, or we can choose to refuse this offer and take our punishment of eternity in hell, separated from God. May we all choose forgiveness! For those of us who have chosen forgiveness, may I ask, how differently do we live from people that choose to cary on in their ways? So often, there is very little difference from modern “Christians” to the people of this world, aside from saying a prayer to give one’s heart to the Lord, HOWEVER, salvation does not come from a prayer! Salvation comes from believing in God with all of one’s heart and loving Him and living life with Him and confessing Him (Romans 10:9). That is how one is saved. By grace through faith have we been saved (Ephesians 2:8). Faith is the total casting upon of all of the trust that you have, it revolutionizes your life because you are throwing everything that you are onto that choice. Has our faith in God completely changed our life? If not, how much faith do we have? We are told that faith the size of a mustard seed can move mountains (a mustard seed is extremely small, about equivalent to a fine point marker dot on paper), family, why is that all the faith that we have? Imagine if we each had faith larger than a mustard seed, imagine how this world would be changed for our King. 

This verse ends by telling us that we are part of God’s kingdom. Family, we matter to God and as His children, as part of His kingdom, may we live to please Him, may we live to know Him and to bring Him glory.

May God’s love abound more and more in us and as we abandon our chains to sin that broke with Christ’s sacrifice for us, may we love more and more.

-Ryan

Daily Life

Jude 20-21

But you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life. 

This passage says so much with so few words. Family, these verses are things we need to remember, these are our daily goals in life as Christians. 

Are we building ourselves up in our faith? Are we seeking God with everything we are? Are we constantly striving to grow in our walk? Are we becoming more and more like Him every day we live? If not, what is standing in our way and what/who will mean more to us?

Are we praying? Are we spending time on our knees, crying out to the most holy God? Are we talking to Him and getting to know Him? Are we treating Him like a wishing well, asking for requests for ourselves more than anything or are we praising Him and thanking Him for all the He has done in our life? Family, how often are we found before the throne of God? Prayer is a beautiful thing, we get to speak to the God, the Creator, the King that forgave us after we rejected Him and committed vile actions in His sight and He listens. He truly listens to us if we approach Him like we ought to. How amazing is this? It is such a privilege, yet so few of us truly take advantage of this opportunity! Why?

Family, do we keep ourselves in the love of God? Do we abide in it? Can we be found living in God’s love, never wanting to leave? Are we truly experiencing this love? If we never experience this love, this pure, unadulterated, limitless, and crazy love, how can we claim to abide in it? Family, God is love, abiding in His love is abiding in Him and on His Word. May we seek to grow with Him and abide in Him. 

Lastly, may we wait for God’s mercy that leads to eternal life. Family, are we eagerly awaiting to be able to spend eternity with our King? I have to admit, it is tough at times. We all have hopes for our lives. Many of us can’t wait to marry and have a family, others want to reach a point of success before death, some desire just to live more and do more things, but family, if these goals are dampening our desire to be with God and making us less excited to be with Him, then we must revaluate these things. They may be a hinderance and, in all reality, they are us holding onto our desires, our worldly hopes and saying that we long for our hopes more than we do God’s. There is nothing wrong with hoping to have a family, or hoping to do well with a career, or living life, but they are wrong when they steal our desire from longing to be with God and looking forward to His return.

May we live a Jude 20-21 life every single day.

Blessings family,

-Ryan

Radical or Average?

3 John 11

Beloved, do not imitate evil but imitate good. Whoever does good is from God; whoever does evil has not seen God.

Though our works are not what brings about salvation in our lives, works are a huge indication of a life. They can be manipulated to portray a false reality by posing to play a role, however, genuine actions are a key indicator of the status of a personal standing with God. The outlook on sin that one has, the love that flows from them, the desire to share His word, all of these and so many more are indicators of where one stands. A person that is sold out for God views sin as disgusting and wants nothing to do with partaking in sin, they seek to avoid compromise to the best of their ability, they have a love like God would have for everyone, friends and enemies alike, and they would have a burning passion to share His word with everyone, not just people that are similar to them. Now, many people’s response to this is “well, that’s great and all, but that’s for a RADICAL CHRISTIAN, what about if I just want to be an ORDINARY CHRISTIAN?” My response to that is, is there such thing as an ordinary Christian? This is a question that I can answer with no certainty. Personally I believe that a true follower of God, wants to be a radical Christian, and is never content with not following Him with everything. The concept of an “ordinary” Christian strikes me as one of a desire for less than is required, a lack of desire to excel, a misplaced passion, a desire to live one’s own life, a desire to make God the passenger rather than the driver. This to me sounds more like a good person than a godly one. It sounds to me like a person that is in love with the world and its offers and isn’t willing to give it all up for God. Family, as people that are called to imitate good, and since good is defined by God, we are to imitate Him. We are to be holy as He is holy (I Peter 1:16). We are to be imitators of Christ. Christ lived nothing short of a radical life, He challenged the status quo because He knew that it was short of what God desired! If our King came and lived a radical life to the point that He died for it, what makes us think that we don’t have to? 

Even if being an “ordinary Christian” was good enough for salvation (though I am not sure it is because only God can decide), I would not be looking forward to the day that I would stand before my King, and look Him in the eye and say, “God, I was an ordinary Christian for you.” Only to hear His reply, “Why? I gave you so much potential and had so much that I desired to do through you to reach my people. Why were you happy with throwing away what I hoped for you?” That response would devastate me and make me wish that I could do it all over again to be a radical Christian.

May we be RADICAL CHRISTIANS FOR GOD.

A love letter to those who rebelled against Him

2 John 9

Everyone who goes on ahead and does not abide in the teaching of Christ, does not have God. Whoever abides in the teaching has both the Father and the Son.

Family, the Bible is our instructions from God on how to live this life. It is our love letter from Him. It is the greatest book ever written. The most accurate document ever written. It is the book with the highest standards. It is a gift from a holy God who did not have to reveal Himself to us. It is a gift from God after we spat in His face and displayed our hatred to Him via sinning. It is a gift after we ran with our sin and loved it more than our Maker. It is a gift that tells us that we have a chance of forgiveness IF we turn to Him and follow Him as His disciple. But yet, we treat this great book with such little reverence. We live life ignoring it so often. We turn to Facebook instead of getting our face in His Book. This verse in 2 John says it all though: “Everyone who goes on ahead and does not abide in the teaching of Christ, does not have God. Whoever abides in the teaching has both the Father and the Son.” If we are not reading His teachings, how can we know Him? Oswald Chambers said, “That is the way God speaks to us, not by visions and dreams, but by words.” If we never read His word, how can we be upset when things aren’t going well or we feel disconnected from Him? Family, what Hebrews 4:12 says, “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” This book is one of God’s channels of communication to us, and we access it so scarcely many times. How do we know God if we don’t access one of His most used channels of communication with us? He has so much to show us in His word, but we have to dive into it. As this passage talks about, without knowing His word, how can we say that we know Him? We need to be in this book as much as possible, at the very least every day. My question is this, do we long for and thirst for the word of God like we starve for food or long for drink? Do we need it more than anything, short of God Himself? May we not make His word our god by going too far the other way, but family, may we dig deeper and deeper into His word, seeking Him for He promises us that when we seek Him, we shall find Him (Luke 11:9). May we be people that know our God and know His word so that we may be workers equipped in and out of season (2 Tim 2:15). Family, this is our sword and we are going into war, may we know how to use it on the battlefield because we are so familiar with it because we have used it so much.

“A Bible that is falling apart, is usually the sign of a life that isn’t.”

- Vance Havner

Blessings

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?