July 23, 2017

60 More Seconds of Christian Comfort

Look at the birds of the air:  they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.  Are you not of more value than they?  And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?  And why are you anxious about clothing?  Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow:  they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.  But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? 

Matthew 6:26-30

Look around you, Christian.  God feeds birds and causes flowers to grow and makes lilies and tulips beautiful.  This is His world.  And if you have truly been born again in Christ, then the God who owns and runs this universe spent His all to adopt you.  

Look at how tender this God is with robins and finches and dandelions and grass.  And you are His child.  Trust Him!

The word Jesus uses at the beginning of verse 28 doesn’t mean just to watch.  He uses a word like that in verse 26, but in the sentence that begins verse 28 He uses a word that means to study or observe or learn from.  So, seriously:  Go outside and look.  Step into your backyard and watch the petals of a flower flicker in a breeze like a candle flame, and know that every step in that dance is by His hand.  Go look at a tree and see the odd shape and direction of its branches, gnarled like an old man’s fingers, and know that every moment from that tree’s first break through the soil to its falling back down back into it are all by the decree of the God who loves and adopted and values you, Christian.  

“Do you see that sun coming up over the horizon, over there, tracing the blue sky with its warm gold?  Do you see that bright yellow star our side of the earth is facing right now?  Study it.  Look at it.  Birds and plants and stars and sins; this is all in His hands, child.  Trust Him.”

This is a good God.  This is a King we can trust.  This is a beautiful, caring, creating, provident, kind, remaking, rescuing, adoring, wise God.  

Let us seek His Kingdom first.  

Let us trust Him.

Grace and peace.

Peace.

July 19, 2017

30 Seconds of Christian Comfort

Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on.  Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?  Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.  Are you not of more value than they?  And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?  And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.  But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?

Matthew 6:25-30

Comfort.  

The disciple of Jesus is supposed to feel better, sense that he’s more secure, after reading this from His Savior.  He should be comforted.

Now, Jesus is not saying that every single believer will be given more beautiful clothing than the flowers.  Why do I know that?  Well, Solomon himself was a servant of God, and Jesus just said that he wasn’t clothed as beautifully as flowers are.  And of course Jesus Himself died with His clothes on the ground below Him, being gambled for by wicked Roman soldiers.  And Paul, His greatest missionary, died penniless.  I have to assume his wardrobe was relatively sparse.

So what is Jesus saying?  How exactly is this supposed to comfort me if I’m a disciple of King Jesus?

He is teaching His followers that God cares for them more than He cares for flowers.  God cares for them.  

God almighty has an intention, a purpose, to care for wildflowers and grass and little birds.  And each of His children is far more valuable than any of them.  After all, the Father spent His Son to have them.

So, how do these words from Christ comfort a Christian?  They teach him two things:  (1) That he is precious to God Almighty, and (2) that this is a caring God.

And so whatever comes, the Christian can know it is for his good.

July 12, 2017

This Great Revolution


The greatest revolution in history is the revolt of the Kingdom of Jesus against the ruler of this dark air, against the principalities of self-love and pride and idolatry and greed that have set themselves up as “kings” in this world.  

The greatest revolt of all time is the one eternal light is mounting against these temporary shadows.  

The church, flawed though she is, is the instrument of that revolution.  She is the people of the coming victory.  

The church, the beloved wife of Jesus Christ, is a people of dangerous love.  She is a people of violent forgiveness.  Christians are a battering ram to the world’s worst lies, both the ones it’s told and the ones it’s been sold.  Our Christian kindness undermines the world’s bloody economy.  The church’s mercy upends this world’s dark systems.  

Our love of children assaults abortion.  Our care for the poor undercuts materialism.  Our promise-keeping in marriage takes a baseball bat to lust.  Our humble serving stands against belligerence and hate.  Christian kindness towards our enemies is an assault on everything Hell stands for.  We are fighting against something just by being children of God.  

We are ice cold water thrown into the face of a world stunned and punch drunk by bitterness and rivalries and selfishness.  We make war with hate by the audacious power of love.  We overcome evil with good.   

We are the people of the greatest revolution.  

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. 

Romans 12:21

July 5, 2017

Would He Be Enough?


Would He enough if I lost everything else?  

If my reputation were destroyed.  If my name were shattered and everyone who’s opinion I cared about most began to think I was a joke. 

If my family were taken away from me.  If the the deep and abiding love of my wife and children were somehow lost to me.

If all my material comforts were gone.  If television and good food and my house and the internet and books were all taken away.  If I had none of my first world diversions or enjoyments or hobbies.

If my job any my ministry and my vocation fell apart.  If I had no obvious successes, and after 20 or 30 or 40 years, nothing had worked out as I’d hoped.  If everything I’d tried to build landed flat, and I was branded a failure.  

If all the lives I’d wanted to see changed seemed simply static.  No growth.  No healing.  No apparent revival.  

If everything were taken from me but Christ, would He be enough for me to live on?  Would I feel like I still had my one most precious thing?  Would I be content despite my sadness, because I still had the thing my heart feasted most on:  The love of my Savior?  

Your inner impulses run like little workers on a sinking ship to protect whatever your deeest treasures are.  When whatever it is you most love, the thing you find the most peace and joy and satisfaction in, is being threatened, you’ll your nerves and behaviors all scurrying to protect it, to patch the hole and make sure no water breaches the hull there.  You can feel it when you lash out in anger over your reputation being damaged.  You can feel it when you protect at all costs your time in front of the TV.  You can feel it when you ignore prayer or family or work for social media and internet videos.  You will protect and gravitate toward whatever you most treasure, whatever you most enjoy.  

So am I worshiping idols?  Or is He that treasure for me?

Do I ask family or reputation or comfort to bear all the weight of my soul and my hope?  Or would He be enough?

I’ll answer in private.  And in prayer.  But I thought hearing the question might benefit some of you.

But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ.  Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.  For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. 

Philippians 3:7-11

July 2, 2017

30 Seconds On How To Be a Real Human


The Gospel is the most humanizing thing available to a man, because nothing is as humanizing or as freeing as being a desperate man in need of forgiveness and getting it.  

We need to be made new, we need a fresh start with our Maker, and the Gospel is that Jesus died and rose to give us that.  

I don’t need more self-esteem or self-affirmation or self-realization in order to reach my full potential as a human being.  I need my evils deeds forgiven, my evil heart changed, and the power to live the loving and humble way that humans were designed to live.  And the Gospel is that Jesus can give all that by the power of God.  

There is nothing more humanizing than being changed by that message.   There is no fuller humanity than Gospel humanity.  

Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. But that is not the way you learned Christ!— assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. 

Ephesians 4:18-24

June 27, 2017

Some Little Kid Definitions Of Big Concepts


I think, generally, if you actually understand something you’ll be able to to explain it to a young child.  And the flip side of that coin is that trying to explain something to a little kid can help you understand it better.  

Some Christian parents, myself included, struggle at times to answer their 5-year-old’s question about what a theologically and philosophically big word means.  

“Daddy, what’s love?”

“But Mommy, what is faith?”

So, after watching The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe with my kids and explaining what “bravery” was to my 3-year-old son, I had the idea to write this post. 

These are some little kid definitions that, while not the most precise exposition you could give of each idea, I think certainly get across what each thing really is.  These have been (or will be) my definitions for my little guys.  

Bravery:  When you love something good and fight for it.  

Evil:  Not like God. 

Faith: Believing someone can do what he says he can do.  

Family:  People connected by a love promise.  

Good:  Like God.   

Heaven:  Where God lives. 

Hell:  A place where God punishes, forever, people who won’t say sorry.  

Home:  Where you’ve been made to belong.  

Hope:  When you really want something to happen.  

Love:  When something is so special to you you’ll do hard things for it.  

Marriage:  A love promise a man and a woman make to each other and to God.

Peace:  When things are working the way God designed them to work.  

Salvation:  How people get to go to Heaven when they believe in Jesus.  

Wisdom:   Knowing what’s good and knowing how to do it.  

Happy Wednesday!

June 21, 2017

Turn And Be Blessed


One of the chief ways God blesses a man is by turning him away from his wickedness. 

God, having raised up his servant, sent him to you first, to bless you by turning every one of you from your wickedness.

Acts 3:26

Strapped for time today, so allow me to get directly to my point.  I see a pervasive reluctance to call sin sin in the wider Christian environment in America.  Not in every Christian church or in every Christsian home or in every Christian pub, but definitely as the majority posture of the mainstream American Protestant environment.  I see a fear of offending the dominant culture, the one that is dark and under the sway of Satan and in need of a Savior (see Ephesians 2:1-3).  It’s a sort of, “Yes, yes, we know abortion is murder and homosexuality is sinful, but why do we have to talk about it?”  And the answer of course is that people are dying, because sin both physically and spiritually kills.  And we have no problem talking about racial hatred or greed or judgmentalism being sinful, because those are chic and acceptable and cool conversations to have in 2017 America.  But a prophet doesn’t call for repentance from only the sins everybody is in agreement on.  And every nation needs Godly prophets.  

Every nation needs men and women who will tell it all that the Bible says.  

The Word of God is a good thing, meaning it is a thing meant for our good and it is itself intrinsically good and beautiful and true.  Our neighbors need it.  And we need to have the conviction that they need it.  We should lovingly, patiently tell people, people we care for and sacrifice for and listen to, about their wickedness.  

Or they’ll never turn from it and be blessed.