January 12
‘Ye are Christ’s’
1 Corinthians 3:23

‘Ye are Christ’s.’  You are his by donation, for the Father gave you to the Son; His by His bloody purchase, for He counted down the price for your redemption; His by dedication, for you have consecrated yourself to Him; His by relation, for you are named by His name, and made one of His brethren and joint-heirs.  Labour practically to show the world that you are the servant, the friend, the bride of Jesus.  When tempted to sin, reply, ‘I cannot do this great wickedness, for I am Christ’s’.  Immortal principles forbid the friend of Christ to sin.  When wealth is before you to be won by sin, say that you are Christ’s, and touch it not. Are you exposed to difficulties and dangers?  Stand fast in the evil day, remembering that you are Christ’s.  Are you placed where others are sitting down idly, doing nothing?  Rise to the work with all your powers; and when the sweat stands upon your brow, and you are tempted to loiter, cry, ‘No, I cannot stop, for I am Christ’s.  If I were not purchased by blood, I might be like Issachar, crouching between two burdens; but I am Christ’s, and cannot loiter.’  When the siren song of pleasure would tempt you from teh path of right, reply, ‘ Thy music cannot charm me; I am Christ’s’.  When the cause of god invites thee, give thyself to it; when the poor require thee, give thy goods and thyself away, for thou art Christ’s.  Never belie thy profession.  Be thou ever one of those whose manners are Christian, whose speech is like the Nazarene, whose conduct and conversation are so redolent of heaven, that all who see you may know that you are the Saviour’s, recognizing in you His features of love and His countenance of holiness. ‘I am a Roman!’ was of old a reason for integrity; far more, then, let it be your argument for holiness, ‘I am Christ’s!’

I hope you find this challenging and encouraging!

I wish that I could claim that I took a little break for the holidays, but in reality I have just not made the time to update the blog.  A lot of changes have happened recently with the move across country from Kentucky back to Utah.  Hopefully some of these changes will spark ideas for writing.  In the meantime, if you are looking for something to create food for thought you should check out Charles Spurgeon’s Morning by Morning/Evening by Evening readings.  They are deep and thought provoking and will hopefully spur you on toward greater faithfulness as it regards to your time in the Word of God. Some of the near-future posts will likely be my own reflections upon Spurgeon’s writing.

I’m not feeling super original but I have been made aware of a website that is seeking to defend the lives of unborn babies and to maintain state and federal laws that currently limit various types of abortion.  Our new administration has made it a priority to sign into law the “Freedom of Choice Act” which would essentially make all forms of abortion legal which includes not requiring parental consent for girls as young as 12 who are seeking abortions.  The Act would also no longer require clinics to inform women of the dangers of abortion procedures.  For the sake of thousands (and even millions) of babies and young women who are affected by abortions every year, I would ask that you take a few minutes to check out the following website and sign the petition if you feel so led. 

http://www.fightfoca.com/

I firmly believe that as American citizens, we are called to support our administration regardless of who is in office but that we are also obligated to protect the vulnerable and innocent of our nation.  May we band together in prayer and petition and defend the lives of the defenseless.  Feel free to drop a comment.

The following is an excerpt from Frank Fears’ Resurrecting the Dead Church.  It is a quick read that is well worth the short amount of time that it takes to work through.  You can find the book at www.thedeadchurch.com.

It is no mystery why “harvested” Christians are rare.  For decades, most churches have settled for transfer increase rather than growth.  We have augmented that “increase”, by reaching a percentage of our biological issue.  Numerical increase by “sheep swapping” does nothing to extend the kingdom.  Actual conversion grown churches are virtually non-existent.  And reaching our own children is scarcely working the fields which Jesus described as white unto harvest.  While training our children in the fear and admonition of the Lord is our responsibility, the gospel was never meant to be kept a family secret.  We have hoarded what we were told to share.  Refusal to obey the Great Commission is a blatant and shameful denial of our Lord and Savior.  Peter’s denial of Christ was rooted in fear; ours is rooted in apathy.  The pain that our denial causes Christ is no less.  The sin of silence is a cancer that has corrupted our communion with God.  It quenches the Spirit, as perhaps nothing else can.  And we have embraced it.  It has permeated our churches by default, and by open acceptance.  Dead churches are the poisonous fruit of that sin.

Ultimately, the state of any church is the responsibility of the leadership.  “Swapping sheep” and dunking children too small to cross the street unattended is what passes for leadership in most churches.  The “consumer Christianity” mindset has as its priority the entertainment and attraction of members from other churches.  The growth of one congregation is at the expense of others; we redistribute instead of multiply.  The definition of a growing church is one that is attracting more members than are currently wandering off.  Success is measured by how many attend,  how much is collected, and how enthused most are about the “awesome” music, “awesome” building, “awesome” programs, and “awesome” friendliness found at one’s church.

Christ’s priority of seeking and saving the lost is only given lip service.  Feeding the sheep is secondary to entertaining the goats.  Long forgotten is the overarching responsibility of pastor-teachers, evangelists, prophets, and apostles.  All those offices had a common function, in addition to their individual roles.  Ephesians 4:12 tells us that they are to jointly, and in tandem, do something essential to the life of the church, and to the extension of the kingdom.  They are instructed to equip the saints to do the work of the ministry.  After equipping it falls to leadership to mobilize, encourage, and to lead by example.  Church leaders were never meant to be the “professional” Christians; to do all the sharing and all the caring.  The instruction was to equip; to perfect, as in bring to reproductive maturity.  Only then is it possible to lead by example.

“A gray head is a crown of glory; It is found in the way of righteousness.” – Proverbs 16:31

This post follows on the heels of the previous one regarding old age/longevity.  This verse has continued to shape my thinking about life and about my own thoughts on age.

It is my great concern that the older people in our churches, communities, and families are being taken for granted by younger generations.  We view the blue-haired people in the church as cute pew decorations rather than seeing them as the seasoned warriors of the faith that they truly are.  Why should we continue to struggle with all of the age-old questions of how we ought to do things when our churches are full of people who have life experience and years of faithful God-fearing under their belts?

Many people will contend and say something to the effect of, “Why should we listen to older people? All they want to do is make us do things the way they’ve always been done…and who wants to sing hymns every Sunday anyway?”  While this example might be a little exaggerated, I am sure that many of us in the younger generations have wrestled with thoughts such as these at some point. 

However, I might suggest that we would be wise to remember that the zeal of our youth will one day give way to a more determined and static understanding of the church and of the gospel.  This is not the emergency that it might seem to be.  It is only natural that we would grow and mature in our understanding of the way that things ought to be done and we too will hold onto the way that we have grown accustomed to doing things. 

Maybe the problem isn’t necessarily that older people are too unwilling to change, but that as younger people we have failed to realize the importance and the value of the believers who have gone before us.  It is much to my dismay that we treat those with the gray-haired crown of splendor with disdain and disrespect rather than taking the time to honor them as heroes of the faith who have faithfully modeled submission to Christ to the rest of the body of Christ.

May we stop and thank God that we have been blessed with believers who have carried the torch of faith and who have faithfully invested in the church so that we as young adults might experience the fullness of the gospel within the church, the Bride of Christ.

Rather than a writing a lengthy post, I have chosen instead to post a video taken from a debate from the Democratic Party primaries.  I’m choosing this video not to endorse any particular candidate or party but to point out the way in which the Bible is viewed within the sphere of politics.   Each candidate’s “favorite verses” are those that pertain to political matters rather than the salvific work of God in the lives of sinners and some are not even verses at all. 

May we be reminded that the Bible is not a “political tool” but is the very Word of God that centers on the work of God in reconciling fallen people to himself.  Feel free to drop a comment.

Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.  Are you not worth much more than they?  And which of you by being anxious can add a single cubit to his life span?”

- Matthew 6:26-27

Over the course of the last several weeks, I have noticed a surge in the number of internet news stories that are centered on the search for the key to long life.  As I began to think about these stories, I realized that the interest in prolonging life is not a recent trend by any stretch of the imagination.  The hope for longer, more fulfilled lives is not simply a biological issue but points us toward several key truths.  In this series of posts, I will look at the issues surrounding longevity and the quest for youthfulness.

The quote from Jesus, as seen as part of The Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5 and 6), provides valuable insight in understanding our perspective on aging.  This verse is part of a whole and as such it is important to understand its context.  In this instance, Jesus is speaking to the crowds about the uselessness of anxiety and worrying about the daily necessities of life.  If God provides for the needs of birds, animals, plants, and all of creation; then how much more will he provide for humans, who are made in His image?

With this in mind, the clamouring over the key to longevity has to be seen for what it truly is; a lack of faith in God as the creator and sustainer of all things.  As people push God away from themselves (both in an intellectual sense as well as in a personal sense), their natural inclination is to seek their own means of sustaining their lives.  The problem remains however, that as mortal humans, we cannot add to the number of days that we have been given.  It is pointless to worry about what tomorrow (or the next 50 years) holds because we may not live to see tomorrow.

In the process of trying to add to our days, we deny our purpose of glorifying God in every aspect of our lives.  When our hope is placed in God through faith in Jesus Christ, we do not live in fear of our lives being cut short, because we realize that it is God who holds the future and He alone has the ability to raise us from death to life, that we might spend eternity in His presence.

“Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean; Remove the evil of your deeds from My sight.  Cease to do evil, Learn to do good; Seek justice, Reprove the ruthless, Defend the orphan, Plead for the widow.” – Isaiah 1:16-17

I just finished up a week-long mission trip to Las Vegas, Nevada where myself and 12 others helped with a church plant named Summerlin Community Baptist Church.  Vegas is known as “Sin City” because of the widespread access to sin.  It is interesting that even people who don’t believe in Jesus Christ or the need for the forgiveness of sin view Las Vegas as “Sin City”.  It would be easy to spend the majority of my blog in crying out against the great “evils” that are readily found in Las Vegas.  However, as I reflect upon the week spent in Las Vegas, my thoughts are taken in a different direction.

Rather than feeling the spiritual affliction that is so often associated with Las Vegas, I was refreshed and continue to be refreshed by the community of believers in the church in Las Vegas.  The other members of the team and myself were given host families from the church to stay with.  These families went above and beyond all that was asked of them.  As we continued to interact with the members of the church throughout the week, the depth of the church’s love for the body of Christ was further revealed. 

The only other church in which I have witnessed such depth of love was in Siena, Italy.  Siena, like Las Vegas, was a very “spiritually dark” place and was a place of hard soil in terms of sharing the gospel.  It continues to amaze me at how churches in some of the darkest places in the world also produce some of the strongest believers in terms of community. 

Many church “strategists” speak of unity and community as if they are something that must be forced by the body of believers rather than recognizing it as the natural overflow of the sanctifying work of the Spirit of God.  As the Holy Spirit works within the life of individual believers within the context of a community/church the natural result ought to be a spirit of unity and love among the believers.

Might it be that churches in many areas lack unity and community because it’s members aren’t serving alongside one another in the trenches of life?  Are we too busy fighting over the color of the carpet that we have forgotten the purpose of the church?  Hopefully, we can take the lessons learned from churches such as Summerlin and Siena and realize that the unity of believers is something that naturally happens in the process of sanctification.  If community is not found in the natural interactions of the members of a church it will never be found on the back page of our church bulletins.

http://www.summerlincommunity.org/

“Does the LORD take delight in thousands of rams, In ten thousand rivers of oil?  Shall I present my firstborn for my rebellious acts; The fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?  He has told you, O man, what is good; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God?” Micah 6:7-8

In Christianity today, many people try to please God through their works, their “sacrifices”, and even in their religiousity.  Often times, we think that we have “revolutionized” the Christian faith through our cool programs, our new approaches to ministry, or even in the way that we worship God.  When we look at the Old Testament prophet, Micah, we see a strikingly different picture.

God doesn’t want our fancy gifts, our worship services, or our good works if our heart is not right with Him.  God has shown us what is good and we continue to try to complicate it by adding elements to the gospel.  When I say that God wants our hearts to be right before Him, I’m referring to a realization that we are sinners because we do not meet the righteous and perfect standard of holiness of God through our own efforts.  This realization leads to repentance (the turning away from our sinful lives) and to a relationship with Jesus Christ which is by faith and not by anything that we can do. 

If we don’t have a right relationship with God through faith in Jesus Christ, it doesn’t matter what we do because by our actions we continually separate ourselves from God.   Our “good works” are filthy rags before the Holy God.  Basically what Micah is saying is that we need to focus on our relationship with God first and foremost because everything else will fall into place.

We are to love God and to love people because we love God.  True religion works itself out from loving God and delighting in Him not by somehow pleasing God through our good works. 

“We have seen…that hypocrites inquire how God is to be pacified, as though they were very solicitous about the performance of thir duty; and that in the meantime these are disguises; for by circuitous windings they turn here and there, and never wish to come directly to God.  The way might have been easily known by them; but they closed their eyes, and at the same time pretended that they had some concern for religion.  And this is also very commonly the case in our day…” – John Calvin commentary on Micah

May God open our eyes to clearly see Him that we might respond accordingly!

“As the deer pants for the water brooks, So my soul pants for Thee, O God.  My soul thirsts for God, for the living God; When shall I come and appear before God?” Psalm 43:1-2

Psalm 43 is well known by many people.  In many churches there is a contemporary worship song that refers to it.  But do we really understand the imagery?

To be honest, my understanding and thinking have involved images of Bambi and Thumper seeking for water after playing around for a while.  It seems as though many people have images of a serene picture of a deer drinking at a brook in their minds.  At the heart of Psalm 43 we are confronted with a drastically different image that forces us to rethink the message of the psalmist.

The other day I was at a man’s house and he had a deer head mounted on his wall.  As with most wall mounts, there was a story behind the hunt.  He explained how he had shot and wounded the deer and ended up following it’s trail for nearly two hours.  He and his fellow hunters knew that there was a stream in the area and inevitably the pursuit of the deer led them to water.  The man explained, “In my hunting experience, wounded animals almost always run to water.”

When we look at the rest of Psalm 43 and see the desperation involved, it becomes clear that our understanding of a deer panting for water should not conjure images of a peaceful creek complete with deer stooping to drink of the water.  Rather it should cause us to think of a desperate struggle for life itself. 

Is our pursuit of God a desperate search for the One who created us or is it something that we worry about one day a week for a little over an hour?  May we understand our need for God in every aspect of our lives!